Realizing that it is his fault because he told the men to abandon the watch, the captain tries to reel the ladder in but is met with more resistance than he expected. He is worried because he is on a "ship of which I knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more." While he is smoking a cigar, in his nightclothes, the captain realizes that a rope ladder is still hanging down one side of the ship. While unusual and the men are surprised, they go to bed leaving the captain alone with his thoughts. Throughout the whole conversation, the captain emphasizes to the reader that he was both " a stranger to the ship" and "a stranger to myself."Īs the crew begins to leave, the captain directs the chief mate to let all "hands turn in without setting an anchor watch." Instead, because the men were tired and had been working hard, the captain himself would take the anchor watch. He learned this information from the tugboat skipper, when he came onboard the ship to deliver mail. The second mate, however, interrupts and says that the ship's name is Sephora and she carries coal. The chief mate begins to speculate on how the boat came to be there, his conclusion being that she was a ship from home lately arrived. While eating dinner, he mentions seeing the ship off of the coast. The sun sets and the captain descends to his quarters, along with his mates. The captain watches, almost regretfully, as the tug ship leaves him alone on his ship in the middle of complete silence, "an immense stillness." While he is alone on board, the captain sees another ship in the distance, something that he is extremely surprised to encounter. On the left, the captain sees a cluster of rocky islets and on his right, two clumps of tress mark the river's mouth and puffs of smoke show the path of the tug ship that recently guided the ship down the river. The narrator, a nameless young captain who has only been in charge of the ship for a fortnight, stands onboard his ship, gazing off the side of the vessel. The story begins on a nameless ship, anchored at the mouth of the River Meinam in the Gulf of Siam.
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