第6章

T.C.It flourished no longer than roses live,and unlike the roses it blossomed in the dead of winter,emitted a sort of faint perfume of adventure,and died before spring set in.But indubitably it was a company,it had even a house-flag,all white with the letters F.C.T.C.artfully tangled up in a complicated monogram.We flew it at our mainmast head,and now I have come to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind in existence.All the same we on board,for many days,had the impression of being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly departures for Montreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and prospectuses which came aboard in a large package in Victoria Dock,London,just before we started for Rouen,France.And in the shadowy life of the F.C.T.C.lies the secret of that,my last employment in my calling,which in a remote sense interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina Almayer's story.

The then secretary of the London Shipmasters'Society,with its modest rooms in Fenchurch Street,was a man of indefatigable activity and the greatest devotion to his task.He is responsible for what was my last association with a ship.I call it that be cause it can hardly be called a sea-going experience.

Dear Captain Froud--it is impossible not to pay him the tribute of affectionate familiarity at this distance of years--had very sound views as to the advancement of knowledge and status for the whole body of the officers of the mercantile marine.He organized for us courses of professional lectures,St.John ambulance classes,corresponded industriously with public bodies and members of Parliament on subjects touching the interests of the service;and as to the oncoming of some inquiry or commission relating to matters of the sea and to the work of seamen,it was a perfect godsend to his need of exerting himself on our corporate behalf.Together with this high sense of his official duties he had in him a vein of personal kindness,a strong disposition to do what good he could to the individual members of that craft of which in his time he had been a very excellent master.And what greater kindness can one do to a seaman than to put him in the way of employment?Captain Froud did not see why the Shipmasters'Society,besides its general guardianship of our interests,should not be unofficially an employment agency of the very highest class.

"I am trying to persuade all our great ship-owning firms to come to us for their men.There is nothing of a trade-union spirit about our society,and I really don't see why they should not,"he said once to me."I am always telling the captains,too,that,all things being equal,they ought to give preference to the members of the society.In my position I can generally find for them what they want among our members or our associate members."

In my wanderings about London from west to east and back again (I was very idle then)the two little rooms in Fenchurch Street were a sort of resting-place where my spirit,hankering after the sea,could feel itself nearer to the ships,the men,and the life of its choice--nearer there than on any other spot of the solid earth.This resting-place used to be,at about five o'clock in the afternoon,full of men and tobacco smoke,but Captain Froud had the smaller room to himself and there he granted private interviews,whose principal motive was to render service.Thus,one murky November afternoon he beckoned me in with a crooked finger and that peculiar glance above his spectacles which is perhaps my strongest physical recollection of the man.

"I have had in here a shipmaster,this morning,"he said,getting back to his desk and motioning me to a chair,"who is in want of an officer.It's for a steamship.You know,nothing pleases me more than to be asked,but,unfortunately,I do not quite see my way ."

As the outer room was full of men I cast a wondering glance at the closed door;but he shook his head.

"Oh,yes,I should be only too glad to get that berth for one of them.But the fact of the matter is,the captain of that ship wants an officer who can speak French fluently,and that's not so easy to find.I do not know anybody myself but you.It's a second officer's berth and,of course,you would not care .

would you now?I know that it isn't what you are looking for."

It was not.I had given myself up to the idleness of a haunted man who looks for nothing but words wherein to capture his visions.But I admit that outwardly I resembled sufficiently a man who could make a second officer for a steamer chartered by a French company.I showed no sign of being haunted by the fate of Nina and by the murmurs of tropical forests;and even my intimate intercourse with Almayer (a person of weak character)had not put a visible mark upon my features.For many years he and the world of his story had been the companions of my imagination without,I hope,impairing my ability to deal with the realities of sea life.I had had the man and his surroundings with me ever since my return from the eastern waters--some four years before the day of which I speak.

It was in the front sitting-room of furnished apartments in a Pimlico square that they first began to live again with a vividness and poignancy quite foreign to our former real intercourse.I had been treating myself to a long stay on shore,and in the necessity of occupying my mornings Almayer (that old acquaintance)came nobly to the rescue.