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Updated: May 31, 2025
In time I learned why the last Fourth, a gay young spark of twenty-two, had fled out of the ship. This old Third, old Croasan his name was, didn't care what happened to him. His children were grown up and run away; he was too ignorant to get a certificate, and he was just waiting for a ship to go to the bottom and take him with her. When the Second told me that I didn't believe him.
Was it one of those weird affairs I remembered in our catalogues, colonial engines with grotesque fireboxes and elaborate funnels, for burning wood instead of coal? I looked round. Nobody in sight. Everybody was below. The Chief and Second were asleep, old Croasan was in his room with a bottle of gin, drinking steadily. In another moment I had gone down the gangway and was making for the shed.
The weather eased a little off Finisterre and we got her righted. We went up to the Chief's room to have a nip of whisky. "'Ye see, said the Second. 'Ye see, mister, there's some as dinna care. "Old Croasan came out of the bunk when the trouble was over. I felt too proud of what I'd been through to be hard on the poor old chap, proud of being in the thick of it. I was seeing life at last.
The oil from the lamp was dripping on to the drawer tops, and every time she gave a deeper roll the light flared. I put the magazine under it to catch the drip, and as I did so I caught sight of a picture in it, a picture of two men standing on the deck of a ship in a storm. Underneath were the words, 'I think she's sinking. Curious, wasn't it? That's just what I thought. I turned to old Croasan.
It was sordid and silly and wrong, but it was real. The Chief lit his lamp and I saw his one bright eye and the empty, blood-red socket glittering in the radiance. To think that I had been mad enough to feel sick of the Corydon! I felt as if I had suddenly got home again. And, just as suddenly, old Croasan had vanished. I looked at the Chief in bewilderment.
"I was coming down from the theatre one night about a week later, and I thought I'd look in at the 'Isle o' Man' for a drink before going aboard. There was a good few in there, Greek and Norwegian skippers; and a Belgian engineer was sitting across from me with old Croasan. The piano was going with Little Dolly Daydream, Pride of Idaho, when in comes Rosa with her tray.
"When I rejoined the Corydon, the Chief said the Second was going to stay on one more trip, but old Croasan was clearing out and I could go Third. I wouldn't mention these details, only they are important, because well, you'll see. "Old Croasan was going ashore when I joined. Didn't even shake hands with the Chief!
Curious I should have found my girl in such surroundings, growing there like a straight, healthy plant, just blooming in a bed among all those old decayed and discarded people of the world. Curious, too, I thought, that these people, like old Croasan, had rejected life.
There was a growl of 'what's that? from the Chief and he suddenly sprang out in his pyjamas. Seeing only me, he shouted, 'What you making all this row about? And then he stumbled over old Croasan. I laughed. I couldn't help it. All the while I was explaining to that indignant Chief how we came to be there I was uttering cries of joy in my heart over the rich humanity of it all.
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