Perceval Gibbon

“ You don't see many like him nowadays."
Mr. Gowan agreed. He had served with the late captain of the Chandos for several years and knew him exhaustively. It had not been an easy service, for the old man had added to the infirmities of his age a petulance and ill humor that lived in the mate's memory like a bad taste in the mouth. Even as he answered the pilot he had in mind the spare figure with its thin raw neck, the voice of rasping complaint and the cold uncertain eyes of the dead captain. ”

“ Gowan made a trumpet of his hands. The salt-sea roar woke the echoes along the dock. "Man overboard!" it sounded, reverberating along the quays. "Boat wanted! Man overboard!"
Behind him Proctor made sounds like whimpering. "They won't be in time," he was crying. "They won't be in time."
Gowan jerked him away with a sweep of his arm. "Out of the road!" he cried, and his coat, as he flung it off, took the younger man in the face. He had not time for his inarticulate protest before Gowan went overboard, head first, from the wing of the bridge. ”

“ I was thinking that minute of taking him in my two hands and heaving him into the dock. He's got a voice like an ashhoist; it simply jars a man to be talked to in his fashion."
Mrs. Gowan made some soft noise; the mate shook his head.
"If I left now who's to say when I'd get a ship?" he said. "But Captain Sleeman's the limit. Looks just like a landsman to me; I tell you he's the livin' image of a shipchandler's tout. He went over the papers in the chartroom. ”

“ Proctor!" cried Gowan. "No, the captain's ashore. Come in, sir; I've got some coffee coming."
"Right," said Proctor. "Jove! This coaldust is beastly. How's the loading getting along?"
He was a man of thirty, tall, serious and carelessly agreeable. The captains and officers in the firm's employ liked him for his mere humanity. "You can say what you mean to Proctor, and he'll tell you to go to blazes yourself," they said of him.
"Coal doesn't come very quick," Gowan told him. "There's forty trucks due now. Did you want to see the captain himself or is it something I can handle for you?" ”

“ His large pink face was upturned as he climbed, and it was subdued already to the sort of solemnity that men put on at a funeral. As he came over the rail and lowered himself to the deck there was that in his movements which suggested a man moving on tiptoe.
"He'd know, of course," reflected Mr. Gowan, walking across to the head of the bridge ladder to receive him.
In the chartroom, through whose open door they could see the boat working down to the cutter again, the pilot spoke across the rim of his tumbler.
"And so the old captain's gone," he said. "Well, it's what happens to all of us. ”

“ They talked of him. "I've got a real mate at last," one of them used to say. "I only go to sea for the look of the thing; the mate's the boss." But Captain Sleeman was slow to such perceptions. Instead of staying ashore while the Chandos lay in dock, taking the dignified ease proper to a master and commander, he moved into his cabin and lived on board. There could be no doubt about his capability; Gowan was too good a seaman to fail to do him credit. The captain thrust Gowan to one side, made him of no account, interfered with his arrangements, ordered him about in his harsh, querulous way ”

“ He's got whiskers and a beard like thin white silk, you know; you can see the curves of his jaw through them. A clean, pink old man; he's rich and he looks rich. He lifted his head as I came in, so mild and soft you could almost kiss him. ”