To the Ends of the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

and rephrased.
    “Your crew is not all officers! Forward there, is a crowd of individuals on whose obedience the order of the whole depends, the success of the voyage depends!”
    “They are well enough.”
    “But sir—just as in a state the supreme argument for the continuance of a national church is the whip it holdsin one hand and the—dare I say—illusory prize in the other, so here—”
    But Mr Cumbershum was wiping his lips with the brown back of his fist and getting to his feet.
    “I don’t know about all that,” he said. “Captain Anderson would not have a chaplain in the ship if he could avoid it—even if one was on offer. The fellow you saw was a passenger and, I believe, a very new-hatched parson.”
    I remembered how the poor devil had clawed up the wrong side of the deck and spewed right in the eye of the wind.
    “You must be right, sir. He is certainly a very new-hatched seaman!”
    I then informed Mr Cumbershum that at a convenient time I must make myself known to the captain. When he looked surprised I told him who I am, mentioned your lordship’s name and that of His Excellency your brother and outlined the position I should hold in the governor’s entourage—or as much as it is politic to outline, since you know what other business I am charged with. I did not add what I then thought. This was that since the deputy-governor is a naval officer, if Mr Cumbershum was an average example of the breed I should give the entourage some tone it would stand in need of!
    My information rendered Mr Cumbershum more expansive. He sat down again. He owned he had never been in such a ship or on such a voyage. It was all strange to him and he thought to the other officers too. We were a ship of war, store ship, a packet boat or passenger vessel, we were all things, which amounted to—and here I believe I detected a rigidity of mind that is to be expected in an officer at once junior and elderly—amounted to being nothing . He supposed that at the end of this voyage she would moor for good, send down her top masts and be a sop to thegovernor’s dignity, firing nothing but salutes as he went to and fro.
    “Which,” he added darkly, “is just as well, Mr Talbot sir, just as well!”
    “Take me with you, sir.”
    Mr Cumbershum waited until the tilted servant had supplied us again. Then he glanced through the door at the empty and streaming lobby.
    “God knows what would happen to her Mr Talbot if we was to fire the few great guns left in her.”
    “The devil is in it then!”
    “I beg you will not repeat my opinion to the common sort of passenger. We must not alarm them. I have said more than I should.”
    “I was prepared with some philosophy to risk the violence of the enemy; but that a spirited defence on our part should do no more than increase our danger is, is—”
    “It is war, Mr Talbot; and peace or war, a ship is always in danger. The only other vessel of our rate to undertake this enormous voyage, a converted warship I mean, converted so to speak to general purposes—she was named the Guardian , I think—yes, the Guardian , did not complete the journey. But now I remember she ran on an iceberg in the Southern Ocean, so her rate and age was not material .”
    I got my breath again. I detected through the impassivity of the man’s exterior a determination to roast me, precisely because I had made the importance of my position clear to him. I laughed good-humouredly and turned the thing off. I thought it a moment to try my prentice hand at the flattery which your lordship recommended to me as a possible passe-partout .
    “With such devoted and skilful officers as we are provided with, sir, I am sure we need fear nothing.”
    Cumbershum stared at me as if he suspected my words of some hidden and perhaps sarcastic meaning.
    “Devoted, sir? Devoted?”
    It was time to “go about,” as we nautical fellows say.
    “Do you see this left hand of mine, sir? Yon door did it. See how scraped and