Youth, a Narrative Read online

procession of head-lightsgliding high and of green lights gliding low in the night, when suddenlya red gleam flashed at me, vanished, came into view again, and remained.The fore-end of a steamer loomed up close. I shouted down the cabin,'Come up, quick!' and then heard a startled voice saying afar in thedark, 'Stop her, sir.' A bell jingled. Another voice cried warningly,'We are going right into that barque, sir.' The answer to this was agruff 'All right,' and the next thing was a heavy crash as the steamerstruck a glancing blow with the bluff of her bow about our fore-rigging.There was a moment of confusion, yelling, and running about. Steamroared. Then somebody was heard saying, 'All clear, sir.'... 'Areyou all right?' asked the gruff voice. I had jumped forward to see thedamage, and hailed back, 'I think so.' 'Easy astern,' said the gruffvoice. A bell jingled. 'What steamer is that?' screamed Mahon. By thattime she was no more to us than a bulky shadow maneuvering a littleway off. They shouted at us some name--a woman's name, Miranda orMelissa--or some such thing. 'This means another month in this beastlyhole,' said Mahon to me, as we peered with lamps about the splinteredbulwarks and broken braces. 'But where's the captain?'

  "We had not heard or seen anything of him all that time. We went aft tolook. A doleful voice arose hailing somewhere in the middle of the dock,'_Judea_ ahoy!'... How the devil did he get there?... 'Hallo!' weshouted. 'I am adrift in our boat without oars,' he cried. A belatedwaterman offered his services, and Mahon struck a bargain with him forhalf-a-crown to tow our skipper alongside; but it was Mrs. Beard thatcame up the ladder first. They had been floating about the dock in thatmizzly cold rain for nearly an hour. I was never so surprised in mylife.

  "It appears that when he heard my shout 'Come up,' he understood at oncewhat was the matter, caught up his wife, ran on deck, and across,and down into our boat, which was fast to the ladder. Not bad for asixty-year-old. Just imagine that old fellow saving heroically in hisarms that old woman--the woman of his life. He set her down on a thwart,and was ready to climb back on board when the painter came adriftsomehow, and away they went together. Of course in the confusion wedid not hear him shouting. He looked abashed. She said cheerfully, 'Isuppose it does not matter my losing the train now?' 'No, Jenny--you gobelow and get warm,' he growled. Then to us: 'A sailor has no businesswith a wife--I say. There I was, out of the ship. Well, no harm donethis time. Let's go and look at what that fool of a steamer smashed.'

  "It wasn't much, but it delayed us three weeks. At the end of that time,the captain being engaged with his agents, I carried Mrs. Beard's bag tothe railway-station and put her all comfy into a third-class carriage.She lowered the window to say, 'You are a good young man. If you seeJohn--Captain Beard--without his muffler at night, just remind him fromme to keep his throat well wrapped up.' 'Certainly, Mrs. Beard,' I said.'You are a good young man; I noticed how attentive you are to John--toCaptain--' The train pulled out suddenly; I took my cap off to the oldwoman: I never saw her again... Pass the bottle.

  "We went to sea next day. When we made that start for Bankok we had beenalready three months out of London. We had expected to be a fortnight orso--at the outside.

  "It was January, and the weather was beautiful--the beautiful sunnywinter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because itis unexpected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't, last long.It's like a windfall, like a godsend, like an unexpected piece of luck.

  "It lasted all down the North Sea, all down Channel; and it lasted tillwe were three hundred miles or so to the westward of the Lizards: thenthe wind went round to the sou'west and began to pipe up. In two days itblew a gale. The _Judea_, hove to, wallowed on the Atlantic like an oldcandlebox. It blew day after day: it blew with spite, without interval,without mercy, without rest. The world was nothing but an immensity ofgreat foaming waves rushing at us, under a sky low enough to touchwith the hand and dirty like a smoked ceiling. In the stormy spacesurrounding us there was as much flying spray as air. Day after day andnight after night there was nothing round the ship but the howl of thewind, the tumult of the sea, the noise of water pouring over her deck.There was no rest for her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched,she stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she groaned, andwe had to hold on while on deck and cling to our bunks when below, in aconstant effort of body and worry of mind.

  "One night Mahon spoke through the small window of my berth. It openedright into my very bed, and I was lying there sleepless, in my boots,feeling as though I had not slept for years, and could not if I tried.He said excitedly--

  "'You got the sounding-rod in here, Marlow? I can't get the pumps tosuck. By God! it's no child's play.'

  "I gave him the sounding-rod and lay down again, trying to think ofvarious things--but I thought only of the pumps. When I came on deckthey were still at it, and my watch relieved at the pumps. By the lightof the lantern brought on deck to examine the sounding-rod I caught aglimpse of their weary, serious faces. We pumped all the four hours.We pumped all night, all day, all the week,--watch and watch. She wasworking herself loose, and leaked badly--not enough to drown us at once,but enough to kill us with the work at the pumps. And while we pumpedthe ship was going from us piecemeal: the bulwarks went, the stanchionswere torn out, the ventilators smashed, the cabin-door burst in. Therewas not a dry spot in the ship. She was being gutted bit by bit. Thelong-boat changed, as if by magic, into matchwood where she stood in hergripes. I had lashed her myself, and was rather proud of my handiwork,which had withstood so long the malice of the sea. And we pumped. Andthere was no break in the weather. The sea was white like a sheet offoam, like a caldron of boiling milk; there was not a break in theclouds, no--not the size of a man's hand--no, not for so much as tenseconds. There was for us no sky, there were for us no stars, no sun,no universe--nothing but angry clouds and an infuriated sea. We pumpedwatch and watch, for dear life; and it seemed to last for months, foryears, for all eternity, as though we had been dead and gone to a hellfor sailors. We forgot the day of the week, the name of the month, whatyear it was, and whether we had ever been ashore. The sails blew away,she lay broadside on under a weather-cloth, the ocean poured overher, and we did not care. We turned those handles, and had the eyes ofidiots. As soon as we had crawled on deck I used to take a round turnwith a rope about the men, the pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned,we turned incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our necks, overour heads. It was all one. We had forgotten how it felt to be dry.

  "And there was somewhere in me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuceof an adventure--something you read about; and it is my first voyage assecond mate--and I am only twenty--and here I am lasting it out as wellas any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased.I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments ofexultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with hercounter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal,like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the wordswritten on her stern: '_Judea_, London. Do or Die.'

  "O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! Tome she was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coalfor a freight--to me she was the endeavour, the test, the trial of life.I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret--as you wouldthink of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her....Pass the bottle.

  "One night when tied to the mast, as I explained, we were pumpingon, deafened with the wind, and without spirit enough in us to wishourselves dead, a heavy sea crashed aboard and swept clean over us. Assoon as I got my breath I shouted, as in duty bound, 'Keep on, boys!'when suddenly I felt something hard floating on deck strike the calf ofmy leg. I made a grab at it and missed. It was so dark we could not seeeach other's faces within a foot--you understand.

  "After that thump the ship kept quiet for a while, and the thing,whatever it was, struck my leg again. This time I caught it--and it wasa saucepan. At first, being stupid with fatigue and thinking of nothingbut the pumps, I did not understand what I had in
my hand. Suddenly itdawned upon me, and I shouted, 'Boys, the house on deck is gone. Leavethis, and let's look for the cook.'

  "There was a deck-house forward, which contained the galley, the cook'sberth, and the quarters of the crew. As we had expected for days to seeit swept away, the hands had been ordered to sleep in the cabin--theonly safe place in the ship. The steward, Abraham, however, persistedin clinging to his berth, stupidly, like a mule--from sheer frightI believe, like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in anearthquake. So we went to look for him. It was chancing death, sinceonce out of our lashings we were as exposed as if on a