"Conrad, Joseph - Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

"The old doorkeeper fussed out of the cloak-room with my hat. They
always do. But he looked very hard at me before he ventured to ask
in a sort of timid whisper: "Got through all right, sir?" For all
answer I dropped a half-crown into his soft broad palm. "Well,"
says he with a sudden grin from ear to ear, "I never knew him keep
any of you gentlemen so long. He failed two second mates this
morning before your turn came. Less than twenty minutes each:
that's about his usual time."

"I found myself downstairs without being aware of the steps as if I
had floated down the staircase. The finest day in my life. The day
you get your first command is nothing to it. For one thing a man is
not so young then and for another with us, you know, there is
nothing much more to expect. Yes, the finest day of one's life, no
doubt, but then it is just a day and no more. What comes after is
about the most unpleasant time for a youngster, the trying to get an
officer's berth with nothing much to show but a brand-new
certificate. It is surprising how useless you find that piece of
ass's skin that you have been putting yourself in such a state
about. It didn't strike me at the time that a Board of Trade
certificate does not make an officer, not by a long long way. But
the slippers of the ships I was haunting with demands for a job knew
that very well. I don't wonder at them now, and I don't blame them
either. But this 'trying to get a ship' is pretty hard on a
youngster all the same . . . "

He went on then to tell us how tired he was and how discouraged by
this lesson of disillusion following swiftly upon the finest day of
his life. He told us how he went the round of all the ship-owners'
offices in the City where some junior clerk would furnish him with
printed forms of application which he took home to fill up in the
evening. He used to run out just before midnight to post them in
the nearest pillar-box. And that was all that ever came of it. In
his own words: he might just as well have dropped them all properly
addressed and stamped into the sewer grating.

Then one day, as he was wending his weary way to the docks, he met a
friend and former shipmate a little older than himself outside the
Fenchurch Street Railway Station.

He craved for sympathy but his friend had just "got a ship" that
very morning and was hurrying home in a state of outward joy and
inward uneasiness usual to a sailor who after many days of waiting
suddenly gets a berth. This friend had the time to condole with him
but briefly. He must be moving. Then as he was running off, over
his shoulder as it were, he suggested: "Why don't you go and speak
to Mr. Powell in the Shipping Office." Our friend objected that he
did not know Mr. Powell from Adam. And the other already pretty
near round the corner shouted back advice: "Go to the private door
of the Shipping Office and walk right up to him. His desk is by the