As often happens after a grey daybreak the sun had risen in a warm and
glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the enlarged
estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous dust, and in the
dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the shores had the murky semi-
transparent darkness of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell,
who had sailed out of London all his young seaman's life, told me that it
was then, in a moment of entranced vision an hour or so after sunrise,
that the river was revealed to him for all time, like a fair face often
seen before, which is suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner
and unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its own which
rouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an unappeasable memory of its
charm. The hull of the Ferndale, swung head to the eastward, caught
the light, her tall spars and rigging steeped in a bath of red-gold, from
the water-line full of glitter to the trucks slight and gleaming against
the delicate expanse of the blue.
"Time we had a mouthful to eat," said a voice at his side. It was Mr.
Franklin, the chief mate, with his head sunk between his shoulders, and
melancholy eyes. "Let the men have their breakfast, bo'sun," he went on,
"and have the fire out in the galley in half an hour at the latest, so
that we can call these barges of explosives alongside. Come along, young
man. I don't know your name. Haven't seen the captain, to speak to,
since yesterday afternoon when he rushed off to pick up a second mate
somewhere. How did he get you?"
Young Powell, a little shy notwithstanding the friendly disposition of
the other, answered him smilingly, aware somehow that there was something
marked in this inquisitiveness, natural, after all--something anxious.
His name was Powell, and he was put in the way of this berth by Mr.
Powell, the shipping master. He blushed.
"Ah, I see. Well, you have been smart in getting ready. The
ship-keeper, before he went away, told me you joined at one o'clock. I
didn't sleep on board last night. Not I. There was a time when I never
cared to leave this ship for more than a couple of hours in the evening,
even while in London, but now, since--"
He checked himself with a roll of his prominent eyes towards that
youngster, that stranger. Meantime, he was leading the way across the
quarter-deck under the poop into the long passage with the door of the
saloon at the far end. It was shut. But Mr. Franklin did not go so far.
After passing the pantry he opened suddenly a door on the left of the
passage, to Powell's great surprise.