End of the Tether | Page 5

couple had gone to settle in
Melbourne he found out that he could not make himself happy on shore.
He was too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere yacht- ing to
satisfy him. He wanted the illusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the
Fair Maid preserved the con- tinuity of his life. He introduced her to his
acquaint- ances in various ports as "my last command." When he grew
too old to be trusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore to
be buried, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed out and
scuttled decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His daughter
would not grudge him the satisfaction of knowing that no stranger
would handle his last command after him. With the fortune he was able
to leave her, the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there. All
this would be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old
man had too much vitality for the sen- timentalism of regret; and a little
wistfully withal, be- cause he was at home in life, taking a genuine
pleasure in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of his
reputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in his

satisfaction with the ship--the plaything of his lonely leisure.
He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his simple ideal of
comfort at sea. A big bookcase (he was a great reader) occupied one
side of his stateroom; the portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous
oil-painting representing the profile and one long black ringlet of a
young woman, faced his bedplace. Three chronometers ticked him to
sleep and greeted him on waking with the tiny competition of their
beats. He rose at five every day. The officer of the morning watch,
drinking his early cup of coffee aft by the wheel, would hear through
the wide orifice of the copper ventilators all the splash- ings, blowings,
and splutterings of his captain's toilet. These noises would be followed
by a sustained deep murmur of the Lord's Prayer recited in a loud
earnest voice. Five minutes afterwards the head and shoulders of
Captain Whalley emerged out of the companion- hatchway. Invariably
he paused for a while on the stairs, looking all round at the horizon;
upwards at the trim of the sails; inhaling deep draughts of the fresh air.
Only then he would step out on the poop, acknowl- edging the hand
raised to the peak of the cap with a majestic and benign "Good morning
to you." He walked the deck till eight scrupulously. Sometimes, not
above twice a year, he had to use a thick cudgel-like stick on account of
a stiffness in the hip--a slight touch of rheumatism, he supposed.
Otherwise he knew nothing of the ills of the flesh. At the ringing of the
breakfast bell he went below to feed his canaries, wind up the
chronometers, and take the head of the table. From there he had before
his eyes the big carbon photographs of his daughter, her husband, and
two fat-legged babies --his grandchildren--set in black frames into the
maple- wood bulkheads of the cuddy. After breakfast he dusted the
glass over these portraits himself with a cloth, and brushed the oil
painting of his wife with a plumate kept suspended from a small brass
hook by the side of the heavy gold frame. Then with the door of his
state- room shut, he would sit down on the couch under the portrait to
read a chapter out of a thick pocket Bible --her Bible. But on some days
he only sat there for half an hour with his finger between the leaves and
the closed book resting on his knees. Perhaps he had re- membered
suddenly how fond of boat-sailing she used to be.
She had been a real shipmate and a true woman too. It was like an
article of faith with him that there never had been, and never could be,

a brighter, cheerier home anywhere afloat or ashore than his home
under the poop- deck of the Condor, with the big main cabin all white
and gold, garlanded as if for a perpetual festival with an unfading
wreath. She had decorated the center of every panel with a cluster of
home flowers. It took her a twelvemonth to go round the cuddy with
this labor of love. To him it had remained a marvel of painting, the
highest achievement of taste and skill; and as to old Swinburne, his
mate, every time he came down to his meals he stood transfixed with
admiration before the progress of the work. You could almost smell
these roses, he declared, sniffing the faint flavor of