"Conrad, Joseph - A Personal Record" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

ship to the, I will not say short-lived, but ephemeral
Franco-Canadian Transport Company. A death leaves something
behind, but there was never anything tangible left from the F. C.
T. C. It flourished no longer than roses live, and unlike the
roses it blossomed in the dead of winter, emitted a sort of faint
perfume of adventure, and died before spring set in. But
indubitably it was a company, it had even a house-flag, all white
with the letters F. C. T. C. artfully tangled up in a complicated
monogram. We flew it at our mainmast head, and now I have come
to the conclusion that it was the only flag of its kind in
existence. All the same we on board, for many days, had the
impression of being a unit of a large fleet with fortnightly
departures for Montreal and Quebec as advertised in pamphlets and
prospectuses which came aboard in a large package in Victoria
Dock, London, just before we started for Rouen, France. And in
the shadowy life of the F. C. T. C. lies the secret of that, my
last employment in my calling, which in a remote sense
interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina Almayer's story.

The then secretary of the London Shipmasters' Society, with its
modest rooms in Fenchurch Street, was a man of indefatigable
activity and the greatest devotion to his task. He is
responsible for what was my last association with a ship. I call
it that be cause it can hardly be called a sea-going experience.
Dear Captain Froud--it is impossible not to pay him the tribute
of affectionate familiarity at this distance of years--had very
sound views as to the advancement of knowledge and status for the
whole body of the officers of the mercantile marine. He organized
for us courses of professional lectures, St. John ambulance
classes, corresponded industriously with public bodies and
members of Parliament on subjects touching the interests of the
service; and as to the oncoming of some inquiry or commission
relating to matters of the sea and to the work of seamen, it was
a perfect godsend to his need of exerting himself on our
corporate behalf. Together with this high sense of his official
duties he had in him a vein of personal kindness, a strong
disposition to do what good he could to the individual members of
that craft of which in his time he had been a very excellent
master. And what greater kindness can one do to a seaman than to
put him in the way of employment? Captain Froud did not see why
the Shipmasters' Society, besides its general guardianship of our
interests, should not be unofficially an employment agency of the
very highest class.

"I am trying to persuade all our great ship-owning firms to come
to us for their men. There is nothing of a trade-union spirit
about our society, and I really don't see why they should not,"
he said once to me. "I am always telling the captains, too,
that, all things being equal, they ought to give preference to
the members of the society. In my position I can generally find