And then a couple or five days ago he had finally gotten tired of watching an arm swing back and forth from the thwart, and to still an urge which demanded to discover if man was fair food, hitched himself upright and, after an hour’s work, had managed to slide the body into the thick of a craggy wave which gulped and gave up its prey no more.
He had stared in stupefaction, then, at the biscuit which floated upon the sea water in the bilge. He wondered that the bosun had not eaten it long before. But the bosun’s loss was his gain and so he had eaten.
The foolishness of eating came to him afterwards. For eating would prolong his life yet a little while and he was heartily sick of the way the boat kept lurching, rolling, pitching. If the sail hadn’t blown away long ago he would have tried to steady the thing with it.
The sound of the wind had gotten into his head along with the slap of the single remaining halyard and he was certain that he would never be able to get it out again. The sea, too, made far too much tumult, for each time a wave towered up its forty feet the wind hacked it down again and sent the top hissing straight out until the air was a horizontal sheet of water, discoloring the already leaden sky.
Wondering a little at his energy now, he put in a time at bailing, scooping up some water, lifting the can to the gunwale, spilling it out, bringing it back, scooping it up, lifting it to the gunwale, spilling it out, bringing it back, scooping it up, spilling it out, lifting it to the gunwale. . . .
He stared for a little at his empty hand, thinking dully that the sea must be still hungry after swallowing eight corpses one after the other. A small part of him was alarmed for now the boat would fill, little by little, at last to sink. The greater part of him said with some relief that, well, he wouldn’t have to bail anymore anyway.
Why he didn’t get pneumonia or die of cold like the others was a problem which he would not now have to solve. That would save his head a lot of useless work. For a man had no right to live at all somewhere off Good Hope in the awfulness of its winter with the ferocity of its gales and the chill of its water; not even a bucko mate in the full strength of his twenty-five years.
The streak of irony in his nature had risen up many times to aid him and perhaps in it there was some small explanation of why he had outlasted those sturdy but stolid souls to whom death was simply death and not a rather good joke on the unwary.
After all, he pondered in one of his few wholly lucid moments, what more could he ask? For a good five hours he had had a command, for when the mast had been shivered, striking down the captain, it had been his lot to valiantly strive to keep the schooner afloat with pumps which took out only half of what came in through the sprung seams.
And now again he had a command, his solitary own, nineteen feet in length, seven feet in beam. And what mattered it if he was riding to the slashed sails and boom which made up the sea anchor? What mattered it if there were now eight good inches of water to slosh in the bottom, over the bottom boards continually and over himself at least half of the time?
The clearness of thought began to seep from him and he stared half unseeing at wind-split Old Glory.
The whole thing was impossible and he achieved the belief that he, Edward Lanson, was not here at all, that neither Cape of Good Hope nor South Atlantic existed. Somebody had made a very great mistake and had hung up the wrong scenery around him. He wasn’t he and the sea existed not at all. The dark which dropped so slowly, coming down like the easy fingers of death, would take everything away and he would awake in a dry bed to a breakfast fit for a sailor, finding that this had been nothing but nightmare.
He had dreamed the clammy flesh of the dead as he jettisoned them. He had dreamed the weeping of the cabin boy who wept only because of the sorrow his mother would feel. He had dreamed even the Gloucester Maid.
He came to himself at the wrench of a powerful sea. It was quite dark now but over him the wind screamed and about him crashed the sea, unbelievable in its power to destroy, conscienceless in its voracity.
He roused himself, for now the bilge covered his face at each roll and though he could not discover any reason for not strangling and thereby putting a swift period to his pain, it took less energy to lift himself with his back to the ’midship thwart than it did to force himself to lie and die.
There was ice in the spray which rattled against his back and he fished listlessly around until he retrieved somebody’s sou’wester. The feel of it was clammy but after a while he got used to it.
His chin sunk hopelessly upon his breast; he rode out the thundering hours, coming to himself now and then and remaining for whole minutes with his wits more clear than they had ever before been in all his life. He thought of the time he had wasted, the countless easy hours spent wholly without purpose, and somehow it amused him to know that all men squander their time, purblind to the hour, often close at hand, when precious few minutes and seconds would be theirs to spend.
The water was now up to his waist as he sat, a full fourteen inches above the bottom boards, eighteen from the keel. Its shifting weight made the craft stagger and take on even more until sometimes half the gunwale was alight with a phosphorescent gleam of foaming spray. The movement pulled him back and forth so that he had to brace himself a little with his arms along the thwart; he had not the strength to adjust himself completely.
If he had ever been close to the shipping lanes, he was far from them now, beyond any possibility of rescue. As he was driven southward he approached Antarctica and the days, each after the last, would increase their cold and the wind its content of ice. A thousand or four thousand miles away was Hobart. A thousand or five hundred directly into the whip of the gale which drove him off was Cape Town. Somehow it was strange to know that actual solid land was still in existence upon the planet, that ships still plowed the deep, that he still lived when all these others were long dead.
It must have been close to eleven in that wailing night when he saw a light. Raised high on the crest and then dropped into the trough as he was continually, it was a sketchy glimpse. Stubbornly he would not allow himself to know it for he full realized that the disappointment would be too agonizing for his remaining sanity to bear.
And yet, each time he was hurtled dizzily in the dark to the foam-toothed peaks, he glimpsed the light anew. Before long, though still refusing to wholeheartedly support the sight, he began to ponder its source, for certainly it resembled no beacon, nor did it seem to be either a running or a range light, for its color was not red or green or white but rather a pale yellow admixed with green. And it was not of one source but rather of many.
At last he believed fully in it and reserved his judgment only about rescue, for it was not to be borne that a ship should pass so near without sighting him.
Now, in these minutes when, believe it whether he would, he might possibly be hauled dripping from the maw of death, his mind refused to function, embattled in itself between desire and refusal to hope.
Ship or land, whichever, it bore steadily toward him, growing better defined with each soaring heave of the sea around. It grew larger but no brighter.
He had known of men going mad in an open boat and seeing all manner of things and then turning berserk when they refused to be real; and it seemed to him that some satanic plan was afloat to draw him into a few croaking cheers after which the vision would vanish. But perhaps if he still refused and did not cheer at all, then he himself would be the victor, outwitting the hostile jokester who saw fit to so work this thing upon him.
He had averted cannibalism. Now, praise God, could he stave off madness, too? He would be cunning. He would rest his chin upon his breast and give no sign and when at last it was too near to withdraw he would seize upon it and so win his life.
Thus, covertly, did he come to believe in the thing and his mind, freed from the struggle, kindled with knowledge that dry in the locker in the stern sheets were
four flares. Without betraying any anxiety, he made his way over the thwarts and lifted the cover. His hands were still and raw and it took him some time to finally pull the cap from one with sufficient force to ignite the cap.
Hotly it smoldered, blinding him when it broke into light. He was startled by the sight of the tumbling seas and the frailty of the half-sunken lifeboat. The enormity of his plight rose up into his throat.
He shielded his eyes from the glare and again sought the thing. He could not see it so plainly now but he knew that it was closer. Strange the outline it had taken on, for the whole affair was aglow and it appeared to be nothing more than a triangle of pale fire.
Certainly no ship, however staunch, could plow directly into the gale, squaresa’ls set even to t’gal’nts!
And certainly those bluff bows and reaching sprit belonged to no staid grain ship, relic of far-gone days when sail was mistress!
The warmth of the flare was good to his hand. He noted its feeling carefully for still he had no faith in this thing. Reason stated that it could not exist and, if it did, that it could not sail in such a fashion and, if it did, would never be booming up from Antarctica.
But there it was, growing larger, and he fancied that, above the yell of wind, he could make out a repeated hail and the creak of straining gear. Then, in an abrupt lull, he heard the thunder of slacked canvas, amid which a voice clearly cried, “Ahoy the whaleboat! Stand by to take a line!”
It was a trick of the sea, that order. It was a failure in his head that the old merchantman was standing to on his windward to drift down upon him with the wind and sea. But all too plainly he heard the canvas booming now as it was momentarily spilled of wind.
The flare did not seem to affect the strange glow which outlined the entire craft, but as the vessel neared he saw that the sails were scarlet, not yellow green, and that the masts were black, gleaming with spray.
A line whistled by his ear and a monkey fist plunked into a wave beyond him. He was almost afraid, in a sudden fit of premonition which stood up the hair along his neck, to touch that heaving line. The moment’s lull was chased away by the returning scream of wind and once the hemp was in his hand he was frightened at the thought of letting it go.
Swiftly he hauled it to him, unmindful of the pain of it through his raw palms. The hawser thumped on the gunwale and he brought it up to carry it forward and drop it over a bitt.
“Haul away!” he cried, his own voice sounding thick but small. The jerk on the lifeboat slammed him to the thwart and he hung on, staring up at the nearing vessel, split apart as he was by the desire to continue his life and the knowledge that this was somehow an awful thing.
At the rail were many faces, unearthly white against the glowing scarlet of the canvas. Not a sound came from them now. He could feel the intensity of eyes upon him and the atmosphere of the vessel reached out and clothed him in clammy garments.
A line dropped down beside him and he placed the bowline on the bight about both his seat and his shoulders and presently, as the sea dropped away with his boat, he felt himself hauled swiftly up.
Hands pulled him down from the rail to the deck and, ordinarily, at this moment of salvation, he would have given way to an intense desire to lean upon their support. But of their faces he could make out nothing save blots of glowing white.
Not a word was spoken until one sailor, drawing his knife, made as if to cut away the lifeboat.
“Don’t!” cried Lanson in sudden horror.
All faces turned to him.
“Haul it astern,” he begged. “It’s not much to tow and . . . and it’s my only command.”
The knife poised over the hawser for seconds and then the sailor withdrew it and thrust it again into his belt.
Lanson looked up and down the deck, anxious to confront an officer and be told that what he thought was untrue and that this greeting was only a trick of his exhausted nerves.
By the mast he saw a larger fellow, seated and seemingly disinterested, passing a marlinespike from fist to fist. A visored cap sat upon his head and Lanson stumbled toward him, hoping that here was the mate, a man with a face.
But the mate had no face whatever.
“I am Edward Lanson, mate of the schooner Gloucester Maid, foundered three weeks or more ago off Cape of Good Hope.”
The fellow turned up his featureless face and continued to pass the marlinespike back and forth. Finally he made a motion with his head toward the quarterdeck and Lanson found himself supported in that direction by the members of the crew.
Any exultation he had felt in his rescue was spent now for it was all too apparent that this ship, hemp-rigged, low of waist and high of stern and fo’c’s’le, should have ceased to sail centuries before.
The crew stopped at the bottom of the ladder to the poop and Lanson looked up to find a tall, nervous fellow up there, dressed in an ancient Spanish mode with the silver hilts of pistols protruding from his sash and rapier sweeping back in a thin, bright line. But here, thank God, was a face!
“The Gloucester Maid, Edward Lanson, mate, sir.”
“Dead?”
“My crew, sir, my crew and my captain every one.”
The man on the upper deck took a restless pace back and forth before he faced Lanson again. The dark eyes flamed strangely.
“This is ill done, Mister Mate. Dead, you say, every one but you?”
“Aye.”
“Foundered off the Cape?”
“Aye.”
“And adrift three weeks in an open boat.”
“Aye.”
“You . . . you have no curiosity about the deck on which you stand?”
“I would rather not, sir. I am weary.”
“Of course! But you are a prudent man, Mister Mate. And you would lie if you said you did not know that before you stands Captain Vanderbeck.”
Lanson’s knees were buckling with exhaustion and only the hands held him erect.
“Take him below,” said Vanderbeck. “Give him stout wine. Madeira with a little pilot bread broken in it. When he wakes give him food.” He did not have to raise his voice to get above the wind.
He turned about and paced into the dark of the quarterdeck while the sailors eased Lanson down a companionway and so into a bunk. Presently one came and gave him the medicine prescribed and then, when the door was shut and he was alone, Lanson let his head sink into the pillow and out of him seeped all concern, fleeing before the delicious desire to sleep forever.
When he awoke he found that he still could feel the uneven lurching of the lifeboat, so long had he endured it. The motion was at variance with that of this ancient merchantman and he made very unsteady progress out of the bunk. It was with surprise that he found it dark outside his port and he wondered if he could have slept through twenty-four hours. In any case he was very refreshed compared to what he had been and he drank some more wine and ate a little pilot bread and began to wonder if any more solid fare would be offered.
His clothes had been rinsed, he found, in fresh water and now hung upon a rack, almost dry. He washed his sore body in a bucket placed there for that purpose and used a half of the bottle of salve which had been left beside the bucket; it cooled his salt-stung skin and allowed him to move without wincing. All the while the cabin kept going up and down and back and forth, duplicating the ceaseless motion of the lifeboat, though when he steadied himself against these expected lunges, he only upset his own balance which was overcome by the steadier movement of the vessel itself.
In a little while, when he was at last dressed and ready, as though somebody had been watching him all the while, the faceless mate put his head in at the door. He said no word but extended a scrap of parchment on which was written:
You will do me the favor of dining in my cabin.
Vanderbeck
> “What day is this?” said Lanson.
But the mate withdrew without a word and his sea boots left no sound in the passageway. Lanson turned to a mirror and nervously fixed the knot in his sailor’s scarf.
All his life he had had an uncanny awareness of time so that no matter the circumstances he was always able to count off the bells without the aid of a watch. As he came more clearly himself he realized that there was something very wrong in its being night and though he had no true check of it he felt that his sleep had been of at least thirty-six hours duration. Remembering, he knew that he had awakened three or four times, each time to find a watcher at his side, ready with a warm broth. But it was all indistinct as though it had happened to another.
He combed his long hair with his fingers and then fell to studying his face, not really wanting to for fear of what he might discover. But there was life in his dark eyes, color in his sunken cheeks and lips. No, there was no doubt about his being still alive, no more than there was any doubt about his recovery.
He fingered the note and pondered the captain’s name, summing up what he had already seen and heard. And then, suddenly he sank down on the edge of his bed and cupped his face in his worn hands.
What release did he have now?
Why hadn’t they let him die out there alone?
For it was quite clear to Edward Lanson now that he faced an endless life of storm in the company of a madman with a crew long dead!
The door swung silently inward and the impassive mate was there again, gesturing mildly that Lanson was to follow without more delay. Lanson avoided looking at the white expanse between cap and collar, at the fingers with their all-too-prominent joints. He followed.
The main cabin was ornate with carved blackwood furniture, glowing silks and oriental carpets. Along the bulkheads to either side were rows of chests, camphor and ivory and teak, from which drooled the luster of pearls or gaped a little over a load of dull gold coins. The ports were twenty feet athwartship and full seven feet tall, all of cunningly set glass to make compasses and tritons and sea horses; through this, trailing far behind them, glowed their frothing wake, leading off into the gray dark and the shrieking wind.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 13