第19章 CHAPTER VI(3)

I couldn't believe my eyes. It made me feel queer all over," went on the old chap in great perturbation, and squashing something in the corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a spatula. "You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard only to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly off my chump for a week.

But no fear. The captain of the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa --came aboard in Shanghai--a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with his hair parted in the middle. `A W --I am-aw-your new captain, mister--mister--aw--Jones.' He was drowned in scent--fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I dare say it was the look I gave him that made him stammer. He mumbled something about my natural disappointment--I had better know at once that his chief officer got the promotion to the Pelion --he had nothing to do with it, of course--supposed the office knew best--sorry.

. . . Says I, `Don't you mind old Jones, sir; damn his soul, he's used to it.' I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. I never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy show. I set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held my peace as long as I could; but at least I had to say something: up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, like a little fighting cock. `You'll find you have a different person to deal with than the late Captain Brierly.' `I've found it,' says I, very glum, but pretending to be mighty busy with my steak. `You are an old ruffian, Mr.--aw--Jones;and what's more, you are known for an old ruffian in the employ,' he squeaks at me. The damned bottle-washers stood about listening with their mouths stretched from ear to ear. `I may be a hard case,' answers I, `but I ain't so far gone as to put up with the sight of you sitting in Captain Brierly's chair.' With that I lay down my knife and fork. `You would like to sit in it yourself--that's where the shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift--on shore--after ten years' service--and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my halfpay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir!

I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his nightglasses--here they are; and he wished me to take care of the dog--here he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Where's the captain, Rover?" The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table.

`All this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge of--quite by a funny accident, too--from Matherson--mad Matherson they generally called him--the same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on:

"`Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing! Perhaps they did not want to know."`The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-brown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?

"`Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you think?" asked Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats me! Why?" He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad. But he wasn't of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me. What a mate don't know about his skipper isn't worth knowing. Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason.""`You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't anything that would have disturbed much either of us two," I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves."`Of course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. Ispoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street.

He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. "They caught me for that inquiry, you see," he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. "And goodness knows how long it will last. Three days, I suppose." I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side. "What's the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine," he pursued, hotly. I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort of pent-up violence.