Half an hour later he was as surprised as any when the body of George Dorety was found inside the companionway on the floor. In the afternoon, alone in his room, he doctored up the log.
‘Ordinary seaman, Karl Brun,' he wrote, ‘lost overboard from foreroyal-yard in a gale of wind. Was running at the time, and for the safety of the ship did not dare to come up the wind. Nor could a boat have lived in the sea that was running.'
On another page he wrote:
‘Had often warned Mr Dorety about the danger he ran because of his carelessness on deck. I told him, once, that some day he would get his head knocked off by a block. A carelessly fastened mainstay sail sheet was the cause of the accident, which was deeply to be regretted because Mr Dorety was a favourite with all of us.'
Captain Dan Cullen read over his literary effort with admiration, blotted the page, and closed the log. He lighted a cigar and stared before him. He felt the Mary Rogers lift, and heel, and surge along, and knew that she was making nine knots. A smile of satisfaction slowly dawned on his black and hairy face. Well, anyway, he had made his westing and fooled God.
Joseph Conrad
THE BLACK MATE
Another outstanding writer of sea stories is Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Like so many of the other contributors to this book he became fascinated by the sea when he was young, and never lost his interest in all the mystery and strangeness of life on the ocean. He too based his work on years of experience at sea; some of it spent in the most dangerous circumstances.
Conrad was actually born in Poland, but went to sea in an English merchant ship and in 1884 became a naturalised British subject. After gaining his master's certificate, he spent a number of years in the Far East where the boats he sailed in plied between Singapore and Borneo. This gave him an unrivalled knowledge of the mysterious creeks and jungles of the area which were later featured in some of his best work.
Just before the turn of the century, he abandoned the sea and settled in England where he began to produce the various books which made his reputation; including such outstanding maritime tales as The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Twixt Land and Sea (1912) and superb short stories like ‘Typhoon’, ‘The Shadow Line’ and ‘The Black Mate’ (published in 1912). This last tale is perhaps my favourite Conrad short story, and its weird atmosphere and surprise ending make it an ideal selection for this collection.
A good many years ago there were several ships loading at the Jetty, London Dock. I am speaking here of the ’eighties of the last century, of the time when London had plenty of fine ships in the docks, though not so many fine buildings in its streets.
The ships at the Jetty were fine enough; they lay one behind the other; and the Sapphire, third from the end, was as good as the rest of them, and nothing more. Each ship at the Jetty had, of course, her chief officer on board. So had every other ship in dock.
The policeman at the gates knew them all by sight, without being able to say at once, without thinking, to what ship any particular man belonged. As a matter of fact, the mates of the ships then lying in the London Dock were like the majority of officers in the Merchant Service - a steady, hard-working, staunch, unromantic-looking set of men, belonging to various classes of society, but with the professional stamp obliterating the personal characteristics, which were not very marked anyhow.
This last was true of them all, with the exception of the mate of the Sapphire. Of him the policemen could not be in doubt. This one had a presence.
He was noticeable to them in the street from a great distance; and when in the morning he strode down the Jetty to his ship, the lumpers and the dock labourers rolling the bales and trundling the cases of cargo on their hand-trucks would remark to each other:
‘Here’s the black mate coining along.’
That was the name they gave him, being a gross lot, who could have no appreciation of the man’s dignified bearing. And to call him black was the superficial impressionism of the ignorant.
Of course, Mr Bunter, the mate of the Sapphire, was not black. He was no more black than you or I, and certainly as white as any chief mate of a ship in the whole of the Port of London. His complexion was of the sort that did not take the tan easily; and I happen to know that the poor fellow had had a month’s illness just before he joined the Sapphire.
From this you will perceive that I knew Bunter. Of course I knew him. And, what’s more, I knew his secret at the time, this secret which - never mind just now. Returning to Burner’s personal appearance, it was nothing but ignorant prejudice on the part of the foreman stevedore to say, as he did in my hearing: ‘I bet he’s a furriner of some sort.’ A man may have black hair without being set down for a Dago. I have known a West-country sailor, boatswain of a fine ship, who looked more Spanish than any Spaniard afloat I’ve ever met. He looked like a Spaniard in a picture.
Competent authorities tell us that this earth is to be finally the inheritance of men with dark hair and brown eyes. It seems that already the great majority of mankind is dark-haired in various shades. But it is only when you meet one that you notice how men with really black hair, black as ebony, are rare. Burner’s hair was absolutely black, black as a raven’s wing. He wore, too, all his beard (clipped, but a good length all the same), and his eyebrows were thick and bushy. Add to this steely blue eyes, which in a fair-haired man would have been nothing so extraordinary, but in that sombre framing made a startling contrast, and you will easily understand that Bunter was noticeable enough. If it had not been for the quietness of his movements, for the general soberness of his demeanour, one would have given him credit for a fiercely passionate nature.
Of course, he was not in his first youth; but if the expression ‘in the force of his age’ has any meaning, he realized it completely. He was a tall man, too, though rather spare. Seeing him from his poop indefatigably busy with his duties, Captain
Ashton, of the clipper ship Elsinore, lying just ahead of the Sapphire, remarked once to a friend that ‘Johns has got somebody there to hustle his ship along for him. ’
Captain Johns, master of the Sapphire, having commanded ships for many years, was well known without being much respected or liked. In the company of his fellows he was either neglected or chaffed. The chaffing was generally undertaken by Captain Ashton, a cynical and teasing sort of man. It was Captain Ashton who permitted himself the unpleasant joke of proclaiming once in company that ‘Johns is of the opinion that every sailor above forty years of age ought to be poisoned -shipmasters in actual command excepted.’
It was in a City restaurant, where several well-known shipmasters were having lunch together. There was Captain Ashton, florid and jovial, in a large white waistcoat and with a yellow rose in his buttonhole; Captain Sellers in a sack-coat, thin and pale-faced, with his iron-gray hair tucked behind his ears, and, but for the absence of spectacles, looking like an ascetical mild man of books; Captain Hell, a bluff sea-dog with hairy fingers, in blue serge and a black felt hat pushed far back off the crimson forehead. There was also a very young ship master, with a little fair moustache and serious eyes, who said nothing, and only smiled faintly from time to time.