The morning was clear, colourless, grey overhead; the dock like a sheet
of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of
hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on
the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and
wooden chests at their feet. Others were coming down the lane between
tall, blind walls, surrounding a hand-cart loaded with more bags and
boxes. It was the crew of the Ferndale. They began to come on board.
He scanned their faces as they passed forward filling the roomy deck with
the shuffle of their footsteps and the murmur of voices, like the
awakening to life of a world about to be launched into space.
Far away down the clear glassy stretch in the middle of the long dock Mr.
Powell watched the tugs coming in quietly through the open gates. A
subdued firm voice behind him interrupted this contemplation. It was
Franklin, the thick chief mate, who was addressing him with a watchful
appraising stare of his prominent black eyes: "You'd better take a couple
of these chaps with you and look out for her aft. We are going to cast
off."
"Yes, sir," Powell said with proper alacrity; but for a moment they
remained looking at each other fixedly. Something like a faint smile
altered the set of the chief mate's lips just before he moved off forward
with his brisk step.
Mr. Powell, getting up on the poop, touched his cap to Captain Anthony,
who was there alone. He tells me that it was only then that he saw his
captain for the first time. The day before, in the shipping office, what
with the bad light and his excitement at this berth obtained as if by a
brusque and unscrupulous miracle, did not count. He had then seemed to
him much older and heavier. He was surprised at the lithe figure, broad
of shoulder, narrow at the hips, the fire of the deep-set eyes, the
springiness of the walk. The captain gave him a steady stare, nodded
slightly, and went on pacing the poop with an air of not being aware of
what was going on, his head rigid, his movements rapid.
Powell stole several glances at him with a curiosity very natural under
the circumstances. He wore a short grey jacket and a grey cap. In the
light of the dawn, growing more limpid rather than brighter, Powell
noticed the slightly sunken cheeks under the trimmed beard, the
perpendicular fold on the forehead, something hard and set about the
mouth.
It was too early yet for the work to have begun in the dock. The water
gleamed placidly, no movement anywhere on the long straight lines of the
quays, no one about to be seen except the few dock hands busy alongside
the Ferndale, knowing their work, mostly silent or exchanging a few
words in low tones as if they, too, had been aware of that lady 'who
mustn't be disturbed.' The Ferndale was the only ship to leave that
tide. The others seemed still asleep, without a sound, and only here and
there a figure, coming up on the forecastle, leaned on the rail to watch
the proceedings idly. Without trouble and fuss and almost without a
sound was the Ferndale leaving the land, as if stealing away. Even the
tugs, now with their engines stopped, were approaching her without a
ripple, the burly-looking paddle-boat sheering forward, while the other,
a screw, smaller and of slender shape, made for her quarter so gently
that she did not divide the smooth water, but seemed to glide on its
surface as if on a sheet of plate-glass, a man in her bow, the master at
the wheel visible only from the waist upwards above the white screen of
the bridge, both of them so still-eyed as to fascinate young Powell into
curious self-forgetfulness and immobility. He was steeped, sunk in the
general quietness, remembering the statement 'she's a lady that mustn't
be disturbed,' and repeating to himself idly: 'No. She won't be
disturbed. She won't be disturbed.' Then the first loud words of that
morning breaking that strange hush of departure with a sharp hail: 'Look
out for that line there,' made him start. The line whizzed past his
head, one of the sailors aft caught it, and there was an end to the
fascination, to the quietness of spirit which had stolen on him at the
very moment of departure. From that moment till two hours afterwards,
when the ship was brought up in one of the lower reaches of the Thames
off an apparently uninhabited shore, near some sort of inlet where
nothing but two anchored barges flying a red flag could be seen, Powell
was too busy to think of the lady 'that mustn't be disturbed,' or of his
captain--or of anything else unconnected with his immediate duties. In
fact, he had no occasion to go on the poop, or even look that way much;
but while the ship was about to anchor, casting his eyes in that
direction, he received an absurd impression that his captain (he was up
there, of course) was sitting on both sides of the aftermost skylight at
once. He was too occupied to reflect on this curious delusion, this
phenomenon of seeing double as though he had had a drop too much. He
only smiled at himself.