Mrs Falchion | Page 3

was found
in an addition to our passenger list. I had spent a day in exploring
Colombo-- visiting Arabi Pasha, inspecting Hindu temples, watching
the jugglers and snake-charmers, evading guides and the sellers of
brummagem jewellery, and idling in the Cinnamon Gardens. I returned
to the ship tired out. After I had done some official duties, I sauntered
to the gangway, and, leaning against the bulwarks, idly watched the
passengers come on board from the tender. Two of these made an
impression on me. One was a handsome and fashionably-dressed
woman, who was followed by a maid or companion (as I fancied),
carrying parcels; the other, a shabbily-dressed man, who was the last to
come up from the tender. The woman was going down the
companion-way when he stepped on deck with a single bag in his hand,
and I noticed that he watched her with a strange look in his eyes. He
stood still as he gazed, and remained so for a moment after she had
gone; then he seemed to recover himself, and started, as I thought,
almost guiltily, when he saw that my attention was attracted. He
nervously shifted his bag from one hand to the other, and looked round
as though not certain of where he should go. A steward came to him
officiously, and patronisingly too,--which is the bearing of servants to
shabbily-dressed people,--but he shook his head, caught his bag smartly
away from the steward's fingers, and moved towards the after part of
the ship, reserved for intermediate passengers. As he went he hesitated,
came to the side of the vessel, looked down at the tender for a moment,
cast his eyes to where the anchor was being weighed, made as if he
would go back to the tender, then, seeing that the ladder was now
drawn up, sighed, and passed on to the second-class companion-way,
through which he disappeared.
I stood commenting idly to myself upon this incident, which, slight
though it was, appeared to have significance of a kind, when
Hungerford, the fifth officer, caught me slyly by the arm and said,
"Lucky fellow! Nothing to do but watch the world go by. I wish I had
you in the North Atlantic on a whaler, or in the No Man's Sea on a
pearl-smack for a matter of thirty days."

"What would come of that, Hungerford?" said I.
"An exchange of matter for mind, Marmion; muscle for meditation,
physics for philosophy."
"You do me too much honour; at present I've neither mind, meditation,
nor philosophy; I am simply vegetating."
"Which proves you to be demoralised. I never saw a surgeon on a ship
who wasn't. They began with mind--more or less--they ate the fruits of
indolence, got precious near being sinful as well as indolent, and ended
with cheap cynicism, with the old 'quid refert'--the thing Hamlet
plagiarised in his, 'But it is no matter.'"
"Isn't this an unusual occupation for you, Hungerford--this Swift-like
criticism?"
"Swift-like, is it? You see, I've practised on many of your race,
Marmion, and I have it pat now. You are all of two classes--those who
sicken in soul and leave after one trip, and those who make another trip
and are lost."
"Lost? How?"
Hungerford pressed his fingers hard on my breastbone, looked at me
enigmatically from under his well-hung brows, and replied: "Brains put
out to seed, morals put out to vegetate--that's 'lost.'"
"What about fifth officers?"
"Fifth officers work like navvies, and haven't time for foolishness.
They've got to walk the bridge, and practise the boats, and be
responsible for luggage--and here I am talking to you like an infallible
undergraduate, while the lascars are in endless confusion with a half-
dozen pieces of baggage, and the first officer foams because I'm not
there to set them right. I leave you to your dreams. Good-bye."
Hungerford was younger than myself, but he knew the world, and I was

flattered by these uncommon remarks, because he talked to no one else
on the ship in the same way. He never sought to make friends, had a
thorough contempt for social trifling, and shrugged his shoulders at the
"swagger" of some of the other officers. I think he longed for a
different kind of sea-life, so accustomed had he been to adventurous
and hardy ways. He had entered the Occidental service because he had
fallen in love with a pretty girl, and thought it his duty to become a
"regular," and thus have the chance of seeing her every three months in
London. He had conceived a liking for me, reciprocated on my part; the
more so, because I knew that behind his blunt exterior there was a
warm and manly heart. When he left me I went to my cabin and
prepared for dinner, laughing as I