Stadey was a Russian Finn, one of a race that on board ship has always had the reputation of being a bit wizard-like, credited with the possession of dread5 powers, such as the ability to raise or still a storm, become invisible, and so on. The bare truth about the seafaring Finns, however, is that they make probably the finest all-round mariners6 in the world. No other sea-folk combine so completely all the qualities that go to make up the perfect seaman7. Many of them may be met with who can build a vessel8, make her spars, her sails, and her rigging, do the blacksmith work and all the manifold varieties of odd workmanship that go to complete a ship’s equipment, take her to sea, and navigate9 her on soundest mathematical principles, and do all these strange acts and deeds with the poorest, most primitive10 tools, and under the most miserable11,190 poverty-stricken conditions. But, as a rule, they are not smart; they must be allowed to do their work in their own way, at their own pace, and with no close scrutiny12 into anything except results. Now, Jack Stadey was a typical Finn, as far as his slow ungainly movements went, but none of that ability and adaptiveness which is characteristic of his countrymen was manifest in him. To the ordinary observer he was just a heavy, awkward “Dutchman,” who couldn’t jump to save his life, and who would necessarily be put upon all the heaviest, dirtiest jobs, while the sailorizing was being done by smarter men. With a long, square head, faded blue eyes, and straggling flaxen moustache, round shoulders, and dangling13, crooked14 arms, he seemed born to be the butt15 of his more favoured shipmates. Yet when I first became acquainted with him in the fo’c’sle of the old Dartmouth, outward bound to Hong Kong, something about him appealed to me, and we became chums. The rest of the crew, with one notable exception, were not bad fellows, and Jack shuffled16 along serenely17 through the voyage, quite undisturbed by the fact that no work of any seamanlike18 nature ever came to his share. I came in for a good deal of not ill-natured chaff19 from the rest for my close intimacy20 with him, but it only had the effect of knitting us closer together, for there is just that strain of obstinacy21 about me that opposition22 only stiffens23. And as I studied that simple, childlike man, I found that he had a heart of gold, a nature that had no taint24 of selfishness, and was sublimely25 unconscious of its own worth.
We made the round voyage together, and on our return to London I persuaded him to quit the gloomy environment of sailor-town to come and take lodgings26 with me in a turning out of Oxford27 Street, whence we could sally forth28 and find ourselves at once in the midst of clean, interesting life, free from the filthy29 importunities of the denizens30 of Shadwell that prey31 upon the sailor. My experiences of London life were turned to good account in those pleasant days, all too short. Together we did all the sights, and it would be hard to say which of us enjoyed ourselves most. At last, our funds having dwindled32 to the last five pounds, we must needs go and look for a ship. I had “passed” for second mate, but did not try very hard to get the berth33 that my certificate entitled me to take, and finally we both succeeded in getting berths34 before the mast in a barque called the Magellan, bound for New Zealand. To crown the common-sense programme we had been following out, we did a thing I have never seen deep-water sailors do before or since—we took a goodly supply of such delicacies35 on board with us as would, had we husbanded them, have kept us from hunger until we crossed the line. But sailor Jack, with all his faults, is not mean, and so all hands shared in the good things until they were gone, which was in about three days. To our great disgust, Jack and I were picked for separate watches, so that our chats were limited to the second dog-watch, that pleasant time between six and eight p.m. when both watches can fraternize at their ease, and discuss all the queer questions that appeal to the sailor mind.
Jack never complained, it wasn’t his habit, but, unknown to me, he was having a pretty bad time of it in the starboard watch. Of course, the vessel was short-handed—four hands in a watch to handle an over-sparred brute36 of nearly a thousand tons—and as a consequence Jack’s ungainly want of smartness was trying to his over-worked watchmates, who were, besides, unable to understand his inability or unwillingness37 to growl38 at the hardness of the common lot. The chief man in that watch was a huge Shetlandman, Sandy Rorison, who, broadly speaking, was everything that Jack was not. Six feet two in his stocking vamps, upright as a lower mast, and agile39 as a leading seaman on board a man-o’-war, there was small wonder that Sandy was sorely irritated by the wooden movements of my deliberate chum. But one day, when, relieved from the wheel, I came into the forecastle for a “verse o’ the pipe,” I found Sandy bullying40 him in a piratical manner. All prudential considerations were forgotten, and I interfered41, although it was like coming between a lion and his kill. Black with fury, Sandy turned upon me, tearing off his jumper the while, and in choking monosyllables invited me to come outside and die. I refused, giving as my reason that I did not feel tired of life, and admitting that I was fully42 aware of his ability to make cracker-hash of me. But while he stood gasping43, I put it to him whether, if he had a chum, any consideration for his own safety would stop him from risking it in the endeavour to save that chum from such a dog’s life as he was now leading Jack Stadey. Well, the struggle between rage and193 righteousness in that big rough man was painful to see. It lasted for nearly five minutes, while I stood calmly puffing44 at my pipe with a numb45 sense of “what must be will be” about me. Then suddenly the big fellow went and sat down, buried his face in his hands, and was silent. I went about my work unmolested, but for nearly a week there was an air of expectation about the whole of us—a sense that an explosion might occur at any moment. Then the tension relaxed, and I saw with quiet delight that Rorison had entirely46 abandoned his hazing47 of Jack.
After a most miserable passage of a hundred and ten days we arrived at our port, and almost immediately after came an opening for me to join a fine ship as second mate. It could not be disregarded, although I had to forfeit48 to the knavish49 skipper the whole of my outward passage earnings50 for the privilege of being discharged. So Jack and I parted, making no sign, as is the custom of men, of the rending51 pain of our separation. When next I saw Jack, several years after, I had left the sea, but on a periodical visit to the docks—a habit I was long curing myself of—I met him, looking for a ship. How triumphantly52 I bore him westward53 to my little home I need not say, but when in the course of conversation I found that he and Rorison had been chums ever since I left the Magellan, I was dumbfounded. The more because, in spite of the change in Rorison after my risky54 interference on that memorable55 afternoon, I had passed many unhappy hours, thinking, in my conceit56 and ignorance of the nobleness of which the majority of human kind are194 capable, given the proper opportunity for showing it, that Jack would have but a sorry time of it after I had left him. Malvolio thought nobly of the soul, and I have had reason, God knows, to think nobly of my fellow-men, even of those who upon a casual acquaintance seemed only capable of exciting disgust. I believe that few indeed are the men and women who have not within them the germ of as heroic deeds as ever thrilled the hearts and moistened the eyes of mankind, although, alas57! myriads58 live and die wanting the occasion that could fructify59 the germ. Made in His own image, although sorely battered60 out of the Divine likeness61, the Father does delight in showing how, in spite of the distance men generally have placed between themselves and Him, the type still persists, and self-sacrifice, soaring above the devilish cynicism that affects to know no God but self-interest, blazes forth to show to all who will but open their eyes that “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.”
Two more strangely assorted62 chums surely seldom foregathered than Sandy and Jack. I remember none in real life, though the big trooper George Rouncewell and Phil have been immortalized by Dickens in “Bleak House,” and the probability is that such a friendship had been known to that marvellous man. How the bond between the Shetlandman and the Finn gradually grew and toughened I had no means of knowing, for Jack was a man of so few words, that even my eager questioning never succeeded in drawing from him the information that I thirsted for. However,195 to resume my story, the pair succeeded in obtaining berths in the same ship again, a big iron clipper, the Theodosia, bound to Melbourne. I did not succeed in meeting Sandy before they sailed, though I tried hard in my scanty63 leisure to do so. But I determined64 that when they returned I would have them both home to my little place, and devote some of my holidays to entertaining them. I watched carefully the columns of the Shipping65 Gazette for news of the ship, and succeeded in tracing her home to Falmouth for orders from Port Pirie. Thence in due time she departed, to my great disappointment, for Sunderland. And the rest of the story must be told as I learned it long afterwards.
It was in the late autumn that they sailed from Falmouth, leaving port on a glorious afternoon with that peerless weather known to west-country fishermen as a “fine southerly.” Up the sparkling Channel they sped with every stitch of canvas set, and a great contentment reigning66 on board at the prospect67 of the approaching completion of the voyage under such favourable68 conditions. Being foul69, the Theodosia made slow progress, but so steady was the favouring wind that in two days she picked up her Channel pilot off Dungeness. He was hardly on board before a change came. One of those sudden gales71 came howling down the stern North Sea, and gradually the labouring ship was stripped of her wings, until in a perfect whirl of freezing spindrift she was groping through the gloom across the Thames estuary72. But no uneasiness was felt, because the pilot was on board,196 and the confidence felt in the well-known skill and seamanship of those splendid mariners makes even the most timid of deep-water sailors feel secure under their charge. No man is infallible, however, and just before midnight a shock, which threw all hands, then standing73 by to wear ship, off their feet, brought the huge vessel up all standing. Not many minutes were needed to show every man on board that she was doomed74. Lying as she was on the weather edge of the Galloper75 Sand (though her position was unknown even to the pilot), she was exposed to the full fury of the gale70, and the blue lights and rockets made but the faintest impression upon the appalling76 blackness. All hands worked with feverish77 energy to free the long-disused boats from their gripes, although they were often hurled78 headlong from this task by the crushing impact of those inky masses of water that rose in terrible might all around. And as the boats were cleared, so they were destroyed until but one remained seaworthy and afloat upon the lee-side, fast by the end of the forebrace. One by one the beaten, bruised79, and almost despairing men succeeded in boarding that tiny ark of refuge as it strained and plunged80 like a terrified creature striving to escape from the proximity81 of the perishing leviathan. When it appeared that all hands were crowded into the overburdened boat, the watchful82 skipper mounted the lee rail, and, waiting his opportunity, leapt for his life.
“Cast off, cast off,” shouted a dozen voices as the captain struggled aft to the place of command, but one cry overtopped them all, the frenzied83 question of197 Rorison, “Where’s Jack Stadey?” A babel of replies arose, but out of that tumult84 one fact emerged, he was not among them. The next moment, as a mountainous swell85 lifted the boat high above the ship’s rail, Rorison had leapt to his feet, and, catching86 hold of the drooping87 mainbrace above his head, was hauling himself back on board again. And the boat had gone. Doubtless in the confusion, some man had succeeded in casting the end of the rope adrift that held her, not knowing what had happened, so that the next vast roller swept her away on its crest88 a hundred fathoms89 in an instant. The wide mouth of the dark engulfed90 her. All unheeding the disappearance91 of the boat, Rorison fought his way about the submerged and roaring decks, peering with a seaman’s bat-like power of vision through the dark for any sign of his chum. Buffeted92 by the scourging93 seas, conscious that he was fast losing what little strength remained to him, he yet persisted in his search until, with a cry of joy, he found poor Stadey jammed between the fife-rail and the pumps, just alive, but with a broken leg and arm. Not a word passed between them, but with a sudden accession of vigour94, Sandy managed to drag his chum aft and lash95 his limp body to one of the poop hen-coops. He then cast another coop adrift, and secured it to the side of the first. Having done this, he lashed96 himself by Stadey’s side, and with one hand feeling the languid pulsation97 of his chum’s heart, awaited the next comber that should sweep their frail98 raft away into the hissing99 sea.
Next morning, under a sky of heavenly glory, two198 Harwich fishermen found the tiny raft, still supporting the empty husks of those two faithful souls, undivided even unto the end of their hard life, and together entered into rest.
With these two exceptions all hands were saved.
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1
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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mariners
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| 海员，水手（mariner的复数形式） | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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navigate
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| v.航行，飞行；导航，领航 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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16
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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seamanlike
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| 海员般的，熟练水手似的 | |
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chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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stiffens
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| （使）变硬，（使）强硬( stiffen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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taint
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| n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染 | |
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sublimely
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| 高尚地，卓越地 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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denizens
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| n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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berths
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| n.（船、列车等的）卧铺( berth的名词复数 )；（船舶的）停泊位或锚位；差事；船台vt.v.停泊( berth的第三人称单数 )；占铺位 | |
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delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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44
puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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46
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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47
hazing
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| n.受辱，被欺侮v.（使）笼罩在薄雾中( haze的现在分词 )；戏弄，欺凌（新生等，有时作为加入美国大学生联谊会的条件） | |
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48
forfeit
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| vt.丧失；n.罚金，罚款，没收物 | |
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49
knavish
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| adj.无赖（似）的，不正的；刁诈 | |
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50
earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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51
rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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52
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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54
risky
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| adj.有风险的，冒险的 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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57
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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58
myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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fructify
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| v.结果实；使土地肥沃 | |
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60
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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reigning
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| adj.统治的，起支配作用的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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70
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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72
estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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galloper
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| 骑马奔驰的人，飞驰的马，旋转木马； 轻野炮 | |
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appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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fathoms
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| 英寻( fathom的名词复数 ) | |
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engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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buffeted
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| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
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scourging
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| 鞭打( scourge的现在分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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pulsation
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| n.脉搏，悸动，脉动；搏动性 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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