Tales of the clipper ships

by C. Fox Smith

He wanted above everything else to be alone. He didn’t feel as if he could face the well-meant curiosity and the equally well-meant sympathy of those men who had wished him luck that morning. His wound had struck too deep for such superficial salves to be other than an added irritation. Normally inclined to err on the side of amiability, he felt just now at odds with all the rest of humankind. He could fancy the whispers that would follow him—“There goes poor Broughton—feeling pretty sickish, you bet!”

The first staggering sensation of blank and bewildered disappointment had passed away, and in its place there surged up within him a cold tide of black anger against Old Featherstone.

So the old devil had been laughing at him in his sleeve that night—even as he was laughing at him now, very likely, in whatever unholy place he was gone to! He had guessed his thoughts, he supposed, in that damned uncanny way he had. If the dead face now lying under the cold cemetery mould had lain in Broughton’s pathway now he would have ground his heel into the sardonic smile that still curled its stiff and silent lips.

Him and his blasted picture!... A thing that wasn’t worth giving wall-space to! A damned ship-chandler’s daub! Why, give him a few splashes of ship’s paint and a brush and he’d make a better fist at it himself!

He strode blindly on, through interminable crescents of smug villas, their pavements greasy with fallen leaves, along dreary streets of shabby “semis,” without noticing or caring where he was going: swinging his neatly rolled umbrella regardless of the fine rain which had begun to fall and was gathering in a million glistening drops on his black coat. His mood cried aloud for the relief of physical effort, of physical discomfort. Now and then he was brought up short by a blank wall that drove him back upon his traces; now and then he cannoned unnoticing into passing pedestrians, who turned, conscious of something unusual in his manner, to watch him out of sight, then continued their way wondering if he were drunk or mad.

Presently the streets of dull “semis” gave place to streets of seedy rows, with here and there a corner off-licence or a fried-fish shop discharging its warm oily odours upon the chill air; and at last, turning a corner, he found himself suddenly in a wide road whose greasy pavements were lined with stalls and flares, yelling salesmen, and groups of draggle-tailed women.

He looked about him stupidly, uncertain of his bearings, though the blare of a ship’s syren striking on his ear told him that he was not far from the river. He was suddenly aware that he was wet and hungry and very tired, and that his feet in his best boots hurt him abominably, for he was no better a walker than most sailormen. He asked a passing pedestrian where he was.

“Lower Road, Deptford.”... Why, he was less than a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Surrey Commercial Docks, where the “Maid of Athens” was even now lying, having just finished discharging the cargo of linseed she had loaded at the River Plate. He couldn’t do better than get on to the ship, he decided; he had been knocked out of time, and no mistake, and there he would be able to sit down quietly and think things over.

The fog, which had been comparatively light on the higher ground, had been steadily growing denser as he neared the river. There were haloes round the flares that roared above the street stalls, and the lighted shop windows were mere luminous blurs in the surrounding murk.