In Which I Make the Acquaintance of Captain Bithery

It must have been a matter of surprise to most of us who have arrived at, or passed, middle life, on looking back through a vista of years, to note what an astonishingly important part has been played in our lives by entirely trivial circumstances. It has, indeed, become a common-place that “great events from little causes spring”; but we do not realise, until we actually submit our experiences to analysis, how the whole tenour and meaning of our lives has in many cases been determined by some occurrence so unimportant that, at the time, it appears incredible that it should have any consequences at all.

Yet so it is. Not only great and critical events which occupy our attention at the time and impress themselves afterwards upon our memory, but trifling circumstances that pass almost unnoticed and are straightway forgotten generate each its train of consequences; and when in retrospect we retrace our steps through the busy years, we are apt to find the starting-point of the main action of our life in some little incident that had long since passed out of recollection until thus recalled by association.

These reflections are suggested to me as I review the series of strange and well-nigh incredible adventures that befell me in the early years of my manhood—adventures which it is the purpose of this narrative to chronicle; for their occurrence is traceable to an event so insignificant that its mention would appear an impertinence but for this connection.

This event was, in fact, nothing more than the mislaying of a match-box. Yet, but for this trifling accident, not only would those marvellous experiences never have befallen me, but the entire course of my life—indeed, my very personality—would have been quite different.

It happened thus:

On a windy September evening I was standing on the quay of the inner basin of Ramsgate harbour, filling my pipe with the shavings that I cut from a cake of “hard.” I had just descended the worn steps of Jacob’s Ladder, and still lingered in its shelter until my pipe should be fairly alight, and when I had finished stuffing the bowl with the fresh-rubbed, clammy shavings, I thrust my hand into the pocket of my monkey jacket for the matches. But the box was not there. I hastily searched other pockets, but, as I expected, without success; for I am methodical in small things, and that box had its abode in that particular pocket.

I was somewhat vexed at the loss, although the thing was of no intrinsic value, for it was only a copper case, into which an ordinary match-box slipped; but it had been made for me by a friendly shipwright from the sheathing of an old corvette (a portrait of which was etched on the copper), and I set some store by it.

As I walked on, sucking the unlit pipe, I tried to recall the last occasion on which I had used it; and suddenly I remembered having passed it to a collier skipper some evenings ago, in the parlour of the “Hovelling Boat” Inn; so thither I immediately turned my steps.

It must not be supposed that I was, in those days, a frequenter of taverns, for this was far from being the case. But to a young man, deeply in love with the sea, the “Hovelling Boat” had special attractions. It was situated in a little narrow street full of crinkled gables and odd bay windows, and blocked at its end by a medley of masts and spars; a street in which anchors and cables sprawled on the pavements, side-lights glared from ship-chandlers’ windows, and suits of oilskins dangled from projecting poles, as if some fisher of men were lurking inside and had just had a “bite.”

The inn itself had a coloured lamp, surmounted by a gilded lugger in full sail, and its cosy parlour abounded in all sorts of sea-monsters—piratical-looking fishermen from Gravelines in knitted caps and stockings and mosaic breeches, whose principal patches hinted at sedentary habits; jolly Dutchmen from square-bowed schuyts; pale Scandinavians with colourless hair and faded blue eyes; smacksmen, colliers, and coasters from the “west country”: all foregathered here to smoke and drink and gossip in the lurid dialect of the salt sea.

I had pushed open the door and was making for the parlour, when the landlady spied me and held up her hand.

“I think I’ve got something of yours, Muster Englefield,” she said, reaching up to a shelf. “Doesn’t this match-box belong to you? I found it in the parlour last Tuesday.”

“Thank you,” I said, seizing the treasure and dropping it into my pocket. “I had come to ask about it. It’s an old friend, and I should have been sorry to lose it.”

I was turning to go out again when she stopped me once more.

“There’s a bit of an unpleasantness going on in there,” she said, nodding towards the parlour. “I should be glad if you could find time to sit down there for a few minutes, sir. Perhaps the presence of a stranger and a gentleman might keep them in order.”

“Very well,” I said. “Send me in a glass of grog and I’ll smoke my pipe in the parlour, and hear what they have to say.”

As I entered and looked round through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, it was not difficult to see who were the parties to the “unpleasantness,” for the inmates of the room, about a dozen in number, lounged on the settles, regarding with placid expectancy two men who occupied separate tables near the fire-place.

They were both mariners of the better class, apparently ship-masters; and one of them—a tall, burly Norwegian with the palest of blue eyes and a mass of straw-coloured hair and beard—stood resting his knuckles on the table while he glared ferociously at his antagonist—a thick-set, powerful man, apparently English, whose swarthy face was made remarkable by a deep scar on the jaw, the contraction of which had drawn his mouth and nose somewhat to one side.

“I ask you again,” exclaimed the Norwegian, huskily, “do you say I am a liar?”

The Englishman made no reply, but a curious, sour, one-sided smile spread over his face, giving it a rather sinister appearance.

“Whoy don’t ye answer the man, ‘nstead o’ settin’ there a-agravatin’ of ‘im?” protested a jovial smacksman (who appeared to be attired for a dress rehearsal of “Puss in Boots”).

“I have answered him,” replied the other gruffly. “I have told him that I have got a smashed channel and he has a dent on his stem; he’s lost half a jibboom and I’ve found one—on my deck.”

“What’s the row about?” I asked a Cockney bargeman who sat near the door, fondling a pewter pot.

“It’s all along of a collision. ‘E begun the rumpus,” replied the bargeman jerking his head vaguely at the fireplace.