Chance by Joseph Conrad (free novel 24 .TXT) 📖

dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way.  The brasses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled background of the horizon.

Young Powell, in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such beings as himself.  It was a strange and almost improper thought to occur to the officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no matter how quiet a night.  Why on earth was he bothering his head?  Why couldn’t he dismiss all these people from his mind?  It was as if the mate had infected him with his own diseased devotion.  He would not have believed it possible that he should be so foolish.  But he was—clearly.  He was foolish in a way totally unforeseen by himself.  Pushing this self-analysis further, he reflected that the springs of his conduct were just as obscure.

“I may be catching myself any time doing things of which I have no conception,” he thought.  And as he was passing near the mizzen-mast he perceived a coil of rope left lying on the deck by the oversight of the sweepers.  By an impulse which had nothing mysterious in it, he stooped as he went by with the intention of picking it up and hanging it up on its proper pin.  This movement brought his head down to the level of the glazed end of the after skylight—the lighted skylight of the most private part of the saloon, consecrated to the exclusiveness of Captain Anthony’s married life; the part, let me remind you, cut off from the rest of that forbidden space by a pair of heavy curtains.  I mention these curtains because at this point Mr. Powell himself recalled the existence of that unusual arrangement to my mind.

He recalled them with simple-minded compunction at that distance of time.  He said: “You understand that directly I stooped to pick up that coil of running gear—the spanker foot-outhaul, it was—I perceived that I could see right into that part of the saloon the curtains were meant to make particularly private.  Do you understand me?” he insisted.

I told him that I understood; and he proceeded to call my attention to the wonderful linking up of small facts, with something of awe left yet, after all these years, at the precise workmanship of chance, fate, providence, call it what you will!  “For, observe, Marlow,” he said, making at me very round eyes which contrasted funnily with the austere touch of grey on his temples, “observe, my dear fellow, that everything depended on the men who cleared up the poop in the evening leaving that coil of rope on the deck, and on the topsail-tie carrying away in a most incomprehensible and surprising manner earlier in the day, and the end of the chain whipping round the coaming and shivering to bits the coloured glass-pane at the end of the skylight.  It had the arms of the city of Liverpool on it; I don’t know why unless because the Ferndale was registered in Liverpool.  It was very thick plate glass.  Anyhow, the upper part got smashed, and directly we had attended to things aloft Mr. Franklin had set the carpenter to patch up the damage with some pieces of plain glass.  I don’t know where they got them; I think the people who fitted up new bookcases in the captain’s room had left some spare panes.  Chips was there the whole afternoon on his knees, messing with putty and red-lead.  It wasn’t a neat job when it was done, not by any means, but it would serve to keep the weather out and let the light in.  Clear glass.  And of course I was not thinking of it.  I just stooped to pick up that rope and found my head within three inches of that clear glass, and—dash it all!  I found myself out.  Not half an hour before I was saying to myself that it was impossible to tell what was in people’s heads or at the back of their talk, or what they were likely to be up to.  And here I found myself up to as low a trick as you can well think of.  For, after I had stooped, there I remained prying, spying, anyway looking, where I had no business to look.  Not consciously at first, may be.  He who has eyes, you know, nothing can stop him from seeing things as long as there are things to see in front of him.  What I saw at first was the end of the table and the tray clamped on to it, a patent tray for sea use, fitted with holders for a couple of decanters, water-jug and glasses.  The glitter of these things caught my eye first; but what I saw next was the captain down there, alone as far as I could see; and I could see pretty well the whole of that part up to the cottage piano, dark against the satin-wood panelling of the bulkhead.  And I remained looking.  I did.  And I don’t know that I was ashamed of myself either, then.  It was the fault of that Franklin, always talking of the man, making free with him to that extent that really he seemed to have become our property, his and mine, in a way.  It’s funny, but one had that feeling about Captain Anthony.  To watch him was not so much worse than listening to Franklin talking him over.  Well, it’s no use making excuses for what’s inexcusable.  I watched; but I dare say you know that there could have been nothing inimical in this low behaviour of mine.  On the contrary.  I’ll tell you now what he was doing.  He was helping himself out of a decanter.  I saw every movement, and I said to myself mockingly as though jeering at Franklin in my thoughts, ‘Hallo!  Here’s the captain taking to drink at last.’  He poured a little brandy or whatever it was into a long glass, filled it with water, drank about a fourth of it and stood the glass back into the holder.  Every sign of a bad drinking bout, I was saying to myself, feeling quite amused at the notions of that Franklin.  He seemed to me an enormous ass, with his jealousy and his fears.  At that rate a month would not have been enough for anybody to get drunk.  The captain sat down in one of the swivel arm-chairs fixed around the table; I had him right under me and as he turned the chair slightly, I was looking, I may say, down his back.  He took another little sip and then reached for a book which was lying on the table.  I had not noticed it before.  Altogether the proceedings of a desperate drunkard—weren’t they?  He opened the book and held it before his face.  If this was the way he took to drink, then I needn’t worry.  He was in no danger from that, and as to any other, I assure you no human being could have looked safer than he did down there.  I felt the greatest contempt for Franklin just then, while I looked at Captain Anthony sitting there with a glass of weak brandy-and-water at his elbow and reading in the cabin of his ship, on a quiet night—the quietest, perhaps the finest, of a prosperous passage.  And if you wonder why I didn’t leave off my ugly spying I will tell you how it was.  Captain Anthony was a great reader just about that time; and I, too, I have a great liking for books.  To this day I can’t come near a book but I must know what it is about.  It was a thickish volume he had there, small close print, double columns—I can see it now.  What I wanted to make out was the title at the top of the page.  I have very good eyes but he wasn’t holding it conveniently—I mean for me up there.  Well, it was a history of some kind, that much I read and then suddenly he bangs the book face down on the table, jumps up as if something had bitten him and walks away aft.

“Funny thing shame is.  I had been behaving badly and aware of it in a way, but I didn’t feel really ashamed till the fright of being found out in my honourable occupation drove me from it.  I slunk away to the forward end of the poop and lounged about there, my face and ears burning and glad it was a dark night, expecting every moment to hear the captain’s footsteps behind me.  For I made sure he was coming on deck.  Presently I thought I had rather meet him face to face and I walked slowly aft prepared to see him emerge from the companion before I got that far.  I even thought of his having detected me by some means.  But it was impossible, unless he had eyes in the top of his head.  I had never had a view of his face down there.  It was impossible; I was safe; and I felt very mean, yet, explain it as you may, I seemed not to care.  And the captain not appearing on deck, I had the impulse to go on being mean.  I wanted another peep.  I really don’t know what was the beastly influence except that Mr. Franklin’s talk was enough to demoralize any man by raising a sort of unhealthy curiosity which did away in my case with all the restraints of common decency.

“I did not mean to run the risk of being caught squatting in a suspicious attitude by the captain.  There was also the helmsman to consider.  So what I did—I am surprised at my low cunning—was to sit down naturally on the skylight-seat and then by bending forward I found that, as I expected, I could look down through the upper part of the end-pane.  The worst that could happen to me then, if I remained too long in that position, was to be suspected by the seaman aft at the wheel of having gone to sleep there.  For the rest my ears would give me sufficient warning of any movements in the companion.

“But in that way my angle of view was changed.  The field too was smaller.  The end of the table, the tray and the swivel-chair I had right under my eyes.  The captain had not come back yet.  The piano I could not see now; but on the other hand I had a very oblique downward view of the curtains drawn across the cabin and cutting off the forward part of it just about the level of the skylight-end and only an inch or so from the end of the table.  They were heavy stuff, travelling on a thick brass rod with some contrivance to keep the rings from sliding to and fro when the ship rolled.  But just then the ship was as still almost as a model shut up in a glass case while the curtains, joined closely, and, perhaps on purpose, made a little too long moved no more than a solid wall.”

* * * * *

Marlow got up to get another cigar.  The night was getting on to what I may call its deepest hour, the hour most favourable to evil purposes of men’s hate, despair or greed—to whatever can whisper into their ears the unlawful counsels of protest against things that are; the hour of ill-omened silence and chill and stagnation, the hour when the criminal plies his trade and the victim of sleeplessness reaches the lowest depth of dreadful discouragement; the hour before the first sight of dawn.