But I knew from Baytown days that the captain was always 'the old man' on any ship, regardless of age.
'Wants a word about what, exactly?' I then enquired, just as though there were many other things I ought to be attending to on the ship.
'You are to continue your story,' said the Mate. 'Your recollections.'
And he seemed to be trying out a new English word. The best thing would be to have it out with him straight away. His lamp had illuminated the length of rope, but I could hardly stoop to catch it up and I doubted that my hands would work properly anyway. He opened the first hatchway, and I stumbled into the companionway. He opened the second, and we were out onto the fore-deck under a dark blue sky and a moon that was full. The fore-sail was still rigged; it trembled in the wind, and so did I. The Captain waited a little way ahead, standing by the mid-ships ladder. One of the two of them must have held the revolver, but I could not see it just at that moment.
I looked up. The smoke from the funnel was pale blue and ghostly against the dark blue of the sky. It would come out at odd intervals, not connected to the beat of the engines. Smoke was unburnt carbon; the stuff could kill you if inhaled in a confined space, but that didn't mean that the fellows who made smoke were evil. Any man with an honest job made smoke in quantities, and I wondered about the men in the engine room of this no-name ship. Did they know about me? I doubted it, for the engines and the stoke hold were aft, and no man was allowed for'ard when I was out of my prison.
We walked on red-painted iron. Sea swirled over it, although not so much as before, and now the waves were almost pretty against the full moon. Some were set on following us, others drifted off crosswise, and they made the deck slippery in parts. What's wanted here, I thought, is a mop – and a big one. Mr Buckingham would scarcely have approved of the situation. Was he a real man? I could not decide. He was the fellow who bought a mill that was kept idle through the negligence of the railway company in not delivering a piece of machinery. Would the carrier be liable for profits lost by the mill being kept idle? No. Loss too remote. My ability to think was returning by degrees, but try as I might to recall those final hours in Scarborough, my recollections stopped somewhere about a giant needle, a quantity of razor blades, a wax doll, a paper fan and a paraffin heater in a blue room.
We walked on the starboard side of the ship, and as I looked over the sea, I thought I made out some deepening of night at a mile's distance, but it was more than that.
'Land!' I called ahead to the grey-faced Dutchman.
'Nobody knows you there, my friend,' he said, not turning around.
It looked homely enough all the same. I saw in silhouette two houses and what might have been a church clustered together on a low cliff. We were going at a fair lick, and they seemed to be riding fast the other way, but I kept them in sight as long as I could. Lights burned brightly at the retreating windows, and I was grateful to whoever had lit them.
The Mate had motioned me to stop. I looked beyond him towards the mid-ships, and another man had taken the place of the Captain at the ladder, this one much younger, hardly more than a boy. I saw him clear by the lamp that hung from the rail near where he stood. He wore the regulation galoshes but also a thin, ordinary sort of suit. I was certain that he was not the man who'd been at the wheel during my first visit to the chart room, which meant that there were four at least in on the secret. The kid had made some signal to the Mate, who was now leaning somewhat against the gunwale, and looking aft. Some delay had occurred in taking me into the bridge house, if that was in fact the programme. Perhaps there were some loiterers aft who might catch sight of me unless they were put off.
I looked again towards the land. It was not above a mile away, and the famous Captain Webb had swum twenty-five, or whatever was the width of the Channel. But he had trained for years; he was in peak condition and had covered himself in grease, whereas I was half dead from cold to begin with. A sudden burst of sea came, and the crash of the wave was replaced by the sound of a bell in the darkness, and this one was not aboard the ship. It approached – or we approached it – at a great rate, and it came into view after half a minute, clanging inside a revolving iron cage. Here was a warning buoy of some sort, a tattered black flag flying from the top of it. Perhaps we were too close to land; perhaps this was the best chance I would get to strike out for the shore. But there were no welcoming windows to be seen now, just a low line of cliffs that rose and fell, but always in darkness. I wondered whether such continuous blankness could occur in my own country, or whether some disaster had over-taken the place since I'd left.
I was still held in check by the Mate. I glanced at the face of the kid at the mid-ships. He looked pale in the white light of the moon and the white light of the lantern; his eyes were restless, but I did not care for the expression that came over his face when they landed on me.
'I would not be you, mate,' that look of his said, 'for worlds.
'
Chapter Seventeen
The sitting room seemed to be filled with the night sky and the black sea. A man with his back to me stood at one of two tall windows, gazing out. Another, younger man lay on a couch. The room was surely the biggest in the house, and it might once have been two rooms – something about the way the floorboards rose to a gentle peak in the middle made me think so; and the way that the two tall windows did not quite match. They seemed to go in for knocking down walls in that house, as I would later discover.
The room was very old. The cornices were crumbling a little, the fireplace was small. Worn blue rugs were scattered over the black boards, but they were too widely spaced. Black and blue: they didn't set each other off right; they were the colours of a bruise. The articles of furniture seemed few and far between. Most notable of these was a very black upright piano, which had a wall to itself and was set somewhat at an angle by the slope of the floor. The man at the window stood some distance from an occasional table that held two books. I could make out the title of one: A History of the British Navy. The man at the window turned about. He was the fellow who'd answered the front door to me, only he looked older now. He stepped aside, as though politely allowing me a view of the sea.
On the harbour wall stood the harbour master's house and the lighthouse, both white. Against the black sky, the two together looked like a glowing white church with a round tower. The man who'd stepped aside was watching me as I noticed the scene on the dark beach, just to the right of the harbour. Two lines of men holding ropes hauled a boat towards the waves, beckoned on by a man at the front, who wore a long oilskin. From this distance the men looked tiny, the whole scene ridiculous.
The guardian of the window put out his hand.
'I'm Fielding,' he said.
'Stringer,' I said.'… I saw a maroon fired.'
He tipped his head to one side, as though questioning what I'd just said, although he was smiling as he did it.
'I saw it from my room,' I said.'… the room on the top floor.'
'Yes,' he said. 'It is the only one presently available.'
The man Fielding was trim, probably in the late fifties or early sixties, with carefully brushed grey hair, a high waistcoat, spotted tie very neatly arranged with a silver pin through it, and a decent, if rather worn, black suit under the smoking jacket. He seemed very proper and mannerly, although he had not yet introduced me to the man lying on the couch, who had not yet troubled to rise. I gave a bolder glance in his direction. He had a droopy moustache, and, as I thought, a lazy eye.
'Are you coming aboard tonight?' Fielding enquired.
'Coming aboard?' I said, shaking his hand. 'Well, I don't see why not!'