Victory | Page 3

back on me and walked
out of the room. It was in a little hotel in the island of St. Thomas in the
West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoon
extended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing of flies to which
his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave a most gruesome
significance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got off
the chairs brusquely and walked out, leaving with me an indelibly
weird impression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that
the fellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I
said: "A professional sharper?" and got for an answer: "He's a terror;
but I must say that up to a certain point he will play fair. . . " I wonder
what the point was. I never saw him again because I believe he went
straight on board a mail-boat which left within the hour for other ports
of call in the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones's characteristic insolence
belongs to another man of a quite different type. I will say nothing as to
the origins of his mentality because I don't intend to make any
damaging admissions.
It so happened that the very same year Ricardo--the physical
Ricardo--was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small
and extremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between
two places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the
most part he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself
from time to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on
talking, not exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but
kept his eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low
voice with his familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance
and make the hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes
were green and every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact
contour of his face. What he was travelling for or what was his business
in life he never confided to me. Truth to say, the only passenger on
board that schooner who could have talked openly about his activities

and purposes was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar,
the superior of a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a
particularly ferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate
in the dark and unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish
gentleman, owner of much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill
indeed. Ricardo seemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that
aged and distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held
a long murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing
but groan feebly, smoke cigarettes, and now and then call for Martin in
a voice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book
would go below into that beastly and noisome hole, remain there
mysteriously, and coming up on deck again with a face on which
nothing could be read, would as likely as not resume for my edification
the exposition of his moral attitude towards life illustrated by striking
particular instances of the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to
frighten me? Or seduce me? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration?
All he did was to arouse my amused incredulity. As scoundrels go he
was far from being a bore. For the rest my innocence was so great then
that I could not take his philosophy seriously. All the time he kept one
ear turned to the cuddy in the manner of a devoted servant, but I had
the idea that in some way or other he had imposed the connection on
the invalid for some end of his own. The reader, therefore, won't be
surprised to hear that one morning I was told without any particular
emotion by the padrone of the schooner that the "rich man" down there
was dead: He had died in the night. I don't remember ever being so
moved by the desolate end of a complete stranger. I looked down the
skylight, and there was the devoted Martin busy cording cowhide
trunks belonging to the deceased whose white beard and hooked nose
were the only parts I could make out in the dark depths of a horrible
stuffy bunk.
As it fell calm in the course of the afternoon and continued calm during
all that night and the terrible, flaming day, the late "rich man" had to be
thrown overboard at sunset, though as a matter of fact we were in sight