Part 1 (1/2)
At Sunwich Port.
by W.W. Jacobs.
CHAPTER I
The ancient port of Sunwich was basking in the suns.h.i.+ne of a July afternoon. A rattle of cranes and winches sounded from the s.h.i.+pping in the harbour, but the town itself was half asleep. Somnolent shopkeepers in dim back parlours coyly veiled their faces in red handkerchiefs from the too ardent flies, while small boys left in charge noticed listlessly the slow pa.s.sing of time as recorded by the church clock.
It is a fine church, and Sunwich is proud of it. The tall grey tower is a landmark at sea, but from the narrow streets of the little town itself it has a disquieting appearance of rising suddenly above the roofs huddled beneath it for the purpose of displaying a black-faced clock with gilt numerals whose mellow chimes have recorded the pa.s.sing hours for many generations of Sunwich men.
Regardless of the heat, which indeed was mild compared with that which raged in his own bosom, Captain Nugent, fresh from the inquiry of the collision of his s.h.i.+p Conqueror with the German barque Hans Muller, strode rapidly up the High Street in the direction of home. An honest seafaring smell, compounded of tar, rope, and fish, known to the educated of Sunwich as ozone, set his thoughts upon the sea. He longed to be aboard s.h.i.+p again, with the Court of Inquiry to form part of his crew. In all his fifty years of life he had never met such a collection of fools. His hard blue eyes blazed as he thought of them, and the mouth hidden by his well-kept beard was set with anger.
Mr. Samson Wilks, his steward, who had been with him to London to give evidence, had had a time upon which he looked back in later years with much satisfaction at his powers of endurance. He was with the captain, and yet not with him. When they got out of the train at Sunwich he hesitated as to whether he should follow the captain or leave him. His excuse for following was the bag, his reason for leaving the volcanic condition of its owner's temper, coupled with the fact that he appeared to be sublimely ignorant that the most devoted steward in the world was tagging faithfully along a yard or two in the rear.
The few pa.s.sers-by glanced at the couple with interest. Mr. Wilks had what is called an expressive face, and he had worked his sandy eyebrows, his weak blue eyes, and large, tremulous mouth into such an expression of surprise at the finding of the Court, that he had all the appearance of a beholder of visions. He changed the bag to his other hand as they left the town behind them, and regarded with grat.i.tude the approaching end of his labours.
At the garden-gate of a fair-sized house some half-mile along the road the captain stopped, and after an impatient fumbling at the latch strode up the path, followed by Mr. Wilks, and knocked at the door. As he paused on the step he half turned, and for the first time noticed the facial expression of his faithful follower.
”What the d.i.c.kens are you looking like that for?” he demanded.
”I've been surprised, sir,” conceded Mr. Wilks; ”surprised and astonished.”
Wrath blazed again in the captain's eyes and set lines in his forehead. He was being pitied by a steward!
”You've been drinking,” he said, crisply; ”put that bag down.”
”Arsking your pardon, sir,” said the steward, twisting his unusually dry lips into a smile, ”but I've 'ad no opportunity, sir--I've been follerin' you all day, sir.”
A servant opened the door. ”You've been soaking in it for a month,” declared the captain as he entered the hall. ”Why the blazes don't you bring that bag in? Are you so drunk you don't know what you are doing?”
Mr. Wilks picked the bag up and followed humbly into the house. Then he lost his head altogether, and gave some colour to his superior officer's charges by first cannoning into the servant and then wedging the captain firmly in the doorway of the sitting-room with the bag.
”Steward!” rasped the captain.
”Yessir,” said the unhappy Mr. Wilks.
”Go and sit down in the kitchen, and don't leave this house till you're sober.”
Mr. Wilks disappeared. He was not in his first l.u.s.tre, but he was an ardent admirer of the s.e.x, and in an absent-minded way he pa.s.sed his arm round the handmaiden's waist, and sustained a buffet which made his head ring.
”A man o' your age, and drunk, too,” explained the damsel.
Mr. Wilks denied both charges. It appeared that he was much younger than he looked, while, as for drink, he had forgotten the taste of it. A question as to the reception Ann would have accorded a boyish teetotaler remained unanswered.
In the sitting-room Mrs. Kingdom, the captain's widowed sister, put down her crochet-work as her brother entered, and turned to him expectantly. There was an expression of loving sympathy on her mild and rather foolish face, and the captain stiffened at once.
”I was in the wrong,” he said, harshly, as he dropped into a chair; ”my certificate has been suspended for six months, and my first officer has been commended.”
”Suspended?” gasped Mrs. Kingdom, pus.h.i.+ng back the white streamer to the cap which she wore in memory of the late Mr. Kingdom, and sitting upright. ”You?”