So he did not understand the aggrieved attitude of the mate--or rather he

understood it obscurely as a result of simple causes which did not seem

to him adequate. He would have dismissed all this out of his mind with a

contemptuous: 'What the devil do I care?' if the captain's wife herself

had not been so young. To see her the first time had been something of a

shock to him. He had some preconceived ideas as to captain's wives

which, while he did not believe the testimony of his eyes, made him open

them very wide. He had stared till the captain's wife noticed it plainly

and turned her face away. Captain's wife! That girl covered with rugs

in a long chair. Captain's . . . ! He gasped mentally. It had never

occurred to him that a captain's wife could be anything but a woman to be

described as stout or thin, as jolly or crabbed, but always mature, and

even, in comparison with his own years, frankly old. But this! It was a

sort of moral upset as though he had discovered a case of abduction or

something as surprising as that. You understand that nothing is more

disturbing than the upsetting of a preconceived idea. Each of us

arranges the world according to his own notion of the fitness of things.

To behold a girl where your average mediocre imagination had placed a

comparatively old woman may easily become one of the strongest shocks

. . . "

Marlow paused, smiling to himself.

"Powell remained impressed after all these years by the very

recollection," he continued in a voice, amused perhaps but not mocking.

"He said to me only the other day with something like the first awe of

that discovery lingering in his tone--he said to me: "Why, she seemed so

young, so girlish, that I looked round for some woman which would be the

captain's wife, though of course I knew there was no other woman on board

that voyage." The voyage before, it seems, there had been the steward's

wife to act as maid to Mrs. Anthony; but she was not taken that time for

some reason he didn't know. Mrs. Anthony . . . ! If it hadn't been the

captain's wife he would have referred to her mentally as a kid, he said.

I suppose there must be a sort of divinity hedging in a captain's wife

(however incredible) which prevented him applying to her that

contemptuous definition in the secret of his thoughts.

I asked him when this had happened; and he told me that it was three days

after parting from the tug, just outside the channel--to be precise. A

head wind had set in with unpleasant damp weather. He had come up to

leeward of the poop, still feeling very much of a stranger, and an

untried officer, at six in the evening to take his watch. To see her was

quite as unexpected as seeing a vision. When she turned away her head he

recollected himself and dropped his eyes. What he could see then was

only, close to the long chair on which she reclined, a pair of long, thin

legs ending in black cloth boots tucked in close to the skylight seat.

Whence he concluded that the 'old gentleman,' who wore a grey cap like

the captain's, was sitting by her--his daughter. In his first

astonishment he had stopped dead short, with the consequence that now he

felt very much abashed at having betrayed his surprise. But he couldn't

very well turn tail and bolt off the poop. He had come there on duty.

So, still with downcast eyes, he made his way past them. Only when he

got as far as the wheel-grating did he look up. She was hidden from him

by the back of her deck-chair; but he had the view of the owner of the

thin, aged legs seated on the skylight, his clean-shaved cheek, his thin

compressed mouth with a hollow in each corner, the sparse grey locks

escaping from under the tweed cap, and curling slightly on the collar of

the coat. He leaned forward a little over Mrs. Anthony, but they were

not talking. Captain Anthony, walking with a springy hurried gait on the

other side of the poop from end to end, gazed straight before him. Young

Powell might have thought that his captain was not aware of his presence

either. However, he knew better, and for that reason spent a most

uncomfortable hour motionless by the compass before his captain stopped

in his swift pacing and with an almost visible effort made some remark to

him about the weather in a low voice. Before Powell, who was startled,

could find a word of answer, the captain swung off again on his endless

tramp with a fixed gaze. And till the supper bell rang silence dwelt

over that poop like an evil spell. The captain walked up and down

looking straight before him, the helmsman steered, looking upwards at the

sails, the old gent on the skylight looked down on his daughter--and Mr.

Powell confessed to me that he didn't know where to look, feeling as

though he had blundered in where he had no business--which was absurd. At

last he fastened his eyes on the compass card, took refuge, in spirit,

inside the binnacle. He felt chilled more than he should have been by

the chilly dusk falling on the muddy green sea of the soundings from a

smoothly clouded sky. A fitful wind swept the cheerless waste, and the

ship, hauled up so close as to check her way, seemed to progress by

languid fits and starts against the short seas which swept along her

sides with a snarling sound.




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