Chance

by Joseph Conrad

  How he first got in touch with his captain’s wife Powell relates in this way. It was long before his memorable conversation with the mate and shortly after getting clear of the channel. It was gloomy weather; dead head wind, blowing quite half a gale; the Ferndale under reduced sail was stretching close-hauled across the track of the homeward bound ships, just moving through the water and no more, since there was no object in pressing her and the weather looked threatening. About ten o’clock at night he was alone on the poop, in charge, keeping well aft by the weather rail and staring to windward, when amongst the white, breaking seas, under the black sky, he made out the lights of a ship. He watched them for some time. She was running dead before the wind of course. She will pass jolly close—he said to himself; and then suddenly he felt a great mistrust of that approaching ship. She’s heading straight for us—he thought. It was not his business to get out of the way. On the contrary. And his uneasiness grew by the recollection of the forty tons of dynamite in the body of the Ferndale; not the sort of cargo one thinks of with equanimity in connection with a threatened collision. He gazed at the two small lights in the dark immensity filled with the angry noise of the seas. They fascinated him till their plainness to his sight gave him a conviction that there was danger there. He knew in his mind what to do in the emergency, but very properly he felt that he must call the captain out at once.

  He crossed the deck in one bound. By the immemorial custom and usage of the sea the captain’s room is on the starboard side. You would just as soon expect your captain to have his nose at the back of his head as to have his state-room on the port side of the ship. Powell forgot all about the direction on that point given him by the chief. He flew over as I said, stamped with his foot and then putting his face to the cowl of the big ventilator shouted down there: “Please come on deck, sir,” in a voice which was not trembling or scared but which we may call fairly expressive. There could not be a mistake as to the urgence of the call. But instead of the expected alert “All right!” and the sound of a rush down there, he heard only a faint exclamation—then silence.

  Think of his astonishment! He remained there, his ear in the cowl of the ventilator, his eyes fastened on those menacing sidelights dancing on the gusts of wind which swept the angry darkness of the sea. It was as though he had waited an hour but it was something much less than a minute before he fairly bellowed into the wide tube “Captain Anthony!” An agitated “What is it?” was what he heard down there in Mrs Anthony’s voice, light rapid footsteps... Why didn’t she try to wake him up! “I want the captain,” he shouted, then gave it up, making a dash at the companion where a blue light was kept, resolved to act for himself.

  On the way he glanced at the helmsman whose face lighted up by the binnacle lamps was calm. He said rapidly to him: “Stand by to spin that helm up at the first word.” The answer “Ay, ay, sir,” was delivered in a steady voice. Then Mr Powell after a shout for the watch on deck to “lay aft,” ran to the ship’s side and struck the blue light on the rail.

  A sort of nasty little spitting of sparks was all that came. The light (perhaps affected by damp) had failed to ignite. The time of all these various acts must be counted in seconds. Powell confessed to me that at this failure he experienced a paralysis of thought, of voice, of limbs. The unexpectedness of this misfire positively overcame his faculties. It was the only thing for which his imagination was not prepared. It was knocked clean over. When it got up it was with the suggestion that he must do something at once or there would be a broadside smash accompanied by the explosion of dynamite, in which both ships would be blown up and every soul on board of them would vanish off the earth in an enormous flame and uproar.

  He saw the catastrophe happening and at the same moment, before he could open his mouth or stir a limb to ward off the vision, a voice very near his ear, the measured voice of Captain Anthony said: “Wouldn’t light—eh? Throw it down! Jump for the flare-up.”

  The spring of activity in Mr Powell was released with great force. He jumped. The flare-up was kept inside the companion with a box of matches ready to hand. Almost before he knew he had moved he was diving under the companion slide. He got hold of the can in the dark and tried to strike a light. But he had to press the flare-holder to his breast with one arm, his fingers were damp and stiff, his hands trembled a little. One match broke. Another went out. In its flame he saw the colourless face of Mrs Anthony a little below him, standing on the cabin stairs. Her eyes which were very close to his (he was in a crouching posture on the top step) seemed to burn darkly in the vanishing light. On deck the captain’s voice was heard sudden and unexpectedly sardonic: “You had better look sharp, if you want to be in time.”

  “Let me have the box,” said Mrs Anthony in a hurried and familiar whisper which sounded amused as if they had been a couple of children up to some lark behind a wall. He was glad of the offer which seemed to him very natural, and without ceremony—

  “Here you are. Catch hold.”

  Their hands touched in the dark and she took the box while he held the paraffin soaked torch in its iron holder. He thought of warning her: “Look out for yourself.” But before he had the time to finish the sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw herself back with an arm across her face. “Hallo,” he exclaimed; only he could not stop a moment to ask if she was hurt. He bolted out of the companion straight into his captain who took the flare from him and held it high above his head.

  The fierce flame fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails. And young Powell turned his eyes to windward with a catch in his breath.

  The strange ship, a darker shape in the night, did not seem to be moving onwards but only to grow more distinct right abeam, staring at the Ferndale with one green and one red eye which swayed and tossed as if they belonged to the restless head of some invisible monster ambushed in the night amongst the waves. A moment, long like eternity, elapsed, and, suddenly, the monster which seemed to take to itself the shape of a mountain shut its green eye without as much as a preparatory wink.

  Mr Powell drew a free breath. “All right now,” said Captain Anthony in a quiet undertone. He gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping wind. Her very form could be distinguished now black and elongated amongst the hissing patches of foam bursting along her path.

  As is always the case with a ship running before wind and sea she did not seem to an onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves. It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the Ferndale that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye. With the red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the lightless space.

  “Close shave,” said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised-enough to be heard in the wind. “A blind lot on board that ship. Put out the flare now.”

  Silently Mr Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can, bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind’s eye the vision of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two destroyed ships. It vanished and there was an immense relief. He told me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over. He measured it (for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which came over him all at once.

  He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual place saw in
the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs Anthony’s face. She whispered quietly:

  “Is anything going to happen? What is it?”

  “It’s all over now,” he whispered back.

  He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and probably had some notion of its nature.

  “You stayed here waiting for what would come,” he murmured admiringly.

  “Wasn’t that the best thing to do?” she asked.

  He didn’t know. Perhaps. He confessed he could not have done it. Not he. His flesh and blood could not have stood it. He would have felt he must see what was coming. Then he remembered that the flare might have scorched her face, and expressed his concern.

  “A bit. Nothing to hurt. Smell the singed hair?”

  There was a sort of gaiety in her tone. She might have been frightened but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction. This confirmed and augmented if possible Mr Powell’s good opinion of her as a “jolly girl,” though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in such terms to one’s captain’s wife. “But she doesn’t look it,” he thought in extenuation and was going to say something more to her about the lighting of that flare when another voice was heard in the companion, saying some indistinct words. Its tone was contemptuous; it came from below, from the bottom of the stairs. It was a voice in the cabin. And the only other voice which could be heard in the main cabin at this time of the evening was the voice of Mrs Anthony’s father. The indistinct white oval sank from Mr Powell’s sight so swiftly as to take him by surprise. For a moment he hung at the opening of the companion and now that her slight form was no longer obstructing the narrow and winding staircase the voices came up louder but the words were still indistinct. The old gentleman was excited about something and Mrs Anthony was “managing him” as Powell expressed it. They moved away from the bottom of the stairs and Powell went away from the companion. Yet he fancied he had heard the words “Lost to me” before he withdrew his head. They had been uttered by Mr Smith.

  Captain Anthony had not moved away from the taffrail. He remained in the very position he took up to watch the other ship go by rolling and swinging all shadowy in the uproar of the following seas. He stirred not; and Powell keeping near by did not dare speak to him, so enigmatical in its contemplation of the night did his figure appear to his young eyes: indistinct—and in its immobility staring into gloom, the prey of some incomprehensible grief, longing or regret.

  Why is it that the stillness of a human being is often so impressive, so suggestive of evil—as if our proper fate were a ceaseless agitation? The stillness of Captain Anthony became almost intolerable to his second officer. Mr Powell loitering about the skylight wanted his captain off the deck now. “Why doesn’t he go below?” he asked himself impatiently. He ventured a cough.

  Whether the effect of the cough or not Captain Anthony spoke. He did not move the least bit. With his back remaining turned to the whole length of the ship he asked Mr Powell with some brusqueness if the chief mate had neglected to instruct him that the captain was to be found on the port side.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr Powell approaching his back. “The mate told me to stamp on the port side when I wanted you; but I didn’t remember at the moment.”

  “You should remember,” the captain uttered with an effort. Then added mumbling “I don’t want Mrs Anthony frightened. Don’t you see?”

  “She wasn’t this time,” Powell said innocently: “She lighted the flare-up for me, sir.”

  “This time,” Captain Anthony exclaimed and turned round. “Mrs Anthony lighted the flare? Mrs Anthony!...” Powell explained that she was in the companion all the time.

  “All the time,” repeated the captain. It seemed queer to Powell that instead of going himself to see the captain should ask him:

  “Is she there now?” Powell said, that she had gone below after the ship had passed clear of the Ferndale. Captain Anthony made a movement towards the companion himself, when Powell added the information. “Mr Smith called to Mrs Anthony from the saloon, sir. I believe they are talking there now.”

  He was surprised to see the captain give up the idea of going below after all.

  He began to walk the poop instead regardless of the cold, of the damp wind and of the sprays. And yet he had nothing on but his sleeping suit and slippers. Powell placing himself on the break of the poop kept a look-out. When after some time he turned his head to steal a glance at his eccentric captain he could not see his active and shadowy figure swinging to and fro. The second mate of the Ferndale walked aft peering about and addressed the seaman who steered.

  “Captain gone below?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the fellow who with a quid of tobacco bulging out his left cheek kept his eyes on the compass card. “This minute. He laughed.”

  “Laughed,” repeated Powell incredulously. “Do you mean the captain did? You must be mistaken. What would he want to laugh for?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  The elderly sailor displayed a profound indifference towards human emotions. However, after a longish pause he conceded a few words more to the second officer’s weakness. “Yes. He was walking the deck as usual when suddenly he laughed a little and made for the companion. Thought of something funny all at once.”

  Something funny! That Mr Powell could not believe. He did not ask himself why, at the time. Funny thoughts come to men, though, in all sorts of situations; they come to all sorts of men. Nevertheless Mr Powell was shocked to learn that Captain Anthony had laughed without visible cause on a certain night. The impression for some reason was disagreeable. And it was then, while finishing his watch, with the chilly gusts of wind sweeping at him out of the darkness where the short sea of the soundings growled spitefully all round the ship, that it occurred to his unsophisticated mind that perhaps things are not what they are confidently expected to be; that it was possible that Captain Anthony was not a happy man.—In so far you will perceive he was to a certain extent prepared for the apoplectic and sensitive Franklin’s lamentations about his captain. And though he treated them with a contempt which was in a great measure sincere, yet he admitted to me that deep down within him an inexplicable and uneasy suspicion that all was not well in that cabin, so unusually cut off from the rest of the ship, came into being and grew against his will...

  Part 2—Chapter 4. Anthony and Flora.

  Marlow emerged out of the shadow of the bookcase to get himself a cigar from a box which stood on a little table by my side. In the full light of the room I saw in his eyes that slightly mocking expression with which he habitually covers up his sympathetic impulses of mirth and pity before the unreasonable complications the idealism of mankind puts into the simple but poignant problem of conduct on this earth.

  He selected and lit the cigar with affected care, then turned upon me. I had been looking at him silently.

  “I suppose,” he said, the mockery of his eyes giving a pellucid quality to his tone, “that you think it’s high time I told you something definite. I mean something about that psychological cabin mystery of discomfort (for it’s obvious that it must be psychological) which affected so profoundly Mr Franklin the chief mate, and had even disturbed the serene innocence of Mr Powell, the second of the ship Ferndale, commanded by Roderick Anthony—the son of the poet, you know.”

  “You are going to confess now that you have failed to find it out,” I said in pretended indignation.

  “It would serve you right if I told you that I have. But I won’t. I haven’t failed. I own though that for a time, I was puzzled. However, I have now seen our Powell many times under the most favourable conditions—and besides I came upon a most unexpected source of information... But never mind that. The means don’t concern you except in so far as they belong to the story. I
’ll admit that for some time the old-maiden-lady-like occupation of putting two and two together failed to procure a coherent theory. I am speaking now as an investigator—a man of deductions. With what we know of Roderick Anthony and Flora de Barral I could not deduct an ordinary marital quarrel beautifully matured in less than a year—could I. If you ask me what is an ordinary marital quarrel I will tell you, that it is a difference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion. However, the Anthonys were free from all demoralising influences. At sea, you know, there is no gallery. You hear no tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either a great elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elemental silence seems to be part of the infinite stillness of the universe.”

  Remembering Flora de Barral in the depths of moral misery, and Roderick Anthony carried away by a gust of tempestuous tenderness, I asked myself, Is it all forgotten already? What could they have found to estrange them from each other with this rapidity and this thoroughness so far from all temptations, in the peace of the sea and in an isolation so complete that if it had not been the jealous devotion of the sentimental Franklin stimulating the attention of Powell, there would have been no record, no evidence of it at all.