We were on our feet in the room by then, and Marlow, brown and
deliberate, approached the window where Mr. Powell and I had retired.
"What was the name of your chance again?" he asked. Mr. Powell stared
for a moment.
"Oh! The Ferndale. A Liverpool ship. Composite built."
"Ferndale," repeated Marlow thoughtfully. "Ferndale."
"Know her?"
"Our friend," I said, "knows something of every ship. He seems to have
gone about the seas prying into things considerably."
Marlow smiled.
"I've seen her, at least once."
"The finest sea-boat ever launched," declared Mr. Powell sturdily.
"Without exception."
"She looked a stout, comfortable ship," assented Marlow. "Uncommonly
comfortable. Not very fast tho'."
"She was fast enough for any reasonable man--when I was in her," growled
Mr. Powell with his back to us.
"Any ship is that--for a reasonable man," generalized Marlow in a
conciliatory tone. "A sailor isn't a globe-trotter."
"No," muttered Mr. Powell.
"Time's nothing to him," advanced Marlow.
"I don't suppose it's much," said Mr. Powell. "All the same a quick
passage is a feather in a man's cap."
"True. But that ornament is for the use of the master only. And by the
by what was his name?"
"The master of the Ferndale? Anthony. Captain Anthony."
"Just so. Quite right," approved Marlow thoughtfully. Our new
acquaintance looked over his shoulder.
"What do you mean? Why is it more right than if it had been Brown?"
"He has known him probably," I explained. "Marlow here appears to know
something of every soul that ever went afloat in a sailor's body."
Mr. Powell seemed wonderfully amenable to verbal suggestions for looking
again out of the window, he muttered: "He was a good soul."
This clearly referred to Captain Anthony of the Ferndale. Marlow
addressed his protest to me.
"I did not know him. I really didn't. He was a good soul. That's
nothing very much out of the way--is it? And I didn't even know that
much of him. All I knew of him was an accident called Fyne.
At this Mr. Powell who evidently could be rebellious too turned his back
squarely on the window.
"What on earth do you mean?" he asked. "An--accident--called Fyne," he
repeated separating the words with emphasis.
Marlow was not disconcerted.
"I don't mean accident in the sense of a mishap. Not in the least. Fyne
was a good little man in the Civil Service. By accident I mean that
which happens blindly and without intelligent design. That's generally
the way a brother-in-law happens into a man's life."