Powell walked past the man. A thin, somewhat sunken face, with a tightly
closed mouth, stared at the distant French coast, vague like a suggestion
of solid darkness, lying abeam beyond the evening light reflected from
the level waters, themselves growing more sombre than the sky; a stare,
across which Powell had to pass and did pass with a quick side glance,
noting its immovable stillness. His passage disturbed those eyes no more
than if he had been as immaterial as a ghost. And this failure of his
person in producing an impression affected him strangely. Who could that
old man be?
He was so curious that he even ventured to ask the pilot in a low voice.
The pilot turned out to be a good-natured specimen of his kind,
condescending, sententious. He had been down to his meals in the main
cabin, and had something to impart.
"That? Queer fish--eh? Mrs. Anthony's father. I've been introduced to
him in the cabin at breakfast time. Name of Smith. Wonder if he has all
his wits about him. They take him about with them, it seems. Don't look
very happy--eh?"
Then, changing his tone abruptly, he desired Powell to get all hands on
deck and make sail on the ship. "I shall be leaving you in half an hour.
You'll have plenty of time to find out all about the old gent," he added
with a thick laugh.
* * * * *
In the secret emotion of giving his first order as a fully responsible
officer, young Powell forgot the very existence of that old man in a
moment. The following days, in the interest of getting in touch with the
ship, with the men in her, with his duties, in the rather anxious period
of settling down, his curiosity slumbered; for of course the pilot's few
words had not extinguished it.
This settling down was made easy for him by the friendly character of his
immediate superior--the chief. Powell could not defend himself from some
sympathy for that thick, bald man, comically shaped, with his crimson
complexion and something pathetic in the rolling of his very movable
black eyes in an apparently immovable head, who was so tactfully ready to
take his competency for granted.
There can be nothing more reassuring to a young man tackling his life's
work for the first time. Mr. Powell, his mind at ease about himself, had
time to observe the people around with friendly interest. Very early in
the beginning of the passage, he had discovered with some amusement that
the marriage of Captain Anthony was resented by those to whom Powell
(conscious of being looked upon as something of an outsider) referred in
his mind as 'the old lot.'