CHANCE--A TALE IN TWO PARTS
by Joseph Conrad
PART I--THE DAMSEL
CHAPTER ONE--YOUNG POWELL AND HIS CHANCE
I believe he had seen us out of the window coming off to dine in the
dinghy of a fourteen-ton yawl belonging to Marlow my host and
skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on
the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we
found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness
at the head of a long table, white and inhospitable like a snow
bank.
The red tint of his clear-cut face with trim short black whiskers
under a cap of curly iron-grey hair was the only warm spot in the
dinginess of that room cooled by the cheerless tablecloth. We knew
him already by sight as the owner of a little five-ton cutter, which
he sailed alone apparently, a fellow yachtsman in the unpretending
band of fanatics who cruise at the mouth of the Thames. But the
first time he addressed the waiter sharply as ''steward'' we knew him
at once for a sailor as well as a yachtsman.
Presently he had occasion to reprove that same waiter for the
slovenly manner in which the dinner was served. He did it with
considerable energy and then turned to us.
"If we at sea," he declared, "went about our work as people ashore
high and low go about theirs we should never make a living. No one
would employ us. And moreover no ship navigated and sailed in the
happy-go-lucky manner people conduct their business on shore would
ever arrive into port."
Since he had retired from the sea he had been astonished to discover
that the educated people were not much better than the others. No
one seemed to take any proper pride in his work: from plumbers who
were simply thieves to, say, newspaper men (he seemed to think them
a specially intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a
correct version of the simplest affair. This universal inefficiency
of what he called "the shore gang" he ascribed in general to the
want of responsibility and to a sense of security.
"They see," he went on, "that no matter what they do this tight
little island won''t turn turtle with them or spring a leak and go to
the bottom with their wives and children."
From this point the conversation took a special turn relating
exclusively to sea-life. On that subject he got quickly in touch
with Marlow who in his time had followed the sea. They kept up a
lively exchange of reminiscences while I listened. They agreed that
the happiest time in their lives was as youngsters in good ships,
with no care in the world but not to lose a watch below when at sea
and not a moment''s time in going ashore after work hours when in
harbour. They agreed also as to the proudest moment they had known
in that calling which is never embraced on rational and practical
grounds, because of the glamour of its romantic associations. It
was the moment when they had passed successfully their first
examination and left the seamanship Examiner with the little
precious slip of blue paper in their hands.
"That day I wouldn''t have called the Queen my cousin," declared our
new acquaintance enthusiastically.
At that time the Marine Board examinations took place at the St.
Katherine''s Dock House on Tower Hill, and he informed us that he had
a special affection for the view of that historic locality, with the
Gardens to the left, the front of the Mint to the right, the
miserable tumble-down little houses farther away, a cabstand, bootblacks squatting on the edge of the pavement and a pair of big
policemen gazing with an air of superiority at the doors of the
Black Horse public-house across the road. This was the part of the
world, he said, his eyes first took notice of, on the finest day of
his life. He had emerged from the main entrance of St. Katherine''s
Dock House a full-fledged second mate after the hottest time of his
life with Captain R-, the most dreaded of the three seamanship
Examiners who at the time were responsible for the merchant service
officers qualifying in the Port of London.
"We all who were preparing to pass," he said, "used to shake in our
shoes at the idea of going before him. He kept me for an hour and a
half in the torture chamber and behaved as though he hated me. He
kept his eyes shaded with one of his hands. Suddenly he let it drop
saying, "You will do!" Before I realised what he meant he was
pushing the blue slip across the table. I jumped up as if my chair
had caught fire.
"Thank you, sir," says I, grabbing the paper.
"Good morning, good luck to you," he growls at me.
"The old doorkeeper fussed out of the cloak-room with my hat. They
always do. But he looked very hard at me before he ventured to ask
in a sort of timid whisper: "Got through all right, sir?" For all
answer I dropped a half-crown into his soft broad palm. "Well,"
says he with a sudden grin from ear to ear, "I never knew him keep
any of you gentlemen so long. He failed two second mates this
morning before your turn came. Less than twenty minutes each:
that''s about his usual time."
"I found myself downstairs without being aware of the steps as if I
had floated down the staircase. The finest day in my life. The day
you get your first command is nothing to it. For one thing a man is
not so young then and for another with us, you know, there is
nothing much more to expect. Yes, the finest day of one''s life, no
doubt, but then it is just a day and no more. What comes after is
about the most unpleasant time for a youngster, the trying to get an
officer''s berth with nothing much to show but a brand-new
certificate. It is surprising how useless you find that piece of
ass''s skin that you have been putting yourself in such a state
about. It didn''t strike me at the time that a Board of Trade
certificate does not make an officer, not by a long long way. But
the slippers of the ships I was haunting with demands for a job knew
that very well. I don''t wonder at them now, and I don''t blame them
either. But this ''trying to get a ship'' is pretty hard on a
youngster all the same . . . "
He went on then to tell us how tired he was and how discouraged by
this lesson of disillusion following swiftly upon the finest day of
his life. He told us how he went the round of all the ship-owners''
offices in the City where some junior clerk would furnish him with
printed forms of application which he took home to fill up in the
evening. He used to run out just before midnight to post them in
the nearest pillar-box. And that was all that ever came of it. In
his own words: he might just as well have dropped them all properly
addressed and stamped into the sewer grating.
Then one day, as he was wending his weary way to the docks, he met a
friend and former shipmate a little older than himself outside the
Fenchurch Street Railway Station.
He craved for sympathy but his friend had just "got a ship" that
very morning and was hurrying home in a state of outward joy and
inward uneasiness usual to a sailor who after many days of waiting
suddenly gets a berth. This friend had the time to condole with him
but briefly. He must be moving. Then as he was running off, over
his shoulder as it were, he suggested: "Why don''t you go and speak
to Mr. Powell in the Shipping Office." Our friend objected that he
did not know Mr. Powell from Adam. And the other already pretty
near round the corner shouted back advice: "Go to the private door
of the Shipping Office and walk right up to him. His desk is by the
window. Go up boldly and say I sent you."
Our new acquaintance looking from one to the other of us declared:
"Upon my word, I had grown so desperate that I''d have gone boldly up
to the devil himself on the mere hint that he had a second mate''s
job to give away."
It was at this point that interrupting his flow of talk to light his
pipe but holding us with his eye he inquired whether we had known
Powell. Marlow with a slight reminiscent smile murmured that he
"remembered him very well."
Then ...
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