’The authorities were evidently of the same
opinion. The inquiry was not adjourned.
It was held on the appointed day to satisfy the law,
and it was well attended because of its human interest,
no doubt. There was no incertitude as to facts—as
to the one material fact, I mean. How the Patna
came by her hurt it was impossible to find out; the
court did not expect to find out; and in the whole
audience there was not a man who cared. Yet,
as I’ve told you, all the sailors in the port
attended, and the waterside business was fully represented.
Whether they knew it or not, the interest that drew
them here was purely psychological—the
expectation of some essential disclosure as to the
strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions.
Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed.
The examination of the only man able and willing to
face it was beating futilely round the well-known
fact, and the play of questions upon it was as instructive
as the tapping with a hammer on an iron box, were
the object to find out what’s inside. However,
an official inquiry could not be any other thing.
Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial
how, of this affair.
’The young chap could have told them, and, though
that very thing was the thing that interested the
audience, the questions put to him necessarily led
him away from what to me, for instance, would have
been the only truth worth knowing. You can’t
expect the constituted authorities to inquire into
the state of a man’s soul—or is it
only of his liver? Their business was to come
down upon the consequences, and frankly, a casual
police magistrate and two nautical assessors are not
much good for anything else. I don’t mean
to imply these fellows were stupid. The magistrate
was very patient. One of the assessors was a
sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a
pious disposition. Brierly was the other.
Big Brierly. Some of you must have heard of Big
Brierly—the captain of the crack ship of
the Blue Star line. That’s the man.
’He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust
upon him. He had never in his life made a mistake,
never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check
in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those
lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much
less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one
of the best commands going in the Eastern trade—and,
what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had.
There was nothing like it in the world, and I suppose
if you had asked him point-blank he would have confessed
that in his opinion there was not such another commander.
The choice had fallen upon the right man. The
rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot
steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures.
He had saved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress,
had a gold chronometer presented to him by the underwriters,
and a pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription
