"Conrad, Joseph - The Mirror Of The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

first course of the passage in an elated voice. But he, as I
learned afterwards, was leaving nothing behind him, except a welter
of debts and threats of legal proceedings.

On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly their
ship had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would disappear
from the sight of their ship's company altogether for some three
days or more. They would take a long dive, as it were, into their
state-room, only to emerge a few days afterwards with a more or
less serene brow. Those were the men easy to get on with.
Besides, such a complete retirement seemed to imply a satisfactory
amount of trust in their officers, and to be trusted displeases no
seaman worthy of the name.

On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW- I remember
that I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about my duties,
myself a commander for all practical purposes. Still, whatever the
greatness of my illusion, the fact remained that the real commander
was there, backing up my self-confidence, though invisible to my
eyes behind a maple-wood veneered cabin-door with a white china
handle.

That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the spirit of
your commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as if from the
sanctum sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a temple or a
"hell afloat" - as some ships have been called - the captain's
state-room is surely the august place in every vessel.

The good MacW- would not even come out to his meals, and fed
solitarily in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white
napkin. Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly
empty plates he was bringing out from there. This grief for his
home, which overcomes so many married seamen, did not deprive
Captain MacW- of his legitimate appetite. In fact, the steward
would almost invariably come up to me, sitting in the captain's
chair at the head of the table, to say in a grave murmur, "The
captain asks for one more slice of meat and two potatoes." We, his
officers, could hear him moving about in his berth, or lightly
snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his
bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as
it were. It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character
that the answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly
tone. Some commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly
grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound of your voice as an
injury and an insult.

But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the
man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the
sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his
moroseness all day - and perhaps half the night - becomes a