His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin he was not ashamed. He had not been alone to believe in the stability of the Banking1 Corporation. Men whose judgment2 in matters of finance was as expert as his seamanship had commended the prudence4 of his investments, and had themselves lost much money in the great failure. The only difference between him and them was that he had lost his all. And yet not his all. There had remained to him from his lost fortune a very pretty little bark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy his leisure of a retired5 sailor —“to play with,” as he expressed it himself.
He had formally declared himself tired of the sea the year preceding his daughter’s marriage. But after the young couple had gone to settle in Melbourne he found out that he could not make himself happy on shore. He was too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere6 yachting to satisfy him. He wanted the illusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the Fair Maid preserved the continuity of his life. He introduced her to his acquaintances in various ports as “my last command.” When he grew too old to be trusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore7 to be buried, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed out and scuttled8 decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His daughter would not grudge9 him the satisfaction of knowing that no stranger would handle his last command after him. With the fortune he was able to leave her, the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there. All this would be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old man had too much vitality10 for the sentimentalism of regret; and a little wistfully withal, because he was at home in life, taking a genuine pleasure in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of his reputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in his satisfaction with the ship — the plaything of his lonely leisure.
He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his simple ideal of comfort at sea. A big bookcase (he was a great reader) occupied one side of his stateroom; the portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous oil-painting representing the profile and one long black ringlet of a young woman, faced his bedplace. Three chronometers11 ticked him to sleep and greeted him on waking with the tiny competition of their beats. He rose at five every day. The officer of the morning watch, drinking his early cup of coffee aft by the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of the copper12 ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and splutterings of his captain’s toilet. These noises would be followed by a sustained deep murmur13 of the Lord’s Prayer recited in a loud earnest voice. Five minutes afterwards the head and shoulders of Captain Whalley emerged out of the companion-hatchway. Invariably he paused for a while on the stairs, looking all round at the horizon; upwards14 at the trim of the sails; inhaling15 deep draughts16 of the fresh air. Only then he would step out on the poop, acknowledging the hand raised to the peak of the cap with a majestic17 and benign18 “Good morning to you.” He walked the deck till eight scrupulously19. Sometimes, not above twice a year, he had to use a thick cudgel-like stick on account of a stiffness in the hip3 — a slight touch of rheumatism20, he supposed. Otherwise he knew nothing of the ills of the flesh. At the ringing of the breakfast bell he went below to feed his canaries, wind up the chronometers, and take the head of the table. From there he had before his eyes the big carbon photographs of his daughter, her husband, and two fat-legged babies — his grandchildren — set in black frames into the maplewood bulkheads of the cuddy. After breakfast he dusted the glass over these portraits himself with a cloth, and brushed the oil painting of his wife with a plumate kept suspended from a small brass21 hook by the side of the heavy gold frame. Then with the door of his stateroom shut, he would sit down on the couch under the portrait to read a chapter out of a thick pocket Bible — her Bible. But on some days he only sat there for half an hour with his finger between the leaves and the closed book resting on his knees. Perhaps he had remembered suddenly how fond of boat-sailing she used to be.
She had been a real shipmate and a true woman too. It was like an article of faith with him that there never had been, and never could be, a brighter, cheerier home anywhere afloat or ashore than his home under the poop-deck of the Condor22, with the big main cabin all white and gold, garlanded as if for a perpetual festival with an unfading wreath. She had decorated the center of every panel with a cluster of home flowers. It took her a twelvemonth to go round the cuddy with this labor23 of love. To him it had remained a marvel24 of painting, the highest achievement of taste and skill; and as to old Swinburne, his mate, every time he came down to his meals he stood transfixed with admiration26 before the progress of the work. You could almost smell these roses, he declared, sniffing27 the faint flavor of turpentine which at that time pervaded28 the saloon, and (as he confessed afterwards) made him somewhat less hearty29 than usual in tackling his food. But there was nothing of the sort to interfere30 with his enjoyment31 of her singing. “Mrs. Whalley is a regular out-and-out nightingale, sir,” he would pronounce with a judicial32 air after listening profoundly over the skylight to the very end of the piece. In fine weather, in the second dog-watch, the two men could hear her trills and roulades going on to the accompaniment of the piano in the cabin. On the very day they got engaged he had written to London for the instrument; but they had been married for over a year before it reached them, coming out round the Cape33. The big case made part of the first direct general cargo34 landed in Hongkong harbor — an event that to the men who walked the busy quays35 of to-day seemed as hazily36 remote as the dark ages of history. But Captain Whalley could in a half hour of solitude37 live again all his life, with its romance, its idyl, and its sorrow. He had to close her eyes himself. She went away from under the ensign like a sailor’s wife, a sailor herself at heart. He had read the service over her, out of her own prayer-book, without a break in his voice. When he raised his eyes he could see old Swinburne facing him with his cap pressed to his breast, and his rugged38, weather-beaten, impassive face streaming with drops of water like a lump of chipped red granite39 in a shower. It was all very well for that old sea-dog to cry. He had to read on to the end; but after the splash he did not remember much of what happened for the next few days. An elderly sailor of the crew, deft40 at needlework, put together a mourning frock for the child out of one of her black skirts.
He was not likely to forget; but you cannot dam up life like a sluggish41 stream. It will break out and flow over a man’s troubles, it will close upon a sorrow like the sea upon a dead body, no matter how much love has gone to the bottom. And the world is not bad. People had been very kind to him; especially Mrs. Gardner, the wife of the senior partner in Gardner, Patteson, & Co., the owners of the Condor. It was she who volunteered to look after the little one, and in due course took her to England (something of a journey in those days, even by the overland mail route) with her own girls to finish her education. It was ten years before he saw her again.
As a little child she had never been frightened of bad weather; she would beg to be taken up on deck in the bosom42 of his oilskin coat to watch the big seas hurling43 themselves upon the Condor. The swirl44 and crash of the waves seemed to fill her small soul with a breathless delight. “A good boy spoiled,” he used to say of her in joke. He had named her Ivy45 because of the sound of the word, and obscurely fascinated by a vague association of ideas. She had twined herself tightly round his heart, and he intended her to cling close to her father as to a tower of strength; forgetting, while she was little, that in the nature of things she would probably elect to cling to someone else. But he loved life well enough for even that event to give him a certain satisfaction, apart from his more intimate feeling of loss.
After he had purchased the Fair Maid to occupy his loneliness, he hastened to accept a rather unprofitable freight to Australia simply for the opportunity of seeing his daughter in her own home. What made him dissatisfied there was not to see that she clung now to somebody else, but that the prop46 she had selected seemed on closer examination “a rather poor stick”— even in the matter of health. He disliked his son-in-law’s studied civility perhaps more than his method of handling the sum of money he had given Ivy at her marriage. But of his apprehensions47 he said nothing. Only on the day of his departure, with the hall-door open already, holding her hands and looking steadily48 into her eyes, he had said, “You know, my dear, all I have is for you and the chicks. Mind you write to me openly.” She had answered him by an almost imperceptible movement of her head. She resembled her mother in the color of her eyes, and in character — and also in this, that she understood him without many words.
Sure enough she had to write; and some of these letters made Captain Whalley lift his white eye-brows. For the rest he considered he was reaping the true reward of his life by being thus able to produce on demand whatever was needed. He had not enjoyed himself so much in a way since his wife had died. Characteristically enough his son-in-law’s punctuality in failure caused him at a distance to feel a sort of kindness towards the man. The fellow was so perpetually being jammed on a lee shore that to charge it all to his reckless navigation would be manifestly unfair. No, no! He knew well what that meant. It was bad luck. His own had been simply marvelous, but he had seen in his life too many good men — seamen49 and others — go under with the sheer weight of bad luck not to recognize the fatal signs. For all that, he was cogitating50 on the best way of tying up very strictly51 every penny he had to leave, when, with a preliminary rumble52 of rumors53 (whose first sound reached him in Shanghai as it happened), the shock of the big failure came; and, after passing through the phases of stupor54, of incredulity, of indignation, he had to accept the fact that he had nothing to speak of to leave.
Upon that, as if he had only waited for this catastrophe55, the unlucky man, away there in Melbourne, gave up his unprofitable game, and sat down — in an invalid’s bath-chair at that too. “He will never walk again,” wrote the wife. For the first time in his life Captain Whalley was a bit staggered.
The Fair Maid had to go to work in bitter earnest now. It was no longer a matter of preserving alive the memory of Dare-devil Harry56 Whalley in the Eastern Seas, or of keeping an old man in pocket-money and clothes, with, perhaps, a bill for a few hundred first-class cigars thrown in at the end of the year. He would have to buckle-to, and keep her going hard on a scant57 allowance of gilt58 for the ginger-bread scrolls59 at her stem and stern.
This necessity opened his eyes to the fundamental changes of the world. Of his past only the familiar names remained, here and there, but the things and the men, as he had known them, were gone. The name of Gardner, Patteson, & Co. was still displayed on the walls of warehouses60 by the waterside, on the brass plates and window-panes in the business quarters of more than one Eastern port, but there was no longer a Gardner or a Patteson in the firm. There was no longer for Captain Whalley an arm-chair and a welcome in the private office, with a bit of business ready to be put in the way of an old friend, for the sake of bygone services. The husbands of the Gardner girls sat behind the desks in that room where, long after he had left the employ, he had kept his right of entrance in the old man’s time. Their ships now had yellow funnels61 with black tops, and a time-table of appointed routes like a confounded service of tramways. The winds of December and June were all one to them; their captains (excellent young men he doubted not) were, to be sure, familiar with Whalley Island, because of late years the Government had established a white fixed25 light on the north end (with a red danger sector62 over the Condor Reef), but most of them would have been extremely surprised to hear that a flesh-and-blood Whalley still existed — an old man going about the world trying to pick up a cargo here and there for his little bark.
And everywhere it was the same. Departed the men who would have nodded appreciatively at the mention of his name, and would have thought themselves bound in honor to do something for Dare-devil Harry Whalley. Departed the opportunities which he would have known how to seize; and gone with them the white-winged flock of clippers that lived in the boisterous63 uncertain life of the winds, skimming big fortunes out of the foam64 of the sea. In a world that pared down the profits to an irreducible minimum, in a world that was able to count its disengaged tonnage twice over every day, and in which lean charters were snapped up by cable three months in advance, there were no chances of fortune for an individual wandering haphazard65 with a little bark — hardly indeed any room to exist.
He found it more difficult from year to year. He suffered greatly from the smallness of remittances66 he was able to send his daughter. Meantime he had given up good cigars, and even in the matter of inferior cheroots limited himself to six a day. He never told her of his difficulties, and she never enlarged upon her struggle to live. Their confidence in each other needed no explanations, and their perfect understanding endured without protestations of gratitude67 or regret. He would have been shocked if she had taken it into her head to thank him in so many words, but he found it perfectly68 natural that she should tell him she needed two hundred pounds.
He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the Sofala’s port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor69 was that it was no use mincing70 matters. Her only resource was in opening a boarding-house, for which the prospects71, she judged, were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly72 that with two hundred pounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship-chandler’s runner, who had brought his mail at the moment of anchoring. For the second time in his life he was appalled73, and remained stock-still at the cabin door with the paper trembling between his fingers. Open a boarding-house! Two hundred pounds for a start! The only resource! And he did not know where to lay his hands on two hundred pence.
All that night Captain Whalley walked the poop of his anchored ship, as though he had been about to close with the land in thick weather, and uncertain of his position after a run of many gray days without a sight of sun, moon, or stars. The black night twinkled with the guiding lights of seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and all around the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trails upon the water of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a gleam anywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing was soaked through with the heavy dew.
His ship was awake. He stopped short, stroked his wet beard, and descended74 the poop ladder backwards75, with tired feet. At the sight of him the chief officer, lounging about sleepily on the quarterdeck, remained open-mouthed in the middle of a great early-morning yawn.
“Good morning to you,” pronounced Captain Whalley solemnly, passing into the cabin. But he checked himself in the doorway76, and without looking back, “By the bye,” he said, “there should be an empty wooden case put away in the lazarette. It has not been broken up — has it?”
The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if dazed, “What empty case, sir?”
“A big flat packing-case belonging to that painting in my room. Let it be taken up on deck and tell the carpenter to look it over. I may want to use it before long.”
The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had heard the door of the captain’s state-room slam within the cuddy. Then he beckoned77 aft the second mate with his forefinger78 to tell him that there was something “in the wind.”
When the bell rang Captain Whalley’s authoritative79 voice boomed out through a closed door, “Sit down and don’t wait for me.” And his impressed officers took their places, exchanging looks and whispers across the table. What! No breakfast? And after apparently80 knocking about all night on deck, too! Clearly, there was something in the wind. In the skylight above their heads, bowed earnestly over the plates, three wire cages rocked and rattled81 to the restless jumping of the hungry canaries; and they could detect the sounds of their “old man’s” deliberate movements within his state-room. Captain Whalley was methodically winding82 up the chronometers, dusting the portrait of his late wife, getting a clean white shirt out of the drawers, making himself ready in his punctilious83 unhurried manner to go ashore. He could not have swallowed a single mouthful of food that morning. He had made up his mind to sell the Fair Maid.
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banking
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| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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chronometers
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| n.精密计时器，航行表( chronometer的名词复数 ) | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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inhaling
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| v.吸入( inhale的现在分词 ) | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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scrupulously
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| adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地 | |
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rheumatism
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| n.风湿病 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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condor
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| n.秃鹰；秃鹰金币 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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hazily
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| ad. vaguely, not clear | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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hurling
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| n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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cogitating
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| v.认真思考，深思熟虑( cogitate的现在分词 ) | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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stupor
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| v.昏迷；不省人事 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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scrolls
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| n.（常用于录写正式文件的）纸卷( scroll的名词复数 )；卷轴；涡卷形（装饰）；卷形花纹v.（电脑屏幕上）从上到下移动（资料等），卷页( scroll的第三人称单数 )；（似卷轴般）卷起；（像展开卷轴般地）将文字显示于屏幕 | |
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warehouses
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| 仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 ) | |
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funnels
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| 漏斗( funnel的名词复数 )； （轮船，火车等的）烟囱 | |
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sector
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| n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形 | |
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boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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remittances
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| n.汇寄( remittance的名词复数 )；汇款，汇款额 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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mincing
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| adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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