"Conrad, Josph - Youth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

have thrown up my new billet for a fortune. The mate
looked me over carefully. He was also an old chap, but
of another stamp. He had a Roman nose, a snow-white,
long beard, and his name was Mahon, but he insisted that
it should be pronounced Mann. He was well connected;
yet there was something wrong with his luck, and he
had never got on.

"As to the captain, he had been for years in coasters,
then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian
trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could
just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for
writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of
course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a
small boy between two grandfathers.

"The ship also was old. Her name was the Judea.
Queer name, isn't it? She belonged to a man Wilmer,
Wilcox--some name like that; but he has been bankrupt
and dead these twenty years or more, and his name don't
matter. She had been laid up in Shadwell basin for ever
so long. You can imagine her state. She was all rust,
dust, grime--soot aloft, dirt on deck. To me it was
like coming out of a palace into a ruined cottage. She
was about 400 tons, had a primitive windlass, wooden
latches to the doors, not a bit of brass about her, and a
big square stern. There was on it, below her name in
big letters, a lot of scroll work, with the gilt off, and some
sort of a coat of arms, with the motto 'Do or Die' under-
neath. I remember it took my fancy immensely. There
was a touch of romance in it, something that made me
love the old thing--something that appealed to my
youth!

"We left London in ballast--sand ballast--to load a
cargo of coal in a northern port for Bankok. Bankok!
I thrilled. I had been six years at sea, but had only seen
Melbourne and Sydney, very good places, charming
places in their way--but Bankok!

"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with a
North Sea pilot on board. His name was Jermyn, and
he dodged all day long about the galley drying his hand-
kerchief before the stove. Apparently he never slept.
He was a dismal man, with a perpetual tear sparkling
at the end of his nose, who either had been in trouble, or
was in trouble, or expected to be in trouble--couldn't be
happy unless something went wrong. He mistrusted
my youth, my common-sense, and my seamanship, and
made a point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I