Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of photographs;
for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old
women of the lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was the means
of our crowning discovery.
“They're not pretty, are they, Mr. Dodd?” said Nares, as he passed it
over.
“Who?” I asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate)
in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been
laborious, and I was wearying for bed.
“Trent and Company,” said he. “That's a historic picture of the gang.”
I held it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain
Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph
of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the
hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. At the foot of
the card was written “Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon,” and a date; and above
or below each individual figure the name had been carefully noted.
As I continued to gaze, a shock went through me; the dimness of sleep
and fatigue lifted from my eyes, as fog lifts in the channel; and I
beheld with startled clearness the photographic presentment of a crowd
of strangers. “J. Trent, Master” at the top of the card directed me to
a smallish, weazened man, with bushy eyebrows and full white beard,
dressed in a frock coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his
button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with
habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks,
but plenty of the martinet: a dry, precise man, who might pass for a
preacher in some rigid sect; and whatever he was, not the Captain
Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an
unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on
the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest
curiosity to the figure labelled “E. Goddedaal, 1st off.” He whom I had
never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring
of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a
detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a viking,
his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous
whiskers, like the tusks of some strange animal, jutting from his
cheeks. With these virile appendages and the defiant attitude in which
he stood, the expression of his face only imperfectly harmonised. It was
wild, heroic, and womanish looking; and I felt I was prepared to hear he
was a sentimentalist, and to see him weep.
For some while I digested my discovery in private, reflecting how best,
and how with most of drama, I might share it with the captain. Then my
sketch-book came in my head; and I fished it out from where it lay, with
other miscellaneous possessions, at the foot of my bunk and turned to
my sketch of Captain Trent and the survivors of the British brig Flying
Scud in the San Francisco bar-room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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