Singleton put out his arm towards it, missed, staggered, and suddenly fell forward, crashing down, stiff and headlong like an uprooted tree. There was a swift rush. Men pushed, crying: -- ‘He's done!’....‘Turn him over!’.... ‘Stand clear there!’ Under a crowd of startled faces bending over him he lay on his back, staring upwards in a continuous and intolerable manner. In the breathless silence of a general consternation, he said in a grating murmur: -- ‘Iam all right,’ and clutched with his hands. They helped him up.
He mumbled despondently: -- ‘I am getting old....old.’-- ‘Not you,’ cried Belfast, with ready tact. Supported on all sides, he hung his head. -- ‘Are you better?’they asked. He glared at them from under his eyebrows with large black eyes, spreading over his chest the bushy whiteness of a beard long and thick. -- ‘Old! old!’ he repeated sternly. Helped along, he reached his bunk. There was in it a slimy soft heap of something that smelt like does at dead low water a muddy foreshore. It was his soaked straw bed. With a convulsive effort he pitched himself on it, and in the darkness of the narrow place could be heard growling angrily, like an irritated and savage animal uneasy in its den: -- ‘Bit of breeze....small thing....can't stand up....old!’ He slept at last. He breathed heavily, high-booted, sou'wester on head, and his oilskin clothes rustled, when with a deep sighing groan he turned over. men conversed about him in quiet concerned whispers. ‘This will break 'im up’....‘Strong as a horse’.... ‘Aye. But he ain't what he used to be’.... In sad murmurs they gave him up. Yet at midnight he turned out to duty as if nothing had been the matter, and answered to his name with a mournful ‘Here!’ He brooded alone more than ever, in an impenetrable silence and with a saddened face. For many years he had heard himself called ‘Old Singleton,’ and had serenely accepted the qualification, taking it as a tribute of respect due to a man who through half a century had measured his strength against the favours and the rages of the sea. He had never given a thought to his mortal self. He lived unscathed, as though he had been indestructible, surrendering to Page 73all the temptations, weathering many gales. He had panted in sunshine, shivered in the cold; suffered hunger, thirst, debauch; passed through many trials -- known all the furies. Old! It seemed to him he was broken at last. And like a man bound treacherously while he sleeps, he woke up fettered by the long chain of disregarded years. He had to take up at once the burden of all his existence, and found it almost too heavy for his strength. Old! He moved his arms, shook his head, felt his limbs. Getting old.... and then? He looked upon the immortal sea with the awakened and groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it unchanged, black and foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stares; he heard its impatient voice calling for him out of a pitiless vastness full of unrest, of turmoil, and of terror. He looked afar upon it, and he saw an immensity tormented and blind, moaning and furious, that claimed all the days of his tenacious life, and, when life was over, would claim the worn-out body of its slave.
This was the last of the breeze. It veered quickly, changed to a black south-eastern and blew itself out, giving the ship a famous shove to the northward into the joyous sunshine of the trade. Rapid and white she ran homewards in a straight path, under a blue sky and upon the plain of a blue sea. She carried Singleton's completed wisdom, Donkin's delicate susceptibilities, and the conceited folly of us all. The hours of ineffective turmoil were forgotten; the fear and anguish of these dark moments were never mentioned in the glowing peace of fine days. Yet from that time our life seemed to start afresh as though we had died and been resuscitated. All the first part of the voyage, the Indian Ocean on the other side of the Cape, all that was lost in a haze, like an ineradicable suspicion of some previous existence. It had ended -- then there were blank hours; a livid blur -- and again we lived! Singleton was possessed of sinister truth; Mr. Creighton of a damaged leg; the cook of fame -- and shamefully abused the opportunities of his distinction. Donkin had an added grievance.
He went about repeating with insistence: -- ‘'E said 'e would brain me -- did you hear? They hare goin' to murder hus now for the least little thing.’ We began at last to think it was rather awful.
And we were conceited! We boasted our pluck, of our capacity foe work, of our energy. We remembered honourable episodes: our devotion, Page 74our indomitable perseverance -- and were proud of them as though they had been the outcome of our unaided impulses. We remembered our danger, our toil -- and conveniently forgot our horrible scare. We decried our officer -- who had done nothing -- and listened to the fascinating Donkin, His care for our rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were not discouraged by the invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain of our looks. Our contempt for him was unbounded -- and we could unbounded -- and we could not but listen with interest to that consummate artist.