Chance

"What are you thinking about," he says angrily. "It isn't my turn. Up

with you."

These were the last words he ever spoke on earth I suppose. I knew he

meant to be the last to leave his ship, so I swarmed up as quick as I

could, and those damned lunatics up there grab at me from above, lug me

in, drag me along aft through the row and the riot of the silliest

excitement I ever did see. Somebody hails from the bridge, "Have you got

them all on board?" and a dozen silly asses start yelling all together,

"All saved! All saved," and then that accursed Irishman on the bridge,

with me roaring No! No! till I thought my head would burst, rings his

engines astern. He rings the engines astern--I fighting like mad to make

myself heard! And of course . . . "

I saw tears, a shower of them fall down Mr. Powell's face. His voice

broke.

"The Ferndale went down like a stone and Captain Anthony went down with

her, the finest man's soul that ever left a sailor's body. I raved like

a maniac, like a devil, with a lot of fools crowding round me and asking,

"Aren't you the captain?"

"I wasn't fit to tie the shoe-strings of the man you have drowned," I

screamed at them . . . Well! Well! I could see for myself that it was

no good lowering a boat. You couldn't have seen her alongside. No use.

And only think, Marlow, it was I who had to go and tell Mrs. Anthony.

They had taken her down below somewhere, first-class saloon. I had to go

and tell her! That Flaherty, God forgive him, comes to me as white as a

sheet, "I think you are the proper person." God forgive him. I wished

to die a hundred times. A lot of kind ladies, passengers, were

chattering excitedly around Mrs. Anthony--a real parrot house. The

ship's doctor went before me. He whispers right and left and then there

falls a sudden hush. Yes, I wished myself dead. But Mrs. Anthony was a

brick.

Here Mr. Powell fairly burst into tears. "No one could help loving

Captain Anthony. I leave you to imagine what he was to her. Yet before

the week was out it was she who was helping me to pull myself together."

"Is Mrs. Anthony in England now?" I asked after a while.

He wiped his eyes without any false shame. "Oh yes." He began to look

for matches, and while diving for the box under the table added: "And not

very far from here either. That little village up there--you know."