“Yes. Good men go out as if there was no use for them in the world. It seems as if there were things that, as the Turks say, are written. Or else fate has a try and sometimes misses its mark. You remember that close shave we had of being run down at night, I told you of, my first voyage with them. This go it was just at dawn. A flat calm and a fog thick enough to slice with a knife. Only there were no explosives on board. I was on deck and I remember the cursed, murderous thing looming up alongside and Captain Anthony (we were both on deck) calling out, “Good God! What’s this! Shout for all hands, Powell, to save themselves. There’s no dynamite on board now. I am going to get the wife! . . ” I yelled, all the watch on deck yelled. Crash!”
Mr. Powell gasped at the recollection. “It was a Belgian Green Star liner, the Westland,” he went on, “commanded by one of those stop-for-nothing skippers. Flaherty was his name and I hope he will die without absolution. She cut half through the old Ferndale and after the blow there was a silence like death. Next I heard the captain back on deck shouting, “Set your engines slow ahead,” and a howl of “Yes, yes,” answering him from her forecastle; and then a whole crowd of people up there began making a row in the fog. They were throwing ropes down to us in dozens, I must say. I and the captain fastened one of them under Mrs. Anthony’s arms: I remember she had a sort of dim smile on her face.”
“Haul up carefully,” I shouted to the people on the steamer’s deck. “You’ve got a woman on that line.”
The captain saw her landed up there safe. And then we made a rush round our decks to see no one was left behind. As we got back the captain says: “Here she’s gone at last, Powell; the dear old thing! Run down at sea.”
“Indeed she is gone,” I said. “But it might have been worse. Shin up this rope, sir, for God’s sake. I will steady it for you.”
“What are you thinking about,” he says angrily. “It isn’t my turn. Up with you.”
These were the last words he ever spoke on earth I suppose. I knew he meant to be the last to leave his ship, so I swarmed up as quick as I could, and those damned lunatics up there grab at me from above, lug me in, drag me along aft through the row and the riot of the silliest excitement I ever did see. Somebody hails from the bridge, “Have you got them all on board?” and a dozen silly asses start yelling all together, “All saved! All saved,” and then that accursed Irishman on the bridge, with me roaring No! No! till I thought my head would burst, rings his engines astern. He rings the engines astern—I fighting like mad to make myself heard! And of course . . . ”
I saw tears, a shower of them fall down Mr. Powell’s face. His voice broke.
“The Ferndale went down like a stone and Captain Anthony went down with her, the finest man’s soul that ever left a sailor’s body. I raved like a maniac, like a devil, with a lot of fools crowding round me and asking, “Aren’t you the captain?”
“I wasn’t fit to tie the shoe-strings of the man you have drowned,” I screamed at them . . . Well! Well! I could see for myself that it was no good lowering a boat. You couldn’t have seen her alongside. No use. And only think, Marlow, it was I who had to go and tell Mrs. Anthony. They had taken her down below somewhere, first-class saloon. I had to go and tell her! That Flaherty, God forgive him, comes to me as white as a sheet, “I think you are the proper person.” God forgive him. I wished to die a hundred times. A lot of kind ladies, passengers, were chattering excitedly around Mrs. Anthony—a real parrot house. The ship’s doctor went before me. He whispers right and left and then there falls a sudden hush. Yes, I wished myself dead. But Mrs. Anthony was a brick.