The Black Mate

(1884)

A good many years ago there were several ships loading at the Jetty,
London Dock. I am speaking here of the 'eighties of the last century, of
the time when London had plenty of fine ships in the docks, though not
so many fine buildings in its streets.

The ships at the Jetty were fine enough; they lay one behind the other;
and the __Sapphire__, third from the end, was as good as the rest of
them, and nothing more. Each ship at the Jetty had, of course, her chief
officer on board. So had every other ship in dock.

The policeman at the gates knew them all by sight, without being able to
say at once, without thinking, to what ship any particular man belonged.
As a matter of fact, the mates of the ships then lying in the London
Dock were like the majority of officers in the Merchant Service--a
steady, hard-working, staunch, un-romantic-looking set of men,
belonging to various classes of society, but with the professional stamp
obliterating the personal characteristics, which were not very marked
anyhow.

This last was true of them all, with the exception of the mate of the
_Sapphire_. Of him the policemen could not be in doubt. This one had a
presence.

He was noticeable to them in the street from a great distance; and when
in the morning he strode down the Jetty to his ship, the lumpers and
the dock labourers rolling the bales and trundling the cases of cargo on
their hand-trucks would remark to each other:

"Here's the black mate coming along."

That was the name they gave him, being a gross lot, who could have no
appreciation of the man's dignified bearing. And to call him black was
the superficial impressionism of the ignorant.

Of course, Mr. Bunter, the mate of the _Sapphire_, was not black. He was
no more black than you or I, and certainly as white as any chief mate
of a ship in the whole of the Port of London. His complexion was of the
sort that did not take the tan easily; and I happen to know that
the poor fellow had had a month's illness just before he joined the
_Sapphire_.

From this you will perceive that I knew Bunter. Of course I knew
him. And, what's more, I knew his secret at the time, this secret
which--never mind just now. Returning to Bunter's personal appearance,
it was nothing but ignorant prejudice on the part of the foreman
stevedore to say, as he did in my hearing: "I bet he's a furriner of
some sort." A man may have black hair without being set down for a Dago.
I have known a West-country sailor, boatswain of a fine ship, who looked
more Spanish than any Spaniard afloat I've ever met. He looked like a
Spaniard in a picture.

Competent authorities tell us that this earth is to be finally the