Chapter XVIII
Jim went below with leaden feet. A year ago he would have been near tears, but he had been through too much for that. Instead, he felt all over him the dead, flat hopelessness — the lifeless despair so hideously familiar to him at one time — the mood which he had been so sure was gone for ever. What did it matter what he did? What did anything matter? A few emigrants, an old barge-hand — they all had to die some time. What did it matter? The emigrants he had failed; he had done his best about the Mate, but the result was the same. He was a hated and despised failure both times, an outcast, more hateful and more dangerous in his folly than outright competent rogues like Dukey and Bert.
Charlie Skinner was still lying in his sodden clothes as they had left him. He was shuddering violently, and seemed in a bad way; but after Jim had helped him to change into dry warm shore-clothes, and had given him a generous tot of the rum, he had enough strength to speak feebly, and even to smile. "You can have my job now, Jim. This lot has finished me for the sea; I don't want no more after this. But you done very well, lad, very well indeed, no mistake. Jiggered if you ain't made my jaw ache, though. You had to do it, I suppose." And he lay back more contentedly to sleep.
"Main-sheet!" came the loud cry from the deck. When Jim appeared, Chubb simply said: "Slack out a bit more. Up with your port lee-board." Jim obeyed the orders in silence, and returned below to the forepeak to change his own clothes, which, after all this time, seemed to be freezing to his body. When he came on deck again he made no move to go aft, but sat on the for'ard end of the main hatch, idly watching the small waves sliding past in the red glow of the port side-light, while again his mind tramped round the familiar treadmill of despair: what would he do when they reached Whitstable? Get another berth? How? On what? Give up the sea? Then what? What else was he trained for?
On and on went the tormenting thoughts, and all the while the low roar of the bow-wave rose and fell as the barge rolled gently in the steadily-mounting following sea; the red-tinted waves grew larger as the low banks drew away, and the packed warehouses gradually gave place to low, bare sea-walls. Once they overtook a slower, deeply-laden barge, and once they were passed themselves by a splendid passenger liner, strung with jewelled lines of lights. But for these, the river was empty of life. Then the banks disappeared altogether, and but for the occasional winking buoy they might have been in mid-Pacific.
"Main-sheet!" The Skipper's shout broke the hours of silence, and Jim walked sullenly back along the deck, which was heaving now as the steep, short Estuary waves overtook them in endless succession. "Slack her right off," said Chubb. Jim obeyed in the same dreary silence, and had begun to walk for'ard again when the Skipper called, in a more friendly tone: "Half a minute, Jim. Don't go off like that." Then, to his relief and joy, he saw that Chubb had taken one hand from the wheel and was extending it towards him: "I got to ask your pardon, mate," said Chubb sheepishly. "You don't want to listen too much to me when I get riled. I don't think, see; I just open my big old mouth and out it all comes. I've always bin like it — you ask old Charlie. I've given him the sack many and many a time, and he's still aboard. My bark's worse than my bite, though."
Jim found he was still holding the Skipper's hand out of sheer happiness. "Then you don't want me to..."
"No, 'course I don't, mate. I know I bin on at you a bit, but you done all right for a first trip — not bad at all. And that other business — the way you went over after old Charlie — well, that was daft, like I said, but your heart's in the right place. And that took a bit of nerve, too. I wouldn't have done it for a pension. But you're lucky to be alive, no mistake. I don't want to boast, but there ain't another Skipper on the river who could have found you. I've got cat's eyes, see?"
"What about the collision ? Will there be a case about it? I mean, that was my fault, really."
"Case? Case? Better not be, mate. I'll give 'em case if there is! Why, these north country colliers, that's the way they use to go about — keep on till you hit something, and trust that to knock you round. Many's the coat o' paint they've cost me. Besides," he added with a shrewd wink, "twas so blessed dark they couldn't have read the name."
"What about your ship's side? Can I make it up out of my pay?"
"Don't you talk so blessed daft, boy! She's going up on the blocks in the barge yard tomorrow; they'll very soon scarf another piece in that gunwale. Don't you worry about that." They exchanged friendly grins in the dark. Then Chubb looked about him at the tiny lights of the channel buoys: "Pretty near out to the Girdler now, Jim. Must be low-water by now, too. We'll bring her round for Whitstable now. In with your main-sheet while I put the helm down. Then we'll have the lee-board down, port side. Shan't be able to get in at Whitstable, o' course. Have to anchor out with the oyster-yawls till there's enough water in the harbour. Now then," he said, when the change of course had been completed, and they had turned out of the deep shipping lanes into the shallow water where only they could go, "you come here and sit on this skylight 'side of me. Time someone talked like a father to you, my lad, and it'll have to be me."
Jim sat down obediently beside him as if Chubb were indeed his father; it seemed natural to him to do so.
"There's something funny about you, Jim, and I want to get to the bottom of it. I mean, it was blooming queer finding you in with them salvagers like that. And I've noticed you these last few days when you ain't been doing nothing — you're all twisted up inside about something — you got something on your mind what don't give you no peace. 'Tisn't no good going on like that, y'know. Whatever it is, you got to get rid of it. So why not tell me all about it?"
And so, for the second time, Jim told the story of the Sardis and her crew, and of his part in her loss. It came out slowly and haltingly at first, then more swiftly as he noticed the utter absorption of the Skipper in the fantastic turns of events. Finally, as the first twinkle of the lights of Whitstable showed low down to the south, he came to the end: "The rest you know, Skipper. And I swear that's the whole truth of it. So now you see..."
"Ah, I do, mate, I do." Chubb shook his head solemnly. "Tell you the truth, Jim, I hadn't reckoned on anything quite so big as this. 'Course, I know it's easy to talk now, but why the devil didn't you tell this chap White when you broke that log thing?"
"Too scared, Skipper. He would have half-killed me."
" 'Course he would, Jim. So would I for that matter, if I'd been in his place — that's discipline. But you'd soon have got over that, see. Instead of that, you got some things now what you'll never forget. Of course, they'll sort of die down out of your mind as time goes by. I mean, you ain't quite such a lost soul now as what you was a couple of months ago."
'I don't quite see why you asked me about all this now. Why now — tonight? I'm no different tonight."
"Ah, 'twas the look on your face when you went overboard after Charlie — that's what had me worried, Jim. You looked more like a chap drowning hisself than one rescuing someone else."
The simple truth of the Skipper's observation struck Jim like a flash. "Yes, I suppose I was," he said. "You see, I had to find out whether..."