THE BATTLE OF THE MONSTERS
Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient of Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6:
August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress, having been bitten on wrist three hours previously by dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man, full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse and temperature higher than normal, due to excitement. Cauterized wound at once (2p.m.) and inoculated with antitoxin.As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming ashore, from lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine, he has been isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for symptoms of cholera.August 3, 6p.m.Microscopic examination of blood corroborative of Metschnikoff's theory of fighting leucocytes. White corpuscles gorged with bacteria.
August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress, having been bitten on wrist three hours previously by dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man, full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse and temperature higher than normal, due to excitement. Cauterized wound at once (2p.m.) and inoculated with antitoxin.
As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming ashore, from lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine, he has been isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for symptoms of cholera.
August 3, 6p.m.Microscopic examination of blood corroborative of Metschnikoff's theory of fighting leucocytes. White corpuscles gorged with bacteria.
He was an amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent, pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous and graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the undulatory movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his way of swimming, good enough to enable him to escape his enemies; this, and riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage, constituting his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was denied him; nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for purposes of offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most unheard-of manner—through the soft walls of his body.
Yet he enjoyed a few social pleasures. Though the organs of the five senses were missing in his economy, he possessed an inner sixth sense which answered for all and also gave him power of speech. He would converse, swap news and views, with creatures of his own and other species, provided that they were of equal size and prowess; but he wasted no time on any but his social peers. Smaller creatures he pursued when they annoyed him; larger ones pursued him.
The sunlight, which made him so beautiful to look at, was distasteful to him; it also made him too visible. He preferred a half-darkness and less fervor to life's battle—time to judge of chances, to figure on an enemy's speed and turning-circle, before beginning flight or pursuit. But his dislike of it really came of a stronger animus—a shuddering recollection of three hours once passed on dry land in a comatose condition, which had followed a particularly long and intense period of bright sunlight. He had never been able to explain the connection, but the awful memory still saddened his life.
And now it seemed, as he swam about, that this experience might be repeated. The light was strong and long-continued, the water uncomfortably warm, and the crowd about him denser—so much so as to prevent him from attending properly to a social inferior who had crossed his bow. But just as his mind grasped the full imminence of the danger, there came a sudden darkness, a crash and vibration of the water, then a terrible, rattling roar of sound. The social inferior slipped from his mouth, and with his crowding neighbors was washed far away, while he felt himself slipping along, bounding and rebounding against the projections of a corrugated wall which showed white in the gloom. There was an unpleasant taste to the water, and he became aware of creatures in his vicinity unlike any he had known,—quickly darting little monsters about a tenth as large as himself,—thousands of them, black and horrid to see, each with short, fish-like body and square head like that of a dog; with wicked mouth that opened and shut nervously; with hooked flippers on the middle part, and a bunch of tentacles on the fore that spread out ahead and around. A dozen of them surrounded him menacingly; but he was young and strong, much larger than they, and a little frightened. A blow of his tail killed two, and the rest drew off.
The current bore them on until the white wall rounded off and was lost to sight beyond the mass of darting creatures. Here was slack water, and with desperate effort he swam back, pushing the small enemies out of his path, meeting some resistance and receiving a few bites, until, in a hollow in the wall, he found temporary refuge and time to think. But he could not solve the problem. He had not the slightest idea where he was or what had happened—who and what were the strange black creatures, or why they had threatened him.
His thoughts were interrupted. Another vibrant roar sounded, and there was pitch-black darkness; then he was pushed and washed away from his shelter, jostled, bumped, and squeezed, until he found himself in a dimly lighted tunnel, which, crowded as it was with swimmers, was narrow enough to enable him to see both sides at once. The walls were dark brown and blue, broken up everywhere into depressions or caves, some of them so deep as to be almost like blind tunnels. The dog-faced creatures were there—as far as he could see; but besides them, now, were others, of stranger shape—of species unknown to him.
A slow current carried them on, and soon they entered a larger tunnel. He swam to the opposite wall, gripped a projection, and watched in wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed the source of the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body and innumerable legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated past. Its body swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling giving out a phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening to a faint red color. Then came a group of others; then a second living lamp; later another and another: they were evenly distributed, and illumined the tunnel.
There were monstrous shapes, living but inert, barely pulsing with dormant life, as much larger than himself as the dog-headed kind were smaller—huge, unwieldy, disk-shaped masses of tissue, light gray at the margins, dark red in the middle. They were in the majority, and blocked the view. Darting and wriggling between and about them were horrible forms, some larger than himself, others smaller. There were serpents, who swam with a serpent's motion. Some were serpents in form, but were curled rigidly into living corkscrews, and by sculling with their tails screwed their way through the water with surprising rapidity. Others were barrel- or globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles. With these they pulled themselves along, in and out through the crowd, or, bringing their squirming appendages rearward,—each an individual snake,—used them as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the form of long cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along like a log in a tideway; others, without appendages, were as inert and helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped creatures float by, clinging together; then a group of eight, then one of twelve. All these, to the extent of their volition, seemed to be in a state of extreme agitation and excitement.
The cause was apparent. The tunnel from which he had come was still discharging the dog-faced animals by the thousand, and he knew now the business they were on. It was war—war to the death. They flung themselves with furious energy into the parade, fighting and biting all they could reach. A hundred at a time would pounce on one of the large red-and-gray creatures, almost hiding it from view; then, and before they had passed out of sight, they would fall off and disperse, and the once living victim would come with them, in parts. The smaller, active swimmers fled, but if one was caught, he suffered; a quick dart, a tangle of tentacles, an embrace of the wicked flippers, a bite—and a dead body floated on.
And now into the battle came a ponderous engine of vengeance and defense. A gigantic, lumbering, pulsating creature, white and translucent but for the dark, active brain showing through its walls, horrible in the slow, implacable deliberation of its movements, floated down with the current. It was larger than the huge red-and-gray creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of the definition—for it assumed all forms. It was long—barrel-shaped; it shrank to a sphere, then broadened laterally, and again extended above and below. In turn it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a pentahedron, a polyhedron. It possessed neither legs, flippers, nor tentacles; but out from its heaving, shrinking body it would send, now from one spot, now from another, an active arm, or feeler, with which it swam, pulled, or pushed. An unlucky invader which one of them touched made few more voluntary movements; for instantly the whole side of the whitish mass bristled with arms. They seized, crushed, killed it, and then pushed it bodily through the living walls to the animal's interior to serve for food. And the gaping fissure healed at once, like the wounds of Milton's warring angels.
The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three, then dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army of defense was mustering.
Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of the projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to himself—but not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail, swinging easily in the eddy, and now felt himself touched from beneath, again from above. A projection down-stream was extending outward and toward him. The cave in which he had taken refuge was closing on him like a great mouth—as though directed by an intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified flirt of his tail he flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the combat the walls of the cave crunched together. It was well for him that he was not there.
The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray kind, and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment marking the death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the horrid interment of fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger, as mouth after mouth of tributary tunnels was passed; but as each one discharged its quota of swimming and drifting creatures, there was no thinning of the crowd.
As he drifted on with the inharmonious throng, he noticed what seemed the objective of the war. This was the caves which lined the tunnel. Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large red-and-gray animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter, and the walls instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature drifted out, limp and colorless, but alive; and with him came fragments of the wall, broken off by the pressure. This happened again and again, but the large creature was never quite killed—merely squeezed. The tentacled non-combatants and the large white fighters seemed to know the danger of these tunnel mouths, possibly from bitter experiences, for they avoided the walls; but the dog-faced invaders sought this death, and only fought on their way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or more, would launch themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail; their united strength could not prevent the closing in of the mechanical maw, and they were crushed and flung out, to drift on with other debris.
Soon the walls could not be seen for the pushing, jostling crowd, but everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a time when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They seemed to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into cross-currents rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical thunder. They were shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed together, hundreds of the smaller creatures dying from the pressure. Then there was a moment of comparative quiet, during which fighting was resumed, and there could be seen the swiftly flying walls of a large tunnel. Next they were rushed through a labyrinth of small caves with walls of curious, branching formation, sponge-like and intricate. It required energetic effort to prevent being caught in the meshes, and the large red-and-gray creatures were sadly torn and crushed, while the white ones fought their way through by main strength. Again the flying walls of a tunnel, again a mighty cave, and the cross-currents, and the rhythmical thunder, and now a wild charge down an immense tunnel, the wall of which surged outward and inward, in unison with the roaring of the thunder.
The thunder died away in the distance, though the walls still surged—even those of a smaller tunnel which divided the current and received them. Down-stream the tunnel branched again and again, and with the lessening of the diameter was a lessening of the current's velocity, until, in a maze of small, short passages, the invaders, content to fight and kill in the swifter tide, again attacked the caves.
But to the never-changing result: they were crushed, mangled, and cast out, the number of suicides, in this neighborhood, largely exceeding those killed by the white warriors. And yet, in spite of the large mortality among them, the attacking force was increasing. Where one died two took his place; and the reason was soon made plain—they were reproducing. A black fighter, longer than his fellows, a little sluggish of movement, as though from the restrictive pressure of a large, round protuberance in his middle, which made him resemble a snake which had swallowed an egg, was caught by a white monster and instantly embraced by a multitude of feelers. He struggled, bit, and broke in two; then the two parts escaped the grip of the astonished captor, and wriggled away, the protuberance becoming the head of the rear portion, which immediately joined the fight, snapping and biting with unmistakable jaws. This phenomenon was repeated.
And on went the battle. Illumined by the living lamps, and watched by terrified non-combatants, the horrid carnival continued with never-slacking fury and ever-changing background—past the mouths of tributary tunnels which increased the volume and velocity of the current and added to the fighting strength, on through widening archways to a repetition of the cross-currents, the thunder, and the sponge-like maze, down past the heaving walls of larger tunnels to branched passages, where, in comparative slack water, the siege of the caves was resumed. For hour after hour this went on, the invaders dying by hundreds, but increasing by thousands and ten thousands, as the geometrical progression advanced, until, with swimming-spaces nearly choked by their bodies, living and dead, there came the inevitable turn in the tide of battle. A white monster was killed.
Glutted with victims, exhausted and sluggish, he was pounced upon by hundreds, hidden from view by a living envelop of black, which pulsed and throbbed with his death-throes. A feeler reached out, to be bitten off; then another, to no avail. His strength was gone, and the assailants bit and burrowed until they reached a vital part, when the great mass assumed a spherical form and throbbed no more. They dropped off, and, as the mangled ball floated on, charged on the next enemy with renewed fury and courage born of their victory. This one died as quickly.
And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet it, the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along the walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working jaws of the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and drifting slowly in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing strength and increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our conservative non-combatant, out in midstream, found himself surrounded by a horde of black enemies who had nothing better to do than attack him.
And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked jaws in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by his terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them with his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to make room for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and back, up and down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then with lightning rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve. He was fighting for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used his jaws, only once to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the white monsters were watching him; but none offered to help, and he had not time to call.
He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from all sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which to fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray creatures, the non-combatants, and the phosphorescent animals were pushed aside, and he, the center of an almost solid black mass, fought, in utter darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had no appreciation of the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance from the wall, or the destination of this never-pausing current. But finally, after an apparently interminable period, he heard dimly, with failing consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and knew momentary respite as the violent cross-currents tore his assailants away. Then, still in darkness, he felt the crashing and tearing of flesh against obstructing walls and sharp corners, the repetition of thunder and the roar of the current which told him he was once more in a large tunnel. An instant of light from a venturesome torch showed him to his enemies, and again he fought, like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dying from exhaustion and pain, but still potential to kill—terrible in his agony. There was no counting of scalps in that day's work; but perhaps no devouring white monster in all the defensive army could have shown a death-list equal to this. From the surging black cloud there was a steady outflow of the dead, pushed back by the living.
Weaker and weaker, while they mangled his flesh, and still in darkness, he fought them down through branching passages to another network of small tunnels, where he caught a momentary view of the walls and the stolid white guard, thence on to what he knew was open space. And here he felt that he could fight no more. They had covered him completely, and, try as he might with his failing strength, he could not dislodge them. So he ceased his struggles; and numb with pain, dazed with despair, he awaited the end.
But it did not come. He was too exhausted to feel surprise or joy when they suddenly dropped away from him; but the instinct of self-preservation was still in force, and he swam toward the wall. The small creatures paid him no attention; they scurried this way and that, busy with troubles of their own, while he crept stupidly and painfully between two white sentries floating in the eddies,—one of whom considerately made room for him,—and anchored to a projection, luckily choosing a harbor that was not hostile.
"Any port in a storm, eh, neighbor?" said the one who had given him room, and who seemed to notice his dazed condition. "You'll feel better soon. My, but you put up a good fight, that's what you did!"
He could not answer, and the friendly guard resumed his vigil. In a few moments, however, he could take cognizance of what was going on in the stream. There was a new army in the fight, and reinforcements were still coming. A short distance above him was a huge rent in the wall, and the caves around it, crushed and distorted, were grinding fiercely. Protruding through the rent and extending half-way across the tunnel was a huge mass of some strange substance, roughly shaped to a cylindrical form. It was hollow, and out of it, by thousands and hundred thousands, was pouring the auxiliary army, from which the black fighters were now fleeing for dear life.
The newcomers, though resembling in general form the creatures they pursued, were much larger and of two distinct types. Both were light brown in color; but while one showed huge development of head and jaw, with small flippers, the other kind reversed these attributes, their heads being small, but their flippers long and powerful. They ran their quarry down in the open, and seized them with outreaching tentacles. No mistakes were made—no feints or false motions; and there was no resistance by the victims. Where one was noticed he was doomed. The tentacles gathered him in—to a murderous bite or a murderous embrace.
At last, when the inflow had ceased,—when there must have been millions of the brown killers in the tunnel,—the great hollow cylinder turned slowly on its axis and backed out through the rent in the wall, which immediately closed, with a crushing and scattering of fragments. Though the allies were far down-stream now, the war was practically ended; for the white defenders remained near the walls, and the black invaders were in wildest panic, each one, as the resistless current rushed him past, swimming against the stream, to put distance between himself and the destroyer below. But before long an advance-guard of the brown enemy shot out from the tributaries above, and the tide of retreat swung backward. Then came thousands of them, and the massacre was resumed.
"Hot stuff, eh?" said his friendly neighbor to him.
"Y-y-y-es—I guess so," he answered, rather vacantly; "I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I never saw such doings. What is it all for? What does it mean?"
"Oh, this is nothing; it's all in a lifetime. Still, I admit it might ha' been serious for us—and you, too—if we hadn't got help."
"But who are they, and what? They all seem of a family, and are killing each other."
"Immortal shade of Darwin!" exclaimed the other sentry, who had not spoken before. "Where were you brought up? Don't you know that variations from type are the deadliest enemies of the parent stock? These two brown breeds are the hundredth or two-hundredth cousins of the black kind. When they've killed off their common relative, and get to competing for grub, they'll exterminate each other, and we'll be rid of 'em all. Law of nature. Understand?"
"Oh, y-yes, I understand, of course; but what did the black kind attack me for? And what do they want, anyway?"
"To follow out their destiny, I s'pose. They're the kind of folks who have missions. Reformers, we call 'em—who want to enforce their peculiar ideas and habits on other people. Sometimes we call them expansionists—fond of colonizing territory that doesn't belong to them. They wanted to get through the cells to the lymph-passages, thence on to the brain and spinal marrow. Know what that means? Hydrophobia."
"What's that?"
"Oh, say, now! You're too easy."
"Come, come," said the other, good-naturedly; "don't guy him. He never had our advantages. You see, neighbor, we get these points from the subjective brain, which knows all things and gives us our instructions. We're the white corpuscles,—phagocytes, the scientists call us,—and our work is to police the blood-vessels, and kill off invaders that make trouble. Those red-and-gray chumps can't take care of themselves, and we must protect 'em. Understand? But this invasion was too much for us, and we had to have help from outside. You must have come in with the first crowd—think I saw you—in at the bite. Second crowd came in through an inoculation tube, and just in time to pull you through."
"I don't know," answered our bewildered friend. "In at the bite? What bite? I was swimming round comfortable-like, and there was a big noise, and then I was alongside of a big white wall, and then——"
"Exactly; the dog's tooth. You got into bad company, friend, and you're well out of it. That first gang is the microbe of rabies, not very well known yet, because a little too small to be seen by most microscopes. All the scientists seem to have learned about 'em is that a colony a few hundred generations old—which they call a culture, or serum—is death on the original bird; and that's what they sent in to help out. Pasteur's dead, worse luck, but sometime old Koch'll find out what we've known all along—that it's only variation from type."
"Koch!" he answered eagerly and proudly. "Oh, I know Koch; I've met him. And I know about microscopes, too. Why, Koch had me under his microscope once. He discovered my family, and named us—the comma bacilli—the Spirilli of Asiatic Cholera."
In silent horror they drew away from him, and then conversed together. Other white warriors drifting along stopped and joined the conference, and when a hundred or more were massed before him, they spread out to a semi-spherical formation and closed in.
"What's the matter?" he asked nervously. "What's wrong? What are you going to do? I haven't done anything, have I?"
"It's not what you've done, stranger," said his quondam friend, "or what we're going to do. It's what you're going to do. You're going to die. Don't see how you got past quarantine, anyhow."
"What—why—I don't want to die. I've done nothing. All I want is peace and quiet, and a place to swim where it isn't too light nor too dark. I mind my own affairs. Let me alone—you hear me—let me alone!"
They answered him not. Slowly and irresistibly the hollow formation contracted—individuals slipping out when necessary—until he was pushed, still protesting, into the nearest movable cave. The walls crashed together and his life went out. When he was cast forth he was in five pieces.
And so our gentle, conservative, non-combative cholera microbe, who only wanted to be left alone to mind his own affairs, met this violent death, a martyr to prejudice and an unsympathetic environment.
Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson:
August 18. As period of incubation for both cholera and hydrophobia has passed and no initial symptoms of either disease have been noticed, patient is this day discharged, cured.
August 18. As period of incubation for both cholera and hydrophobia has passed and no initial symptoms of either disease have been noticed, patient is this day discharged, cured.
FROM THE ROYAL-YARD DOWN
As night descended, cold and damp, the wind hauled, and by nine o'clock the ship was charging along before a half-gale and a rising sea from the port quarter. When the watch had braced the yards, the mate ordered the spanker brailed in and the mizzen-royal clued up, as the ship steered hard. This was done, and the men coiled up the gear.
"Let the spanker hang in the brails; tie up the royal," ordered the mate from his position at the break of the poop.
"Aye, aye, sir," answered a voice from the group, and an active figure sprang into the rigging. Another figure—slim and graceful, clad in long yellow oilskin coat, and a sou'wester which could not confine a tangled fringe of wind-blown hair—left the shelter of the after-companionway and sped along the alley to the mate's side.
"The foot-rope, Mr. Adams," she said hurriedly. "The seizing was chafed, you remember."
"By George, Miss Freda!" said the officer. "Forgot all about it. Glad you spoke. Come down from aloft," he added in a roar.
The sailor answered and descended.
"Get a piece of spun yarn out o' the booby-hatch and take it up wi' you," continued the mate. "Pass a temporary seizing on the lee royal foot-rope. Make sure it's all right 'fore you get on it, now."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The man passed down the poop steps, secured the spun yarn, and while rolling it into a ball to put in his pocket, stood for a moment in the light shining from the second mate's room. The girl on the poop looked down at him. He was a trim-built, well-favored young fellow, with more refinement in his face than most sailors can show; yet there was no lack of seamanly deftness in the fingers which balled up the spun yarn and threw a half-hitch with the bight of the lanyard over the point of the marlinespike which hung to his neck. As he climbed the steps, the girl faced him, looking squarely into his eyes.
"Be careful, John—Mr. Owen," she said. "The seizing is chafed through. I heard the man report it—it was Dutch George of the other watch. Do be careful."
"Eh, why—why, yes, Miss Folsom. Thank you. But you startled me. I've been Jack for three years—not John, nor Mister. Yes, it's all right; I——"
"Get aloft to that mizzenroyal," thundered the mate, now near the wheel.
"Aye, aye, sir." He touched his sou'wester to the girl and mounted the weather mizzen-rigging, running up the ratlines as a fireman goes up a ladder. It was a black night with cold rain, and having thrown off his oiled jacket, he was already drenched to the skin; but no environment of sunshine, green fields and woodland, and flower-scented air ever made life brighter to him than had the incident of the last few moments; and with every nerve in his body rejoicing in his victory, and her bitter words of four years back crowding his mind as a contrasting background, he danced up and over the futtock-shrouds, up the topmast-rigging, through the crosstrees, and up the topgallant-rigging to where the ratlines ended and he must climb on the runner of the royal-halyards. As the yard was lowered, this was a short climb, and he swung himself upward to the weather yard-arm, where he rolled up one side of the sail with extravagant waste of muscular effort; for she had said he was not a man, and he had proved her wrong: he had conquered himself, and he had conquered her.
He hitched the gasket, and crossed over to the lee side, forgetting, in his exhilaration, the object of the spun yarn in his pocket and the marlinespike hung from his neck, stepped out on the foot-rope, passed his hands along the jack-stay to pull himself farther, and felt the foot-rope sink to the sound of snapping strands. The jackstay was torn from his grasp, and he fell, face downward, into the black void beneath.
An involuntary shriek began on his lips, but was not finished. He felt that the last atom of air was jarred from his lungs by what he knew was the topgallant-yard, four feet below the royal; and, unable to hold on, with a freezing cold in his veins and at the hair-roots, he experienced in its fullness the terrible sensation of falling,—whirling downward,—clutching wildly at vacancy with stiffened fingers.
The first horror past, his mind took on a strange contemplativeness; fear of death gave way to mild curiosity as to the manner of it. Would he strike on the lee quarter, or would he go overboard? And might he not catch something? There was rigging below him—the lee royal-backstay stretched farthest out from the mast, and if he brushed it, there was a possible chance. He was now face upward, and with the utmost difficulty moved his eyes,—he could not yet, by any exercise of will or muscle, move his head,—and there, almost within reach, was a dark line, which he knew was the royal-backstay; farther in toward the spars was another—the topgallant-backstay; and within this, two other ropes which he knew for the topgallant-rigging, though he could see no ratlines, nor could he distinguish the lay of the strands; the ropes appeared like solid bars. This, with the fact that he was still but a few feet below the topgallant-yard, surprised him, until it came to him that falling bodies travel over sixteen feet in the first second of descent, which is at a rate too fast for distinct vision, and that the apparent slowness of his falling was but relative—because of the quickness of his mind, which could not wait on a sluggish optic nerve and more sluggish retina.
Yet he wondered why he could not reach out and grasp the backstay. It seemed as though invisible fetters bound every muscle and joint, though not completely. An intense effort of will resulted in the slow extension of all the fingers of his right hand, and a little straightening of the arm toward the backstay; but not until he had fallen to the level of the upper topsail-yard was this result reached. It did no good; the backstay was now farther away. As it led in a straight line from the royal-masthead to the rail, this meant that he would fall overboard, and the thought comforted him. The concussion would kill him, of course; but no self-pity afflicted him now. He merely considered that she, who had relented, would be spared the sight of him crushed to a pulp on the deck.
As he drifted slowly down past the expanse of upper topsail, he noticed that his head was sinking and his body turning so that he would ultimately face forward; but still his arms and legs held their extended position, like those of a speared frog, and the thought recalled to him an incident of his infancy—a frog-hunt with an older playmate, his prowess, success, wet feet, and consequent illness. It had been forgotten for years, but the chain was started, and led to other memories, long dead, which rose before him. His childhood passed in review, with its pleasures and griefs; his school-days, with their sports, conflicts, friends and enemies; college, where he had acquired the polish to make him petted of all but one—and abhorrent to her. Almost every person, man or woman, boy or girl, with whom he had conversed in his whole life, came back and repeated the scene; and as he passed the lower topsail-yard, nearly head downward, he was muttering commonplaces to a brown-faced, gray-eyed girl, who listened, and looked him through and through, and seemed to be wondering why he existed.
And as he traversed the depth of the lower topsail, turning gradually on his axis, he lived it over—next to his first voyage, the most harrowing period of his life: the short two months during which he had striven vainly to impress this simple-natured sailor-girl with his good qualities, ending at last with his frantic declaration of a love that she did not want.
"But it's not the least use, John," she said to him. "I do not love you, and I cannot. You are a gentleman, as they say, and as such I like you well enough; but I never can love you, nor any one like you. I've been among men, real men, all my life, and perhaps have ideals that are strange to you. John,"—her eyes were wide open in earnestness,—"you are not a man."
Writhing under her words, which would have been brutal spoken by another, he cursed, not her, nor himself, but his luck and the fates that had shaped his life. And next she was showing him the opened door, saying that she could tolerate profanity in a man, but not in a gentleman, and that under no circumstances was he to claim her acquaintance again. Then followed the snubbing in the street, when, like a lately whipped dog, he had placed himself in her way, hoping she would notice him; and the long agony of humiliation and despair as his heart and soul followed her over the seas in her father's ship, until the seed she had planted—the small suspicion that her words were true—developed into a wholesome conviction that she had measured him by a higher standard than any he had known, and found him wanting. So he would go to her school, and learn what she knew.
With lightning-like rapidity his mind rehearsed the details of his tuition: the four long voyages; the brutality of the officers until he had learned his work; their consideration and rough kindness when he had become useful and valuable; the curious, incongruous feeling of self-respect that none but able seamen feel; the growth in him of an aggressive physical courage; the triumphant satisfaction with which he finally knew himself as a complete man, clean in morals and mind, able to look men in the face. And then came the moment when, mustering at the capstan with the new crew of her father's ship, he had met her surprised eyes with a steady glance, and received no recognition.
And so he pleaded his cause, dumbly, by the life that he lived. Asking nothing by word or look, he proved himself under her eyes—first on deck; first in the rigging; the best man at a weather-earing; the best at the wheel; quick, obedient, intelligent, and respectful, winning the admiration of his mates, the jealous ill will of the officers, but no sign of interest or approval from her until to-night—the ninety-second day of the passage. She had surrendered; he had reached her level, only to die; and he thought this strange.
Facing downward, head inboard now, and nearly horizontal, he was passing the cross-jack yard. Below him was the sea—black and crisp, motionless as though carved in ebony. Neither was there movement of the ship and its rigging; the hanging bights of ropes were rigid, while a breaking sea just abaft the main chains remained poised, curled, its white crest a frozen pillow of foam. "The rapidity of thought," he mused dreamily; "but I'm falling fast enough—fast enough to kill me when I strike."
He could not move an eyelid now, nor was he conscious that he breathed; but, being nearly upright, facing aft and inboard, the quarter-deck and its fittings were before his eyes, and he saw what brought him out of eternity to a moment of finite time and emotion. The helmsman stood at the motionless wheel with his right hand poised six inches above a spoke, as though some sudden paralysis gripped him, and his face, illumined by the binnacle light, turned aloft inquiringly. But it was not this. Standing at the taffrail, one hand on a life-buoy, was a girl in yellow looking at him,—unspeakable horror in the look,—and around her waist the arm of the mate, on whose rather handsome face was an evil grin.
A pang of earthly rage and jealousy shot through him, and he wished to live. By a supreme effort of will he brought his legs close together and his arms straight above his head; then the picture before him shot upward, and he was immersed in cold salt water, with blackness all about him. How long he remained under he could not guess. He had struck feet first and suffered no harm, but had gone down like a deep-sea lead. He felt the aching sensation in his lungs coming from suppressed breathing, and swam blindly in the darkness, not knowing in which direction was the surface, until he felt the marlinespike—still fastened to his neck—extending off to the right. Sure that it must hang downward, he turned the other way, and, keeping it parallel with his body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and with a little trouble he shed them.
He was alive, and his world was again in motion. Seas lifted and dropped him, occasionally breaking over his head. In the calm of the hollows, he listened for voices of possible rescuers. On the tops of the seas,—ears filled with the roar of the gale,—he shouted, facing to leeward, and searching with strained eyes for sign of the ship or one of her boats. At last he saw a pin-point of light far away, and around it and above it blacker darkness, which was faintly shaped to the outline of a ship and canvas—hove to in the trough, with maintopsail aback, as he knew by its foreshortening. And even as he looked and shouted it faded away. He screamed and cursed, for he wanted to live. He had survived that terrible fall, and it was his right.
Something white showed on the top of a sea to leeward and sank in a hollow. He sank with it, and when he rose again it was nearer.
"Boat ahoy!" he sang out. "Boat ahoy!—this way—port a little—steady."
He swam as he could, cumbered by the life-buoy, and with every heaving sea the boat came nearer. At last he recognized it—the ship's dinghy; and it was being pulled into the teeth of that forceful wind and sea by a single rower—a slight figure in yellow.
"It's Freda," he exclaimed; and then, in a shout: "This way, Miss Folsom—a little farther."
She turned, nodded, and pulled the boat up to him. He seized the gunwale, and she took in the oars.
"Can you climb in alone, John?" she asked in an even voice—as even as though she were asking him to have more tea. "Wait a little,—I am tired,—and I will help you."
She was ever calm and dispassionate, but he wondered at her now; yet he would not be outdone.
"I'll climb over the stern, Freda, so as not to capsize you. Better go forward to balance my weight."
She did so. He pulled himself to the stern, slipped the life-buoy over his head and into the boat, then, by a mighty exercise of all his strength, vaulted aboard with seeming ease and sat down on a thwart. He felt a strong inclination to laughter and tears, but repressed himself; for masculine hysterics would not do before this young woman. She came aft to the next thwart, and when he felt steadier he said:
"You have saved my life, Freda; but thanks are idle now, for your own is in danger. Give me the oars. We must get back to the ship."
She changed places with him, facing forward, and said wearily, as he shipped the oars: "So you want to get back?"
"Why, yes; don't you? We are adrift in an open boat."
"The wind is going down, and the seas do not break," she answered, in the same weary voice. "It does not rain any more, and we will have the moon."
A glance around told him that she spoke truly. There was less pressure to the wind, and the seas rose and fell, sweeping past them like moving hills of oil. Moonlight shining through thinning clouds faintly illumined her face, and he saw the expressionless weariness of her voice, and a sad, dreamy look in her gray eyes.
"How did you get the dinghy down, Freda?" he asked. "And why did no one come with you?"
"Father was asleep, and the mate was incompetent. I had my revolver, and they backed the yards for me and threw the dinghy over. I had loosened the gripes as you went aloft. I thought you would fall. Still—no one would come."
"And you came alone," he said in a broken voice, "and pulled this boat to windward in this sea. You are a wonder."
"I saw you catch the life-buoy. Why did you fall? You were cautioned."
"I forgot the foot-rope. I was thinking of you."
"You are like the mate. He forgot the foot-rope all day because he was thinking of me. I should have gone aloft and seized it myself."
There was no reproof or sarcasm in the tired voice. She had simply made an assertion.
"Why are you at sea, before the mast—a man of your talents?"
It was foolish, he knew; but the word "man" sent a thrill through him.
"To please you if I may; to cultivate what you did not find in me."
"Yes, I knew; when you came on board I knew it. But you might have spoken to me."
There was petulance in the tone now, and the soul of the man rejoiced. The woman in her was asserting itself.
"Miss Folsom," he answered warmly, "I could not. You had made it impossible. It was your right, your duty, if you wished it. But you ignored my existence."
"I was testing you. I am glad now, Mr. Owen."
The petulance was gone, but there was something chilling in this answer.
"Can you see the ship?" he asked after a moment's silence. "The moonlight is stronger."
"We will not reach her. They have squared away. The mate had the deck, and father is asleep."
"And left you in an open boat," he answered angrily.
"He knew I was with you."
What was irrelevant in this explanation of the mate's conduct escaped him at the time. The full moon had emerged from behind the racing clouds, and it brightened her face, fringed by the tangled hair and yellow sou'wester, to an unearthly beauty that he had never seen before. He wondered at it, and for a moment a grisly thought crossed his mind that this was not life, but death; that he had died in the fall, and in some manner the girl had followed.
She was standing erect, her lithe figure swaying to the boat's motion, and pointing to leeward, while the moonlit face was now sweetened by the smile of a happy child. He stood up, and looked where she pointed, but saw nothing, and seated himself to look at her.
"See!" she exclaimed gleefully. "They have hauled out the spanker and are sheeting home the royal. I will never be married! I will never be married! He knew I was with you."
Again he stood up and searched the sea to leeward. There was nothing in sight.
"Unhinged," he thought, "by this night's trouble. Freda," he said gently, "please sit down. You may fall overboard."
"I am not insane," she said, as though reading his thought; and, smiling radiantly in his face, she obeyed him.
"Do you know where we are?" he asked tentatively. "Are we in the track of ships?"
"No," she answered, while her face took on the dreamy look again. "We are out of all the tracks. We will not be picked up. We are due west from Ilio Island. I saw it at sundown broad on the starboard bow. The wind is due south. If you will pull in the trough of the sea we can reach it before daylight. I am tired—so tired—and sleepy. Will you watch out?"
"Why, certainly. Lie down in the stern-sheets and sleep if you can."
She curled up in her yellow oil-coat and slumbered through the night, while he pulled easily on the oars—not that he had full faith in her navigation, but to keep himself warm. The sea became smoother, and as the moon rose higher, it attained a brightness almost equal to that of the sun, casting over the clear sky a deep-blue tint that shaded indefinitely into the darkness extending from itself to the horizon. Late in the night he remembered the danger of sleeping in strong moonlight, and arising softly to cover her face with his damp handkerchief, he found her looking at him.
"We are almost there, John. Wake me when we arrive," she said, and closed her eyes.
He covered her face, and, marveling at her words, looked ahead. He was within a half-mile of a sandy beach which bordered a wooded island. The sea was now like glass in its level smoothness, and the air was warm and fragrant with the smell of flowers and foliage. He shipped the oars, and pulled to the beach. As the boat grounded she arose, and he helped her ashore.
The beach shone white under the moonlight, and dotting it were large shellfish and moving crabs that scuttled away from them. Bordering the beach were forest and undergrowth with interlacery of flowering vines. A ridge of rocks near by disclosed caves and hollows, some filled by the water of tinkling cascades. Oranges snowed in the branches of trees, and cocoa-palms lifted their heads high in the distance. A small deer arose, looked at them, and lay down, while a rabbit inspected them from another direction and began nibbling.
"An earthly paradise, I should say," he observed, as he hauled the boat up the beach. "Plenty of food and water, at any rate."
"It is Ilio Island," she answered, with that same dreamy voice. "It is uninhabited and never visited."
"But surely, Freda, something will come along and take us off."
"No; if I am taken off I must be married, of course; and I will never be married."
"Who to, Freda? Whom must you marry if we are rescued?"
"The mate—Mr. Adams. Not you, John Owen—not you. I do not like you."
She was unbalanced, of course; but the speech pained him immeasurably, and he made no answer. He searched the clean-cut horizon for a moment, and when he looked back she was close to him, with the infantile smile on her face, candor and sanity in her gray eyes. Involuntarily he extended his arms, and she nestled within them.
"Youwillbe married, Freda," he said; "youwillbe married, and to me."
He held her tightly and kissed her lips; but the kiss ended in a crashing sound, and a shock of pain in his whole body which expelled the breath from his lungs. The moonlit island, sandy beach, blue sea and sky were swallowed in a blaze of light, which gave way to pitchy darkness, with rain on his face and whistling wind in his ears, while he clung with both arms, not to a girl, but to a hard, wet, and cold mizzentopgallant-yard whose iron jack-stay had bumped him severely between the eyes. Below him in the darkness a scream rang out, followed by the roar of the mate: "Are you all right up there? Want any help?"
He had fallen four feet.
When he could speak he answered: "I'm all right, sir." And catching the royal foot-rope dangling from the end of the yard above him, he brought it to its place, passed the seizing, and finished furling the royal. But it was a long job; his movements were uncertain, for every nerve in his body was jumping in its own inharmonious key.
"What's the matter wi' you up there?" demanded the mate when he reached the deck; and a yellow-clad figure drew near to listen.
"It was nothing, sir; I forgot about the foot-rope."
"You're a bigger lunkhead than I thought. Go forrard."
He went, and when he came aft at four bells to take his trick at the wheel, the girl was still on deck, standing near the companionway, facing forward. The mate stood at the other side of the binnacle, looking at her, with one elbow resting on the house. There was just light enough from the cabin skylight for Owen to see the expression which came over his face as he watched the graceful figure balancing to the heave of the ship. It took on the same evil look which he had seen in his fall, while there was no mistaking the thought behind the gleam in his eyes. The mate looked up,—into Owen's face,—and saw something there which he must have understood; for he dropped his glance to the compass, snarled out, "Keep her on the course," and stepped into the lee alleyway, where the dinghy, lashed upside down on the house, hid him from view.
The girl approached the man at the wheel.
"I saw you fall, Mr. Owen," she said in a trembling voice, "and I could not help screaming. Were you hurt much?"
"No, Miss Folsom," he answered in a low though not a steady tone; "but I was sadly disappointed."
"I confess I was nervous—very nervous—when you went aloft," she said; "and I cleared away the life-buoy. Then, when you fell, it slipped out of my hand and went overboard. Mr. Adams scolded me. Wasn't it ridiculous?" There were tears and laughter in the speech.
"Not at all," he said gravely; "it saved my life—for which I thank you."
"How—why——"
"Who in Sam Hill's been casting off these gripe-lashings?" growled the voice of the mate behind the dinghy.
The girl tittered hysterically, and stepped beside Owen at the wheel, where she patted the moving spokes, pretending to assist him in steering.
"Miss Freda," said the officer, sternly, as he came around the corner of the house, "I must ask you plainly to let things alone; and another thing, please don't talk to the man at the wheel."
"Will you please mind your own business?" she almost screamed; and then, crying and laughing together: "If you paid as much attention to your work as you do to—to—me, men wouldn't fall from aloft on account of rotten foot-ropes."
The abashed officer went forward, grumbling about "discipline" and "women aboard ship." When he was well out of sight in the darkness, the girl turned suddenly, passed both arms around Owen's neck, exerted a very slight pressure, patted him playfully on the shoulder as she withdrew them, and sped down the companionway.
He steered a wild course during that trick, and well deserved the profane criticism which he received from the mate.