Читать книгу Command - William McFee - Страница 8

"Say, d'you know who I am, Mister?" he asked, and added, "I'll tell ye. I'm the Thorn in the Flesh," and he disappeared into the bathroom, whence came the rumble of water being boiled up by steam. Mr. Spokesly's eyes returned to the burly gentleman who was regarding him with amusement. Mr. Spokesly threw up his hands.

"Well," he said, looking stonily at nothing, "there it is. I was told to get it fixed, an'——"

"Fix it then," said the chief quietly. Mr. Spokesly almost bridled.

"Not my work," he muttered.

"Oh, I see; it's mine, you mean!" surmised the other in a tone, of assumed enlightenment.

"It's engineer's work," said Mr. Spokesly irritably. The chief made no reply for a moment, merely studying Mr. Spokesly intently.

"See here, Mister," he began, and reached out a huge hand to close the door. "See here, Mister, you're under a misapprehension. Now I'll tell you the whole trouble. You heard Mr. Tolleshunt just now. D'ye know what he meant when he said he was the Thorn in the Flesh? It's a joke of ours in the mess room. He meant your flesh. And the reason for that is that you men up on the bridge are in a false position. Ye have executive power without knowledge. Ye command a ship and what do ye know about a ship? To whom do ye come for help, whether it is steering or driving or discharging or salving or anything? You want the same consideration and power that you have on a sailing-ship, where you know all about the gear and make out yourselves. Here, you just have to stand by while we do it. And on top o' that, you come down here with your silly damn breakages and expect us to be tinkers as well. You think Mr. Tolleshunt is sadly deficient in respect, I dare say. But what of his side o' the question? He's been up all night and all morning on a breakdown. So's the second, who's still at it. So have I, for that matter. We've all three of us got just as good tickets as you. Ye never heard about it? Of course not. What could ye do for us? When ye've pulled that handle on the bridge and heard the gong answer, you're finished! Ye're in charge of a box of mechanism of which ye know nothing. Ye walk about in uniform and talk big about yer work, and what does it all amount to? Ye're a young man, and I'm, well, not so young, and I tell ye friendly, Mister, ye're a joke. Ye're what the newspapers call an anachronism or an anomaly, I forget which. Ye'll never get men like young Tolleshunt, men who know their work from A to Z, to treat ye seriously unless ye take hold and study a ship for what she is, a mass o' machinery. Ye'll have to get shut o' the notion that as soon as ye become officers, ye must lose the use o' your hands. Now there's just as much engineerin' about that binnacle as there is in a kettle or a rabbit hutch. Put one o' your young apprentices to it, and if he can't, make him learn. I've been with old-time skippers who could do anything, from wire-splicing to welding an anchor shackle. They learned in the yard before they went to sea. Your young fellers can do nothing except slather a hose round the decks and ask for higher wages. Now don't be sore because I'm telling ye the truth. We're busy and we're tired. We've all sorts o' trouble you can't understand, vital matters that mean speed and safety. Suppose, after a spell on the bridge in fog, ye were to come down to yer room and find me there with some ash-bags to sew up, eh? Imagine it! Just imagine it!"

He sat there, looking sideways at Mr. Spokesly, his pipe between his enormous thumb and knuckle, asking Mr. Spokesly to imagine this fearsome thing. But Mr. Spokesly's imagination was for the time being out of commission. He was scarcely conscious of the request, so intensely preoccupied was he with the ghastly cleavage between his own estimate of his position and the chief's. Back of all these frank insults to his dignity, Mr. Spokesly scented the sinister prejudice of his commander. As he strode, in severe mental disarray, back to his room, he discovered a conviction that the chief "had been pumpin' the Old Man." Not that he needed any pumping, of course. It would be only too like him to blab to an engineer about his own officers. Well, there it was! Mr. Spokesly pitched the hapless binnacle on the settee and turned to the wash-stand. Perhaps it was due to the course of the London School of Mnemonics, the course in tracing the association of ideas, that when his eye fell on the tumblers in the rack he should think of that abominable trick of the Old Man sneaking in and smelling the glass to see if he, Mr. Spokesly, had been drinking. Couldn't trust him that far! Do what he would he could give no satisfaction. He would ask to be paid off to-morrow as soon as they dropped anchor in Saloniki harbour. That would be the best way. Just pull out of it. They would realize, when he was gone, the sort of man they had lost. The flame of indignation died out again and he sat moodily pondering the difficulty of commanding an adequate appreciation. Command! The word stung him to bodily movement. If only he could once grasp the sceptre, he could defy them all. He would have the whip-hand then. And there were ways, there were ways of making money. Some he had heard of on this run were quadrupling their incomes. Archy had whispered incredible stories of skippers and stewards working together … working together. Perhaps it would be worth while to stick to the ship for a voyage or so, even if he did have to put up with this sort of thing. They would reach Saloniki in a few hours, and then they would see.

It frequently happens that moods which would logically drive men mad, moods which seem to have no natural antidote, are broken up and neutralized by some entirely fortuitous event. It is not too much to say that Mr. Spokesly's grievances were inducing one of these moods, when the wholesome activity of affairs on the forecastle-head, the keen autumn wind blowing across the bony ridges of Chalcidice, and the professional criticism evoked by the ships outward-bound, blew the foul vapours away. Captain Meredith, whose reflective and unchallenging blue eyes were visible between the weather-cloth and the laced peak of his cap, made a mental note that "the man was doing himself justice." Of course Captain Meredith did not perceive how very wide of the mark his sensible phrase led him. Mr. Spokesly always did himself justice. What he was eternally hunting for, in and out of the maze in which he spent his life, was justice from others. Captain Meredith did not realize that a middle-aged man with a grievance is like a man who has been skinned—to touch him causes the most exquisite agony. Nay, merely to exist, to permit the orderly march of every-day routine, chafes him to the verge of hysteria. It was nothing to Mr. Spokesly that he was serving his country; nothing to him that he was in imminent peril by mine and torpedo. During the voyage he had scarcely noticed the occasional formal slips that came from the wireless house informing them that an enemy submarine was operating in such and such a position, so many miles ahead or astern as the case might be. Mr. Spokesly had never seen a submarine and he didn't want to. The whole business of war in his eyes became a ghastly farce so long as he was not appreciated at his true worth. It might almost be said that at times he was indifferent to the outcome of the gigantic struggle. A horrible unrest assailed him. The world was heaving in a death grapple with the powers of darkness and he was as nothing in the balance.

But as he walked the forecastle-head and the Tanganyika passed through the bottle neck of Kara Burun into the wide waters of the gulf-head, he was restored to a normal attention to the cut-and-dried duties of his calling. There was exhilaration in the thought of foregathering once more with Archy, of going ashore in a new port. And there would be letters. He drew a deep breath. Ada would write. Unconsciously he straightened up. A warm glow suffused him as he recalled her dark-gray, adoring eyes and the deep tremble of her voice as she called him her sailor sweetheart. After all, he was that. He was understood there, he thought, and was comforted. Rung by rung he climbed up out of the dark dank well in which he had been dwelling until, when the compressors had been screwed up tight and the Tanganyika was swinging gently on her eighty fathom of cable, he was recapitulating the heartening words he had last read in his "course" in the London School of Mnemonics.

Think well of yourself and your ability, it ran. Get the habit of believing in your own ambition. This is only another way of saying that faith can move mountains. But remember that to be satisfied with what you are is to lose grip. If you are standing still you are slipping back. This paradox will be shown. …

It was some hours later, after dinner, that Captain Meredith sat at the desk in his room looking out of the big side-scuttle at the blood-red and purple of the western sky beyond the Vardar delta. It was such a sunset as one may see across Lake Pontchartrain in the fall, or looking up some aisle of the dark silent forests that fringe the swamps of the Georgia coast. It has the opaque glamour that comes from the dense vapours rising from a marsh, the tangible beauty of a giant curtain rather than the far glories of miles of ambient mountain air. But Captain Meredith was not occupied with esthetic musings. In his hand he held a letter from the superintendent in London, and he sought seclusion, as was his wont, in looking out towards the immense polychrome of the sky. For the letter contained orders which might involve him in some difficulties. He was instructed to file, in an enclosed form, precise particulars of all his officers' records, and return them accompanied by his own opinion as to their fitness for promotion. It would be necessary, he was informed, to engage a large number of additional officers for a fleet which the company had purchased all standing, and the directors were anxious that those already in their employ should have the pick of the billets. It was important, he was warned, that he use care in recommending any man, as the directors proposed to act upon these suggestions, and the failure of a nominee would react unfavourably upon the prestige of the commander responsible for the report.

Like all men who have grown up inside the protecting walls of tradition and routine, Captain Meredith was unable to view a situation without prejudice. Some small portion of free and independent judgment he had, or he would never have become master; but the bulk of the decisions which he had to make were obtained by unconscious reference to rules, written or unwritten. This order, however, involved just that small part of his mental equipment which made his work of interest to him, his imagination if you like. It forced him to take a far wider view than was ordinarily advisable. He was aware of the popular legends which have grown around great commanders—legends of their genius for selecting subordinates, their uncanny aptitude for appraising a man's powers at a glance. Not so easy, Captain Meredith had found it. Like most of us, he had in time cultivated a habit of suspending judgment, a habit of discounting the dreadful efficiency of the new broom, the total abstainer, the college-graduate, and the newly married. What he waited for time to reveal was the man's principle. Without the main girder and tie-ribs of principle, all was as nothing. And yet what comprised this principle Captain Meredith would have been sore put to it to explain. It was not enthusiasm, nor was it will power. It was not even intellect or civil responsibility. It was deeper than any of these, a subtle manifestation of character as elusive and imponderable as a beam of light or the expression on a man's face. Somewhat to his surprise Captain Meredith's reflections showed him that not even compatibility of temperament had much to do with it. He and old McGinnis had never been warm friends, had even had frequent differences on minor details of executive routine. Neither of them would have invited the other to his home, had the opportunity served. That did not matter. He had had some experience of officers quite different from Mr. McGinnis, clever, gay young men, "good mixers," passengers' favourites, and he had discovered that a man may be a brilliant social success and a useless incumbrance at the same time. To state the problem to himself was difficult, but it was forced upon him irresistibly when he endeavoured to formulate his mature conclusions upon the subject of Mr. Spokesly. His chief officer was his chief concern. Of the others he was able to set down a fairly just and intelligible estimate. Young Chippenham was a bundle of amiable possibilities. He would have to get his certificates before the company would make him or break him. The chief engineer was at the other end of the scale. His name was made. Behind him was a career of solid responsibility, of grave crises met and mastered with cool generalship and unbeatable energy. He was one of those men who carry in their own personality the prestige of a race, a nation, and a learned profession. Of the others it would be safe to take his verdict. Mr. Spokesly, therefore, remained the chief source of anxiety. For it was not a simple question of bearing witness to Mr. Spokesly's ability as a seaman, as a navigator, or as a desirable junior officer. The tremendous responsibility from which Captain Meredith shrank was twofold. On the one hand, he had to accept the onus of recommending his chief officer for a command. On the other lay the grave danger of injustice to a brother professional. Mr. Spokesly was a man no longer in his first youth, no doubt engaged to be married, with ambitions and aspirations with which Captain Meredith had the deepest sympathy. It was no small matter to stop a man's promotion. He remembered how he himself, piqued at some ungenerous act of the company, had talked of resignation, and his commander had taken him by the arm and muttered contemptuously, "And spoil yourself for life, eh?" And when asked "How?" that same shipmaster had drawn a brutal picture of a man throwing up a billet just as he was getting a name, entering another employ as a junior, spending years working up to chief mate again, only to find about a score of active, intelligent, and experienced officers on the list ahead of him, and gradually resigning himself to the colourless existence of an elderly failure. Captain Meredith was not the man to condemn a brother officer to such a fate without an overwhelming conviction. Rather would he. …

But his thoughts refused to travel that road. He sat looking out at the sombre beauty of the sky, noting the long rigid black bar that divided sharply the dark swamps from the shining pallor of the roadstead. He tapped his teeth with his pencil. No, he was not prepared to jeopardize his own prospects. He had a family. He hoped to spend more time with them later … after the war. He was beginning to think sea life was narrowing. One got out of touch with so many phases of human interest and activity. … One toiled and moiled, and suffered agonies of anxiety and defeated vigilance; sleep and leisure went by the board for days; one found fault and made mistakes; superior young men in warships asked sarcastic questions during the small hours; and all to what end? After all, one only earned for all this the salary which a successful barrister or surgeon would pay his chauffeur. It was preposterous, when one came to regard it. So Captain Meredith's thoughts ran on, with a sort of light bitterness, sharpening their flavour and inclining him to charity. In more senses than one, he and Mr. Spokesly were in the same boat. He put his papers away in a drawer, picked up his cigar to take the air on the bridge. Without registering any final and irrevocable decision, he had made a mental note that "unless the man made an ass of himself" he would not stand in his way.

The sun, concealed behind a distant range, threw up a ruddy and vigorous glow as from an open cupola, but the roadstead lay in a profound shadow whose edge began to sparkle with coloured lights of a singular distinctness and individuality. It was like watching from the depths of space a congregation of blessed yet still intensely personal spirits on the heavenly shores. They stood in clusters or apart, in long lines or zigzags far up the mountain side. At times they were obliterated by trolley cars—gently moving glares which bore on their foreheads flashing blue-white gems. At other times a fountain of sparks indicated an otherwise invisible puff of smoke from a locomotive, and whole galaxies of shining points would vanish while an ammunition train moved laboriously across the city. But no knowledge of the actual causes could destroy the illusion that the lights were informed with an intelligent vitality. They winked and quivered with mysterious emotions. They went on journeys among other fixed stars of greater magnitude. They came out in boats over the dark water as though possessed with a passion for exploring, and then, losing heart, would go back in a hurry, or else expire. They raced along country roads and vanished in folds of the hills. They danced and were smitten with idiotic immobility. They were born, and they died sudden and inexplicable deaths. They were shocked, or were filled with calm content. Low down on the edge of the shore, where an open-air cinema was working convulsively, the lights had collected in some excitement around the screen. Captain Meredith, raising his night glasses to inspect this novel portent, imagined himself watching a square hole in a dark spangled curtain, through which a drama of inconceivable brightness and rapidity could be observed. It was, the captain imagined whimsically, like watching a huge brain at work, if such a thing were possible. He occasionally took refuge from himself in such reflections. Without any pretence to originality, he occasionally found himself in possession of thoughts for which custom had provided no suitable phrase. With the humility common to those of gentle birth who have followed the sea, he kept the results to himself. Even in letters to his wife, he adhered to the conventional insipidity that makes an Englishman's letters home one of the wonders of the world. He had become somewhat fearful of originality, even in others, during his honeymoon, when he had tried timidly to interest his wife in a novel he was reading. It was a novel about sailors and the sea, of all things in the world, and Captain Meredith had been so intrigued with the notion of a story written about sailors without distorting them out of all recognition that he couldn't keep it to himself. And he had been completely nonplussed when his gentle, blonde, and slightly angular young wife had displayed not merely a tepid lack of interest but downright dislike. "I don't like it," she had said acidly, and returned to her own book, an interminable tale of gipsies and highwaymen in masks, and a "reigning toast" with forty thousand pounds. They had been married some time before he realized just what it was she didn't like in the story. And when he realized it, he put the thought from him in trepidation, for he was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake. She embodied for him all that he craved of England. She was typical, as she bent over their one child, a flaxen-haired little girl with incredibly thin limbs. And he was typical, too—as he thought of them and their setting at Ealing—the modern Englishman who has given intellectual hostages to fortune.