January lo, 1918 
LAND & WATEK 
15 
to set off the gentility of nis accem against his unshaven chin 
and his dirty collar. Still he didn't do it badly. 
" I told my friend the Captain here, from the first, that 
your wife was English, sir. Delightful to meet an Enghshman 
in these . . . these surroundings." 
He waved his hand. There was no way, indeed, of getting 
free from his attentions. He produced a card-case, cards. 
In five minutes his intimacy had run to photographs of his 
wife and two children. Rather a handsome woman in a 
florid way : I suppose ten years ago Antonio had been some- 
thing of a catch in Newport or Cardiff, or wherever it was ; 
and the children were charming. My wife kept her end up as 
well as she could, and while she did so the skipper pulled round 
his chair to face me, so that I became particularly conscious 
of the tight blue serge, wrinkled horizontally over his thighs, 
his soiled collar, and over it his simple ruddy face and his 
very puzzled eyes. He spoke in a low voice. " You muss 
excuse nie, sin and particularly your lady. But in a way of 
speakin' you're a godsend if ever there was one." 
He produced a cigarette case of imitation morocco from 
his pocket, fumbled with a visiting card. He handed it to 
me. It ran : Capt.\i.n' J.^mes A. Williams, S.S. Gower Hall. 
" Captain Williams ! " I said. 
" That's my present name," he repUed. " But you never 
know. I've been master of this ship for five years. But you 
never know. One of these days she'll put her nose into a 
cargo of iron ore out of Bilbao or get piled up on Limdy, and 
then there won't be much Captain about it. It's hke tempting 
providence to print that word. Only these cards — " 
he became more and more confidential^" was a Christmas 
present from my wife's sister. She's all for the Captain and 
that. Williams is my name, James Williams. Leave the 
Captain out of it. I say you're a godsend, meaning that if 
it wasn't for you being here I should have the devil's own 
job with Antonio. It's bad enough to have been shipmates 
with him from Cardiff to Algiers. Ten days of it. But to 
get the beggar loose in this place at night is more than I'm 
up to." 
Over my shoulder I heard Antonio asking the waiter for 
aloueiles. He meant matches. 
Antoni > broke in : " Now sir, what about a Uttle drink ? 
Come on, Skipper, come on. You're frightened of it ! " 
Another round of brandy ; and the skipper, gulping it 
down with the most obvious distaste, smiled that curious 
protesting smile of his. A moment later Antonio began to 
pick a quarrel with an American captain whom he was anxious 
to instruct in a fine point of navigation. The Grand Cafe 
Tantonville was no place for us. As we turned to go the 
skipper pressed my hand fervently. " Very much obliged to 
you, sir, and to your lady. You see I'm in for it to-night." 
II. 
He was in for it. How thoroughly I never imagined till 
next day when I met liim wandering along the great boule- 
vard above the harbour w all not far from that particular cafe 
which sea captains frequent. Its name I forget ; but if you 
are an Enghshman and wear a blue serge suit the waiters 
will call you " captain " and bring you beef as a matter of 
course. There,'' in the pecuHarly hard light which the white 
causeway and tlie whiter fronts of the colonnade reflect, the 
skipper looked a rather meaner figure than before. He was 
still unshaven, and the beard had grown : his collar was a 
little dirtier, his trousers more obviously acquainted with 
the engine-room. I never saw a man more stoUdly down in 
the mouth. " Well, where's Antonio ? " I asked. 
" Antonio. . . ." He swore steadily and without heat 
for longer than I should have imagined possible. It had 
begun with a quarrel, the one which I had seen blowing up 
in the Tantonville. Tlien to the Casino : a place that was a 
mixture of musical hall and gambling den. There Antonio 
had won money : that was the worst of it for the skipper had 
been looking forward to a process of natural exhaustion which 
was thus miraculously stayed. Still the skipper stuck to hini. 
He followed Antonio scattering twenty-five franc notes in the 
alleys and escorted by an appreciative crowd, through an 
arched door in the middle of a dancing house. 
"You know those dances," said the skipper wearily; 
" the kind you can see in any port between Marseilles to 
Honolulu. Nothing in 'em." 
Outside, in the clear night air Antonio had escaped him, 
the devil kmw how, and half the rest of that night he had 
spt-nt walking the straight and hilly ways of the Arab city. 
" About four o'clock this morning," said the .skipper, 
" I got down to the ship and went below. I hadn't been 
aslecji more than a couple of hours when in comes Antonio 
wanting money. Money. . . . Well, I told Mr. .\ntonio 
what I thought of him : him a man with a position and a 
family. ' CaJm yourself, old chap,' he says, just like that. 
' I've got to have it. I've had the bad luck to lose my watch 
as well as your revolver. 
The skipper glared at me as if it were I who had stolen it. 
" One thing I know," he said, " and that is that if I have 
to lose the ship i'll never take a 'gentleman on board again. 
You'll excuse my saying so : but you know how 1 feci. That's 
what comes of being the master of a ship. You think you're 
going to be God Almighty and then the owners come and 
plant a thing like this on you. Back I go to Cardiff and the 
first thing they'll ask mc is what have you done with Antonio. 
Unless I put him in irons at every port I shall have lost him. 
It's my luck. - It's always been the same. Now listen. My 
wife's a Catholic. ... a Roman Catholic. I don't 
think any the worse of her for it. She's a good woman when 
she's away from her sister. Voyage after voyage she hears 
of me taking coal to Italy, and nothing will satisfy the woman 
but to come with me and see Rome. Now she's a bad sailor, 
and inclined to be stout. A fine time I had with her, I can 
tell you. It's an awful thing to see a woman of that size sick. 
When we came to Civita Vecchia she goes and slips on a gang- 
way . . . weak, you know with the sickness, and breaks 
her leg. And that's all she ever saw of Rome. That's what 
hapf)ens. I wish I'd never seen this ship A man's 
happiest when he's a mate. I assure you there's nothing in 
it but trouble nothing but trouble." 
By this time we had wandered a good way to the east, and 
I noticed that his eyes were constantly turning towards the 
forest of masts which rose above the docks. At last he stopped 
me, tapping me on the arm. 
" There she is ? " he said. 
" Where ? " 
" The red funnel with a white band and two red stars.'' 
I looked in the direction which he gave me and picked out 
with difficulty a funnel of this description springing holt 
upright from one of the most villainous little craft I ha\'e ever 
seen. She was very small, resembling some undersized and 
stunted mongrel ; her smoke stack was caked with spray and 
soot, her decks were foul with coal ; her ensign, tattered and 
drooping, hung miserably astern. 
" There she is," said the skipper again. 
I looked at him. It was an extraordinaiy transformation, 
or, if you will, transfiguration. All his distress and grumbling 
discontent were suddenly gone. His tanned, square face 
became somehow almost beautiful. The change would have 
been ridiculous if it hadn't really been the symbol of a rapt 
and lovely ectsasy. It's an amazing thing how emotion of 
that kind communicates itself. In that moment I felt tliat 
I would have done anything in^the world for the master of the 
Gawer Hall. 
" She's a fine little packet," he said, gripping my arm. 
" The best sea-boat I ever sailed in. It isn't fair for you to 
look at her now when she's discharging a cargo of coal. You 
want to see her when I've got 'em to work on the white deck 
paint. White deck paint on a collier, eh ? You want to see 
her spinning along at eight or nine knots. My chief '11 get her 
up to ten all-out. One of these days you must come aboard. 
My steward's a Jap. Say what yoti like about the Japs, but 
they do know how to cook. If only I had this Antonio off 
my mind. . . ." 
We walked up again to the restaurant of which I have 
spoken where they gave us an uncomprising steak with the idea, 
no doubt, of reminding the captain of Cardiff. 
" This is the first food," he smiled, ■" that I've tasted for 
twenty-four hours. I want you to consider yourself my guest 
for all your sympathy," he said, and when I protested, thinking 
of the little house in Cardiff and of those aml^itious visiting 
cards : " You know, the owners always allow us so much for 
entertaining in a business way." 
We parted and tliat day I saw no more of him or of .\ntonio. 
He was bound, I knew, for Bougie, the next port along the 
coast, where he was due to pick up a cargo of some metal. . . 
I think it was copper, and 1 gave the matter no more thought 
till, lounging upon the sea wall about the time of sunset, I 
happened to see a misshapen httle steamboat putting out 
to sea. It was a wonderful evening, a dull red going down 
behind the serene skyhne on which the church of Notre-Dame 
d'Afrique stands, ancl all the bay the colour of deep jade and 
very calm. I recognised the starred smoke-stack of the 
Gowcr Halt, butting out stubbornly, with something of the 
skipper's own stunted energy, into the paler sea in whch the 
light of Cape Matifou would soon blink out. " A funny 
business," I thought, " just as some damned little coasting 
tramp comes in and hes alongside a stranger at a foreign 
quay, we human creatures bump one another and get taken up 
for an hour or two quite intimately into the woof of each other's 
lives. And that's the end of it. I shall never see Antonio 
or Captain James Williams or the Gower Hall again, and yet 
in some, corner of our brains, even though we don't suspJect 
it, we shall always remember one another. I, at any rate, 
shall always remember liow Mrs. Williams broke her leg on 
the wav to sec the Pope. A funnv business." 
