IVThe day following this conversation, Nichols introduced me to Devereux; I met and talked with him several times before I left Hong Kong. If he was mad, the fact didn't affect his daily intercourse. He was a man of charming personality; a man who held something back, of course, but this merely added interest to the charm. Only his eyes were strange; as he talked, they invariably wandered upward, and were recalled to the scene in intermittent sharp flashes.Then I left Hong Kong, and forgot all about him for a couple of years. At the end of that time I found myself in Batavia on business, when who should arrive but Nichols in the barqueOmega. I left a message for him at his broker's, and that evening he called on me at the hotel. Already, I had determined to ask him for a passage north."But it'll take me a couple of months to reach Hong Kong" he told me "I'm going from here to Macassar, then on up the straights to Cebu and Iloilo""Time is no object to me" I answered."Good" said he "I'll be glad enough of your company. I have one passenger already, but he's hardly exhilarating. It's Devereux—you remember him. The fellow who lost an island in the Pacific""Yes, indeed. How is he now?""He's in bad shape" said Nichols, tapping his head significantly "I've had him aboard the round trip, for his health, but it hasn't seemed to help him. I'm afraid he is really breaking up, this time"So it was arranged that I accompany Nichols northward. I went off on board with him that night, to enjoy the fresh sea-breeze in the outer roads. There I renewed my acquaintance with Devereux in more intimate circumstances.The change in him was decidedly noticeable. His manner was odder, more distrait; throughout the evening he sat with his chair pulled close to the side, speaking only when spoken to, gazing off into the night and drumming constantly on the rail with his hand. We sailed from Batavia in a couple of days. Quite abruptly, on the morning of our departure, Devereux approached me with a new manner, as if anxious to enter into confidences. The anchor had just fetched away, the ship had begun to turn on her heel. Something had moved him to the depths, some gleam of colour, some distant view of the palm-covered islands in the offing. He stopped me in the weather alley-way, his delicate features working with a powerful emotion."I've tried..." he began; then broke off for an instant, and drew nearer. "You know, I hardly said good-bye" he told me impressively "I went off in a great hurry that morning" He gazed at me profoundly, like a man looking at his own image in a mirror. "Do you know the Pacific?" he suddenly demanded."Not very well" I answered "I've been to Honolulu, and New Caledonia. Nothing in between""Oh..." he murmured "Then I must tell you" Without warning, he plunged into a relation of his own tale. I listened politely, then curiously, then with growing excitement. The tale transported him, inspired him. It was poetic drama, tragic and magnificent, that I heard; scene after scene unfolded itself before me as he talked, made real by his unconscious perfection of detail, and invested with truth by his air of fervour and simplicity. I saw the island in bold outline, in vivid colouring; I felt the hunger and thirst, and tasted the water that they found there on the beach; I looked up with him to behold the woman of his dreams. His dreams, or his memories—which was it? Had there ever been an island? The question seemed never so baffling as at that moment, when his present madness stood so openly revealed.After this experience he retained me in his confidence—didn't want to talk about anything else but the vision that he saw and the sorrow that lay on his heart. It was very distressing. One morning as I came up the companion-way after breakfast, he plucked me nervously by the sleeve."Look here" said he, leading me to windward "Nichols knows the position of that island. He's trying to pass it...""Nonsense, Devereux!" I exclaimed "You mustn't credit such a thought. Nichols knows less about it than we do""He's always poring over the chart" said Devereux darkly "He tries to keep our position from me. Oh, I can see it in his eye!""But we aren't in that part of the world" I argued, like a man wrestling with the wind.He passed a hand wearily across his eye. "It looks the same" said he. Suddenly he shot at me a piercing glance. "I don't know whether to believe you or not!" he snarled "You're all against me, every damned one of you!"He quickly dropped the mood of suspicion, however, for that evening we had another long talk about the island. The next forenoon he took a notion to go aloft; spent a number of hours perched on the main royal yard. There we could see him steadily searching the horizon. We seized the opportunity to talk over his case at length in the cabin, but could come to no decision except to let affairs run their course."Good Lord, Nichols, suppose he really sights an island, up there!" I suddenly exclaimed. We bent over the chart, pricking off our exact position that morning; and breathed a sigh of relief to discover that, as we were going, we shouldn't sight any land till the following day.It was in Macassar that we saw the first evidence of violent abberration in Devereux. The three of us had gone ashore for the day; after an early dinner, we were taking a short drive in the cool of the evening through a region of small rice and coffee plantations. Somewhere beyond the outskirts of the town, a native woman stepped from the road in front of us to make way for our horses. She drew back against a fringe of bamboo trees by the roadside, stretched out her arms to part the branches behind her, and stood there motionless, in sharp relief against the sunset, watching us pass by. Beside us, Devereux uttered a wild cry, some unintelligible name, and leaped from the moving vehicle.We found him prostrate at the feet of the woman, babbling in a musical, strange tongue. The light on his face was the very madness of joy. The woman shrieked, drawing back among the bamboo stems. Nichols reassured her in the Bugis dialect."Devereux, come away!" he commanded sharply "You don't know her. For God's sake, come away!"Devereux got up slowly, gazing at us in wild alarm; then held out his arms to the woman. She struggled farther back into the bamboo thicket. Again he turned to us, drew himself together, and spoke with authority and defiance."She is my wife!" said he.It was pathetic and terrible—the very devil of a scene. He fought and struggled; we had to take him to the carriage by main strength. A crowd had gathered. At last Devereux grew quiet. Nichols explained as best he could to the woman, while half a hundred ears listened eagerly to the astonishing tale. A rapid colloquy ensued; though I couldn't understand the words, I heard the woman's voice melt with pity."She wants to know whether your wife had a birthmark on her bosom" Nichols interpreted, turning to the carriage.Devereux shook his head; he was still dazed with the struggle. The woman left cover, and came close to the carriage without fear. The upper part of her sarong slipped down, disclosing a broad red blotch on the dusky skin above her right breast. Leaning forward, she spoke a few words in a soothing voice."She says that you must be mistaken" repeated Nichols "She says she is sorry—but now you have seen that it cannot be"Devereux stiffened in his seat, and the light suddenly went out of his eyes. He gazed at her a moment like a rudely awakened somnambulist. Then he slumped in the corner, as if felled by a sharp invisible blow. The woman nodded to us, and we drove rapidly away.He was ill for several days after that, keeping close in his room. When he was able to come on deck again, we had reached well across the Celebes Sea, and were about to make Sibutu Passage on the coast of Borneo. We watched him anxiously that forenoon for signs of a return of his malady. But he'd evidently forgotten the incident in Macassar; he talked with us all day in a normal manner, without reference to his affairs. It seemed as if the worst of the attack was over.A long, narrow island lies on the west side of Sibutu Passage, clear of the mainland and hiding several smaller islands behind it. This was sighted while we were at dinner that noon; when we came up for our cigars, it stood in plain view on the lee bow. Being an island against the main, with land rising behind it as we came on, we didn't think of it as a possible new source of excitement. As the afternoon passed, however, Nichols called my attention to Devereux, who was acting strangely again. For a while he would lean against the lee rail, talking rapidly to himself; suddenly he would leave that off and take to pacing the deck in short, quick turns, rubbing his hands together. His eyes, it was to be noticed, kept watching the island, now less than four miles away. His face worked with nervous energy. His whole air was one of suppressed excitement, mingled with a certain quiet elation."He's using that Polynesian dialect!" Nichols exclaimed in a worried whisper "What can we do with him? We must pass the island""Can't you stop there long enough to set him ashore—convince him that it isn't his island?" I suggested.Nichols considered soberly, then shook his head. "It wouldn't work" said he "First place, the currents are bad, there's no harbour or village, and no anchorage, so far as I'm aware. Second place, would anything convince him? Even if there was once a real island, mightn't this one, in his present condition, look as good as the next to him? Suppose he were to insist on a hunt for the inhabitants? We'd have to bring him away in the end—and that might only prolong the agony""I guess you're right, Nichols; but what's the alternative?""Tack ship, and stand away till night" he answered without hesitation "Slip through the passage under cover of darkness. Trust to luck that he'll change the mood again tomorrow, and forget what he saw this afternoon. We can get him to sleep somehow—drug him if necessary""But he'll make a row at once, when you tack ship""I suppose so. We'll have to play him at his own game"It seemed the better plan, and Nichols acted on it immediately. Devereux, lost in his own sphere of unreality, didn't discover that the ship was coming about until the island began to change its position along the rail. He watched it a moment, looked up to see the sails flat aback, then turned in alarm and ran toward the stern."What are you doing?" he cried "You can make the anchorage on this tack. The cove lies just round that first point""I know" said Nichols easily "But it's getting late, and I am afraid of the reefs. The channel is narrow, the wind's dying, the currents can't be trusted around that entrance. I'm going to stand off and on all night, and wait for the morning""Nonsense!" urged Devereux "We could easily make it! Why, Nichols, I know that channel like a book. There's plenty of daylight left....""Sorry, old fellow, but I just don't dare try it" said Nichols decisively, throwing into the words all the power of his normality "You must remember that I have the ship on my hands"Devereux regarded him sourly, in a sort of hostile dejection. His case throughout was marked by a singular docility, as if all things assumed an illogical aspect to him, and were to be met by circumlocutory methods. "Well, I suppose your word is law" he allowed "But its damned hard on me. I've waited a good many years, Nichols, for this night" Without deigning to discuss the matter further, he went off down the companion like a sulky child. Following him a few moments later to reconnoitre, I found the door of his stateroom tightly closed.He didn't appear at the supper table; as the evening passed it seemed evident that he wasn't coming out again. We began to have hope of getting through the night without another painful scene. When I looked into his room after supper and found him sound asleep in the bunk, it seemed too good to be true. Nichols at once tacked ship again, and we stood back toward Sibutu Passage.Our plan for slipping through under cover of the darkness, however, had failed to reckon with the moonlight; that both of us had forgotten it is a good indication of the state of our minds. For the night, when it settled down, was positively radiant. A great soft moon hung high in the heavens, flooding the sea with a subdued glare, and revealing every detail of the land as we came abreast of the point of the island shortly after midnight. Sleep was out of the question. Nichols, of course, had to navigate the ship through the intricate passage. Thus it became my duty to run below every little while, keeping a watch on Devereux's door. But no sound or movement came from the closed room.We had already forged past the main point of the island, which lay abaft the lee beam, less than half a mile distant, when I started on this errand for the last time. Going down the companion, I was struck by an uneasy feeling, and found myself hurrying through the entry. When I reached the cabin, Devereux's door stood open, a black hole in the dim light of the swinging lamp above the chart table. A glance into the room showed me that he was no longer in the bunk. I ran to the forward cabin door, but seeing no one out there, turned and jumped up the after companion on the dead run."Have you seen Mr Devereux come on deck?" I cried to the helmsman."No, sir"Nichols, at the stern rail, had heard my question, and ran forward to meet me. "Isn't he in his room?" he asked."No. I can't find him anywhere in the cabin. Must have gone up the forward companion"Together we hurried forward along the weather alley. Reaching the corner of the house, where the main deck opened before us, we made out two men standing to leeward of the mainmast, apparently in earnest conversation. One seemed eager, excited; the other was evidently on the defensive. Devereux and the mate, we saw the next instant. It crossed my mind that the mate was ignorant of the intimate details of Devereux's malady; he wasn't the sort of fellow to take into confidential relations.We heard his voice, now, sharply raised, as if in a final attempt to quell the other's insistence."But we aren't going to stop here, I tell you! There's nothing to stop for, no place to call....""Not going to stop?..." Devereux repeated wildly. He turned toward the rail, holding his arms stiffly outstretched in a gesture of utter distraction. Who can imagine the thoughts that leaped through his brain at that moment, or fathom the depths of the disappointment that suddenly crushed his already broken mind?"Look out" cried Nichols at my elbow "Don't let him get away!"But it was already too late; Devereux had heard the warning, too, and accepted it as a challenge. With a wild cry that seemed to tremble among the upper sails and echo back from the wooded heights of the island, he leaped forward, dodging the mate, and gained the bulwarks just abaft the fore preventor backstay. For an instant he stood there, silhouetted against the bright track of the moonlight, confronting the vision that was reality—then plunged with a magnificent abandon, and disappeared under the silvery surface of the water.We saw him strike out toward the island. The ship forged ahead, carrying the moon-track with her; before we could get out a boat, he had vanished in the shrouded wastes astern. We sought for a night and a day, but could find no trace of his body. In that swift current setting seaward, it was impossible that he could have reached the land.SERVANT AND MASTERSERVANT AND MASTERI"Steward!""Yes, sir, Cappen"The little old Chinaman looked up from the brass threshold that he was polishing. Kneeling at the entrance to the forward cabin, with his back toward Captain Sheldon, he peered round his shoulder with a gnome-like movement, his hands pausing on the brass.Captain Sheldon laid down his book. He pointed an accusing forefinger at the stateroom threshold, which the steward had just finished."That's dirty, Wang. You haven't half polished it. What's the matter with you lately?""All light, Cappen, all light. Eye gettee old"He shifted his pan of brick-dust, scuttled across on his knees to the stateroom threshold, and attacked the brass again. With head bent low and hands flying, he worked silently. His back disclosed nothing beyond the familiar mechanical impersonality.Captain Sheldon watched him with narrowing eyes. He realized that he was beginning to "get down on" the old steward; yet to his mind there was justice in the feeling. Wang wasn't so neat or careful as he used to be. He frowned as he noted the greasy collar of the Chinaman's tunic. A dirty steward!—he had always abhorred the notion. To his strict ideas of nautical propriety, it meant the beginning of a ship's disintegration. The time was not far distant, he saw clearly, when he would have to get rid of old Wang.He had inherited the steward along with the shipRetrieverwhen his father died. "Wang-ti, His Mark" the entry had stood voyage after voyage on the ship's articles; young John Sheldon had grown up taking the venerable Chinaman for granted. He was the "old man's" trusted servant, as much a part of the vessel as her compass or her keel. He took entire charge of the ship's provisioning, as well as of the cabin accessories. He kept the commissary accounts, with never a penny out of the way; his prudence and honesty had saved the ship many a dollar. John often used to hear his father boast that be wouldn't be able to go to sea without Wang-ti.In his boyhood on shipboard, there had existed a natural intimacy between the captain's son and the factotum of the nautical household. John's mother was dead, he roamed the ship wild from forecastle to lazaret; and Wang had guarded his fortunes with the wise faithfulness that knows how to keep its attentions unobserved. The captain had even permitted his son to sit in the steward's room, watching him smoke a temperate pipeful of opium after the noon dishes were done; this was the measure of his trust in the old Chinaman.Indeed, John Sheldon, had he been disposed, might have recalled a great deal that went on in Wang's narrow room on the port side of the forward cabin—incidents fraught with deep importance to boyhood. The room was a place of retreat, a zone of freedom. It made little difference whether Wang were there or not, the two understood each other, conversed only in monosyllables, and the Chinaman apparently took no interest in what the boy did. In return, the boy throughout this period never so much as made an inquiry into Wang's life; that matter, too, was taken for granted. Many an afternoon he would lie for hours on the clean, hard bed, his head buried in a book, while the steward sat beside him on a three-legged wooden stool, sewing or figuring his accounts, neither of them speaking a word or glancing at the other. The click of the stone as the Chinaman mixed his ink, the rustle of the pages, and the faint creak of the wooden finish in the cabin, would mingle with the fainter sounds aloft and along decks as the vessel slipped quietly through the water.But this was long ago, before life had opened, before days of responsibility and authority had overlaid youthful sentiment with a hard veneer of efficiency. The door of that room had closed on John Sheldon for the last time when he left the ship in New York, a boy of thirteen, to spend a few years at home in school; he was not to share another hour with Wang until the final hour. When next he joined theRetriever'scompany, it was in the capacity of a rousing young second mate of seventeen, broad shouldered and full of confidence, believing that his place in life depended on strength and self-assertion. He picked quarrels with the crew largely for the sake of fighting; he was aggressive and overbearing, as befitted the type of commanding officer that appealed to his imagination. In him, real ability was combined with a physical prowess beyond the ordinary; he failed to meet the reverses that teach men of lesser combative powers a much-needed lesson, and the years conspired to develop the arbitrary side of his character. As an instance of this unfortunate tendency, he had allowed himself, after rising to the position of first mate on theRetriever, to quarrel with his father over some trifling matter of discipline; so that at the end of the voyage he had quitted the deck on which he had been brought up, and had shipped away in another vessel.It was on the voyage immediately following this incident that his father had died suddenly at sea, half way across the Indian Ocean on the passage home. John Sheldon had arrived in New York from the West Coast almost in company with theRetriever, brought in by the mate who had taken his place. The first news he heard was that his father had been buried at sea. The ship was owned in the family; it seemed natural, in view of this stroke of destiny, that he should have her as his first command. The officers left, he took possession of the cabin and the quarterdeck that had been his father's province for so many years; and Wang continued his duties in the forward cabin as if nothing had happened. The Chinaman had nursed Captain Sheldon when he took to his bed, had found him dying the next morning, had heard his last words, and had laid out his body for burial.Six years had passed since then. John Sheldon was a dashing young shipmaster of twenty-seven; and now Wang was failing. No doubt about it. The dishes weren't clean any longer; a greasy knife annoyed Captain Sheldon almost as much as an insult. Lately, he had begun to notice a heavy, musty smell as he passed by the pantry door. A dirty steward!—it wasn't to be supported, not on his ship, at any rate.The Chinaman finished the brasses, gathered up his pan and rags, and started for the forward cabin. Captain Sheldon laid down his book again."Steward, have you got a home?""Oh, yes, Cappen. I got two piecee house, Hong Kong side"Wang paused in the doorway, turning half round and steadying himself as the ship lurched. His fingers left a smudge on the white paint. As if perceiving it, he wiped the place furtively with the corner of his cotton tunic, only spreading the smudge. Captain Sheldon, watching the manoeuvre, sniffed in disgust, and continued the inquiry."Have you got a wife?""She dead, seven, eight year""Any children?""Oh, I got some piecee children, maybe three, four""For God's sake, don't you know how many children you've got?""Yes, sir, Cappen. I got four piecee, all go 'way. Maybe some dead. I no hear""Hm-m" The captain knit his brows ponderously, a habit he had acquired in the last few years, and fixed a severe glance on the old Chinaman. "Don't you ever want to go home?""Oh, no, Cappen. Why fo' I go home? I b'long ship side"After waiting a moment in silence for further questions, Wang realized that the conversation was not to be concluded this time. He turned slowly and shuffled off through the forward cabin, head bent and eyes peering hard at the floor. Captain Sheldon did not see him stumble heavily against the corner of the settee.In the protection of the pantry, Wang put down the pan of brick-dust and stood for a long time motionless, holding the dirty rags in the other hand, facing the window above the dresser. He could see the small square of light plainly, but the rest of the room was vague. His tiny, inanimate figure, in the midst of the dim clutter of the room, expressed a weary relaxation; he stood like a man lost in vacant thought. No one would have suspected the feelings behind the wizened face; Wang's countenance, as he gazed steadfastly at the square of light, was an expressionless blank. He seemed scarcely to breathe; the spark of life seemed to have sunk low within him, to have retreated in fear or impotence. The hand holding the rags paused rigidly, as if petrified in the act of putting down its grimy burden. Had Captain Sheldon come upon him at that moment, he would have ordered him shortly to get busy, begin to do something.All his thoughts, in the silence of the pantry, were of loyalty. That uncommunicative intimacy of the past had been fruitful to one, at least, of the parties to the contract. "Young Cappen" who as a boy had been Wang's pride and charge, was his pride and charge still. Had not "Old Cappen" on his deathbed, whispered the final order "Keep an eye on the boy, Wang. He's stepping high now—but the time may come when he will need you" But of these words, his father's last utterance "Young Cappen" of course knew nothing. They remained a profound secret between Wang and the dead.If it were true, Wang recognized in that unwavering gaze, that his days of usefulness were over, he would no longer be able to discharge this obligation. Not that his strength was less; his withered, cord-like sinews ached to scrub and polish, to keep his domain in its old efficient order. But this voyage he hadn't been able to see what needed to be done. He had hardly dared allow his mind to formulate the explanation. But now he must face it. He was going blind.He comprehended fully the meaning of the recent conversation in the after cabin. The pain that held him inert and motionless was half of love and half of fear. Perhaps, he tried to tell himself "Young Cappen" was now safely launched on the sea of life; perhaps he no longer had need of an old man's service. Yet, in the same moment of thought, Wang knew that this was not the fact. The knowledge filled him with a desperate tenacity; until fate actually laid him low, he could not submit to the turn of fortune. Old and wise in life, he realized that "Young Cappen's" hardest lessons still lay ahead of him. He must serve as long as he was able.That night over the supper table, Captain Sheldon opened a biscuit; there was a dead cockroach in it. His knife had cut it in halves. He threw the biscuit down in disgust. Wang always made the cabin bread.... Well, why didn't the old fool take it away? He must have seen the incident. Captain Sheldon knew that he was standing a few feet away in the pantry door. Taking up his plate, he snapped over his shoulder"Steward!"Wang was at his elbow in an instant. The captain thrust the biscuit into his trembling hand."Look at that! Take them all away, and bring some bread""Yes, sir, Cappen" The Chinaman mumbled incoherently, trying to cover his confusion. His innate sense of the etiquette of human relations, which even after fifty years of service had not accommodated itself to the brusque callousness of European manners, felt bitterly outraged; no way had been left him to save his face. Yet other and stronger emotions quickly submerged the insult. The biscuit plate rattled like a castanet as he set it down on the pantry dresser. As he cut into a new loaf of bread, he shook his head slowly from side to side, like an animal in pain, stopping in the midst of the operation to bend above the offending biscuit and examine it closely. He loosened the cockroach with the point of the bread knife; it fell to the plate, a dark spot on the white china. Under his breath he heaved a staccato sigh "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"Captain Sheldon found himself unable to forget this trivial incident; he kept brooding over it all the evening. At breakfast next morning it came to his mind again, and followed him intermittently throughout the day—a day of petty mishaps and annoyances, one of those days when everything aboard the vessel seemed to be going wrong, when even the best efforts of officers and men to please him resulted in misfortune, and the simplest words rubbed him the wrong way. Captain Sheldon was nearing the end of a long and tedious passage, with nerves and temper badly frayed.Coming below an hour after dinner, in hope to find a little peace, he met the heavy odour of opium smoke floating through the cabin. The door into the forward cabin had been left open. He strode out angrily; the steward's door was open, too. Glancing into the stateroom, he saw the old Chinaman stretched on the bed, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling, the pipe slipping from his fingers. Thin wisps of opium smoke curled up from the bowl and drifted out into the cabin.Captain Sheldon's patience snapped suddenly. By God, this was too much! First, bugs in the bread; and now ... the lazy old swine, lying there in an opium dream, too indolent even to close the door! The ship's discipline was going plumb to hell. His authority was becoming a joke. A dirty steward! By God, he wouldn't stand it any longer."Steward! Steward! Wake up, there!""What, Cappen?"By a violent effort, Wang pulled himself out of the delicious stupor and sat up on the edge of the bunk. The drug had not fully overcome him; in a long lifetime, he had never exceeded the moderate daily pipeful that would put him to sleep for only half an hour."Steward, I can't permit this any longer. You've left your door open, and stunk up the whole cabin with the damned stuff""I s'pose close him, Cappen. Maybe wind swing him open""You didn't close it! You don't finish anything, now-a-days. It's got to stop, I tell you. I can see what the trouble is. This devilish opium is getting the best of you. It's got to stop—and the best way to stop, is to begin now.... Give me all the opium you've got""Yes, sir, Cappen"The import of the captain's words brought the old Chinaman to his senses with a rush. He got up unsteadily, went to his chest, and began fumbling in the lower corner. Soon he brought out a number of small square packages done up in Chinese paper."Cappen, what you do with him?"Captain Sheldon snatched the packages from the steward's hand."I'm going to throw it all overboard! If you've got any more of the stuff hidden away, you're not to smoke it—do you understand? I won't have such a mess in my cabin""Cappen, no can do!"Wang was panting; a shrill note of anguish came into his voice. He reached out a trembling hand toward the precious drug."Yes, you can, and you will. It's nothing but a nasty, degenerate habit. You're too old for such things. It's making you dirty and careless. Brace up, now—show that you're good for something. You used to be the best steward in the fleet. I'm only trying to help you out. If things were to go on like this much longer, I'd have to find a new steward in Hong Kong"Captain Sheldon, struggling to regain control of himself after the outburst of temper, stamped off through the after cabin. Wang heard him go up the companion. He sat down again on the edge of the bunk, a crumpled heap, inert and silent, his eyes dulled by a fear beyond any he had yet known. For fifty years he had smoked daily that tiny pipeful of opium. With all that life had brought him, could he summon strength for this new and terrible ordeal?IIFire, like the rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike, and eats up a tall ship at sea as readily as it guts a splendid castle. They were half way across from Luzon to the China coast, only a few hundred miles from Hong Kong and the end of the passage, when the blaze was discovered in the fore hold, already well under way. Quickly it became unmanageable. Through a day and a night of frantic effort the whole ship's company fought the flames, retreating aft inch by inch while destruction followed them relentlessly under decks. In the gleam of a dawn striking across a smooth sea and lighting up the pale faces gathered on the top of the after house, it became apparent that the ship was doomed.Daylight found them in the boats, standing off to watch the last lurid scene. The ship burned fiercely throughout the forenoon. At midday, under a blistering sun, her bows seemed suddenly to crumple and dissolve; surrounded by a cloud of steam, she settled forward with a loud hissing noise, and slowly vanished under the waters of the China Sea.Captain Sheldon, sitting upright in the stern of the long-boat, watched the scene with set jaw and snapping eyes. It was his first disaster, the first time he had met destiny coming the other way. A fierce anger, like the fire he had just been fighting, ran in his blood. He was beside himself. It seemed inconceivable that there was no way to bring his ship back out of the deep; that the very means of authority had vanished, that he was powerless, that the event was sealed for all time. He wanted to strike out blindly, hit something, crush something.Well he knew that if any blame attached to the matter, it rested on him alone. For some occult reason, as it now seemed, the mate a few days before had broached the subject of fire, in conversation at the supper table. Not that fire was to be expected; no one ever had heard of it with such a cargo. Why had the mate chosen that day, of all others, when the captain had lost his patience with old Wang, to talk about fire throughout the supper period, to follow him on deck with the subject in the evening? The talk had only aroused the perversity of his own opposition. The mate, waxing eloquent and imaginative, had at length succeeded in frightening himself; had wanted to take off the fore hatch in the dog watch, just to look into the hold. Had he done so then, the fire would probably have been discovered in season to overcome it. But Captain Sheldon, sarcastic and bristling with arbitrariness, had flatly commanded him to leave the fore hatch alone.Well, no use in crying over spilt milk. The ship was gone."Give way!" he shouted across the water to the mate's boat "Keep along with me. We'll strike in for the coast, and follow it down"All the afternoon they rowed silently in the broiling heat and mirror-like calm. The coast of China came in sight, a range of high blue-grey mountains far inland. Nearer at hand, a group of outlying islands appeared on the horizon. Captain Sheldon swung his course to the westward, heading directly into the blinding sun that by this time had sunk low in the western sky.In the extreme bow of the longboat sat the old steward, gazing straight ahead with unseeing eyes. His head was uncovered; the sun beat down on him without effect. He made no movement, uttered no sound. Alone and helpless, he suffered the throes of the most desperate struggle that human consciousness affords—the struggle of the will against the call of a body habituated to opium.In the latter part of the afternoon they sighted a big Chinese junk, close inshore against the islands. A light breeze had begun to ruffle the water. On the impulse of the moment, Captain Sheldon decided to board the junk and have himself carried to Hong Kong under sail. The idea caught him and suited his fancy; he couldn't bear to think of arriving in port in open boats. Instructions were shouted to the mate's boat, the head of the longboat was again swung around, and a course was laid to intercept the brown-sailed native craft under the lee of the land.All this passed unnoticed by the silent figure in the bow, wandering blindly through a grim vale of endeavour. As time went on, however, Wang seemed to realize that a change had taken place in the plan of their progress. The sun no longer shone full in his face. He glanced up dully, caught a vague sight of the junk, now close aboard and standing, to his veiled eyes, like a dark blot on the clear rim of the horizon; then pulled himself hastily together and made a low inquiry of the man at the bow oar. The answer seemed to galvanize his tortured body into action. He began to scramble aft under the moving oars."Here, what's the trouble forward?" Captain Sheldon tried to make out the cause of the commotion."Wang wants to come aft, sir""What for? Shove him into the bottom of the boat""He says he must see you, sir""Oh, the devil ... Well, let him come. He needn't hold up the boat for that"Many hands helped the old Chinaman aft.Muttering rapidly to himself, he sank into a place beside the captain."What's that you say?" demanded Captain Sheldon "What are you trying to hatch up now?"Wang made a vague beckoning gesture in the captain's face. Behind all that floated wildly through his mind, stood the fixed thought that he must not shame "Young Cappen" by openly imparting information."Are you sick or crazy?" demanded Captain Sheldon again, bending above the maundering old man."Cappen, junk he no good!" whispered Wang feverishly "No can do, Cappen! Must go 'way, chop-chop. Night come soon. Maybe no see"Captain Sheldon gave a loud laugh. He spoke for all to hear."What damned nonsense have you got into your head now?""No, sir, Cappen. Look-see!" Wang grasped the other's arm with frantic strength, pulling him down "You no savvy him, Cappen. Killee quick, no good! You no wanchee him. Go Hong Kong side, chop-chop. Night come, maybe can do. Cappen, I savvy plenty what for!""Oh, shut up, you raving old idiot!" cried Captain Sheldon, roughly.At this inopportune moment the mate, ranging alongside in his boat, offered a suggestion. They were closing in with the junk now; a row of yellow faces peered over the side toward them, watching with narrow bright eyes every movement of the approaching boats."Captain Sheldon, I don't like the looks of that crowd" said the mate nervously "Hadn't we better sheer off, sir?""No, certainly not!" shouted the angry captain. "I suppose I'm still in charge here, even if the ship is gone. Do you think I haven't any judgment? By God, between a timid mate and a crazy steward.... Give way, boys, there's nothing to be afraid of!"The breeze had by this time died away, the junk was scarcely moving. A moment later their oars rattled against the side. Captain Sheldon scrambled aboard. He gave a rapid glance along the low maindeck, but saw nothing to arouse his suspicion. A man, evidently the captain of the craft, was advancing toward him; the crew were crowding around to overhear the conversation. But all this was only natural. An ordinary trading junk, of course; heaven alone knew what all these native craft really were doing. After a moment's scrutiny, he dismissed from his mind any thought that may secretly have been aroused by Wang's warning and the mate's unfortunate remark."You losee ship—ha?" The captain of the junk accosted him in good pidgin English."Yes—she burned this morning. I want you to take me to Hong Kong"Within half an hour the bargain had been struck, and they were comfortably established on the new deck. The breeze had freshened, the junk's head had been put about, the two ship's boats trailed astern in single file at the end of a long line. TheRetriever'scompany had partaken of a Chinese supper; many of them were spending the last hour of daylight in examining the queer craft, passing remarks on her strange nautical points, while the native crew watched their movements with furtive gaze.Captain Sheldon paced to and fro on the high poop deck, chewing the end of a cigar and ruminating on the unaccountable turns of fortune. The adventure of boarding the junk had for a time broken the savage current of his thoughts; but now, with the affair settled and night closing in, the mood of anger and bitterness claimed him again with redoubled intensity.The mate ranged up beside him with a friendly air. He felt the need of a reconciliation."You'll be interested to hear, Captain, that old Wang has found a pipeful of opium""The devil you say! I wondered where the old rascal had disappeared to. How do you know?""He's been hanging around the Chinese crew, sir, ever since we came aboard. I went through their quarters down below forward a while ago, and there he lay in one of their bunks, dead to the world, with the pipe across his chest""The useless old sot!" exclaimed Captain Sheldon "I had made up my mind to get rid of him this time, anyway. You know he has been in the family, so to speak. But I don't like the idea of his going off with his native gang. Combined with the opium business, it looks suspicious. You'd better keep an eye on him. He's got a grudge against me, you know, since I took away his stuff""I guess they'll all bear watching, sir""Oh, nonsense! There isn't the slightest cause for alarm. It's perfectly evident that this craft is a peaceful trader, and we could handle the whole gang of 'em if they began to make trouble. They won't, though, never fear; a Chinaman is too big a coward. This captain seems to be quite an intelligent fellow; I've just been having a yarn with him. He has given up his room to me; well, not much of a room, nothing but a bunk and a door, but such as it is, it's all he has. Funny quarters they have down below, like a labyrinth of passages, all leading nowhere.The mate laughed. "Funny enough forward, too; a damned stinking hole, if you ask me, sir"While they were talking on the poop, Wang appeared on deck forward, went to the weather rail and sniffed a deep breath of the land breeze. He had had an hour's opium sleep—an hour of heaven, an hour of life again. Now he could command his faculties. Blindness was no hindrance to work in the dark; was even an advantage, since for many months now he had been accustomed to feeling and groping his way. Fate had been good to him, at the last. Now he possessed the strength to do what he would have to do.The familiar voices of the mate and the captain came to his ears, but he did not glance in their direction. The least move on his part to give information would have been his last. He had heard enough already to know that the death of the whole ship's company that night was being actively planned, for the sake of the boats and the mysterious tin box that Captain Sheldon carried.
IV
The day following this conversation, Nichols introduced me to Devereux; I met and talked with him several times before I left Hong Kong. If he was mad, the fact didn't affect his daily intercourse. He was a man of charming personality; a man who held something back, of course, but this merely added interest to the charm. Only his eyes were strange; as he talked, they invariably wandered upward, and were recalled to the scene in intermittent sharp flashes.
Then I left Hong Kong, and forgot all about him for a couple of years. At the end of that time I found myself in Batavia on business, when who should arrive but Nichols in the barqueOmega. I left a message for him at his broker's, and that evening he called on me at the hotel. Already, I had determined to ask him for a passage north.
"But it'll take me a couple of months to reach Hong Kong" he told me "I'm going from here to Macassar, then on up the straights to Cebu and Iloilo"
"Time is no object to me" I answered.
"Good" said he "I'll be glad enough of your company. I have one passenger already, but he's hardly exhilarating. It's Devereux—you remember him. The fellow who lost an island in the Pacific"
"Yes, indeed. How is he now?"
"He's in bad shape" said Nichols, tapping his head significantly "I've had him aboard the round trip, for his health, but it hasn't seemed to help him. I'm afraid he is really breaking up, this time"
So it was arranged that I accompany Nichols northward. I went off on board with him that night, to enjoy the fresh sea-breeze in the outer roads. There I renewed my acquaintance with Devereux in more intimate circumstances.
The change in him was decidedly noticeable. His manner was odder, more distrait; throughout the evening he sat with his chair pulled close to the side, speaking only when spoken to, gazing off into the night and drumming constantly on the rail with his hand. We sailed from Batavia in a couple of days. Quite abruptly, on the morning of our departure, Devereux approached me with a new manner, as if anxious to enter into confidences. The anchor had just fetched away, the ship had begun to turn on her heel. Something had moved him to the depths, some gleam of colour, some distant view of the palm-covered islands in the offing. He stopped me in the weather alley-way, his delicate features working with a powerful emotion.
"I've tried..." he began; then broke off for an instant, and drew nearer. "You know, I hardly said good-bye" he told me impressively "I went off in a great hurry that morning" He gazed at me profoundly, like a man looking at his own image in a mirror. "Do you know the Pacific?" he suddenly demanded.
"Not very well" I answered "I've been to Honolulu, and New Caledonia. Nothing in between"
"Oh..." he murmured "Then I must tell you" Without warning, he plunged into a relation of his own tale. I listened politely, then curiously, then with growing excitement. The tale transported him, inspired him. It was poetic drama, tragic and magnificent, that I heard; scene after scene unfolded itself before me as he talked, made real by his unconscious perfection of detail, and invested with truth by his air of fervour and simplicity. I saw the island in bold outline, in vivid colouring; I felt the hunger and thirst, and tasted the water that they found there on the beach; I looked up with him to behold the woman of his dreams. His dreams, or his memories—which was it? Had there ever been an island? The question seemed never so baffling as at that moment, when his present madness stood so openly revealed.
After this experience he retained me in his confidence—didn't want to talk about anything else but the vision that he saw and the sorrow that lay on his heart. It was very distressing. One morning as I came up the companion-way after breakfast, he plucked me nervously by the sleeve.
"Look here" said he, leading me to windward "Nichols knows the position of that island. He's trying to pass it..."
"Nonsense, Devereux!" I exclaimed "You mustn't credit such a thought. Nichols knows less about it than we do"
"He's always poring over the chart" said Devereux darkly "He tries to keep our position from me. Oh, I can see it in his eye!"
"But we aren't in that part of the world" I argued, like a man wrestling with the wind.
He passed a hand wearily across his eye. "It looks the same" said he. Suddenly he shot at me a piercing glance. "I don't know whether to believe you or not!" he snarled "You're all against me, every damned one of you!"
He quickly dropped the mood of suspicion, however, for that evening we had another long talk about the island. The next forenoon he took a notion to go aloft; spent a number of hours perched on the main royal yard. There we could see him steadily searching the horizon. We seized the opportunity to talk over his case at length in the cabin, but could come to no decision except to let affairs run their course.
"Good Lord, Nichols, suppose he really sights an island, up there!" I suddenly exclaimed. We bent over the chart, pricking off our exact position that morning; and breathed a sigh of relief to discover that, as we were going, we shouldn't sight any land till the following day.
It was in Macassar that we saw the first evidence of violent abberration in Devereux. The three of us had gone ashore for the day; after an early dinner, we were taking a short drive in the cool of the evening through a region of small rice and coffee plantations. Somewhere beyond the outskirts of the town, a native woman stepped from the road in front of us to make way for our horses. She drew back against a fringe of bamboo trees by the roadside, stretched out her arms to part the branches behind her, and stood there motionless, in sharp relief against the sunset, watching us pass by. Beside us, Devereux uttered a wild cry, some unintelligible name, and leaped from the moving vehicle.
We found him prostrate at the feet of the woman, babbling in a musical, strange tongue. The light on his face was the very madness of joy. The woman shrieked, drawing back among the bamboo stems. Nichols reassured her in the Bugis dialect.
"Devereux, come away!" he commanded sharply "You don't know her. For God's sake, come away!"
Devereux got up slowly, gazing at us in wild alarm; then held out his arms to the woman. She struggled farther back into the bamboo thicket. Again he turned to us, drew himself together, and spoke with authority and defiance.
"She is my wife!" said he.
It was pathetic and terrible—the very devil of a scene. He fought and struggled; we had to take him to the carriage by main strength. A crowd had gathered. At last Devereux grew quiet. Nichols explained as best he could to the woman, while half a hundred ears listened eagerly to the astonishing tale. A rapid colloquy ensued; though I couldn't understand the words, I heard the woman's voice melt with pity.
"She wants to know whether your wife had a birthmark on her bosom" Nichols interpreted, turning to the carriage.
Devereux shook his head; he was still dazed with the struggle. The woman left cover, and came close to the carriage without fear. The upper part of her sarong slipped down, disclosing a broad red blotch on the dusky skin above her right breast. Leaning forward, she spoke a few words in a soothing voice.
"She says that you must be mistaken" repeated Nichols "She says she is sorry—but now you have seen that it cannot be"
Devereux stiffened in his seat, and the light suddenly went out of his eyes. He gazed at her a moment like a rudely awakened somnambulist. Then he slumped in the corner, as if felled by a sharp invisible blow. The woman nodded to us, and we drove rapidly away.
He was ill for several days after that, keeping close in his room. When he was able to come on deck again, we had reached well across the Celebes Sea, and were about to make Sibutu Passage on the coast of Borneo. We watched him anxiously that forenoon for signs of a return of his malady. But he'd evidently forgotten the incident in Macassar; he talked with us all day in a normal manner, without reference to his affairs. It seemed as if the worst of the attack was over.
A long, narrow island lies on the west side of Sibutu Passage, clear of the mainland and hiding several smaller islands behind it. This was sighted while we were at dinner that noon; when we came up for our cigars, it stood in plain view on the lee bow. Being an island against the main, with land rising behind it as we came on, we didn't think of it as a possible new source of excitement. As the afternoon passed, however, Nichols called my attention to Devereux, who was acting strangely again. For a while he would lean against the lee rail, talking rapidly to himself; suddenly he would leave that off and take to pacing the deck in short, quick turns, rubbing his hands together. His eyes, it was to be noticed, kept watching the island, now less than four miles away. His face worked with nervous energy. His whole air was one of suppressed excitement, mingled with a certain quiet elation.
"He's using that Polynesian dialect!" Nichols exclaimed in a worried whisper "What can we do with him? We must pass the island"
"Can't you stop there long enough to set him ashore—convince him that it isn't his island?" I suggested.
Nichols considered soberly, then shook his head. "It wouldn't work" said he "First place, the currents are bad, there's no harbour or village, and no anchorage, so far as I'm aware. Second place, would anything convince him? Even if there was once a real island, mightn't this one, in his present condition, look as good as the next to him? Suppose he were to insist on a hunt for the inhabitants? We'd have to bring him away in the end—and that might only prolong the agony"
"I guess you're right, Nichols; but what's the alternative?"
"Tack ship, and stand away till night" he answered without hesitation "Slip through the passage under cover of darkness. Trust to luck that he'll change the mood again tomorrow, and forget what he saw this afternoon. We can get him to sleep somehow—drug him if necessary"
"But he'll make a row at once, when you tack ship"
"I suppose so. We'll have to play him at his own game"
It seemed the better plan, and Nichols acted on it immediately. Devereux, lost in his own sphere of unreality, didn't discover that the ship was coming about until the island began to change its position along the rail. He watched it a moment, looked up to see the sails flat aback, then turned in alarm and ran toward the stern.
"What are you doing?" he cried "You can make the anchorage on this tack. The cove lies just round that first point"
"I know" said Nichols easily "But it's getting late, and I am afraid of the reefs. The channel is narrow, the wind's dying, the currents can't be trusted around that entrance. I'm going to stand off and on all night, and wait for the morning"
"Nonsense!" urged Devereux "We could easily make it! Why, Nichols, I know that channel like a book. There's plenty of daylight left...."
"Sorry, old fellow, but I just don't dare try it" said Nichols decisively, throwing into the words all the power of his normality "You must remember that I have the ship on my hands"
Devereux regarded him sourly, in a sort of hostile dejection. His case throughout was marked by a singular docility, as if all things assumed an illogical aspect to him, and were to be met by circumlocutory methods. "Well, I suppose your word is law" he allowed "But its damned hard on me. I've waited a good many years, Nichols, for this night" Without deigning to discuss the matter further, he went off down the companion like a sulky child. Following him a few moments later to reconnoitre, I found the door of his stateroom tightly closed.
He didn't appear at the supper table; as the evening passed it seemed evident that he wasn't coming out again. We began to have hope of getting through the night without another painful scene. When I looked into his room after supper and found him sound asleep in the bunk, it seemed too good to be true. Nichols at once tacked ship again, and we stood back toward Sibutu Passage.
Our plan for slipping through under cover of the darkness, however, had failed to reckon with the moonlight; that both of us had forgotten it is a good indication of the state of our minds. For the night, when it settled down, was positively radiant. A great soft moon hung high in the heavens, flooding the sea with a subdued glare, and revealing every detail of the land as we came abreast of the point of the island shortly after midnight. Sleep was out of the question. Nichols, of course, had to navigate the ship through the intricate passage. Thus it became my duty to run below every little while, keeping a watch on Devereux's door. But no sound or movement came from the closed room.
We had already forged past the main point of the island, which lay abaft the lee beam, less than half a mile distant, when I started on this errand for the last time. Going down the companion, I was struck by an uneasy feeling, and found myself hurrying through the entry. When I reached the cabin, Devereux's door stood open, a black hole in the dim light of the swinging lamp above the chart table. A glance into the room showed me that he was no longer in the bunk. I ran to the forward cabin door, but seeing no one out there, turned and jumped up the after companion on the dead run.
"Have you seen Mr Devereux come on deck?" I cried to the helmsman.
"No, sir"
Nichols, at the stern rail, had heard my question, and ran forward to meet me. "Isn't he in his room?" he asked.
"No. I can't find him anywhere in the cabin. Must have gone up the forward companion"
Together we hurried forward along the weather alley. Reaching the corner of the house, where the main deck opened before us, we made out two men standing to leeward of the mainmast, apparently in earnest conversation. One seemed eager, excited; the other was evidently on the defensive. Devereux and the mate, we saw the next instant. It crossed my mind that the mate was ignorant of the intimate details of Devereux's malady; he wasn't the sort of fellow to take into confidential relations.
We heard his voice, now, sharply raised, as if in a final attempt to quell the other's insistence.
"But we aren't going to stop here, I tell you! There's nothing to stop for, no place to call...."
"Not going to stop?..." Devereux repeated wildly. He turned toward the rail, holding his arms stiffly outstretched in a gesture of utter distraction. Who can imagine the thoughts that leaped through his brain at that moment, or fathom the depths of the disappointment that suddenly crushed his already broken mind?
"Look out" cried Nichols at my elbow "Don't let him get away!"
But it was already too late; Devereux had heard the warning, too, and accepted it as a challenge. With a wild cry that seemed to tremble among the upper sails and echo back from the wooded heights of the island, he leaped forward, dodging the mate, and gained the bulwarks just abaft the fore preventor backstay. For an instant he stood there, silhouetted against the bright track of the moonlight, confronting the vision that was reality—then plunged with a magnificent abandon, and disappeared under the silvery surface of the water.
We saw him strike out toward the island. The ship forged ahead, carrying the moon-track with her; before we could get out a boat, he had vanished in the shrouded wastes astern. We sought for a night and a day, but could find no trace of his body. In that swift current setting seaward, it was impossible that he could have reached the land.
SERVANT AND MASTER
SERVANT AND MASTER
I
"Steward!"
"Yes, sir, Cappen"
The little old Chinaman looked up from the brass threshold that he was polishing. Kneeling at the entrance to the forward cabin, with his back toward Captain Sheldon, he peered round his shoulder with a gnome-like movement, his hands pausing on the brass.
Captain Sheldon laid down his book. He pointed an accusing forefinger at the stateroom threshold, which the steward had just finished.
"That's dirty, Wang. You haven't half polished it. What's the matter with you lately?"
"All light, Cappen, all light. Eye gettee old"
He shifted his pan of brick-dust, scuttled across on his knees to the stateroom threshold, and attacked the brass again. With head bent low and hands flying, he worked silently. His back disclosed nothing beyond the familiar mechanical impersonality.
Captain Sheldon watched him with narrowing eyes. He realized that he was beginning to "get down on" the old steward; yet to his mind there was justice in the feeling. Wang wasn't so neat or careful as he used to be. He frowned as he noted the greasy collar of the Chinaman's tunic. A dirty steward!—he had always abhorred the notion. To his strict ideas of nautical propriety, it meant the beginning of a ship's disintegration. The time was not far distant, he saw clearly, when he would have to get rid of old Wang.
He had inherited the steward along with the shipRetrieverwhen his father died. "Wang-ti, His Mark" the entry had stood voyage after voyage on the ship's articles; young John Sheldon had grown up taking the venerable Chinaman for granted. He was the "old man's" trusted servant, as much a part of the vessel as her compass or her keel. He took entire charge of the ship's provisioning, as well as of the cabin accessories. He kept the commissary accounts, with never a penny out of the way; his prudence and honesty had saved the ship many a dollar. John often used to hear his father boast that be wouldn't be able to go to sea without Wang-ti.
In his boyhood on shipboard, there had existed a natural intimacy between the captain's son and the factotum of the nautical household. John's mother was dead, he roamed the ship wild from forecastle to lazaret; and Wang had guarded his fortunes with the wise faithfulness that knows how to keep its attentions unobserved. The captain had even permitted his son to sit in the steward's room, watching him smoke a temperate pipeful of opium after the noon dishes were done; this was the measure of his trust in the old Chinaman.
Indeed, John Sheldon, had he been disposed, might have recalled a great deal that went on in Wang's narrow room on the port side of the forward cabin—incidents fraught with deep importance to boyhood. The room was a place of retreat, a zone of freedom. It made little difference whether Wang were there or not, the two understood each other, conversed only in monosyllables, and the Chinaman apparently took no interest in what the boy did. In return, the boy throughout this period never so much as made an inquiry into Wang's life; that matter, too, was taken for granted. Many an afternoon he would lie for hours on the clean, hard bed, his head buried in a book, while the steward sat beside him on a three-legged wooden stool, sewing or figuring his accounts, neither of them speaking a word or glancing at the other. The click of the stone as the Chinaman mixed his ink, the rustle of the pages, and the faint creak of the wooden finish in the cabin, would mingle with the fainter sounds aloft and along decks as the vessel slipped quietly through the water.
But this was long ago, before life had opened, before days of responsibility and authority had overlaid youthful sentiment with a hard veneer of efficiency. The door of that room had closed on John Sheldon for the last time when he left the ship in New York, a boy of thirteen, to spend a few years at home in school; he was not to share another hour with Wang until the final hour. When next he joined theRetriever'scompany, it was in the capacity of a rousing young second mate of seventeen, broad shouldered and full of confidence, believing that his place in life depended on strength and self-assertion. He picked quarrels with the crew largely for the sake of fighting; he was aggressive and overbearing, as befitted the type of commanding officer that appealed to his imagination. In him, real ability was combined with a physical prowess beyond the ordinary; he failed to meet the reverses that teach men of lesser combative powers a much-needed lesson, and the years conspired to develop the arbitrary side of his character. As an instance of this unfortunate tendency, he had allowed himself, after rising to the position of first mate on theRetriever, to quarrel with his father over some trifling matter of discipline; so that at the end of the voyage he had quitted the deck on which he had been brought up, and had shipped away in another vessel.
It was on the voyage immediately following this incident that his father had died suddenly at sea, half way across the Indian Ocean on the passage home. John Sheldon had arrived in New York from the West Coast almost in company with theRetriever, brought in by the mate who had taken his place. The first news he heard was that his father had been buried at sea. The ship was owned in the family; it seemed natural, in view of this stroke of destiny, that he should have her as his first command. The officers left, he took possession of the cabin and the quarterdeck that had been his father's province for so many years; and Wang continued his duties in the forward cabin as if nothing had happened. The Chinaman had nursed Captain Sheldon when he took to his bed, had found him dying the next morning, had heard his last words, and had laid out his body for burial.
Six years had passed since then. John Sheldon was a dashing young shipmaster of twenty-seven; and now Wang was failing. No doubt about it. The dishes weren't clean any longer; a greasy knife annoyed Captain Sheldon almost as much as an insult. Lately, he had begun to notice a heavy, musty smell as he passed by the pantry door. A dirty steward!—it wasn't to be supported, not on his ship, at any rate.
The Chinaman finished the brasses, gathered up his pan and rags, and started for the forward cabin. Captain Sheldon laid down his book again.
"Steward, have you got a home?"
"Oh, yes, Cappen. I got two piecee house, Hong Kong side"
Wang paused in the doorway, turning half round and steadying himself as the ship lurched. His fingers left a smudge on the white paint. As if perceiving it, he wiped the place furtively with the corner of his cotton tunic, only spreading the smudge. Captain Sheldon, watching the manoeuvre, sniffed in disgust, and continued the inquiry.
"Have you got a wife?"
"She dead, seven, eight year"
"Any children?"
"Oh, I got some piecee children, maybe three, four"
"For God's sake, don't you know how many children you've got?"
"Yes, sir, Cappen. I got four piecee, all go 'way. Maybe some dead. I no hear"
"Hm-m" The captain knit his brows ponderously, a habit he had acquired in the last few years, and fixed a severe glance on the old Chinaman. "Don't you ever want to go home?"
"Oh, no, Cappen. Why fo' I go home? I b'long ship side"
After waiting a moment in silence for further questions, Wang realized that the conversation was not to be concluded this time. He turned slowly and shuffled off through the forward cabin, head bent and eyes peering hard at the floor. Captain Sheldon did not see him stumble heavily against the corner of the settee.
In the protection of the pantry, Wang put down the pan of brick-dust and stood for a long time motionless, holding the dirty rags in the other hand, facing the window above the dresser. He could see the small square of light plainly, but the rest of the room was vague. His tiny, inanimate figure, in the midst of the dim clutter of the room, expressed a weary relaxation; he stood like a man lost in vacant thought. No one would have suspected the feelings behind the wizened face; Wang's countenance, as he gazed steadfastly at the square of light, was an expressionless blank. He seemed scarcely to breathe; the spark of life seemed to have sunk low within him, to have retreated in fear or impotence. The hand holding the rags paused rigidly, as if petrified in the act of putting down its grimy burden. Had Captain Sheldon come upon him at that moment, he would have ordered him shortly to get busy, begin to do something.
All his thoughts, in the silence of the pantry, were of loyalty. That uncommunicative intimacy of the past had been fruitful to one, at least, of the parties to the contract. "Young Cappen" who as a boy had been Wang's pride and charge, was his pride and charge still. Had not "Old Cappen" on his deathbed, whispered the final order "Keep an eye on the boy, Wang. He's stepping high now—but the time may come when he will need you" But of these words, his father's last utterance "Young Cappen" of course knew nothing. They remained a profound secret between Wang and the dead.
If it were true, Wang recognized in that unwavering gaze, that his days of usefulness were over, he would no longer be able to discharge this obligation. Not that his strength was less; his withered, cord-like sinews ached to scrub and polish, to keep his domain in its old efficient order. But this voyage he hadn't been able to see what needed to be done. He had hardly dared allow his mind to formulate the explanation. But now he must face it. He was going blind.
He comprehended fully the meaning of the recent conversation in the after cabin. The pain that held him inert and motionless was half of love and half of fear. Perhaps, he tried to tell himself "Young Cappen" was now safely launched on the sea of life; perhaps he no longer had need of an old man's service. Yet, in the same moment of thought, Wang knew that this was not the fact. The knowledge filled him with a desperate tenacity; until fate actually laid him low, he could not submit to the turn of fortune. Old and wise in life, he realized that "Young Cappen's" hardest lessons still lay ahead of him. He must serve as long as he was able.
That night over the supper table, Captain Sheldon opened a biscuit; there was a dead cockroach in it. His knife had cut it in halves. He threw the biscuit down in disgust. Wang always made the cabin bread.... Well, why didn't the old fool take it away? He must have seen the incident. Captain Sheldon knew that he was standing a few feet away in the pantry door. Taking up his plate, he snapped over his shoulder
"Steward!"
Wang was at his elbow in an instant. The captain thrust the biscuit into his trembling hand.
"Look at that! Take them all away, and bring some bread"
"Yes, sir, Cappen" The Chinaman mumbled incoherently, trying to cover his confusion. His innate sense of the etiquette of human relations, which even after fifty years of service had not accommodated itself to the brusque callousness of European manners, felt bitterly outraged; no way had been left him to save his face. Yet other and stronger emotions quickly submerged the insult. The biscuit plate rattled like a castanet as he set it down on the pantry dresser. As he cut into a new loaf of bread, he shook his head slowly from side to side, like an animal in pain, stopping in the midst of the operation to bend above the offending biscuit and examine it closely. He loosened the cockroach with the point of the bread knife; it fell to the plate, a dark spot on the white china. Under his breath he heaved a staccato sigh "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
Captain Sheldon found himself unable to forget this trivial incident; he kept brooding over it all the evening. At breakfast next morning it came to his mind again, and followed him intermittently throughout the day—a day of petty mishaps and annoyances, one of those days when everything aboard the vessel seemed to be going wrong, when even the best efforts of officers and men to please him resulted in misfortune, and the simplest words rubbed him the wrong way. Captain Sheldon was nearing the end of a long and tedious passage, with nerves and temper badly frayed.
Coming below an hour after dinner, in hope to find a little peace, he met the heavy odour of opium smoke floating through the cabin. The door into the forward cabin had been left open. He strode out angrily; the steward's door was open, too. Glancing into the stateroom, he saw the old Chinaman stretched on the bed, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling, the pipe slipping from his fingers. Thin wisps of opium smoke curled up from the bowl and drifted out into the cabin.
Captain Sheldon's patience snapped suddenly. By God, this was too much! First, bugs in the bread; and now ... the lazy old swine, lying there in an opium dream, too indolent even to close the door! The ship's discipline was going plumb to hell. His authority was becoming a joke. A dirty steward! By God, he wouldn't stand it any longer.
"Steward! Steward! Wake up, there!"
"What, Cappen?"
By a violent effort, Wang pulled himself out of the delicious stupor and sat up on the edge of the bunk. The drug had not fully overcome him; in a long lifetime, he had never exceeded the moderate daily pipeful that would put him to sleep for only half an hour.
"Steward, I can't permit this any longer. You've left your door open, and stunk up the whole cabin with the damned stuff"
"I s'pose close him, Cappen. Maybe wind swing him open"
"You didn't close it! You don't finish anything, now-a-days. It's got to stop, I tell you. I can see what the trouble is. This devilish opium is getting the best of you. It's got to stop—and the best way to stop, is to begin now.... Give me all the opium you've got"
"Yes, sir, Cappen"
The import of the captain's words brought the old Chinaman to his senses with a rush. He got up unsteadily, went to his chest, and began fumbling in the lower corner. Soon he brought out a number of small square packages done up in Chinese paper.
"Cappen, what you do with him?"
Captain Sheldon snatched the packages from the steward's hand.
"I'm going to throw it all overboard! If you've got any more of the stuff hidden away, you're not to smoke it—do you understand? I won't have such a mess in my cabin"
"Cappen, no can do!"
Wang was panting; a shrill note of anguish came into his voice. He reached out a trembling hand toward the precious drug.
"Yes, you can, and you will. It's nothing but a nasty, degenerate habit. You're too old for such things. It's making you dirty and careless. Brace up, now—show that you're good for something. You used to be the best steward in the fleet. I'm only trying to help you out. If things were to go on like this much longer, I'd have to find a new steward in Hong Kong"
Captain Sheldon, struggling to regain control of himself after the outburst of temper, stamped off through the after cabin. Wang heard him go up the companion. He sat down again on the edge of the bunk, a crumpled heap, inert and silent, his eyes dulled by a fear beyond any he had yet known. For fifty years he had smoked daily that tiny pipeful of opium. With all that life had brought him, could he summon strength for this new and terrible ordeal?
II
Fire, like the rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike, and eats up a tall ship at sea as readily as it guts a splendid castle. They were half way across from Luzon to the China coast, only a few hundred miles from Hong Kong and the end of the passage, when the blaze was discovered in the fore hold, already well under way. Quickly it became unmanageable. Through a day and a night of frantic effort the whole ship's company fought the flames, retreating aft inch by inch while destruction followed them relentlessly under decks. In the gleam of a dawn striking across a smooth sea and lighting up the pale faces gathered on the top of the after house, it became apparent that the ship was doomed.
Daylight found them in the boats, standing off to watch the last lurid scene. The ship burned fiercely throughout the forenoon. At midday, under a blistering sun, her bows seemed suddenly to crumple and dissolve; surrounded by a cloud of steam, she settled forward with a loud hissing noise, and slowly vanished under the waters of the China Sea.
Captain Sheldon, sitting upright in the stern of the long-boat, watched the scene with set jaw and snapping eyes. It was his first disaster, the first time he had met destiny coming the other way. A fierce anger, like the fire he had just been fighting, ran in his blood. He was beside himself. It seemed inconceivable that there was no way to bring his ship back out of the deep; that the very means of authority had vanished, that he was powerless, that the event was sealed for all time. He wanted to strike out blindly, hit something, crush something.
Well he knew that if any blame attached to the matter, it rested on him alone. For some occult reason, as it now seemed, the mate a few days before had broached the subject of fire, in conversation at the supper table. Not that fire was to be expected; no one ever had heard of it with such a cargo. Why had the mate chosen that day, of all others, when the captain had lost his patience with old Wang, to talk about fire throughout the supper period, to follow him on deck with the subject in the evening? The talk had only aroused the perversity of his own opposition. The mate, waxing eloquent and imaginative, had at length succeeded in frightening himself; had wanted to take off the fore hatch in the dog watch, just to look into the hold. Had he done so then, the fire would probably have been discovered in season to overcome it. But Captain Sheldon, sarcastic and bristling with arbitrariness, had flatly commanded him to leave the fore hatch alone.
Well, no use in crying over spilt milk. The ship was gone.
"Give way!" he shouted across the water to the mate's boat "Keep along with me. We'll strike in for the coast, and follow it down"
All the afternoon they rowed silently in the broiling heat and mirror-like calm. The coast of China came in sight, a range of high blue-grey mountains far inland. Nearer at hand, a group of outlying islands appeared on the horizon. Captain Sheldon swung his course to the westward, heading directly into the blinding sun that by this time had sunk low in the western sky.
In the extreme bow of the longboat sat the old steward, gazing straight ahead with unseeing eyes. His head was uncovered; the sun beat down on him without effect. He made no movement, uttered no sound. Alone and helpless, he suffered the throes of the most desperate struggle that human consciousness affords—the struggle of the will against the call of a body habituated to opium.
In the latter part of the afternoon they sighted a big Chinese junk, close inshore against the islands. A light breeze had begun to ruffle the water. On the impulse of the moment, Captain Sheldon decided to board the junk and have himself carried to Hong Kong under sail. The idea caught him and suited his fancy; he couldn't bear to think of arriving in port in open boats. Instructions were shouted to the mate's boat, the head of the longboat was again swung around, and a course was laid to intercept the brown-sailed native craft under the lee of the land.
All this passed unnoticed by the silent figure in the bow, wandering blindly through a grim vale of endeavour. As time went on, however, Wang seemed to realize that a change had taken place in the plan of their progress. The sun no longer shone full in his face. He glanced up dully, caught a vague sight of the junk, now close aboard and standing, to his veiled eyes, like a dark blot on the clear rim of the horizon; then pulled himself hastily together and made a low inquiry of the man at the bow oar. The answer seemed to galvanize his tortured body into action. He began to scramble aft under the moving oars.
"Here, what's the trouble forward?" Captain Sheldon tried to make out the cause of the commotion.
"Wang wants to come aft, sir"
"What for? Shove him into the bottom of the boat"
"He says he must see you, sir"
"Oh, the devil ... Well, let him come. He needn't hold up the boat for that"
Many hands helped the old Chinaman aft.
Muttering rapidly to himself, he sank into a place beside the captain.
"What's that you say?" demanded Captain Sheldon "What are you trying to hatch up now?"
Wang made a vague beckoning gesture in the captain's face. Behind all that floated wildly through his mind, stood the fixed thought that he must not shame "Young Cappen" by openly imparting information.
"Are you sick or crazy?" demanded Captain Sheldon again, bending above the maundering old man.
"Cappen, junk he no good!" whispered Wang feverishly "No can do, Cappen! Must go 'way, chop-chop. Night come soon. Maybe no see"
Captain Sheldon gave a loud laugh. He spoke for all to hear.
"What damned nonsense have you got into your head now?"
"No, sir, Cappen. Look-see!" Wang grasped the other's arm with frantic strength, pulling him down "You no savvy him, Cappen. Killee quick, no good! You no wanchee him. Go Hong Kong side, chop-chop. Night come, maybe can do. Cappen, I savvy plenty what for!"
"Oh, shut up, you raving old idiot!" cried Captain Sheldon, roughly.
At this inopportune moment the mate, ranging alongside in his boat, offered a suggestion. They were closing in with the junk now; a row of yellow faces peered over the side toward them, watching with narrow bright eyes every movement of the approaching boats.
"Captain Sheldon, I don't like the looks of that crowd" said the mate nervously "Hadn't we better sheer off, sir?"
"No, certainly not!" shouted the angry captain. "I suppose I'm still in charge here, even if the ship is gone. Do you think I haven't any judgment? By God, between a timid mate and a crazy steward.... Give way, boys, there's nothing to be afraid of!"
The breeze had by this time died away, the junk was scarcely moving. A moment later their oars rattled against the side. Captain Sheldon scrambled aboard. He gave a rapid glance along the low maindeck, but saw nothing to arouse his suspicion. A man, evidently the captain of the craft, was advancing toward him; the crew were crowding around to overhear the conversation. But all this was only natural. An ordinary trading junk, of course; heaven alone knew what all these native craft really were doing. After a moment's scrutiny, he dismissed from his mind any thought that may secretly have been aroused by Wang's warning and the mate's unfortunate remark.
"You losee ship—ha?" The captain of the junk accosted him in good pidgin English.
"Yes—she burned this morning. I want you to take me to Hong Kong"
Within half an hour the bargain had been struck, and they were comfortably established on the new deck. The breeze had freshened, the junk's head had been put about, the two ship's boats trailed astern in single file at the end of a long line. TheRetriever'scompany had partaken of a Chinese supper; many of them were spending the last hour of daylight in examining the queer craft, passing remarks on her strange nautical points, while the native crew watched their movements with furtive gaze.
Captain Sheldon paced to and fro on the high poop deck, chewing the end of a cigar and ruminating on the unaccountable turns of fortune. The adventure of boarding the junk had for a time broken the savage current of his thoughts; but now, with the affair settled and night closing in, the mood of anger and bitterness claimed him again with redoubled intensity.
The mate ranged up beside him with a friendly air. He felt the need of a reconciliation.
"You'll be interested to hear, Captain, that old Wang has found a pipeful of opium"
"The devil you say! I wondered where the old rascal had disappeared to. How do you know?"
"He's been hanging around the Chinese crew, sir, ever since we came aboard. I went through their quarters down below forward a while ago, and there he lay in one of their bunks, dead to the world, with the pipe across his chest"
"The useless old sot!" exclaimed Captain Sheldon "I had made up my mind to get rid of him this time, anyway. You know he has been in the family, so to speak. But I don't like the idea of his going off with his native gang. Combined with the opium business, it looks suspicious. You'd better keep an eye on him. He's got a grudge against me, you know, since I took away his stuff"
"I guess they'll all bear watching, sir"
"Oh, nonsense! There isn't the slightest cause for alarm. It's perfectly evident that this craft is a peaceful trader, and we could handle the whole gang of 'em if they began to make trouble. They won't, though, never fear; a Chinaman is too big a coward. This captain seems to be quite an intelligent fellow; I've just been having a yarn with him. He has given up his room to me; well, not much of a room, nothing but a bunk and a door, but such as it is, it's all he has. Funny quarters they have down below, like a labyrinth of passages, all leading nowhere.
The mate laughed. "Funny enough forward, too; a damned stinking hole, if you ask me, sir"
While they were talking on the poop, Wang appeared on deck forward, went to the weather rail and sniffed a deep breath of the land breeze. He had had an hour's opium sleep—an hour of heaven, an hour of life again. Now he could command his faculties. Blindness was no hindrance to work in the dark; was even an advantage, since for many months now he had been accustomed to feeling and groping his way. Fate had been good to him, at the last. Now he possessed the strength to do what he would have to do.
The familiar voices of the mate and the captain came to his ears, but he did not glance in their direction. The least move on his part to give information would have been his last. He had heard enough already to know that the death of the whole ship's company that night was being actively planned, for the sake of the boats and the mysterious tin box that Captain Sheldon carried.