کاپیتان مک‌ویر

CHAPTER ONE

Captain MacWhirr

‘There’s some bad weather out there.’ Captain MacWhirr said to himself, looking at the barometer.

He was a quiet man, who never looked for trouble, and rarely found it. When he talked, which was not often, he used few words. This made some people think that he was not so clever. He had blue eyes, not much hair on top of his head - with thin yellow hair around the back and sides, and thick red hair on his face.

He had a strong, thick, short body. On shore - it didn’t matter where - he always wore the same brown hat, brown suit, and heavy black boots. But everyone who worked with him knew that he was a good captain. Ships under his command arrived on time, and he never had trouble with his crews.

When he was fifteen, MacWhirr ran away from home in Ireland to be a sailor. He didn’t tell his mother and father - who had a shop in Belfast - where he was until eight months later, when he sent them a letter from Chile.

Year after year he worked on different ships, and didn’t go home very often. But he wrote many letters home from all over the world. They were short, and always gave news about the weather: ‘It’s very hot here’ or ‘On Christmas Day at four o’clock in the afternoon it was very cold.’

In time he met a young woman that he liked. Her name was Lucy, but he did not have time to write much about her to his mother and father, because they died. MacWhirr married Lucy not long after he was given his first job as the captain of a ship.

The Nan-Shan was three years old and was made in Dumbarton, in Scotland. She was a fine, strong ship, neither too narrow nor too deep, and good in stormy weather.

At first the Nan-Shan sailed under a British flag, but then the owner, Mr Sigg, decided that it would be better to change to the old Thai flag. This was red with a big, white elephant in the middle of it. Jukes, the first mate, felt uncomfortable sailing under Thai colours.

‘It looks strange to me, that flag with the elephant on it,’ he said to Captain MacWhirr. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ replied Captain MacWhirr, looking up at the flag. ‘You just have to make sure that the crew put it the right way up.’

Jukes wasn’t happy with the captain’s answer. Later, down on deck, he told Solomon Rout about it. Rout, taking time out from the engine room, was the chief engineer.

He was a tall, fatherly man, and often listened - smiling - to young Jukes’s stories.

‘I can’t understand the captain,’ said Jukes. ‘You say one thing to him, and he takes it another way. I was ready to leave my job because we’re now sailing under that Thai flag. But all he could say was that you had to put it up the right way.’

‘And did you leave your job?’ asked Rout, smiling. After many years’ work on ships all over the world, Rout knew how important it was to have - and not to lose - a good job.

‘No, I didn’t,’ replied Jukes. He felt a little angry with himself because he talked of it but didn’t do it.

‘Rout!’ said the captain, arriving just then.

‘Yes, sir!’ Rout replied.

‘We’re sailing for Fu-chau this afternoon. The engines must be ready for one o’clock. And Jukes!’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘We’re taking two hundred Chinese labourers with us. They’re arriving in about twenty minutes. During the day, they can stay on deck, and at night they’ll sleep in the hold. Make sure that there’s room for them and their boxes.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jukes. And with that the captain went to his room, and Rout and Jukes hurried away to do their work.

The two hundred Chinese workers were going back to their villages after seven years of work away from home. They all wore the same dark clothes, and each one carried a little box which was made of wood.

In this box was everything that they had in the world, and all their work money. Each one kept his box near him at all times. When they came onto the Nan-Shan, Jukes told them where to go.

Because the Chinese labourers couldn’t speak English very well, he explained everything very loudly and slowly to them: ‘You sleep here. You cook food here, and here you eat. In fine weather, you can come up, walk on deck, and enjoy the sea air.’ Did the Chinese workers understand him? Their tired faces didn’t show what they were really thinking, so it was difficult to be sure.

In four hours the ship would leave for Fu-chau. There was just time to write to family and friends, and MacWhirr, Rout and Jukes all wanted to send letters before leaving.

MacWhirr’s letter was to his wife. Spending so much time at sea, Captain MacWhirr didn’t understand his wife and their two children - Lydia and Tom - very well. He knew little about their lives, and had little to tell them about his life.

Lucy MacWhirr usually didn’t read her husband’s letters very carefully: they spoke about the weather, the sea, and other things that she didn’t really find very interesting. Her one great worry was that one day he would come back, and want to live at home with her all the time.

So she read his letters looking for any words about that. Remember me to the children. Your loving husband, wrote MacWhirr, before he put his name at the bottom.

Rout’s letters were much fuller, and his wife always enjoyed reading them. She lived with Rout’s mother, who couldn’t hear very well, and needed help. And she often read the really interesting parts of her husband’s letters very loudly to the old woman.

I prefer a slow captain who does no wrong to a quick-thinking criminal one. They’re easier to work with, wrote Rout to his wife, thinking of MacWhirr.

Jukes always wrote to a friend of his - a sailor on another ship - and he usually described everything that happened in his life, and how he thought and felt about it.

In this letter he wrote: The other day I was talking with one of the crew for a while, and later the captain asked me: ‘Was that you talking?’ I said, ‘Yes.’

‘For two hours!’ he said. ‘What do you find to talk about?’ When we’re on shore I see people talking all day, and then in the evening they go on talking over drinks. Surely they’re saying the same things over again. I can’t understand it.’ Isn’t he a strange man?

Sometimes he makes me angry, and sometimes I feel sorry for him - because I think that he doesn’t really understand anything of life at all.

After the three writers finished and posted their letters, the Nan-Shan was ready to go on her way.