Tales of Hearsay — The Black Mate (1884)

“I shall never know,” he repeated, sternly, disengaged himself, pressed her hands to his lips, and went out.

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.

“He’s had command of a Liverpool ship, the _Samaria_, some years ago.

He lost her in the Indian Ocean, and had his certificate suspended for a year.

Ever since then he has not been able to get another command.

He’s been knocking about in the Western Ocean trade lately.

” “That accounts for him being a stranger to everybody about the Docks,” Captain Ashton concluded as they rose from table.

Captain Johns walked down to the Dock after lunch.

He was short of stature and slightly bandy.

His appearance did not inspire the generality of mankind with esteem; but it must have been otherwise with his employers.

He had the reputation of being an uncomfortable commander, meticulous in trifles, always nursing a grievance of some sort and incessantly nagging.

He was not a man to kick up a row with you and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man capable of making one’s life a perfect misery if he took a dislike to an officer.

That very evening I went to see Bunter on board, and sympathized with him on his prospects for the voyage.

He was subdued.

I suppose a man with a secret locked up in his breast loses his buoyancy.

And there was another reason why I could not expect Bunter to show a great elasticity of spirits.

For one thing he had been very seedy lately, and besides--but of that later.

Captain Johns had been on board that afternoon and had loitered and dodged about his chief mate in a manner which had annoyed Bunter exceedingly.

“What could he mean?

” he asked with calm exasperation.

“One would think he suspected I had stolen something and tried to see in what pocket I had stowed it away; or that somebody told him I had a tail and he wanted to find out how I managed to conceal it.

I don’t like to be approached from behind several times in one afternoon in that creepy way and then to be looked up at suddenly in front from under my elbow.

Is it a new sort of peep-bo game?

It doesn’t amuse me.

I am no longer a baby.

” I assured him that if anyone were to tell Captain Johns that he--Bunter--had a tail, Johns would manage to get himself to believe the story in some mysterious manner.

He would.

He was suspicious and credulous to an inconceivable degree.

He would believe any silly tale, suspect any man of anything, and crawl about with it and ruminate the stuff, and turn it over and over in his mind in the most miserable, inwardly whining perplexity.

He would take the meanest possible view in the end, and discover the meanest possible course of action by a sort of natural genius for that sort of thing.

Bunter also told me that the mean creature had crept all over the ship on his little, bandy legs, taking him along to grumble and whine to about a lot of trifles.

Crept about the decks like a wretched insect--like a cockroach, only not so lively.

Thus did the self-possessed Bunter express himself with great disgust.

Then, going on with his usual stately deliberation, made sinister by the frown of his jet-black eyebrows: “And the fellow is mad, too.

He tried to be sociable for a bit, and could find nothing else but to make big eyes at me, and ask me if I believed ‘in communication beyond the grave.

’ Communication beyond--I didn’t know what he meant at first.

I didn’t know what to say.

‘A very solemn subject, Mr. Bunter,’ says he.

I’ve given a great deal of study to it.

” Had Johns lived on shore he would have been the predestined prey of fraudulent mediums; or even if he had had any decent opportunities between the voyages.

Luckily for him, when in England, he lived somewhere far away in Leytonstone, with a maiden sister ten years older than himself, a fearsome virago twice his size, before whom he trembled.

It was said she bullied him terribly in general; and in the particular instance of his spiritualistic leanings she had her own views.

These leanings were to her simply satanic.

She was reported as having declared that, “With God’s help, she would prevent that fool from giving himself up to the Devils.

” It was beyond doubt that Johns’ secret ambition was to get into personal communication with the spirits of the dead--if only his sister would let him.

But she was adamant.

I was told that while in London he had to account to her for every penny of the money he took with him in the morning, and for every hour of his time.

And she kept the bankbook, too.

Bunter (he had been a wild youngster, but he was well connected;

had ancestors; there was a family tomb somewhere in the home counties)--Bunter was indignant, perhaps on account of his own dead.

Those steely-blue eyes of his flashed with positive ferocity out of that black-bearded face.

He impressed me--there was so much dark passion in his leisurely contempt.

“The cheek of the fellow!

Enter into relations with...

A mean little cad like this!

It would be an impudent intrusion.

He wants to enter!...

What is it?

A new sort of snobbishness or what?

” I laughed outright at this original view of spiritism--or whatever the ghost craze is called.

Even Bunter himself condescended to smile.

But it was an austere, quickly vanished smile.

A man in his almost, I may say, tragic position couldn’t be expected--you understand.

He was really worried.

He was ready eventually to put up with any dirty trick in the course of the voyage.

A man could not expect much consideration should he find himself at the mercy of a fellow like Johns.

A misfortune is a misfortune, and there’s an end of it.

But to be bored by mean, low-spirited, inane ghost stories in the Johns style, all the way out to Calcutta and back again, was an intolerable apprehension to be under.

Spiritism was indeed a solemn subject to think about in that light.

Dreadful, even!

Poor fellow!

Little we both thought that before very long he himself...

However, I could give him no comfort.

I was rather appalled myself.

Bunter had also another annoyance that day.

A confounded berthing master came on board on some pretence or other, but in reality, Bunter thought, simply impelled by an inconvenient curiosity--inconvenient to Bunter, that is.

After some beating about the bush, that man suddenly said: “I can’t help thinking.

I’ve seen you before somewhere, Mr. Mate.

If I heard your name, perhaps Bunter--” That’s the worst of a life with a mystery in it--he was much alarmed.

It was very likely that the man had seen him before--worse luck to his excellent memory.

Bunter himself could not be expected to remember every casual dock walloper he might have had to do with.

Bunter brazened it out by turning upon the man, making use of that impressive, black-as-night sternness of expression his unusual hair furnished him with: “My name’s Bunter, sir.

Does that enlighten your inquisitive intellect?

And I don’t ask what your name may be.

I don’t want to know.

I’ve no use for it, sir.

An individual who calmly tells me to my face that he is _not sure_ if he has seen me before, either means to be impudent or is no better than a worm, sir.

Yes, I said a worm--a blind worm!

” Brave Bunter.

That was the line to take.

He fairly drove the beggar out of the ship, as if every word had been a blow.

But the pertinacity of that brass-bound Paul Pry was astonishing.

He cleared out of the ship, of course, before Bunter’s ire, not saying anything, and only trying to cover up his retreat by a sickly smile.

But once on the Jetty he turned deliberately round, and set himself to stare in dead earnest at the ship.

He remained planted there like a mooring-post, absolutely motionless, and with his stupid eyes winking no more than a pair of cabin portholes.

What could Bunter do?

It was awkward for him, you know.

He could not go and put his head into the bread-locker.

What he did was to take up a position abaft the mizzen-rigging, and stare back as unwinking as the other.

So they remained, and I don’t know which of them grew giddy first; but the man on the Jetty, not having the advantage of something to hold on to, got tired the soonest, flung his arm, giving the contest up, as it were, and went away at last.

Bunter told me he was glad the _Sapphire_, “that gem amongst ships” as he alluded to her sarcastically, was going to sea next day.

He had had enough of the Dock.

I understood his impatience.

He had steeled himself against any possible worry the voyage might bring, though it is clear enough now that he was not prepared for the extraordinary experience that was awaiting him already, and in no other part of the world than the Indian Ocean itself; the very part of the world where the poor fellow had lost his ship and had broken his luck, as it seemed for good and all, at the same time.

As to his remorse in regard to a certain secret action of his life, well, I understand that a man of Bunter’s fine character would suffer not a little.

Still, between ourselves, and without the slightest wish to be cynical, it cannot be denied that with the noblest of us the fear of being found out enters for some considerable part into the composition of remorse.

I didn’t say this in so many words to Bunter, but, as the poor fellow harped a bit on it, I told him that there were skeletons in a good many honest cupboards, and that, as to his own particular guilt, it wasn’t writ large on his face for everybody to see--so he needn’t worry as to that.

And besides, he would be gone to sea in about twelve hours from now.

He said there was some comfort in that thought, and went off then to spend his last evening for many months with his wife.

For all his wildness, Bunter had made no mistake in his marrying.

He had married a lady.

A perfect lady.

She was a dear little woman, too.

As to her pluck, I, who know what times they had to go through, I cannot admire her enough for it.

Real, hard-wearing every day and day after day pluck that only a woman is capable of when she is of the right sort--the undismayed sort I would call it.

The black mate felt this parting with his wife more than any of the previous ones in all the years of bad luck.

But she was of the undismayed kind, and showed less trouble in her gentle face than the black-haired, buccaneer-like, but dignified mate of the _Sapphire_.

It may be that her conscience was less disturbed than her husband’s. Of course, his life had no secret places for her; but a woman’s conscience is somewhat more resourceful in finding good and valid excuses.

It depends greatly on the person that needs them, too.

They had agreed that she should not come down to the Dock to see him off.

“I wonder you care to look at me at all,” said the sensitive man.

And she did not laugh.

Bunter was very sensitive; he left her rather brusquely at the last.

He got on board in good time, and produced the usual impression on the mud-pilot in the broken-down straw hat who took the _Sapphire_ out of dock.

The river-man was very polite to the dignified, striking-looking chief mate.

“The five-inch manilla for the check-rope, Mr. --Bunter, thank you--Mr. Bunter, please.

” The sea-pilot who left the “gem of ships” heading comfortably down Channel off Dover told some of his friends that, this voyage, the _Sapphire_ had for chief mate a man who seemed a jolly sight too good for old Johns.

“Bunter’s his name.

I wonder where he’s sprung from?

Never seen him before in any ship I piloted in or out all these years.

He’s the sort of man you don’t forget.

You couldn’t. A thorough good sailor, too.

And won’t old Johns just worry his head off!

Unless the old fool should take fright at him--for he does not seem the sort of man that would let himself be put upon without letting you know what he thinks of you.

And that’s exactly what old Johns would be more afraid of than of anything else.

” As this is really meant to be the record of a spiritualistic experience which came, if not precisely to Captain Johns himself, at any rate to his ship, there is no use in recording the other events of the passage out.

It was an ordinary passage, the crew was an ordinary crew, the weather was of the usual kind.

The black mate’s quiet, sedate method of going to work had given a sober tone to the life of the ship.

Even in gales of wind everything went on quietly somehow.

There was only one severe blow which made things fairly lively for all hands for full four-and-twenty hours.

That was off the coast of Africa, after passing the Cape of Good Hope.

At the very height of it several heavy seas were shipped with no serious results, but there was a considerable smashing of breakable objects in the pantry and in the staterooms.

Mr. Bunter, who was so greatly respected on board, found himself treated scurvily by the Southern Ocean, which, bursting open the door of his room like a ruffianly burglar, carried off several useful things, and made all the others extremely wet.

Later, on the same day, the Southern Ocean caused the _Sapphire_ to lurch over in such an unrestrained fashion that the two drawers fitted under Mr. Bunter’s sleeping-berth flew out altogether, spilling all their contents.

They ought, of course, to have been locked, and Mr. Bunter had only to thank himself for what had happened.

He ought to have turned the key on each before going out on deck.

His consternation was very great.

The steward, who was paddling about all the time with swabs, trying to dry out the flooded cuddy, heard him exclaim “Hallo!

” in a startled and dismayed tone.

In the midst of his work the steward felt a sympathetic concern for the mate’s distress.

Captain Johns was secretly glad when he heard of the damage.

He was indeed afraid of his chief mate, as the sea-pilot had ventured to foretell, and afraid of him for the very reason the sea-pilot had put forward as likely.

Captain Johns, therefore, would have liked very much to hold that black mate of his at his mercy in some way or other.

But the man was irreproachable, as near absolute perfection as could be.

And Captain Johns was much annoyed, and at the same time congratulated himself on his chief officer’s efficiency.

He made a great show of living sociably with him, on the principle that the more friendly you are with a man the more easily you may catch him tripping; and also for the reason that he wanted to have somebody who would listen to his stories of manifestations, apparitions, ghosts, and all the rest of the imbecile spook-lore.

He had it all at his fingers’ ends; and he spun those ghostly yarns in a persistent, colourless voice, giving them a futile turn peculiarly his own.

“I like to converse with my officers,” he used to say.

“There are masters that hardly ever open their mouths from beginning to end of a passage for fear of losing their dignity.

What’s that, after all--this bit of position a man holds!

” His sociability was most to be dreaded in the second dog-watch, because he was one of those men who grow lively towards the evening, and the officer on duty was unable then to find excuses for leaving the poop.

Captain Johns would pop up the companion suddenly, and, sidling up in his creeping way to poor Bunter, as he walked up and down, would fire into him some spiritualistic proposition, such as: “Spirits, male and female, show a good deal of refinement in a general way, don’t they?

” To which Bunter, holding his black-whiskered head high, would mutter: “I don’t know.

” “Ah!

that’s because you don’t want to.

You are the most obstinate, prejudiced man I’ve ever met, Mr. Bunter.

I told you you may have any book out of my bookcase.

You may just go into my stateroom and help yourself to any volume.

” And if Bunter protested that he was too tired in his watches below to spare any time for reading, Captain Johns would smile nastily behind his back, and remark that of course some people needed more sleep than others to keep themselves fit for their work.

If Mr. Bunter was afraid of not keeping properly awake when on duty at night, that was another matter.

“But I think you borrowed a novel to read from the second mate the other day--a trashy pack of lies,” Captain Johns sighed.

“I am afraid you are not a spiritually minded man, Mr. Bunter.

That’s what’s the matter.

” Sometimes he would appear on deck in the middle of the night, looking very grotesque and bandy-legged in his sleeping suit.

At that sight the persecuted Bunter would wring his hands stealthily, and break out into moisture all over his forehead.

After standing sleepily by the binnacle, scratching himself in an unpleasant manner, Captain Johns was sure to start on some aspect or other of his only topic.

He would, for instance, discourse on the improvement of morality to be expected from the establishment of general and close intercourse with the spirits of the departed.

The spirits, Captain Johns thought, would consent to associate familiarly with the living if it were not for the unbelief of the great mass of mankind.

He himself would not care to have anything to do with a crowd that would not believe in his--Captain Johns’--existence.

Then why should a spirit?

This was asking too much.

He went on breathing hard by the binnacle and trying to reach round his shoulder-blades; then, with a thick, drowsy severity, declared: “Incredulity, sir, is the evil of the age!

” It rejected the evidence of Professor Cranks and of the journalist chap.

It resisted the production of photographs.

For Captain Johns believed firmly that certain spirits had been photographed.

He had read something of it in the papers.

And the idea of it having been done had got a tremendous hold on him, because his mind was not critical.

Bunter said afterwards that nothing could be more weird than this little man, swathed in a sleeping suit three sizes too large for him, shuffling with excitement in the moonlight near the wheel, and shaking his fist at the serene sea.

“Photographs!

photographs!

” he would repeat, in a voice as creaky as a rusty hinge.

The very helmsman just behind him got uneasy at that performance, not being capable of understanding exactly what the “old man was kicking up a row with the mate about.

” Then Johns, after calming down a bit, would begin again.

“The sensitised plate can’t lie.