The Black Mate
(1884)
A good many years ago there were several ships loading at the Jetty,
London Dock. I am speaking here of the 'eighties of the last century, of
the time when London had plenty of fine ships in the docks, though not
so many fine buildings in its streets.
The ships at the Jetty were fine enough; they lay one behind the other;
and the __Sapphire__, third from the end, was as good as the rest of
them, and nothing more. Each ship at the Jetty had, of course, her chief
officer on board. So had every other ship in dock.
The policeman at the gates knew them all by sight, without being able to
say at once, without thinking, to what ship any particular man belonged.
As a matter of fact, the mates of the ships then lying in the London
Dock were like the majority of officers in the Merchant Service--a
steady, hard-working, staunch, un-romantic-looking set of men,
belonging to various classes of society, but with the professional stamp
obliterating the personal characteristics, which were not very marked
anyhow.
This last was true of them all, with the exception of the mate of the
_Sapphire_. Of him the policemen could not be in doubt. This one had a
presence.
He was noticeable to them in the street from a great distance; and when
in the morning he strode down the Jetty to his ship, the lumpers and
the dock labourers rolling the bales and trundling the cases of cargo on
their hand-trucks would remark to each other:
"Here's the black mate coming along."
That was the name they gave him, being a gross lot, who could have no
appreciation of the man's dignified bearing. And to call him black was
the superficial impressionism of the ignorant.
Of course, Mr. Bunter, the mate of the _Sapphire_, was not black. He was
no more black than you or I, and certainly as white as any chief mate
of a ship in the whole of the Port of London. His complexion was of the
sort that did not take the tan easily; and I happen to know that
the poor fellow had had a month's illness just before he joined the
_Sapphire_.
From this you will perceive that I knew Bunter. Of course I knew
him. And, what's more, I knew his secret at the time, this secret
which--never mind just now. Returning to Bunter's personal appearance,
it was nothing but ignorant prejudice on the part of the foreman
stevedore to say, as he did in my hearing: "I bet he's a furriner of
some sort." A man may have black hair without being set down for a Dago.
I have known a West-country sailor, boatswain of a fine ship, who looked
more Spanish than any Spaniard afloat I've ever met. He looked like a
Spaniard in a picture.
Competent authorities tell us that this earth is to be finally the
inheritance of men with dark hair and brown eyes. It seems that already
the great majority of mankind is dark-haired in various shades. But
it is only when you meet one that you notice how men with really black
hair, black as ebony, are rare. Bunter's hair was absolutely black,
black as a raven's wing. He wore, too, all his beard (clipped, but a
good length all the same), and his eyebrows were thick and bushy. Add
to this steely blue eyes, which in a fair-haired man would have been
nothing so extraordinary, but in that sombre framing made a startling
contrast, and you will easily understand that Bunter was noticeable
enough.
If it had not been for the quietness of his movements, for the general
soberness of his demeanour, one would have given him credit for a
fiercely passionate nature.
Of course, he was not in his first youth; but if the expression "in the
force of his age" has any meaning, he realized it completely. He was
a tall man, too, though rather spare. Seeing him from his poop
indefatigably busy with his duties, Captain Ashton, of the clipper
ship _Elsinore_, lying just ahead of the _Sapphire_, remarked once to a
friend that "Johns has got somebody there to hustle his ship along for
him."
Captain Johns, master of the _Sapphire_, having commanded ships for
many years, was well known without being much respected or liked. In the
company of his fellows he was either neglected or chaffed. The chaffing
was generally undertaken by Captain Ashton, a cynical and teasing sort
of man. It was Captain Ashton who permitted himself the unpleasant joke
of proclaiming once in company that "Johns is of the opinion that every
sailor above forty years of age ought to be poisoned--shipmasters in
actual command excepted."
It was in a City restaurant, where several well-known shipmasters were
having lunch together. There was Captain Ashton, florid and jovial, in a
large white waistcoat and with a yellow rose in his buttonhole; Captain
Sellers in a sack-coat, thin and pale-faced, with his iron-gray hair
tucked behind his ears, and, but for the absence of spectacles, looking
like an ascetical mild man of books; Captain Hell, a bluff sea-dog with
hairy fingers, in blue serge and a black felt hat pushed far back off
his crimson forehead. There was also a very young shipmaster, with
a little fair moustache and serious eyes, who said nothing, and only
smiled faintly from time to time.
Captain Johns, very much startled, raised his perplexed and credulous
glance, which, together with a low and horizontally wrinkled brow, did
not make a very intellectual _ensemble_. This impression was by no means
mended by the slightly pointed form of his bald head.
Everybody laughed outright, and, thus guided, Captain Johns ended by
smiling rather sourly, and attempted to defend himself. It was all very
well to joke, but nowadays, when ships, to pay anything at all, had to
be driven hard on the passage and in harbour, the sea was no place for
elderly men. Only young men and men in their prime were equal to modern
conditions of push and hurry. Look at the great firms: almost every
single one of them was getting rid of men showing any signs of age. He,
for one, didn't want any oldsters on board his ship.
And, indeed, in this opinion Captain Johns was not singular. There was
at that time a lot of seamen, with nothing against them but that they
were grizzled, wearing out the soles of their last pair of boots on the
pavements of the City in the heart-breaking search for a berth.
Captain Johns added with a sort of ill-humoured innocence that from
holding that opinion to thinking of poisoning people was a very long
step.
This seemed final but Captain Ashton would not let go his joke.
"Oh, yes. I am sure you would. You said distinctly 'of no use.' What's
to be done with men who are 'of no use?' You are a kind-hearted fellow,
Johns. I am sure that if only you thought it over carefully you would
consent to have them poisoned in some painless manner."
Captain Sellers twitched his thin, sinuous lips.
"Make ghosts of them," he suggested, pointedly.
At the mention of ghosts Captain Johns became shy, in his perplexed,
sly, and unlovely manner.
Captain Ashton winked.
"Yes. And then perhaps you would get a chance to have a communication
with the world of spirits. Surely the ghosts of seamen should haunt
ships. Some of them would be sure to call on an old shipmate."
Captain Sellers remarked drily:
"Don't raise his hopes like this. It's cruel. He won't see anything. You
know, Johns, that nobody has ever seen a ghost."
At this intolerable provocation Captain Johns came out of his reserve.
With no perplexity whatever, but with a positive passion of credulity
giving momentary lustre to his dull little eyes, he brought up a lot of
authenticated instances. There were books and books full of instances.
It was merest ignorance to deny supernatural apparitions. Cases were
published every month in a special newspaper. Professor Cranks saw
ghosts daily. And Professor Cranks was no small potatoes either. One
of the biggest scientific men living. And there was that newspaper
fellow--what's his name?--who had a girl-ghost visitor. He printed in
his paper things she said to him. And to say there were no ghosts after
that!
"Why, they have been photographed! What more proof do you want?"
Captain Johns was indignant. Captain Bell's lips twitched, but Captain
Ashton protested now.
"For goodness' sake don't keep him going with that. And by the by,
Johns, who's that hairy pirate you've got for your new mate? Nobody in
the Dock seems to have seen him before."
Captain Johns, pacified by the change of subjects, answered simply that
Willy, the tobacconist at the corner of Fenchurch Street, had sent him
along.
Willy, his shop, and the very house in Fenchurch Street, I believe, are
gone now. In his time, wearing a careworn, absent-minded look on his
pasty face, Willy served with tobacco many southern-going ships out of
the Port of London. At certain times of the day the shop would be full
of shipmasters. They sat on casks, they lounged against the counter.
Many a youngster found his first lift in life there; many a man got
a sorely needed berth by simply dropping in for four pennyworth of
birds'-eye at an auspicious moment. Even Willy's assistant, a redheaded,
uninterested, delicate-looking young fellow, would hand you across
the counter sometimes a bit of valuable intelligence with your box of
cigarettes, in a whisper, lips hardly moving, thus: "The _Bellona_,
South Dock. Second officer wanted. You may be in time for it if you
hurry up."
And didn't one just fly!
"Oh, Willy sent him," said Captain Ashton. "He's a very striking man. If
you were to put a red sash round his waist and a red handkerchief round
his head he would look exactly like one of them buccaneering chaps that
made men walk the plank and carried women off into captivity. Look out,
Johns, he don't cut your throat for you and run off with the _Sapphire_.
What ship has he come out of last?"
Captain Johns, after looking up credulously as usual, wrinkled his
brow, and said placidly that the man had seen better days. His name was
Bunter.