the apex of the destroyer screen, a light was stabbing erratically.
“Midships! Steady. Slow ahead together.”
There was a clatter from the ladder. The Captain burst at him.
“What the bloody hell are you playing at?”
Hurried and smooth.
“I thought there was wreckage on the starboard bow, sir, and couldn’t be sure so I maintained course and speed till we were clear, sir.”
The Captain stopped, one hand on the screen of the bridge and lowered at him.
“What sort of wreckage?”
“Baulks of timber, sir, floating just under the surface.”
“Starboard look-out!”
“Sir?”
“Did you see any wreckage?”
“No, sir.”
“—I may have been mistaken, sir, but I judged it better to make sure, sir.”
The Captain bored in, face to face so that his grip on the rock tightened as he remembered. The Captain’s face was big, pale and lined, the eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness and gin. It examined for a moment what the window had to exhibit. The two shadowy noses on either side of the window caught a faint, sweet scent. Then the face changed, not dramatically, not registering, not making obvious, but changing like a Nat-face, from within. Under the pallor and moist creases, in the corners of the mouth and eyes, came the slight muscular shift of complicated tensions till the face was rearranged and bore like an open insult, the pattern of contempt and disbelief.
The mouth opened.
“Carry on.”
In a confusion too complete for answer or salute he watched the face turn away and take its understanding and contempt down the ladder.
There was heat and blood.
“Signal, sir, from Captain D. ‘Where are you going to my pretty maid?’”
Signalman with a wooden face. Heat and blood.
“Take it to the Captain.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He turned back to the binnacle.
“Port fifteen. Midships. Steady.”
Looking under his arm he saw Nathaniel pass the bridge messenger in the waist. Seen thus, he was a bat hanging upside down from the roof of a cave. Nat passed on, walking and lurching till the break of the fo’castle hid him.
He found he was cursing an invisible Nat, cursing him for Mary, for the contempt in old Gin-soak’s face. The centre, looking in this reversed world over the binnacle, found itself beset by a storm of emotions, acid and inky and cruel. There was a desperate amazement that anyone so good as Nat, so unwillingly loved for the face that was always rearranged from within, for the serious attention, for love given without thought, should also be so quiveringly hated as though he were the only enemy. There was amazement that to love and to hate were now one thing and one emotion. Or perhaps they could be separated. Hate was as hate had always been, an acid, the corroding venom of which could be borne only because the hater was strong.
“I am a good hater.”
He looked quickly at the deck watch, across at Wilde beeste and gave orders for the new course.
And love? Love for Nat? That was this sorrow dissolved through the hate so that the new solution was a deadly thing in the chest and the bowels.
He muttered over the binnacle.
“If I were that glass toy that I used to play with I could float in a bottle of acid. Nothing could touch me then.”
Zag.
“That’s what it is. Ever since I met her and she interrupted the pattern coming at random, obeying no law of life, facing me with the insoluble, unbearable problem of her existence the acid’s been chewing at my guts. I can’t even kill her because that would be her final victory over me. Yet as long as she lives the acid will eat. She’s there. In the flesh. In the not even lovely flesh. In the cheap mind. Obsession. Not love. Or if love, insanely compounded of this jealousy of her very being. Odi et amo . Like that thing I tried to write.”
There were lace curtains in decorous curves either side of the oak occasional table with its dusty fern. The round table in the centre of the almost unused parlour smelt of polish—might
“Midships! Steady. Slow ahead together.”
There was a clatter from the ladder. The Captain burst at him.
“What the bloody hell are you playing at?”
Hurried and smooth.
“I thought there was wreckage on the starboard bow, sir, and couldn’t be sure so I maintained course and speed till we were clear, sir.”
The Captain stopped, one hand on the screen of the bridge and lowered at him.
“What sort of wreckage?”
“Baulks of timber, sir, floating just under the surface.”
“Starboard look-out!”
“Sir?”
“Did you see any wreckage?”
“No, sir.”
“—I may have been mistaken, sir, but I judged it better to make sure, sir.”
The Captain bored in, face to face so that his grip on the rock tightened as he remembered. The Captain’s face was big, pale and lined, the eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness and gin. It examined for a moment what the window had to exhibit. The two shadowy noses on either side of the window caught a faint, sweet scent. Then the face changed, not dramatically, not registering, not making obvious, but changing like a Nat-face, from within. Under the pallor and moist creases, in the corners of the mouth and eyes, came the slight muscular shift of complicated tensions till the face was rearranged and bore like an open insult, the pattern of contempt and disbelief.
The mouth opened.
“Carry on.”
In a confusion too complete for answer or salute he watched the face turn away and take its understanding and contempt down the ladder.
There was heat and blood.
“Signal, sir, from Captain D. ‘Where are you going to my pretty maid?’”
Signalman with a wooden face. Heat and blood.
“Take it to the Captain.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He turned back to the binnacle.
“Port fifteen. Midships. Steady.”
Looking under his arm he saw Nathaniel pass the bridge messenger in the waist. Seen thus, he was a bat hanging upside down from the roof of a cave. Nat passed on, walking and lurching till the break of the fo’castle hid him.
He found he was cursing an invisible Nat, cursing him for Mary, for the contempt in old Gin-soak’s face. The centre, looking in this reversed world over the binnacle, found itself beset by a storm of emotions, acid and inky and cruel. There was a desperate amazement that anyone so good as Nat, so unwillingly loved for the face that was always rearranged from within, for the serious attention, for love given without thought, should also be so quiveringly hated as though he were the only enemy. There was amazement that to love and to hate were now one thing and one emotion. Or perhaps they could be separated. Hate was as hate had always been, an acid, the corroding venom of which could be borne only because the hater was strong.
“I am a good hater.”
He looked quickly at the deck watch, across at Wilde beeste and gave orders for the new course.
And love? Love for Nat? That was this sorrow dissolved through the hate so that the new solution was a deadly thing in the chest and the bowels.
He muttered over the binnacle.
“If I were that glass toy that I used to play with I could float in a bottle of acid. Nothing could touch me then.”
Zag.
“That’s what it is. Ever since I met her and she interrupted the pattern coming at random, obeying no law of life, facing me with the insoluble, unbearable problem of her existence the acid’s been chewing at my guts. I can’t even kill her because that would be her final victory over me. Yet as long as she lives the acid will eat. She’s there. In the flesh. In the not even lovely flesh. In the cheap mind. Obsession. Not love. Or if love, insanely compounded of this jealousy of her very being. Odi et amo . Like that thing I tried to write.”
There were lace curtains in decorous curves either side of the oak occasional table with its dusty fern. The round table in the centre of the almost unused parlour smelt of polish—might
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