Some Reminiscences | Page 8

surprised and perhaps have dropped his
precious banjo. Neither could I have told him that the sun of my
sea-going was setting too, even as I wrote the words expressing the
impatience of passionate youth bent on its desire. I did not know this
myself, and it is safe to say he would not have cared, though he was an
excellent young fellow and treated me with more deference than, in our
relative positions, I was strictly entitled to.
He lowered a tender gaze on his banjo and I went on looking through
the port-hole. The round opening framed in its brass rim a fragment of
the quays, with a row of casks ranged on the frozen ground and the
tail-end of a great cart. A red-nosed carter in a blouse and a woollen
nightcap leaned against the wheel. An idle, strolling custom-house
guard, belted over his blue capote, had the air of being depressed by
exposure to the weather and the monotony of official existence. The
background of grimy houses found a place in the picture framed by my
port-hole, across a wide stretch of paved quay brown with frozen mud.
The colouring was sombre, and the most conspicuous feature was a

little cafe with curtained windows and a shabby front of white
woodwork, corresponding with the squalor of these poorer quarters
bordering the river. We had been shifted down there from another berth
in the neighbourhood of the Opera House, where that same port-hole
gave me a view of quite another sort of cafe--the best in the town, I
believe, and the very one where the worthy Bovary and his wife, the
romantic daughter of old Pere Renault, had some refreshment after the
memorable performance of an opera which was the tragic story of
Lucia di Lammermoor in a setting of light music.
I could recall no more the hallucination of the Eastern Archipelago
which I certainly hoped to see again. The story of "Almayer's Folly"
got put away under the pillow for that day. I do not know that I had any
occupation to keep me away from it; the truth of the matter is that on
board that ship we were leading just then a contemplative life. I will not
say anything of my privileged position. I was there "just to oblige," as
an actor of standing may take a small part in the benefit performance of
a friend.
As far as my feelings were concerned I did not wish to be in that
steamer at that time and in those circumstances. And perhaps I was not
even wanted there in the usual sense in which a ship "wants" an officer.
It was the first and last instance in my sea life when I served
ship-owners who have remained completely shadowy to my
apprehension. I do not mean this for the well- known firm of London
ship-brokers which had chartered the ship to the, I will not say
short-lived, but ephemeral Franco-Canadian Transport Company. A
death leaves something behind, but there was never anything tangible
left from the F.C.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 main-mast 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 because 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 organised
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