Captain Black/Part 1

Mr. George Farnham, counsellor-at-law, having devoted ten years of his life to the remunerative toil of entangling certain persons in, and extricating certain others from, the meshes of the law, found himself, at the age of thirty-five, with a respectable balance in bank and a pronounced craving for rest and recreation. Summer was coming on, the courts would soon be closed, and a torpor was settling down upon the field of litigation, and the idea of a vacation abroad presented itself to his mind with alluring force. He was weary of briefs and bills of exceptions; his office was taking on, to his jaded eyes, an aspect of dreary dinginess that promised to become unendurable in the near future, and the long rows of buff-clad digests and revised statutes seemed to glare down upon him from their shelves, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, with grim suggestions of long nights of toil. Under these impelling influences he turned his back upon the law, packed a portmanteau, and found himself upon a bright morning in June on the steamer Servia, fairly committed to a three months’ sojourn in foreign parts.

As the hour of sailing drew near he stood on the hurricane deck, leaning against the rail and watching with lively interest the animated scene on the pier below. A double line of passengers and their friends was thronging up and down the gangway giving access to the lower deck, a crowd of spectators, idlers, and itinerant vendors of steamer-chairs and other comforts of the sea was swarming below him on the pier, and a number of agile cabin-stewards in blue jackets were rushing up and down a supplemental gang-way, bringing aboard an endless variety of steamer-trunks, hand-bags, and bundled rugs. Carriages drove up, discharged their living freight and made their way back through the surging crowd amid volleys of imprecations; while the decks of the steamer swarmed with people chattering, scolding, and weeping farewells with the feverish vehemence peculiar to such occasions. Farnham, enjoying the spectacle with all the relish of a school-boy abandoning his books for a time, turned to a fellow-passenger who stood beside him at the rail, and remarked, “A busy scene, sir.”

“I should call it a bedlam,” said the other, without looking up. “I never could understand the insane curiosity that impels people remaining at home to subject themselves to the most unpleasant feature of going abroad.”

“Meaning the crowd?” inquired Farnham.

“Yes,” replied the other, shortly, “the rabble, the deafening racket, the infernal discomfort of the whole business;” with which he turned abruptly and walked away as if not in the mood for further conversation.

Farnham, at complacent peace with himself and with the world, looked after him with good-humored surprise. He was a tallish man of powerful build, with a full brown beard and hair slightly marked with gray, exceedingly well dressed, and having the unmistakable bearing of a man of the world. By a momentary glimpse of his face as he turned away, Farnham saw that he had regular features, a dark complexion, and a certain self-contained expression that was not altogether prepossessing. As he disappeared in the crowd Farnham turned again and resumed his watch of the scene below.

At this moment the bell for “all ashore” was rung, and the crowd on the gangway began to resolve itself into a stream bound shoreward, occasionally broken by a belated passenger hurriedly making his way upward through the living tide. Then the stream dwindled to a few stragglers, and finally to the inevitable last man, scrambling downward while the gangway was swinging in the slings; the long plank was lowered and cast off, a mighty pulse began to throb beneath Farnham’s feet, and the great ship backed majestically out of the slip amid a tempest of shouts of farewell.

It was at this instant that Farnham’s attention was attracted to a cab that came rattling along the pier, scattering the crowd in every direction. As it drew up at the gangway opening, a man sprang out and crying frantically, “Stop! stop!” rushed to the edge of the pier and began running back and forth upon the string- piece as if meditating a desperate attempt to leap out and clutch at the side of the receding ship. A roar of derisive laughter burst from the bystanders as this preposterous intention became evident, and two of the wharf hands seized the distracted man and roughly dragged him back, struggling and protesting, until he was lost to view in the crowd that surged about him. Farnham fancied, from a sudden expression on his face as he was dragged away, that he had recognized some one on the upper deck, and glancing around involuntarily, discovered the bearded passenger standing beside him at the rail, gazing down upon the scene with an angry scowl. At this moment they came abreast of the end of the pier, where a scene of waving handkerchiefs and tossing sun-umbrellas of every hue and shade burst upon them like a mighty kaleidoscope, and at the same instant the belated traveller appeared in the surging mass of people, hatless and dishevelled and clutching wildly at the air, as if he would stay the departing ship. “Intolerable ass!” muttered the bearded man in a savage whisper, and striking the rail furiously with his clenched fist, he strode angrily away.

The sail through the river and down the bay was enough of a novelty to keep Farnham busily observant, and it was not until the Hook had been passed and the pilot taken off that he bethought himself of going below to don his steamer-cap and shoes, and otherwise prepare himself for a week of seafaring leisure. He had secured a berth in an outside room in the double row just aft the saloon companion-way, and as he entered the passage leading to it he met his bearded acquaintance just coming out of the room. “Mr. Farnham?” said the dark man, interrogatively. “That is my name,” replied Farnham. “I am Captain Black,” said the other, bowing stiffly; “I believe we are booked as room-mates,” and, pushing by him, walked away without pausing for a reply.

“I hope you’ll pan out better than you promise, my good fellow,” said Farnham to himself, philosophically; and entering his room, he was soon busily occupied in making a convenient disposal of his modest belongings.

The door stood open, and Farnham presently became aware of the presence, in the room directly opposite, of a fellow-passenger similarly occupied. He seemed to be of about the height and build of Farnham’s room-mate, but his face, of which Farnham caught an occasional glimpse as he moved about, was as unlike that gentleman’s as could well be imagined. He was clean shaven, of a pallor that was almost unearthly, and had a hideous scar extending from one corner of his mouth down across his chin. To all this was added a certain wildness of eye that was so distinctly repellent that Farnham inwardly congratulated himself that Captain Black had fallen to his lot instead of this unprepossessing stranger; and completing his arrangements, loaded himself with cigars and went on deck.

Events proved that if Captain Black was not companionable, he was at least unobtrusive. Except for the mere knowledge to the contrary, Farnham had the room virtually to himself. His companion rose, had his tub, dressed, and went on deck long before the overworked counsellor-at-law had finished his supplemental morning doze, and retired at night so late and so quietly that Farnham never so much as knew when he came into the room. As for the rest, the man was singularly preoccupied in manner, acknowledging with the merest nod and with an absent air Farnham’s salutation when they chanced to meet, and keeping aloof from him and, with one exception, from the other passengers as well, with a persistence that was too marked to permit any attempt at a closer acquaintance.

The exception, to Farnham’s surprise, was the uninviting-looking occupant of the opposite room. What made this remarkable selection still more surprising was the fact that the acquaintance between the two had evidently been made aboard ship, as Farnham had seen them passing and repassing each other without the slightest sign of recognition during the afternoon of the day of sailing; yet before twenty-four hours had elapsed an intimacy had been formed and matured between these strangely contrasted men, so close that they seemed to be inseparable. Morning, noon, and far into the night they sat and smoked together in secluded corners, the man with the scar constantly talking in a smothered undertone, with a certain fierce vehemence and violence of gesture, and the captain listening with a brooding look upon his dark features and an observant eye upon the other’s face. Farnham was puzzled, and, for a while, found a singular fascination in furtively watching the two men and mentally speculating as to what strange community of interest had brought them together. The few passengers with whom he chanced to fall into conversation knew as little about the scar-faced man as he himself knew about Captain Black, and beyond the fact that his name was Leath, learned incidentally from the cabin-steward, no information of any kind was obtainable. Farnham’s interest in the matter, being rather antipathetic than otherwise, was short-lived, and in the course of a day or two subsided into a mere glance at the two men when he chanced to come upon them.

The weather was fair and promised to hold; but shortly after passing the Banks the ship ran into a rough sea rolling heavily from the southward, evidently the tail of a storm that had passed up from the tropics. As the day wore on the sea continued rising, and by nightfall the ship was rolling heavily, and Farnham, who had thus far fared well, began to experience certain premonitions that impelled him, after a proud struggle against fate, to forego his after-dinner cigar and turn in at an unseemly hour, in the hope that a night’s rest would set him right. He lay in his berth, occasionally falling into a doze and then being roused by an unusually violent plunge as the ship labored in the heavy sea, getting up from time to time to secure and make fast the various toilet articles that had drifted from their moorings, and then tumbling into his berth again with a qualmish apprehension that the supreme moment he was fighting against was upon him.

It was just after one of these excursions that the door opened and Captain Black came into the room. The curtain of the berth was drawn so that he was concealed from view, but Farnham, half dozing, was vaguely aware, above the creaking of the ship, of his movements about the room; and an occasional rattle of keys and the snapping of a lock indicated the opening of some article of luggage. These trifling noises not being disturbing in themselves, Farnham finally dropped asleep and was presently involved in a contested will case of extraordinary magnitude, with his most important witness a fugitive in the wilds of Madagascar. The details progressed with astonishing velocity, accompanied by distracting complications heretofore unheard of in law practice, and matters were assuming a portentous aspect with tremendous pecuniary penalties impending, when he awoke and started up with a sudden consciousness that the curtain had been drawn aside and that he had been looked upon as he lay sleeping in his berth. He pushed it back and looked out, and as he did so the door of the room was softly closed and he heard the heavy footsteps of Captain Black going out through the passageway. The incident was sufficiently annoying in itself, but Farnham found it doubly so from the manifest impossibility of resenting it at the moment, and after fuming over it to no purpose he lay down again, resolving to give his room-mate a bit of his mind in the morning; and bracing himself with his knees against the rolling of the ship, tried to compose himself to sleep. But sleep would not come. The sudden awakening and the resulting irritation had excited him, and he rolled and tossed about, dropping off into fitful naps and waking with every violent plunge of the ship, and occasionally muttering unseemly imprecations against the evil chance that had broken in upon his night’s rest.

It was just after one of these wakings that he heard the sound of a hurried step descending the companionway, and some one came aft through the open cabin and turned into the passageway almost on a run; the door of the opposite room was opened, closed again and locked, apparently with feverish haste, and all was still again. Farnham, listening with alert attention, heard six bells strike a moment after, and concluding from the hour that Captain Black would soon follow his friend, prepared to speak his mind then and there; nursing which amiable intention he presently fell sound asleep.