Manage it? Anderton repressed an impulse to execute a double shuffle on the edge of the dock, to fling his arms round the little man’s neck and embrace him, to cast his cap upon the stones and leap upon it. Instead, he said, with the air of one conferring a favour, that he rather thought he might.
“All right, then ... ship ‘Altisidora’ ... South-West India Dock ... ask for Mr. Rumbold ... tell him you’ve seen me ... Captain Carter.”
Anderton stood staring after his new captain for several minutes after his stubby figure had disappeared among the sheds. The thing was incredible. It was impossible. It must be a dream. Here, only two minutes before, he had been walking along seriously meditating the desirability of taking a plunge into the murky waters of the London Docks, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the whole aspect of life had been changed by a total stranger offering him—more, positively thrusting upon him—the very thing he had trudged the docks in search of until his boot-soles were nearly through.
If he had had time to reflect upon this bewildering gift thrown at him by wayward fortune it might have occurred to him that—like so many of that freakish dame’s bounties—there was a catch in it somewhere. He might have thought, for example, that it was, to say the least, a surprising fact that—at a time when he knew from bitter personal experience that the supply of highly qualified and otherwise eminently desirable second mates evidently greatly exceeded the demand—a distracted skipper should be rushing round the docks looking for one. But no such idea as yet damped the first fine flush of his triumph. Why, indeed, should it? The ship’s name conveyed no sinister meaning to his mind. He had never heard of her reputation; if he had, he wouldn’t have cared a button.
He was, as it happened, destined to get the first hint of it within a very few minutes. Just outside the dock gates he ran into Dick Charnock, who had been senior apprentice in the old “Araminta” when Anderton was a first voyager. Charnock was now mate—chief officer he called himself—of a stinking little tub of a steam tramp plying to the Mediterranean ports; and Anderton, remembering the airs he had been wont to give himself in bygone days, took a special pleasure in announcing his good fortune.
Charnock blew his cheeks out and said:
“O-oh—her!”
“Well?” said Anderton a trifle huffily. “What about her?”
No one likes to have cold water poured upon an exultant mood. “Beast!” he thought. “Jealous—that’s what’s the matter with him!”
“Oh, nothing—nothing!” Charnock replied hastily. “I was just thinking about something else, that’s all!”