at the lascars with
their deck brooms, at the quartermasters rubbing the brass rails with
greasy rags; he was eager to shake his fist and roar abuse in bad Malay
at the poor carpenter--a timid, sickly, opium-fuddled Chinaman, in loose
blue drawers for all costume, who invariably dropped his tools and fled
below, with streaming tail and shaking all over, before the fury of that
"devil." But it was when he raised up his eyes to the bridge where one
of these sailor frauds was always planted by law in charge of his ship
that he felt almost dizzy with rage. He abominated them all; it was an
old feud, from the time he first went to sea, an unlicked cub with a
great opinion of himself, in the engine-room. The slights that had
been put upon him. The persecutions he had suffered at the hands of
skippers--of absolute nobodies in a steamship after all. And now that
he had risen to be a shipowner they were still a plague to him: he
had absolutely to pay away precious money to the conceited useless
loafers:--As if a fully qualified engineer--who was the owner as
well--were not fit to be trusted with the whole charge of a ship. Well!
he made it pretty warm for them; but it was a poor consolation. He had
come in time to hate the ship too for the repairs she required, for the
coal-bills he had to pay, for the poor beggarly freights she earned.
He would clench his hand as he walked and hit the rail a sudden blow,
viciously, as though she could be made to feel pain. And yet he could
not do without er; he needed her; he must hang on to her tooth and nail
to keep his head above water till the expected flood of fortune came
sweeping up and landed him safely on the high shore of his ambition.

It was now to do nothing, nothing whatever, and have plenty of money
to do it on. He had tasted of power, the highest form of it his limited
experience was aware of--the power of shipowning. What a deception!
Vanity of vanities! He wondered at his folly. He had thrown away the
substance for the shadow. Of the gratification of wealth he did not know
enough to excite his imagination with any visions of luxury. How
could he--the child of a drunken boiler-maker--going straight from the
workshop into the engine-room of a north-country collier! But the notion
of the absolute idleness of wealth he could very well conceive. He
reveled in it, to forget his present troubles; he imagined himself
walking about the streets of Hull (he knew their gutters well as a b