Chance | Page 6

for having the mere notion of it.
"`Who?' says he, speaking very low. `Anybody. One of the office messengers maybe. I've risen to be the Senior of this office and we are all very good friends here, but don't you think that my colleague that sits next to me wouldn't like to go up to this desk by the window four years in advance of the regulation time? Or even one year for that matter. It's human nature.'
"I could not help turning my head. The three fellows who had been skylarking when I came in were now talking together very soberly, and the long-necked chap was going on with his writing still. He seemed to me the most dangerous of the lot. I saw him side-face and his lips were set very tight. I had never looked at mankind in that light before. When one's young human nature shocks one. But what startled me most was to see the door I had come through open slowly and give passage to a head in a uniform cap with a Board of Trade badge. It was that blamed old doorkeeper from the hall. He had run me to earth and meant to dig me out too. He walked up the office smirking craftily, cap in hand.
"`What is it, Symons?' asked Mr Powell.
"`I was only wondering where this 'ere gentleman 'ad gone to, sir. He slipped past me upstairs, sir.'
"I felt mighty uncomfortable.
"`That's all right, Symons. I know the gentleman,' says Mr Powell as serious as a judge.
"`Very well, sir. Of course, sir. I saw the gentleman running races all by 'isself down 'ere, so I...'
"`It's all right I tell you,' Mr Powell cut him short with a wave of his hand; and, as the old fraud walked off at last, he raised his eyes to me. I did not know what to do: stay there, or clear out, or say that I was sorry.
"`Let's see,' says he, `what did you tell me your name was?'
"Now, observe, I hadn't given him my name at all and his question embarrassed me a bit. Somehow or other it didn't seem proper for me to fling his own name at him as it were. So I merely pulled out my new certificate from my pocket and put it into his hand unfolded, so that he could read Charles Powell written very plain on the parchment.
"He dropped his eyes on to it and after a while laid it quietly on the desk by his side. I didn't know whether he meant to make any remark on this coincidence. Before he had time to say anything the glass door came open with a bang and a tall, active man rushed in with great strides. His face looked very red below his high silk hat. You could see at once he was the skipper of a big ship.
"Mr Powell, after telling me in an undertone to wait a little, addressed him in a friendly way.
"`I've been expecting you in every moment to fetch away your Articles, Captain. Here they are all ready for you.' And turning to a pile of agreements lying at his elbow he took up the topmost of them. From where I stood I could read the words: `Ship Ferndale' written in a large round hand on the first page.
"`No, Mr Powell, they aren't ready, worse luck,' says that skipper. `I've got to ask you to strike out my second officer.' He seemed excited and bothered. He explained that his second mate had been working on board all the morning. At one o'clock he went out to get a bit of dinner and didn't turn up at two as he ought to have done. Instead there came a messenger from the hospital with a note signed by a doctor. Collar-bone and one arm broken. Let himself be knocked down by a pair-horse van while crossing the road outside the dock gate, as if he had neither eyes nor ears. And the ship ready to leave the dock at six o'clock to-morrow morning!
"Mr Powell dipped his pen and began to turn the leaves of the agreement over. `We must then take his name off,' he says in a kind of unconcerned sing-song.
"`What am I to do?' burst out the skipper. `This office closes at four o'clock. I can't find a man in half an hour.'
"`This office closes at four,' repeats Mr Powell glancing up and down the pages and touching up a letter here and there with perfect indifference.
"`Even if I managed to lay hold some time to-day of a man ready to go at such short notice I couldn't ship him regularly here--could I?'
"Mr Powell was busy drawing his pen through the entries relating to that unlucky second mate and making a note in the margin.
"`You could