"Day broke, and the after-swell still tumbled us heavily: but nowhere within the great ring of horizon did it heave one of the other boats into sight. The sea smoothed itself down with a quite wonderful rapidity, and still its great surface was a blank."
"I cannot somehow believe that so able a handler of his boat as I knew Captain Macnaughten to be allowed himself to be swamped in that gale. His orders had been to carry on and only heave-to upon signal. Jarvis—who (as I have said) could sail our boat running by the feel of her, maintained that we had never been in the worst of danger, that the skipper could sail a boat for ten to his own one, that he had just held on, in his straight way, upon the orders he had given, and left us at the back of the horizon while we fenced seas under Grimalson's orders.
"Since nothing apparently has been heard since of those other boats, I shall go on hoping that Jarvis was wrong, and that Captain Macnaughten's boat and Mr. Ingpen's, in one way or another, met with a short sharp end in that gale.
"But if they did last it out and over the horizon to drag it out and die and never be reported to Lloyd's, then I, who know the sort of things they must have suffered, assure you, who have read them accurately reported in books, that whenever or wherever Captain James Macnaughten perished, the Recording Angel has him entered up for a seaman and a gentleman."
"One must use ugly words for ugly things.
"Grimalson, staring—as we all stared—over the blank sea, vomited the natural man within him in some fourteen or fifteen words for which he was never forgiven by any of us.
"'Gone, by Gosh! And that bloody old fool was teachingmeto handle a boat!'
"All heard it. Not a soul spoke. I glanced at Jarvis in time to catch the twitch of his mouth—one of those twitches I used to study in angry dogs, and snapshot and measure: but he continued to gaze across the waters. After half a minute or so he glanced at me, looked seaward again, and observed quietly, 'It don't seem probable they would run mast-down in the time. And yet I don't know: 'twas blowing powerful fresh just after midnight. Hull-down, a boat might easily be; and supposing sail lowered, what's a boat's mast better to pick up than a needle in a bottle o' hay?—let be they might be dismasted. There was weather enough. And No. 1 carried a bamboo— which is never to be trusted, if you askme.'
"'Who the devil's asking you?' demanded Grimalson.
"'Nobody, sir,' the seaman answered, respectfully, but without turning his head. 'Words spoken in a l'il boat like this be for anybody's hearin'; and anybody's heard or no, accordin' as they choose.'
"'Well then,' Grimalson retorted, 'I happen to be boss here aboard, and I don't choose. So drop you that, prompt, and start baling her.'
"'One moment, Mr. Grimalson—' I began. But he took me up quicker than he had taken Jarvis.
"'Dear me, now!' he snarled in a foolish sarcastic way. 'And who may this be that I have the honour of addressing?—Captain Macnaughten's ghost? or his next-of-kin, belike? Or may be his deputy understudy?—with yourOne moment, please?… You sit down on that thwart there, and don't you dare open your face again until I give you leave.… That was the old fool's way withme—hey? And now you recognise it.'
"'I do,' said I, pulling out my revolver. 'You may quit fumbling in your pocket, for it's wringing wet and these cartridges are dry, as I have assured myself.…Yousit down onthatthwart, and don't you dare open your face until I give you leave to get up and wash it. That'syourtrick of speech, and maybe you recognise it."
"As I covered him, Jarvis touched my elbow. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but you're a gentleman and a passenger, and Mr. Grimalson's our senior officer, when all's said,andin command.… I'm not talkin' about the rights of it nor the wrongs of it,' Jarvis went on, as I still held the revolver levelled:' but 'tis flat mutiny you're committing; and me and my mates'll have to range up on the side of order. Whereby you'll be no match for us.… Oh, sir,' he pleaded, 'let up with quarrelling, and let's all die decent, if we must, when the time comes—and with a lady in the boat!'
"'Thank you, Jarvis,' said I; and lowering my revolver drew out the cartridges pretty deliberately. 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Grimalson. I shall not, on any provocation, interfere with you again. But before you start baling the boat, I'll ask you to note that the third water-breaker is stove, and it was the only full one. Saltish this water may be, but nine-tenths of it is honest rain from heaven.'
"'My God, sir, and it's truth!' verified one of the seamen who had scrambled forward. The full breaker had jerked loose from its lashings and lay awash under the bowman's thwart: worse—it had loosed the other two, and these, floating light, had washed away overboard and gone out of ken.
"Grimalson stood up, slightly dazed. In the rock of the boat he seemed to be shifting his weight deliberately from foot to foot.
"'Why didn't one of you report?' he shouted, in a fury at which I smiled; it being so senseless and at the same time so cunning, as a ruse to let him arise with dignity from the thwart. 'Why didn't somebody report?' he repeated in an absurd official manner, quite as though he had been a station-master interrogating a group of porters on the whereabouts of a missing parcel.
"'Well, sir,' I answered as politely as possible; 'it was I that first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before it ran amuck to do further damage. In securing it I found that it had lost its bung and was almost empty: but that hardly seemed worth mentioning, with such a flood of rainwater washing around. There was nothing to be done at the moment; the breaker in a way was refilling itself, as soon as I had it jammed, by the water washing over it; and, after a bit, judging it full or nearly full, I ripped off a corner of my oily and made a sort of bung, as you see."
"All this had, in fact, cost me some labour, and I related it, no doubt, a bit too complacently. Worse, I rounded it up by saying, 'The captain, sir, was more anxious about the water than anything, as he told me yesterday.'
"At this his temper boiled over—yet not (as I could see) until he had flung a glance at Jarvis and the crew, to make sure they were submissive still to the old habit of discipline. 'Macnaughten was always full of wisdom,' he sneered; '—so full that he's dead of it! … And so you didn't think it worth mentioning?'
"Do you know, Roddy, I didn't think the fool worth any further attention.… One can't really hate two men at one time… at any rate,Ican't. It's too fatiguing. There sat Farrell, three feet away, looking dazed, as he'd looked ever since theEurotaswent under. As for this Grimalson, I didn't reckon him worth powder and shot. I knew that he would bluster before the men, to save his face, and then climb down. To secure the water on board was such an obvious measure that, bluster as he might, he couldn't miss coming to it finally.… I heard Jarvis explaining that an empty pork-tub, with a tarpauling inside of it, would hold quite a deal of the rainwater washing above the bottom-boards. I took no more trouble than to turn my back on Grimalson, who was arguing that all this water was mucking the dry provisions.
"'They're pretty well mucked already, sir, by the looks of 'em,' answered Jarvis: 'all but the canned meats, and few enough they are. Five cans, as I counted the last stowage.'
"'Oh, very well, then,' came the order which I had known to be inevitable. 'Run a tarpauling inside of that cask—and bale, you, Prout and Martinez!'
"And so, behind my back and almost as I shrugged my shoulders—so, within twenty minutes of the sunrise that told us we were eight human beings isolated from all help but that which we could afford to one another—in a casual, unpremeditated stroke the curse fell on us.
"The seaman Martinez, kneeling in water, was asking, rather helplessly, for someone to pass him a baler or invent one—our regulation dipper having gone overboard in the gale. It was a silly, useless question: but Grimalson, already rattled, swung round upon a man he knew to be weak. 'Damn me!' cried he in a gust of rage, 'if I can't teach it to doctors, I'll teachseamenwho gives orders here!' and snatching out a marling-spike from a sheath in his belt, hurled it full at the seaman's head.
"The act was brutal enough in itself; for the iron, though a light one, was full heavy enough, flung with that force, to lay a man out. It did worse: for Martinez, instead of ducking his head, made a spring to his feet, putting out his hands much as if fielding a cricket-ball. The marling-spike, miss-aimed, struck the thwart in front of him, turned point up with the ricochet, and plunged into his thigh. As I splashed forward to his help, blood came creeping, staining the water around my ankles. The steel point had pierced slantwise through his femoral artery.
"Well, I was quick: and Santa was quick, too—tearing in strips the damp pillow-case on which her head rested of nights when it wasn't resting against Farrell's shoulder. (But notthisnight, I thought as I worked—not this blessed night just passed!) With the pillow-case and the very spike that had done the mischief I made a good firm tourniquet and saved Martinez's life for the time.
"But he had lost a lot of blood. All the drinking water awash in the boat was foul with it, and this bloodied flood was running, as the boat rocked, in and out among our small bags of pork and ship-bread. My job ended, I looked aft. Farrell was leaning over the gunwale in uncontrollable nausea. The face of Prout at the tiller, was dogged but inexpressive. Grimalson stood like a man dazed.
"'Will he live?' he asked, his eyes meeting mine. 'Of course I never intended—'
"'It wasn't a very pretty thing to do, was it?' I answered quietly.
"'Well, this settles it,' said he, staring down at the water. 'We must clean out this filthy mess and overhaul the stores.'
"'Andthen?' I asked.
"'Oh, it'll rain,' said he, affecting confidence. 'It rained for a hundred last night, didn't it? We've run south of the dry latitudes and soon we'll be getting more rain than we've any use for. There's the small keg of rum, too.… Great thing as we're situated,' the fool continued, 'is to keep everyone in heart. And anyway I don't stomach water with blood in it—specially Dago blood.… Jarvis and Webster, fall to baling: and you, Prout, hand us over the tiller and dig out something for breakfast.'
"I had found a plug of tobacco in my pocket and seated myself to slice it: and as I cut it upon my palm, my eyes fell on Farrell's yet-heaving shoulders.… Of a sudden then it came upon me that, even with the luck we'd carried, men can't go through seven days and eight nights in an open boat and emerge quite sane. Macnaughten had put up a gallant, a magnificent pretence. 'The Old Man's Penny Readings,' as Grimalson had dubbed those evenings when the boats had closed up and the crews sang Moody and Sankey orMy Mary—'The Old Man's Penny Readings, or Pea-nuts on the Pacific'—had been just as grandly simple as anything in the Gospel. No: that's wrong—they had come straight out of the Gospel, a last chapter of it the skipper had found floating and recovered, and would carry up, a proud passport to his God.
"But Macnaughten was gone, and with him the whole lovely illusion. He had kept us in a nursery, separated from hell by a half-inch plank; and here we were all beasts, consigned to ravening and to die of unsatisfied bestial wants—yes, and commanded by a monkey-man who chattered of keeping everyone in heart!He!"
"So there it was. I told you, Roddy, that it all happened like a nightmare—or, if you prefer it, a composite photograph—of any dozen stories you can recall. Here are the facts; and I will try to give them succinctly, as in a police-report.
"We were eight in the boat:"
Grimalson.In command.Davis.A.B. Seaman.Prout.A.B. Seaman.Webster.Ordinary Seaman.Martinez.Ordinary Seaman.Farrell.Passenger.Santa.Passenger.and I.Passenger.
Grimalson.In command.Davis.A.B. Seaman.Prout.A.B. Seaman.Webster.Ordinary Seaman.Martinez.Ordinary Seaman.Farrell.Passenger.Santa.Passenger.and I.Passenger.
"Our victuals were:—4 lb. of pork (about) and 7 lb. of ship-bread, all messed with blood: 3 cans of potted meat, 2 of preserved fruit, one tin of sardines: for liquid, half a gallon of rum and, in the breaker, about 3 pints of water.
"We were, as we calculated, four hundred miles at least from any known land, and we had no chart on board: we might be within a hundred miles of the fringe of traffic.
"The sea was calm: the wind came in intermittent light draughts from the north. The sky was a great burning-glass, holding no hint of rain."
"Now from the very beginning—from the moment we left the ship—I knew that, if we were to perish of hunger or thirst before sighting help, I should be the last survivor. No; you needn't stare: it's perfectly simple.… I doubt if I ever told you that in the old days, when experimenting with the animals, I found that my will—or brain-power, if you prefer the term—worked torpidly for a while after meals, although, as you know, I was never what they call a hearty feeder. So I took to cutting down my rations. Then of course I discovered that this was all right enough up to a point, beyond which the stomach's craving made the brain irritable and impatient. So for a long time I let it go at that, and ate pretty frugally at fairly long stretches… until one day, in some book about Indian fakirs, I picked up a hint that if this interval of exhaustion were passed—if I stuck it out—my will might pick up its second wind, so to speak, and work more strongly than ever. I was curious enough, anyway, to give it a trial or two. The results didn't amount to much: but Ididdiscover that I had a rather exceptional capacity for fasting, and promised myself to practise it further, from time to time, as an experiment on my own vile body.
"But now we'll come to something more important. In the matter of thirst I had persevered: being, as you may remember, hot-foot upon rabies just then and the salivary glands.… Well, in the matter of thirst, I trained myself to do my three days easy without swallowing a drop. That last night you invited yourself to dinner— the night I first met Farrell, by the way—you unknowingly ended a four days' experiment. I told Jimmy Collingwood about it, the morning he breakfasted with me.…"
["I remember Jimmy's telling me something about it, in the taxi," I put in. "He said you were either the saviour or the curse of society—he wasn't clear which: wouldn't commit himself until he'd read your forthcoming treatise onThirst, Its Cause and Cure. He added that you were mistaken if you thought the topic non-controversial."]
"He needn't be afraid. . . Farrell smashed me up for good as a benefactor of my species.… I shall put up a brass plate in Harley Street and end my days as a pottering empiricist—Remember Jimmy's trouble with that word?—alleviating particular complaints for cash. If it hadn't been for Farrell—well, just you rememberthatwhen I stand up for judgment!…
"Anyhow, that infernal boat gave me all the personal experiment I wanted.… I promised not to tell you all about it.… Martinez went first, of course, being weak as water. He died muttering for water. Grimalson came next… two days later.
"But I shall go on telling you about myself. Physically I suffered very little, mentally a good deal at sight of the others' torments— but only from time to time. By the fourth day (the eleventh after theEurotaswent down) we were all more or less mad, I reckon. But my lunacy took the form of light-headedness with a strange, almost persistent, sense of exaltation. I kept my strength so much better than they that almost unconsciously they left most of the trimming and steering in my hands. And I sat and steered as a god, in a world blank of all but miserable happenings. I looked on Santa, and she was the woman I loved but should never enjoy. I looked on Farrell: and he washere, brought here byme. What worse woe could possibly lie in store for him than this agony over which I presided it was impossible to tell and hard indeed to imagine. But I did not want him to die. On the contrary, it was forhimthat I searched the horizon, that a ship might rescue us and he might live. I would see to the rest!
"They say that living with an enemy in a confinement such as ours, makes you hate him worse and worse.… It wasn't so with me. My hate, by this time, was set and annealed, so to speak; quite cold, and almost judicial. I had no more jealousy than Jove. The air that, to the others, quivered so damnably, so insufferably around the boat under a sky without shade, swam around me like incense.… As for Farrell, his eyes watched mine like a dog's.
"Oh, yes, we went through it all! I'll have to tell you about Grimalson (as shortly as possible, though), because Farrell gets mixed up in it, hereabouts. Even in their suffering, the three seamen—Jarvis, Prout, and Webster—had nursed poor Martinez almost tenderly; and I suppose, amid their mutterings forward, they had hatched out their form of protest. And it was fit for comic opera— ghastly comic opera—if you can imagine Lucifer sitting in the stalls.
"Noon of the third day it was—I count from the time of our losing the other two boats. We had lowered Martinez overboard about an hour before, and the seamen should have been preparing our diminutive ration. (Salt pork boiled in sea-water, if you can imagine it, Roddy!) I was steering: Santa sat a foot away, staring over the waters, sometimes bringing her attention back to a line which Grimalson had cast overboard, trying for a fish. Grimalson lounged on the after-thwart—facing me, as you might say, and with his back to the men, but lolling sideways over the gunwale. He felt the line with his left hand. Close by his right lay a useless gaff. He had exhausted our third and last tin of sardines for bait, without effect, and—what was worse—had drained the oil down his throat impudently, without an offer to share it. Also he had been drinking salt water—and I had not troubled to restrain him. Farrell I could hate, but this man was naught. Farrell lay on the bottom-boards at my feet, breathing stertorously, with his head in what shade Santa's gown and the side-sheets together afforded. But this fool seemed intent on baiting the Pacific with a plummet, a hook, and a lump of salt pork.
"As if this wasn't enough of grisly opera, of a sudden, in my light-headedness I saw the three men stand up, join hands solemnly in a sort of cat's cradle fashion, and advance aft, for all the world like a comic trio, with the after thwart for footlights. They came to a halt, close behind Grimalson, and—even as though I had ordered a burlesque—Jarvis cleared his parched throat painfully, very formally, and spoke across to me. You must picture the three, if you will, still holding hands while he spoke.
"'Doctor Foe, sir,' said Jarvis oratorically, 'me and my mates, not knowing the law, but being wishful to behave conformable as British seamen, have cast it up together. And we allow 'tis no mutiny, being situated as we are, to say as this Martinez was a shipmate, when all's said and done, though a Dago, and Mr. Grimalson, meaning no disrespect, done him to death by bloody murder. Which, consequently, attaching no blame, we three, as loyal British seamen, two A.B. and one ordinary, and giving our opinion for what it is worth, hold that Mr. Grimalson was probably off his chump when he done it, and hasn't behaved subsequently in a way to inspire confidence in a crew left as we are. Whereby, Doctor Foe, not having pen and ink handy to make a round robin of it, we hereby respectfully depose Mr. Grimalson, and request of you to take over command of this craft, trusting you to be a gentleman and being well aware of the consequences and ready to face 'em. The others having saidAmen, we'll consider the matter finished.'
"There's farce somewhere in every tragedy, Roddy. Here, against the glare on the Pacific, it challenged all doom, broad and unashamed. I need hardly tell you that Grimalson, at the opening of this harangue, had dropped his fishing-line, clutched his gaff, and whirled about furiously. But he faced three determined men, and Webster's loose hand played with a revolver. Twice or thrice Grimalson essayed to interrupt; but Jarvis was a man with a prepared speech: and, backed by Webster's free hand, he delivered it straight out at me to the last word over Grimalson's shoulder.
"Then, as he concluded, there ensued the beastliest scene of all. Grimalson, from facing these three slow, determined men, took a swift turn right about and struck at me with the gaff. They clutched at him and he faced about again, dropping the gaff, springing to the thwart and hitting right and left. Webster sprang also to the thwart and landed him a stunner on the point of the jaw which sent him overboard from the rocking boat.
"Now Webster was, in ordinary life, a religious man, and a Methodist. At sight of what he had done he ran to the boat's side, making ineffectual grabs to recover the body, which floated for a moment or two, with the senseless hands afloat or spread on the waters, as if in ghastly benediction. And then, as I put up helm, as if hauled down on a line, the trunk and head disappeared from view and a bloody smear came up, oozing and spreading. Jarvis called out that he had seen a shark's fin.
"I did not see it, being occupied in rounding up the boat to recover the body: doing this, too, with my left hand, in no small pain. For Grimalson's stroke with the gaff had lacerated my right fore-arm, tearing away a strip of my rolled-up shirt-sleeve.
"And then.… My God, Roddy!—Farrell, who had roused himself up at the scrimmage, had his mouth fastened on my arm, mad with thirst, sucking the blood! Oh, you have to go through these things to understand!… And I said I wouldn't tell.… I beat at him; but it was Santa who pushed him off.
"Webster had sunk, sobbing, with his face on his hands that gripped the gunwale. We were all mad. I held out my bleeding fore-arm to Santa, who was tearing a bandage for it.
"'Your husband has drunk,' I said.
"'Ah, pity!' said she, softly, taking the first deft turn of the bandage. 'Must you, too, be a beast?'
"Jarvis, meanwhile, like a man dulled to all tragedy had gone to the boat's side and was hauling in Grimalson's futile line. He brought up the sinker.
"'God help us all!—there's hope yet!' he barked through his parched throat, and held up the sinker all clothed about and clogged with greenish-brown shore-weed."
"That night, as I was steering, I heard a sound as of a bucket dipped over the bows. Needless to say, we had hoisted no lantern on the forestay since the night the other boats had driven away from us or gone down. To help a vessel to pick us up on that expanse of water it would have been about as useful as the tail of a glow-worm—and moreover the crewhad drunk all the oil.
"I had the sheet well out and was running under a light, lazy night-waft of breeze. A thin moon was setting somewhere behind my right shoulder, and the glimmer of it played on the canvas.… I had supposed all the others to be sunk in merciful sleep, when Webster stood up and, staggering forward, ducked under the foot of the sail, which at once hid him from me.… When I heard theplunkof a bucket—as I supposed—it suggested at the worst that here was another fool dosing himself mad on sea-water; and, as values counted by this time, it was not worth while to awake four other souls to consciousness and misery for the sake of preventing him. … And then the man's face went swimming past me, upturned to the moonlight, momentarily sinking as I grabbed at his beard which floated up like seaweed.… I grabbed, and missed. God knows what I should have done had my fingers tangled themselves in that beard, to get a clutch on it.
"He had slipped himself overboard, to drown quietly.… And we were now five, and Prout was plainly a dying man. (I'd have you note, Roddy, the order in which the men on board went; for it rather curiously backs up my theory that there's ever so much more vitality in what we call brains than in what we call physique.) Martinez was a weakling, of poor breed: Grimalson, big as bull's beef, had a brain rotten as a pear: Webster, a docile fellow, was strong as Hercules and surprisingly stupid. These were gone, in their order. The two A.B.'s, Jarvis and Prout—canny men, resourceful, full of seamanship—survived, and we three passengers. What kept Farrell going, and saved his reason, was a great capacity for sleep. He slept all the night and most of the day; and though by consequence he helped us little or nothing, seemed (as he declared himself to be) constantly dog-tired. His momentary ferocity, when he fastened on my bleeding forearm, had been a gust only, and after it he sank deeper and deeper into drowsiness. As for Santa—frankly, I don't know. They tell us that women sleep more lightly than men, and can endure suffering far more patiently—which some explain by saying that their nerves are less sensitive to pain, and (I suppose therefore) to pleasure. But I don't know: I have never studied the subject. She sat very quiet, sometimes for hours together, without stirring; but she took very little actual sleep.
"The end of Jarvis and Prout was one of those inhuman, ghastly farces which, as I've said, break the spell of a sudden and are worse than the tragedy itself. They had struck up a quaint, almost canine friendship—Yes, that's the word, though I can't stop to explain what I mean by it more than by saying that they would sit together by the hour, like two dogs before a fire. The odd thing about it was that they had twice been shipwrecked before on the coast; and had come through the double experience respecting one another as capable seamen but forming no attachment until—But it's ludicrous past guessing. On the second day in the boat it was discovered by a chance word that they had a common acquaintance in 'Frisco: and he wasn't much of a friend either. I never heard his name right and full, and I doubt if they knew it. They called him Uncle Tibe, and I gathered from their earlier conversations that he was a Jewish dealer in marine stores and a money-lender; of mature years; and afflicted with a chronic and most Christian thirst, which he alleviated by methods derived from the earliest patriarchs of his race. Of these his favourite was to attach himself to some young seaman with money in his pocket and, having insinuated concurrently the undoubted truths that he possessed great wealth but was averse to spending it (even on Scotch 'smokes'), to insinuate further that the victim had to an extraordinary degree crept into the affections of a childless old man,—yea, might hope indeed, by attentions which in practice worked out to ordering whisky and adding 'Make it two,' to inherit his real and personal estate.
"Silly as you like!—But the discovery that each had been hoaxed by Uncle Tibe, and the comparison of their foolish experiences, with reported tales of the dupes yet more heavily befooled and bled, caught and bound these men in fellowship. They had both met with some queer ones in their travels, and they compared notes: but they always came back to this superlative old fraud. After long wise and disconnected talk about the set of the wind, or the rates of pay on various lines, or stowage, or freights, or rigs, or currents, or the characters of various skippers and mates, or the liveliness or sulkiness or homeliness or fickleness of this or that kind of cargo, they would revert extra-professionally to Uncle Tibe: of whom the old stories would be repeated over and over, with long pauses, chuckles, slow appreciations—'Ay, Tibe!… He was a none-such, if you like!'
"Will you believe me that, in the end, these two honest fellows murdered each other over this more-than-half-mythical Tibe? No, you can't guess what it's like, towards the finish. They sat side by side on the mid-thwart, fishing over either gunwale—or leaning over, pretending. They were almost too weak to haul in a fish over four pounds had they caught one, and for two days their throats had been parched so that speech came with difficulty. Of a sudden Jarvis let out 'Tibe!' with a sort of ghostly cackle, and Prout cackled 'Tibe!' in an echo even thinner.… And, with that Jarvis stood up and started raving of what he would do when the money came to him, as he allowed it would, after all. Mighty queer ways of spending wealth he mentioned, too, before Prout was up and, yelling at him for a thief and supplanter, drove at his throat with a knife. He missed: but the next instant, these two fond friends, whose friendship had fenced us others off almost as strangers, were wallowing and knifing one another on the bottom-boards,—all over the visionary legacy of a Jew, thousands of miles away, whose picking of their pockets had been their common reminiscence and their standing joke through days of horror! And political economists used to tell us that money is a medium and symbol of exchange!"
"Well, after that we were three in the boat, and I was the only one strong enough to heft the bodies overboard. If they could only have held on to their wits for another twenty-four hours, or even for twelve!
"When I had done this work, and redded up the boat, I looked rather anxiously at Santa, who had been watching me: for I feared the effect this scene of shambles might have upon her. She sat, with Farrell's head resting against her knee, and still gazed unmoved.… Then I knew why. She had passed beyond these vain phenomena. Her eyes saw them and saw them not.… She was dying.
"Yet she sat erect. She even smiled, very faintly, and made a feeble motion of the hand towards her guitar-case, which I had lifted out of the reach of the blood and set on the seat at a little distance from her. Then I understood that shehadseen, after all.… For I must tell you that, in the early days, Santa's playing and singing had brought great cheer to the crews, and our boat was envied for carrying this music. But there had come a day when Jarvis and Prout sent aft very respectfully to beg that there might be no more of it, for it dragged across their raw nerves: and from that hour the guitar had lain in its case. It could be set free now.
"I took it out, and she half held out her arms for it, as a mother might for her newly-born child.… But she would never play on it again. The strings were all loose but one, and that one broken. She had no strength, and I no skill, to re-tune the thing.
"But she thanked me in a sort of throaty whisper, and sat for a while letting the neck of the guitar lie against her shoulder, while her left hand went up to clasp it and finger it in the old way. And her right hand lifted itself once or twice towards the sounding-hole, but dropped back to her lap.
"'You are very good to me,' she said, after some seconds, still in the same whisper. 'Why is it that you hate Pete so?' Then, as I did not answer, she went on, 'I am dying, I think. It would be quite safe to tell me, now.'
"'When two men love one woman—' I began. But she shook her head, and her eyes accused me. Santa had very beautiful eyes, and in this agony they were perhaps deeper in colour and more beautiful than ever. But they had changed, somehow.… I cannot explain it but they recalled another pair of eyes… another woman's.… Whose?… I don't know! My mother's, maybe. She died, you know, when I was quite a small boy.… Anyway, these eyes quite suddenly looked at me out of the past—out of my memory, as it were. They were Santa's and yet they were not Santa's.…
"'Ah,' said she, 'do not lie to me, now! It hurts so!'
"'Well, then,' I told her, 'your husband once, back in the past, did me a very great wrong. It—well, it wrecked the work of my life, and I have never forgiven it. Now let us talk no more about it.'
"A look of relief, almost a happy look, dawned on her face. 'Iknewit was not about me! For I saw your two faces when you met on the hill, under my porchway.… Do you know that, at moments, you are very much alike?… Oh, in general, of course, there is no likeness at all.… But at certain moments.… And it was so when you met, there on the hill: I had to look from one to the other. It was plain in that instant that you hated one another—yes, and it might have been for a long time… ages and ages. But it could not have been about me, for you had not set eyes on me but within the minute.… I am glad, anyway, that it is not for my sake that you hate.'
"Her words came in faint, hurrying wafts, much as for days the wind had been ruffling after us. The sunset struck slantwise across her cheek and hung entangled in the brown tress that drooped low by her right temple. I tell you, Roddy, that if the old gods and goddesses in our school-books ever turned out to be mortal after all, she was one, and thus looked, and spoke as she died.…
"'I understand well enough,' she went on, 'the small things over which women quarrel.… Though they all seem very far away just now, I was a woman and could be jealous overany of them. But I never understood whymenquarrelled, except for me, of course. … Was it over your work, do you tell me?'
"'Surely,' said I, 'a man's work—'
"'Yes. I know that it is so,' she answered me with a small sigh. 'Do you know that, far back, I come down from the Incas? and I dare say they thought less of work than of other things.… It is all thanks to your working that we three are alive, now.… I understand a little why men so much value their work.… But yet I do not understand why they drop their work to quarrel as they do. I understand it no better than the fighting of dogs.' She paused on that last word, and then, as though it had put new life into her, she sat erect and opened her eyes wider upon the horizon as she put the amazing question, 'Was it over a dog that you two hated?'
"It staggered me: but I caught at the first explanation. 'Oh, I see,' said I. 'Your husband has been telling you?'
"She didn't answer this at once.… At length, and as though my voice had taken long in reaching her, far out on the ocean where her gaze rested—'No,' said she, 'Pete has told me nothing. ... I never asked.… But if it is true,ay de mi!then that which I behold is not true.'
"'Of what are you speaking?' I asked.
"'I saw an island,' she answered, as one in a dream: 'and again I see it. It has two sharp peaks and one that would seem to be cut short. Lawns of green climb up to the peaks between forests. There is a ring of surf all about the shore… but the boat has found a passage through… and you and Pete are landing… and— strangest!—there is a dog leaping about on the shore to welcome you.'
"I was silent, not caring to break in upon her happy delirium. 'But I am not there,' she whispered, almost in a moan. 'Why should a dog be there and not I?' Still getting no word from me, she turned her eyes full on mine and repeated the question imperatively, almost indignantly. 'Why should it be a dog?—and notI, over whom you never hated?'
"'Santa,' said I, 'if there were such an island as you see—'
"'But thereis,' she interrupted quick as thought. 'Thereis, and it is near, though I shall not see it, except from the boat.'
"'Say, then, that there is such an island—' said I. It was just possible: for during the last two days we had sighted many sea-birds.
"'And near—quite near,' she insisted. 'It has groves of coco-trees, and streams tumbling down the rocks—on which no boat can row with men cursing in her and fighting with knives.'
"'Then you shall land on that island, O beloved!' said I, 'and we will live on it, and love—'
"'Ah, I know what you mean! You mean as they love in heaven? Yes.' And she added quite simply. 'I have had great trouble with men.'
"'Not exactly as in heaven,' said I, and took out from a breast-pocket under my jumper a small flask of yellow Chartreuse, which I had snatched up among other small belongings from my state-room locker ten minutes before theEurotaswent down. I had nursed it with a very jealous purpose.… Farrell should not slip through my fingers by dying, while I could yet force a stimulant down his throat, to linger him out.… It was a tiny 'sample' flask, and had been pressed on my acceptance, as a small flourish of trade, by a German wine-dealer in Valparaiso.… And here at the crisis, with Farrell dying at my feet, on an instant I renounced my purpose.
"'Drink this,' I commanded Santa, 'and you shall live some hours yet. And then, if therebean island—'
"She caught at it with a delighted cry, her hands suddenly vitalised. The guitar slid down from her lap. She drew out the glass stopper, holding the flask up a moment to the setting sun and letting it blaze through the liquid. Then swiftly, as I made sure she would carry it to her lips, she bent over Farrell and whispered some soft word of the night that pierced his stupor so that he stirred and lolled his head around.… Yes, and for a farewell kiss—which I watched without jealousy.…
"But as their mouths drew apart, and before his swollen lips could close again, she had slipped the mouth of the flask between them and the cordial was pouring down his throat.…
"She had defeated me.… I watched her without uttering a word. Farrell let out a guttural sort ofah-h!and sat up somewhat higher against her knee, opening his chest and breathing in new life as the Chartreuse coursed through his veins. Santa turned the flask upside-down, and handed it to me.
"'I have won!' she said softly. 'Men at the last are—what is the word?—magnanimous, mostly: and that is why a woman can usually win in the end.'
"'You have thrown away,' said I, 'so much of life as I gave you, renouncing much. You have sacrificed yourself.'
"'That wasmyshare of the price, my friend. Now continue to be great, as for these many days you have been good. There is a bad pain about my heart. With that other small bottle of yours, and with that needle I have seen you use… You will? Ah, how much better it is to be friends than enemies, when the world—even this little shrinking world—is so wide yet—so wide—'
"So I took her wrist and, she scarcely wincing, injected the last drop of my morphia: yes, Roddy, and kissed the spot like any poor fool, she not resisting!… Her last words were that I should lay the guitar back again on her lap.… Oh, damn it, man! it was everything your damned sneerer would choose to call it.… But I tell you I held my ear close to her breast for hours; and in my light-headedness I heard the muted music lulling her: and in and out of her breathing, when she was long past speech—and above the stertorous snoring of my enemy laid at her feet—I heard distant waves breaking in a low chime to some words of a verse I had once quoted to her on a night when her song had made the crews sorrowful for a while before lifting their hearts again to make them merry—music to ripple, ripple:"
'—Ripple in my hearingLike waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor fearing,Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to death.'
'—Ripple in my hearingLike waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor fearing,Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to death.'
'—Ripple in my hearingLike waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor fearing,Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to death.'
"My ear was close to her breast, listening, as the last breath went out with a flutter… and Santa was dead, having conquered me— conquered me far beyond my guessing; but up to the moment having subdued me so effectively that my sole kiss of her had been taken, kneeling, upon the wrist, as one kisses faith to a sovereign, and had never been returned. Through the night I held her wrist until it was cold."
"Towards dawn, and just at that moment when a watcher's spirits are at their lowest, Farrell stirred, stretched out his legs, drew them up again, and asked how things were?… For his part (he added, sitting up weakly), he felt a different man.
"'It behoves you to be,' said I with some sternness. 'Take the tiller and—yes, you may hold on to it with some firmness. Your wife is dead.'
"'Santa!' he gasped. 'Oh, my God!' and cast himself upon her body, seemly bestowed as I could serve it.
"'Get off of it,' I shouted, 'before I brain you!' I held the very gaff with which Grimalson had torn my arm. He had plucked the tiller from the rudder-head, and with these two weapons in our right hands we faced one another, each with his left feeling for the revolver he carried.
"Then Farrell, who stood facing the bows, shot out his right as if jabbing at me with the stick, a foot short of my shoulder. The action was, as a stroke, so idiotic that, although it might so easily have meant death to me, I turned half-about to where the stick pointed, as the helmless boat yawed.
"And there, above the low-lying wisps of morning fog, stood three peaks: two sharp and the third blunted: and, below the fog, ran a thin white ribbon of breaking water!
"We had run down upon it so close in those hours of darkness that the beat of the surf had, as I now recognised, confused itself into Santa's last breathings: so close that, as the sun took swift mastery of the mist and dissolved it, disclosing, below the peaks, the variegated greenery of lawn and forest pouring down to the seamed cliffs and pouring over them to the very beaches in tapestries of vines and creepers, we were almost in the ring of the surf: and it came as a shock to me that the lazy swell on which we had so long lifted and dropped, heeding it least among many threats, could beat on this islet so terrifically.
"The sight so vanquished Farrell that he yielded the stick over to me, obedient as a child. I thrust it back in its socket, hauled sheet and fetched her up close to the wind outside the surges.… Without a word said, he turned to pointing out this and that inlet between the reefs where there seemed a chance to slip through.
"For two miles at least we fended off in this way, until we came to the base of the hill which, from seaward, had appeared so curiously truncated. As we opened its steep-to sides, they rounded gradually into a high curve at the skyline, and, at the base, into a foreshore of tumbled rock through which ran a cleft with still water protected by sheer rocks—a narrow slit, but worth risking with the wind to drive us straight through. So I upped helm on the heave of a comber, and drove her for it, the walls of rock so close on either hand that twice the end of our short boom brushed them before Farrell, who held the sheet, could avoid touching.… And then, rushed by a heave of the swell through this gorge, we were shot into a round lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on; a lakelet, rather; calm as a pond except by the entrance, where the waves, broken and spent, spread themselves in long ripples that melted and were gone.
"You know Lulworth Cove? Well, imagine Lulworth, with a narrower entrance, its water blue as a sapphire shot with amethystine violet, its cliffs taller, steeper, hung with matted creeper and, high aloft, holding the heaven in a three-part circle almost as regular as you could draw with a pair of compasses. We were floating in the cup of a dead volcano, broken on the seaward side; and broken many hundreds of years ago—for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent, swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat that had frightened them.
"They had risen in alarm at the sound of barking, high up the slope. A dog came leaping down it, tore through the fern, and, as our boat drew to shore, raced to and fro by the water's edge, barking wildly in an ecstasy of welcome. A yellow dog, Roddy—a largish yellow dog—and, as I live by food, the living image of my murdered Billy!"