Chance by Joseph Conrad (novels to read TXT) 📕

He saw the catastrophe happening and at the same moment, before he could open his mouth or stir a limb to ward off the vision, a voice very near his ear, the measured voice of Captain Anthony said: “Wouldn’t light—eh?  Throw it down!  Jump for the flare-up.”

The spring of activity in Mr. Powell was released with great force.  He jumped.  The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches ready to hand.  Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under the companion slide.  He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to strike a light.  But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with one arm, his fingers were damp and stiff, his hands trembled a little.  One match broke.  Another went out.  In its flame he saw the colourless face of Mrs. Anthony a little below him, standing on the cabin stairs.  Her eyes which were very close to his (he was in a crouching posture on the top step) seemed to burn darkly in the vanishing light.  On deck the captain’s voice was heard sudden and unexpectedly sardonic: “You had better look sharp, if you want to be in time.”

“Let me have the box,” said Mrs. Anthony in a hurried and familiar whisper which sounded amused as if they had been a couple of children up to some lark behind a wall.  He was glad of the offer which seemed to him very natural, and without ceremony—

“Here you are.  Catch hold.”

Their hands touched in the dark and she took the box while he held the paraffin soaked torch in its iron holder.  He thought of warning her: “Look out for yourself.”  But before he had the time to finish the sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw herself back with an arm across her face.  “Hallo,” he exclaimed; only he could not stop a moment to ask if she was hurt.  He bolted out of the companion straight into his captain who took the flare from him and held it high above his head.

The fierce flame fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails.  And young Powell turned his eyes to windward with a catch in his breath.

The strange ship, a darker shape in the night, did not seem to be moving onwards but only to grow more distinct right abeam, staring at the Ferndale with one green and one red eye which swayed and tossed as if they belonged to the restless head of some invisible monster ambushed in the night amongst the waves.  A moment, long like eternity, elapsed, and, suddenly, the monster which seemed to take to itself the shape of a mountain shut its green eye without as much as a preparatory wink.

Mr. Powell drew a free breath.  “All right now,” said Captain Anthony in a quiet undertone.  He gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping wind.  Her very form could be distinguished now black and elongated amongst the hissing patches of foam bursting along her path.

As is always the case with a ship running before wind and sea she did not seem to an onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves.  It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the Ferndale, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye.  With the red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the lightless space.

“Close shave,” said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised enough to be heard in the wind.  “A blind lot on board that ship.  Put out the flare now.”

Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can, bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon the poop.  And at the same time vanished out of his mind’s eye the vision of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two destroyed ships.  It vanished and there was an immense relief.  He told me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over.  He measured it (for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which came over him all at once.

He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual place saw in the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs. Anthony’s face.  She whispered quietly:

“Is anything going to happen?  What is it?”

“It’s all over now,” he whispered back.

He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white ghostly oval.  He wondered she had not rushed out on deck.  She had remained quietly there.  This was pluck.  Wonderful self-restraint.  And it was not stupidity on her part.  She knew there was imminent danger and probably had some notion of its nature.

“You stayed here waiting for what would come,” he murmured admiringly.

“Wasn’t that the best thing to do?” she asked.

He didn’t know.  Perhaps.  He confessed he could not have done it.  Not he.  His flesh and blood could not have stood it.  He would have felt he must see what was coming.  Then he remembered that the flare might have scorched her face, and expressed his concern.

“A bit.  Nothing to hurt.  Smell the singed hair?”

There was a sort of gaiety in her tone.  She might have been frightened but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction.  This confirmed and augmented if possible Mr. Powell’s good opinion of her as a “jolly girl,” though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in such terms to one’s captain’s wife.  “But she doesn’t look it,” he thought in extenuation and was going to say something more to her about the lighting of that flare when another voice was heard in the companion, saying some indistinct words.  Its tone was contemptuous; it came from below, from the bottom of the stairs.  It was a voice in the cabin.  And the only other voice which could be heard in the main cabin at this time of the evening was the voice of Mrs. Anthony’s father.  The indistinct white oval sank from Mr. Powell’s sight so swiftly as to take him by surprise.  For a moment he hung at the opening of the companion and now that her slight form was no longer obstructing the narrow and winding staircase the voices came up louder but the words were still indistinct.  The old gentleman was excited about something and Mrs. Anthony was “managing him” as Powell expressed it.  They moved away from the bottom of the stairs and Powell went away from the companion.  Yet he fancied he had heard the words “Lost to me” before he withdrew his head.  They had been uttered by Mr. Smith.

Captain Anthony had not moved away from the taffrail.  He remained in the very position he took up to watch the other ship go by rolling and swinging all shadowy in the uproar of the following seas.  He stirred not; and Powell keeping near by did not dare speak to him, so enigmatical in its contemplation of the night did his figure appear to his young eyes: indistinct—and in its immobility staring into gloom, the prey of some incomprehensible grief, longing or regret.

Why is it that the stillness of a human being is often so impressive, so suggestive of evil—as if our proper fate were a ceaseless agitation?  The stillness of Captain Anthony became almost intolerable to his second officer.  Mr. Powell loitering about the skylight wanted his captain off the deck now.  “Why doesn’t he go below?” he asked himself impatiently.  He ventured a cough.

Whether the effect of the cough or not Captain Anthony spoke.  He did not move the least bit.  With his back remaining turned to the whole length of the ship he asked Mr. Powell with some brusqueness if the chief mate had neglected to instruct him that the captain was to be found on the port side.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Powell approaching his back.  “The mate told me to stamp on the port side when I wanted you; but I didn’t remember at the moment.”

“You should remember,” the captain uttered with an effort.  Then added mumbling “I don’t want Mrs. Anthony frightened.  Don’t you see? . . .”

“She wasn’t this time,” Powell said innocently: “She lighted the flare-up for me, sir.”

“This time,” Captain Anthony exclaimed and turned round.  “Mrs. Anthony lighted the flare?  Mrs. Anthony! . . . ”  Powell explained that she was in the companion all the time.

“All the time,” repeated the captain.  It seemed queer to Powell that instead of going himself to see the captain should ask him:

“Is she there now?”

Powell said that she had gone below after the ship had passed clear of the Ferndale.  Captain Anthony made a movement towards the companion himself, when Powell added the information.  “Mr. Smith called to Mrs. Anthony from the saloon, sir.  I believe they are talking there now.”

He was surprised to see the captain give up the idea of going below after all.

He began to walk the poop instead regardless of the cold, of the damp wind and of the sprays.  And yet he had nothing on but his sleeping suit and slippers.  Powell placing himself on the break of the poop kept a look-out.  When after some time he turned his head to steal a glance at his eccentric captain he could not see his active and shadowy figure swinging to and fro.  The second mate of the Ferndale walked aft peering about and addressed the seaman who steered.

“Captain gone below?”

“Yes, sir,” said the fellow who with a quid of tobacco bulging out his left cheek kept his eyes on the compass card.  “This minute.  He laughed.”

“Laughed,” repeated Powell incredulously.  “Do you mean the captain did?  You must be mistaken.  What would he want to laugh for?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

The elderly sailor displayed a profound indifference towards human emotions.  However, after a longish pause he conceded a few words more to the second officer’s weakness.  “Yes.  He was walking the deck as usual when suddenly he laughed a little and made for the companion.  Thought of something funny all at once.”

Something funny!  That Mr. Powell could not believe.  He did not ask himself why, at the time.  Funny thoughts come to men, though, in all sorts of situations; they come to all sorts of men.  Nevertheless Mr. Powell was shocked to learn that Captain Anthony had laughed without visible cause on a certain night.  The impression for some reason was disagreeable.  And it was then, while finishing his watch, with the chilly gusts of wind sweeping at him out of the darkness where the short sea of the soundings growled spitefully all round the ship, that it occurred to his unsophisticated mind that