Gallions Reach

The steamer moved up river at half-speed, and the sounds of life fell with the sun. The shores grew blurred. The quiet was the dusk. The ship itself was hushed, and her men about their duties appeared at a task spectrally, out of nowhere. She might have been trying to reach her destination unobserved. The tired air spilling over the steamer’s bows hardly reached the bridge. The bridge caught the last of the light, and a trace of anger that flushed the mirk banked in the west, to which the ship was moving, was reflected in the face of an officer there, and gave him the distinction of a being regnant and stern. He was superior, and seemed to be brooding down over some passengers sitting in a group on the indistinct foredeck. They were murmuring in conversation, with a child asleep on a shawl beside one of the chairs.

Yellow glims appeared low down in the shadows that were Kent and Essex. That day of summer had gone. Only the wan river and the sky remembered it. A figure rose from the group on the foredeck, and his voice, surprisingly uplifted, was as if he had been compelled to an important announcement. “There’s the smoke of it. London.”

The child sat up quickly. He stared up and ahead, as his elders were doing. He wanted to see what London meant. He saw only the solid black angle of the bows, and the faint smear of crimson beyond. He heard waters muttering, and edged closer to the shadow of his mother. Her hand sought his bare head, and rumpled his hair.

“Nearly home, Jim.”

Eh? There at last was Perriam. He was coming up the stairs in heavy deliberation, like destiny. No escape now; might kill the beggar, though. Jimmy smiled at the thought. But to fling a bomb into Moloch’s fiery belly and do in the brute god would be decrepit backsliding. Not much spiritual acceptance, in that act, of the ultimate unimportance of material bellies, fiery or otherwise. Let the fiery belly burn itself out.

Mr. Perriam was filled, in fact, with resolute calm. He was not burning. He was content, for now he knew that control of his affairs was in his hands again. He and they were safe. He walked slowly to his door. Jimmy heard it close. The reflections of another light confused the darkness of the outer office.

As though it had only opened in the darkness since he came, he noticed before him a cleft in the wall. It could have been an outlet there. It was a lighter patch. While he wondered whether it was an outlet a green planet moved across it, midway, from side to side. The planet appeared suddenly, was bright for a few seconds, and then was eclipsed. As though that green light had caused it, he felt a cool draught blow steadily from across the way. What was there? Then a red star appeared midway, in the midst of a travelling cluster of white stars. Lord, a ship!

He listened rigidly. He could hear the plunging of a propeller. He made a guess. A red light? Then she was going east. She was bound outwards. He crossed over and walked down that slit in the dark till he felt only outer space was before him. There were remote points of light in a void. He stopped, and fumbled with his hand. Yes, this was the edge of his world.

He sat down on it. In a little while he could hear water talking quietly somewhere below him. It might have been near or far. It was invisible. Perhaps that was the tide running by the Southern Cross. That was a long sheer cold drop.

The night engulfed them with a roar as though it saw them instantly. Colet was separated from Hale. There was no ship. There was but a pealing and a shouting. The darkness was full of driving water. It was hard to breathe. Hale had gone. Colet forgot which was the head and which the stern. A burst of spray raked past. Then he felt a grip on his arm, and a warm mouth sought his ear. Hale was saying something but his words were torn away.

“What?”

The skipper’s voice was at once superior to the chaos:

“We can do it.”

Wanted a bit of doing. Like trying to walk a plank you couldn’t see which was only there sometimes. It was a wonder it ever came back. My God, she was like a balloon, trying to sail out of it. But the water was up there too. Here was the ladder down to the deck. He had got on to its rungs when the warm mouth came near his ear again:

“Wait. Hold tight.”

The thing under their feet heaved, but checked, as if this was too much for it. The night exploded over them and fell in broken thunder. Couldn’t go through that.

“Go on,” ordered invisible Hale. They reached the deck, and ran. Ran in short lengths. You can’t keep running on a slope which changes direction abruptly in the dark. Together they got to the foot of the ladder to the bridge-deck, and Hale pushed Colet at it, the signal to mount quickly; but when he gripped the iron thing it came at him as though loose.

A group of Chinamen below stood bent in appreciation of some cocks, each in its own wicker cage. The cocks stridently challenged each other. One cage was carelessly handled, and the gladiator hustled out. A bystander grabbed at it, but it flustered to the topside of the ship, and another indiscreet clutch at its tail sent it protesting into the sea. For an instant it was a frantic bunch of feathers there, and then an unseen body from below swirled the water ponderously and the cock had gone.

Colet was shocked. This was not in accord with what was familiar. The penalty had come so suddenly, just when he had allowed the motorcar, in spite of its size and appearance, to displace some old conceptions, to occupy with the certainty of a late solid engine the ancient mystery of the East. Yet nobody else seemed affected by the incident. The Chinamen stared indifferently at the place where the water had swirled, but the others might not have been aware that anything had happened. His companion made a humorous reference to the incident, but returned with soft pleasure to some more intimate words on the pleasantries of native ways. Colet, with a divided mind, listened while his eyes still rested absently on the Malay below who had been used to illustrate a little colourful drama of no value except to show to a stranger the delights and simplicity of the things he did not know.