I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without
a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made,
the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the
river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for
the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like
the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing
the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint,
and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges
drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in
red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of
varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that
ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark
above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed
into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the
biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our
host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood
in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there
was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a
pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified.
It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the
luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding
gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere,
the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts
together through long periods of separation, it had the
effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns--
and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellowys--
had, because of his many years and many virtues,
ythe only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug.
The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes,
and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow
sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast.
He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a
straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms
dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an
idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold,
made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged
a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on
board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not
begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit
for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a
serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone
pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity
of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex
marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from
the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in
diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding
over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute,
as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun
sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red
without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly,
stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding
over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the
serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The
old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline
of day, after ages of good service done to the race that
peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We
looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a
short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the
august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is
easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed
the sea" with reverence and affection, that to evoke the
great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the
Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing
service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had
borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It
had known and served all the men of whom the nation is
yproud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin,
knights all, titled and untitled--the great knights-errant
of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like
jewels flashing in the night of time, from the GOLDEN HIND
returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be
visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of
the gigantic tale, to the EREBUS and TERROR, bound on
other conquests--and that never returned. It had known
the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford,
from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the
settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change;