Command

"Why not?" demanded the captain, very much astonished.

"No reason"s far as I know. But I"m not going third mate of anything, anywhere, any more. That"s that."

"Well, of course, we can"t _force_ you to go, you know."

"I know you can"t."

"But we shall really have to draw the attention of the owners to the fact that you refused to go."

"That"s all right. But I"m not going. I"ll go home if you don"t mind. Or if I can get a job here I take it my articles finished with the _Tanganyika_."

"No doubt, no doubt. But what could you get here?"

"I don"t know what I could do. But I"d shine shoes on the steps out there before I went third mate...."

"There"s no need to go back to the question if you refuse to volunteer."

Mr. Spokesly stood up. He was in a rage. Or rather he was resuming the rage which had a.s.sailed him when the _Tanganyika_ was going down and which had been suspended while he made good his claim on life. The smug way in which this bearded stranger disposed of him was intolerable. Mr.

Spokesly knew this man would never dream of sending one of his own caste to a third mate"s job on a Persian Gulf coaster with the hot season coming on. He knew that he himself, being a merchant seaman, was regarded by all these bra.s.s-bound people as an inferior, a sh.e.l.l-back, a lob-scouser, and no dire need would ever make them accept him as one of themselves. And he had a glimpse, in his rage, of another truth, for one often sees these things in flashes of anger. He just caught sight of the fact that these people, with their closely guarded privileges and esoteric codes, were fighting much more for their cla.s.s than for England, that an England democratized and ravished of her cla.s.s system would be to them a worse place than an England defeated by a cla.s.s-conscious enemy. But the immediate grievance was personal. He stood up.

"Volunteer," he repeated. "Excuse me, Mister, I came home from out east and took a second mate"s job, there being nothing better about. I went mate when the other man died. I"ve had a master"s ticket this ten years.

Now you want me to go third mate. Where shall I end up? In the forecastle? Volunteer! I can tell you, I"m beginning to regret I ever left Hong Kong."

"I see. Of course we can"t help that, you know. You"d better go and see the paymaster commander. Perhaps he can put you on a ship."

Mr. Spokesly took the cap, a size too large for him, which he had got on credit at Stein"s Oriental Store, and went out. He was feeling very bitter. No man feels he is doing himself justice in clothes that are too large for him. Mr. Spokesly wanted to go away and hide until he could get rid of his enormous golf-cap and the coat which hung on him, as he himself put it, like a bosun"s shirt on a capstan-bar. He went downstairs into the street. The sun had forced its way through vast banks of blue-black and gray-white clouds and brought out unsuspected tones in the roadway ankle-deep in bright yellow mud, in the green uniform of a Russian soldier who was carrying a polished copper kettle, and in the black-green waters of the Gulf crested with silver plumes.

Without a.n.a.lyzing the causes of the change, Mr. Spokesly felt more cheerful. He would go to the paymaster commander, who was in the Olympos Palace Hotel, and get the price of a drink anyway. He put his hands in his pockets and whistled. His hand had closed over the ring. He thought of Archy, the shiningly successful one, the paladin of pilferers, the financial genius, down among the crawfish and awaiting those things he saw on a stall just over there, eight-armed horrors with enormous bald heads and bulging eyes and hooked beaks. And as he came to the corner of the Place de la Liberte, he encountered a gentleman in the uniform of a lieutenant of reserve. He was an elderly person, with the subdued air of those men who have somehow attained to a command without ever making any mistakes or achieving any remarkable successes. His uniform was badly cut, his trousers bagged at the knees, and a large blue anchor was tattooed on his left hand. But to Mr. Spokesly he was an angel. He was not surprised when this person made some trivial remark to open the conversation. And it soon appeared that he, too, was nursing a grievance.

"What? You off the _Tanganyika_? Why, you only went out yesterday. No, the day before. Dear, dear! And what are they going to do with you?"

"Want me to go up the Persian Gulf third watch-keeper of a six-hundred-ton coaster," said Mr. Spokesly, feeling the ring in his pocket and scowling.

"Ah! Just fancy that."

"And I been mate this six years, mind you."

"Just so. How about a drink? Floka"s, you know, just up here. I quite understand," this elderly angel added, raising his hand. "This is all on me, if you don"t mind."

"But I can"t really, Mister. Not from a stranger," protested Mr.

Spokesly.

"Well, call it a loan, then, until you can see the paymaster. Here, take these two notes. There now! You owe me a sovereign, eh? Here we are."

Mr. Spokesly would have had some trouble in admitting it, but the fact remains that as they sat down at one of Floka"s little tables and his new friend asked him if he could do with a gin and bitters, he could scarcely answer because he was on the verge of tears. After the icy courtesy of the navy, for the officers of the sloop had not permitted him to forget for a moment that he was only a seaman, this warm human kindliness was almost too much. It really would have been a good thing for him if he had been able to have what is called a good cry. But he had been brought up to believe that such emotion was foolish, whereas it is often the highest wisdom.

"What is your job here?" he asked after the drinks had arrived.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I"m in a state of suspended animation,"

answered the other, who had been a commander in tramp steamers for some years. And he began to tell his story. He had joined up in the usual way, and after knocking about in a sh.o.r.e job in the Bristol Channel, some brilliant creature hit on the idea of sending him out to Saloniki to act as harbour master. They needed one, too, he observed in parentheses; an experienced man to straighten things out. Very good. He arrived.

"And what do I find but I am to take my orders from a sub-lieutenant R.

N. who"s about the age of my second boy who was killed at Mons, a c.o.c.ky young fellow who knows just as much about running a harbour master"s office as I do about painting pictures! Well, I went to the captain of the Base and I told him as plain as I could, I simply didn"t see my way to do it. I couldn"t, Mister! I went in to see this young lordship one day on some business, and he kept me waiting half an hour while he was telephoning about a girl he"d met. I told the Captain of the Base I really would have to go home. You know the saying: Standing rigging makes poor running gear. And now," he concluded with a quiet smile, "I believe I"ve refused duty or something. I do wish I could get a ship again. This waiting about is awful. But my owners have had so many losses, I can"t expect a command for a long time even if I could get out of this." And he touched the lace on his sleeve. "These navy people are all right in their own line of trade, I suppose, but they don"t seem to understand our troubles at all. They say the most curious things."

"How do you mean?"

"Why," said the old fellow in a whisper, "we had a lot of ships in dock last week or so, so many that the anchors got fouled. One ship would drop her anchor across another"s cable, you see. Well, one captain sent in a report he could not get his anchors up and in consequence he"d be delayed getting out. What I wanted to do, what I was going to do, was to move the other ships and give him room. If necessary, some of them could go out and round the breakwater, you understand. But my young lordship, this sub-lieutenant, says, "Can"t he slip his anchors?" in that tone of voice that they use trying to make you feel as though you were an errand boy. Just fancy that! "Can"t he slip his anchors?" "I dare say he can slip them all right," I said, "but wouldn"t he find them useful in Genoa?" Which was where he was going. You read a lot in the papers about what wonderful chaps they are, but ... I don"t know."

They sat there, those two, getting themselves pleasantly communicative on gin and bitters, swapping stories of the incompetence of others and their own obscure virtues, until Mr. Spokesly realized he would have to see the paymaster and discover what was to happen to him.

"Well," he said, "I must go. I suppose I"ll see you again."

"I"m at the Olympos. I"ll show you where to go. You"d better get a room there, too, if you can. I think I"ll get along now and see what my young lordship is up to. Slipping some more anchors, I expect. See you later."

And he moved off, in his slovenly fitting uniform and large broad-toed shoes. Mr. Spokesly watched him. There, he thought, went a man who"d had a command for years. And treated like a dog! He would be like that himself in twelve or fifteen years" time. These official people only thought of themselves. The only thing to do was to take a leaf out of their book and look after Number One. He went into the hotel.

He came out again in about a quarter of an hour. "So that"s the way we"re treated," he muttered, walking away. "Anybody would think I"d committed a crime, not going down with everybody else." This was rather hard on a hara.s.sed paymaster who could do nothing for Mr. Spokesly save advance him two hundred francs, as per regulations regarding distressed ships" officers, and promise him a compa.s.sionate pa.s.sage home at some future date, unless Mr. Spokesly"s owners authorized something more generous. With the two hundred francs in his pocket he walked away with the general idea of getting a suit of clothes. And then--perhaps it was the backward glance he took as he stood at the upper end of the noisy, dirty little Place de la Liberte and saw the sunlight dancing on the green-black water and on the polished bra.s.s funnels of the launches; perhaps it was the glimpse he caught of the far peaks of Thessaly that gave him an uplifting of the heart. His mood changed. He saw the thing suddenly not as a grievance but as an adventure, in which he would have to decide for himself. These naval people were only cogs in wheels. If they wanted him they could come for him. He recalled again the important fact that with the loss of the _Tanganyika_ he became exactly what he had so greatly desired--a free agent, so long as he did not press his claim for pa.s.sage home. There was nothing in his way now except this life-long habit of going to somebody for orders. Men had made great fortunes, he had heard, by being cast adrift in a foreign port in some such fashion. And others, he reflected cynically, had come down in the world to be weak-kneed b.u.mmers and drink-cadgers. There it was again. It rested with the man himself. What was it the little green books of the London School of Mnemonics had said? Mr. Spokesly laughed shortly as he thought of them lying at the bottom of the sea. A good place for them.

Lot of rubbish, if the truth were known. Fat lot of use they were now, for instance. That chap Dainopoulos was worth a ton of scientific flub-dub about training one"s memory. Why not go and see Dainopoulos now? See if his talk about a job would amount to anything. And Mrs.

Dainopoulos. And Evanthia Solaris. He drew a deep breath and looked out across the dancing sea. A battalion began to march along the quay, drums and fifes thudding and squeaking behind them, a long line of khaki figures with overcoats curled in a thick band across their bodies, hung all over with an extraordinary a.s.sortment of utensils. Going up to the front, he reflected, to be shot or dismembered or racked with dysentery.

They got the glory, too. They were "the boys at the front," and they filled the public eye. They and the navy. They had pensions provided and so on. Mr. Spokesly was not a trustworthy authority on the business and emoluments of soldiering. He held always the civilian"s point of view.

He had been brought up among a cla.s.s of people who kept silent on the subject if a member of their family enlisted. Even the war, which abolished the necessity for shame, did not eradicate the fundamental animosity of these middle-cla.s.s folk towards the military. Mr. Spokesly himself had an old aunt, who lived on her husband"s insurance money at Hendon, who still alluded to "the red-coats," though scarlet had been abolished. It was, like their terror of dear bread, in their blood. They were individualists, these bourgeois from whom Mr. Spokesly came. They were the folk whose relatives were established in distant colonies where they had raised families of tall sons who had come back into the fight so changed in character that the people of England did not know them.

They were the folk who "went out" to the East and into Africa as traders and factors, and who carried Haverstock Hill with them up the Nile and the Hoang Ho. Unimaginative and devoid of conscious art, they furnished, without knowing or caring much about the matter, the raw material of romance. They did outrageously romantic things under the pretence of providing for their families or getting orders for their firm. And it was this generic inherited character, working to the surface during the reaction from his recent exertions and emotional stress, that meant more to Mr. Spokesly than either the war or the London School of Mnemonics.

The basis of romantic adventure is character, and a man"s real character is sometimes overlaid with curious artificial ornaments. Mr. Spokesly had been very much in error both as to his own character and his destiny. He had no more need of memory training than Mr. Dainopoulos. In the future his care would be to forget rather than remember. His recent experiences had taught him much. What was to come would teach him still more.

He found Mr. Dainopoulos in his extremely diminutive office in a cross-street near the Post Office. Mr. Dainopoulos was ostensibly a money-changer. In front of his premises was a gla.s.s case with an a.s.sortment of currency. A few sovereigns in a saucer caught the eye, and might have inspired the casual pa.s.senger with polite wonder how they had found their way there when honest men in England had forgotten how they looked. And at the back of his premises Mr. Dainopoulos had a safe nearly as large as the office. Between these two emblems of financial affairs were a table and two chairs. On the walls were musty insurance calendars and obsolete steamship sailing lists, for Mr. Dainopoulos had done a brisk agency in the past with emigrants, stimulating the cupidity of Balkan peasants with lively handbills describing the streets of New York and Chicago as being paved with gold. At the present moment, when Mr. Spokesly came in, the other chair was occupied by a long thin person folded loosely together and smoking a cigarette in a holder nearly a foot long. He had one of those physiognomies that baffle a.n.a.lysis by the simple expedient of never under any circ.u.mstances meeting one"s eye. The pinched cranium, the cold, pale blue eyes, the hooked nose coming down over a toothless mouth to meet an up-turning pointed chin, might lead one to think him old, yet he was no more than forty-five in fact. His long sallow hands were hairless and garnished with several seal-rings, and on one skinny wrist hung a slave bangle. He had his chair tipped back against the wall, one leg dangling, the other hooked by the heel into the cross-bar, while over the raised sharp knee-joint he had draped his fore-arm. He was talking with great animation, his jaws moving rapidly like the jaws of a ventriloquist"s dummy, which he altogether resembled, and his toothless gums gave out a hissing lisp. Mr.

Dainopoulos jumped up.

"My dear friend!" he exclaimed, with that faint Latin crow on the upper register which is so disconcerting to the northerner. He took in the situation rapidly. It was unusual for him to be ignorant of anything for long. He very often knew of disasters before the Intelligence Department, having means that they lacked for gathering news from obscure sources. He needed no schools of mnemonics to teach him the inevitable deductions from Mr. Spokesly"s queer cap and baggy coat, while the long strips of plaster made him utter inarticulate sounds of sympathy.

"Let me introduce you. This is Captain Rannie. He"s skipper of my little ship the _Kalkis_. Captain, I want you to know this gentleman. His ship"s just been sunk."

Even at the moment when he offered a limp hand Captain Rannie did not raise his eyes above Mr. Spokesly"s side pockets, and he lost no time in resuming the conversation. Mr. Spokesly found that this was one of Captain Rannie"s most notable peculiarities. He had the air of a silent, reserved man, and he gave one a strong impression of being silent and reserved since he never divulged anything about himself. Yet he was always in the midst of an interminable monologue. When you met him he was talking rapidly in a low, ill-tempered lisping voice, he continued whether you had business with him or not, and he was still at it when you bade him good day. He talked extremely well, with a sort of heavy varnish of culture instead of fine polish, and he took occasional deep breaths in order to sound his periods correctly. The subjects of his discourse were two: his own virtues and the sins of everybody else on earth. Perhaps this was why he was never finished, since both subjects were inexhaustible. No one had ever given him a fair deal and he had given up expecting it. There were many things about himself to which he never alluded, but he gave the impression that in strict justice he ought to allude to them and very unfavourably, since he had been so badly treated by the other parties. He was never heard to mention the war, for example, or his own partic.i.p.ation in the fray. He talked, indeed, as a very garrulous being from another planet might, after a few intensive lessons on human frailty. At the present moment he was giving it as his fixed opinion, and supporting it with an overwhelming ma.s.s of fresh evidence, that everybody--the agent in Port Said, the crew including the mate and the engineer, the warship who had peremptorily demanded his name and port of origin, and the captain of the port who had a.s.signed him a bad berth nearly three miles from the dock--was in a conspiracy to make his life a h.e.l.l on earth. After he had shaken hands with Mr. Spokesly his arm dropped slackly across his knee once more, leaving the cigarette-stained fingers to make expressive motions emphasizing the ghastliness of the tale he unfolded. And never once did he raise his eyes to either of his auditors. It almost seemed as though he could not bear to look in the faces of those beings from whom it was impossible to obtain justice.

"I ask you, what is a man to do? What can he do, as commander of the vessel, when his own officers decline, absolutely pointblank decline, to give him ordinary decent respect? Let alone carrying out explicit orders. It"s enough to make a man throw up the whole thing in disgust.

If I"ve told my chief officer once I"ve told him fifty times, I will not have a cuspidor on the bridge for the man at the wheel. My helmsman must have the common decency to refrain from spitting while on duty. What is the result? He laughs in my face. Simply takes not the slightest notice.

The same with everything else. Do I give orders to have the captain"s tea served at four sharp? What does he do but stops the steward on his way down, drinks the tea, spits in the cup, and tells the man to take it to the captain. And when I ordered him to his room he threatened me.

Actually threatened the commander of the ship. I of course logged him for insolent, unbearable, and insubordinate behaviour, and when I read the entry to him according to regulations, he tore the book to pieces and not only threw them at me but offered me bodily violence. I was attacked! And the engineer is, if anything, worse. Stood looking in the port and laughed at the chief officer"s ruffianly behaviour. Do you suppose for a single moment I can tolerate this sort of thing?"

"Well, well, Captain, I tell you what ..." began Mr. Dainopoulos.

"And another thing," continued Captain Rannie, without looking up, "the man"s no good in a pinch. Several times on the voyage I"ve had literally to tell him his work. No sense of his position. Sits on the fore hatch and has long conversations with the crew. I make no charges, mind, none whatever, but I am as certain that man carries my conversation forward as I am of my own existence. When eight bells ring at my orders, he is frequently nowhere to be seen, and if I send the man at the wheel to find him and bring him up, as I have had to do more than once, he keeps the man with him in his room playing cards, leaving me at the wheel.

That"s grat.i.tude. That"s the sort of thing I have to put up with from this man. Do you suppose for a moment that I can allow it to go on for ever?"

"Well, Captain," said Mr. Dainopoulos again, "I can see we shall have to ..."

"In Port Said," cut in Captain Rannie, "I scarcely saw the man.

Positively I might have had no chief officer! But for me the ship would have been looted over and over again. More than once, when I was going ash.o.r.e on ship"s business, I found he had sent the boat away on some perfectly trivial errand of his own, to buy him some cigarettes or to fetch his laundry. And when I made an absolutely justifiable protest and issued explicit orders that the boat was not to leave the ship"s side except at the express orders of the commander, what happens? Nothing but insults and foul innuendoes. This sort of treatment might appeal to some ship masters. You can"t tell, there"s no accounting for tastes.

Personally, I simply will not have it. I have been patient long enough.

I make every allowance for defective education and ignorance of the ordinary decencies of life. I hope I realize everybody cannot be the same. But this is going too far."