The image continued its fixed regard of nothing for a while, its jaws moving as though it were making its words. When they were ready, it spoke.
“About an hour.”
The youngster bent closer to the diagram, and ended his inspection with a calculation on an old envelope he took from his pocket.
“Why, but in that case she won’t last till morning.”
Wilson eased his position slightly, and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His voice was so deep and effortless that it sounded like the easy impersonal utterance of the room itself.
“She may. You can’t tell.”
He might have experienced a full life of such nights and occasions, and so could, if it were worth while, advise youth out of a, privy knowledge which was part of the nature of ships and the sea.
“Something may be done,” said Wilson.
Colet made as if he were about to leave them.
“Don’t go, Mr. Colet,” urged the officer in charge. “Wait here, will you, till somebody comes along.”
Colet let go the handle of the door, went over to look at the diagram with Lycett, and endured the quiet, while listening to the seas, which were now invisible. The boy began to whistle a tune softly in a hesitating way.
What were the others doing? Sometimes Colet thought he felt the far thumping of human handiwork under their feet. Hale and Sinclair were there, anyhow, and old Gillespie and his men; it was comforting, that certitude. It warmed the world, that secure thought of its good men holding fast. And while his faith was sustained that they could save her, it was not altogether because he himself was there. The ship herself meant something. She had become important. That image at the wheel was admonishing; that figure might be, perchance, the secret familiar of their ship. It was more than human; it spoke out of the ship. Once the steamer plunged head foremost, and something gave in her body. They thrilled to it, as if it were the smothered parting of a piano wire in a house where all was quiet and suspect. Lycett glanced at Colet, and then at the helmsman.
“Was that a bulkhead, Wilson?”
“Couldn’t say, sir.”
Of course he could not. He was not going to give her away so easily. Colet winked at the boy, and began to pace their little prison; but paused and stretched his arms. No. Stop that. That worried the others. Better have a pipe.
“Are you allowed to smoke, Wilson?”
The seaman only smiled.
“Oh, he chews,” said Lycett, and tapped a cigarette on the desk.
Lycett had just struck eight bells when Collins, the second officer, put his head in the door.
“Leave this. You can go below now, the lot of you. When you’re wanted you’ll know.” He disappeared at once.
Colet roamed the deck amidships, accompanied only by the sough of the dark. Their own familiar and confident chant had ceased, that song which used to issue boldly from the open door of the engine-room casing as you passed it. No message but an infrequent clanking came up from below. Her heart had stopped. A flare or two, while he waited for signs, passed deep under the gratings. They were busy, in the depth of her; but doing what?
There was no doubt about it; when one walked aft it was distinctly to walk uphill. Her head was heavy. He tried to convince himself that this was not so. But it was.
There were no stars. There was only the steady drive of the dark. She was responding to it as though she were tired, stumbling and sluggish. Now and then a sea mounted over her fore-deck. He looked at the shadows of some bent davits, with the swaying remnants of their falls, and heard a block mewling as it swung. That whining voice was the very trivialality of outer desolation. Creak. Whine. The captain’s daughter was taking her degree. A bit extra for her. To-night, who was dining at the ‘Gridiron’?
Morning came. Colet went out, when his port-light had shaped, and saw the crew, for the first time that voyage. The men were assembled on the after-deck, and they surprised him as much as would a miraculous visitation of quiet disinterested strangers. Most of them were squatting against the bulwarks, but a few stood gazing seaward, indifferently. It was a scene dim and unreal. The air was warm. Once clanking broke out below again, but did not last long. Neither the captain nor Sinclair were there. He could not see any of the engineers. Perhaps, though, they still hoped to pull her through. The cook appeared at his galley door above, and peremptorily called out that anybody who wanted anything could come for it. There was a cheer from the men, wavering but derisive, and they began to move up to the galley. They might have been ignorant, or they might have known they had plenty of time. The forward deck was level with the water; it could not rise; the head of the ship was a sunken warning. Its lowness prompted Colet at once to appraise the size of the heavy propulsions of the ocean; he looked beyond to see whether a sea higher than the rest was coming.
It was not coming yet. And the men were still murmuring about the galley. Nothing was in sight, but one could not see very far. The sun would be there soon. It was warm, but, when Collet was not thinking of it, he shivered. Yet the sky was rosy along the east. How long to wait?
There came the sun, broad to the ship. It saw them. Their case now was manifest to heaven. A seaman who was lying as though asleep by the coaming of a hatch below the galley rose to his feet, stumbled to the side, and began to shout at the sun. The man was in rags. His mates watched him in limp wonder. He raised his bare arms and raved at the bloody day.
“To hell with you—you’re no good to us.”
“Stop that man,” commanded a voice. There stood the captain at the companion aft. Everybody turned that way.
“Stop him,” cried Hale, and ran quickly forward. The watchers came to their senses; but the man had scrambled outboard and dropped. One of his mates leaped astride the bulwarks, but Hale got a firm hand on him, and looked over. They were all peering over.
“Useless,” said Hale, still with his restraining hand on the seaman. “You come down. One’s enough.”
Colet was overlooking that from the amidships section. Some one’s hand heartily slapped his shoulder.
“Nice morning, Colet,” said Sinclair, and went pattering down to the main-deck, and passed through the men. Every one now listlessly eyed the conference of the master and his lieutenant. Gillespie came hurrying along to join them. While the rest had their eyes on the three, the deck lapsed. There could be no mistake about that jolt.
“Let’s get a move on,” muttered a seaman. The master did not appear to have noticed it. Then he moved one arm slightly, a gesture of abandonment, and they heard the end of the talk.
“Man, ye can do n’more,” from Gillespie.
“The boats, Mr. Sinclair,” said the master aloud.
Sinclair took the men’s eyes with a glance. He swept his arm with a motion to gather. He strolled to the amidships ladder, and they after him. It was right to show her that they were not in a hurry to leave her. Gillespie briefly inspected his squad, which had gravitated around him, and jerked his head towards Sinclair.
“Job’s finished, laddies. Awa’ now.”
She settled again while they took their stations, but the men kept their own gait. Colet sought the master, who was obscured by the activity at the ship’s side.
“Ah, purser, I am just going aft for something I must have.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“There’s time. How good these fellows are!”
The captain, with a japanned dispatch box in his hand, appeared to know exactly where to find all that he wanted; he moved about his room with a methodical promptitude which gave Colet the impression that the foundering of a ship could be ordered to a common ritual. Hale opened a drawer of his clothes chest and took out a wrap.
“We must leave her, Colet. It’s queer you should have brought her to this.”
There lay Kuan-yin. The master glanced round his cabin; at his desk, at the barometer, and last, at his pictures. “That’s all. Time to go.”
One of the two laden boats was waiting
for them, close under a boom which had been rigged out, with a man rope.
“Now, my lad, off with you.” Then the master hesitated.
“That greaser who was killed, Colet. I had meant to bear it in mind. I have a little packet of his in my cabin. His people might like it. Another minute.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Get in, get in.”
“No.…”
“The boat, sir.” Hale flung out his arm.
“Come on,” bawled some one from the sea.
The captain paused by the ship’s side to con her. Then he called out seawards:
“Your boat, Collins, keep her away.”
Colet eased off along the beam, and dropped from his hold as the lifeboat rose to him. He scrambled up to see what had become of Hale. There was no sign of him. Gillespie, in the stern of the boat, was angry with alarm.
“There’s no time, there’s no time.” The engineer eagerly half-stood, as they fell away into a hollow, for a better view of that companion door within which the captain had vanished. It was unnaturally high and strangely tilted in a ship whose life seemed poised on a moment of time and the hesitation of a breath. It remained empty.
“Hale,” shouted Gillespie; “Hale.”
They waited. A sea lifted them swiftly and lightly, and Colet turned his head in measuring fear from the door aft to the head of the Altair. Her forecastle deck was isolated, a raft of wreckage flush with the swirls and foam. The seas were pouring solidly across her middle. Her funnel was bowed over the flood, and each dip of it to the declination of the ocean was, to the men in the boat, the prelude to the end. But it was her stern which rose and lowered her head.
“My God, she’s going.”
She gave a hollow rumbling groan, and to the silent awe of the watchers without a pause she went down. Colet saw the shape of the propeller over him and the bright sky through its frame. There was a confusion on the surface of the waters, which melted as a swell heaved over the place. The sea was bare.
Chapter XIX
The men in the boat continued to stare at the place where their ship had been as though they still saw her. They remained trance-like without a movement in an apparent refusal to believe their experience. They certainly heard Hale’s voice there just now. The peaceful brightness of the vacant ocean was a mistake.
It was a stupid little noise in the shining immensity which woke Colet from his far absorption with what had gone, and brought him back to notice what new thing had taken its place. Lycett, beside him, was crying, but was trying to hide it. Mr. Collins, in the stern-sheets, had also withdrawn his gaze from the sea. He indicated something to a seaman, who spat on his palms, and made a few slow strokes with his oar. Nothing remained of the past but a spreading defilement of ash and oil.
Sinclair called across to them, and Collins held up a hand in understanding. Both craft set their lugs, and, in company, began to withdraw their occupants into another extension of life. Lycett’s head was averted. He was watching the near water. An area of cinders drifted astern. He watched it go till the water was clear again. He sat looking for more cinders, but the sea continued to be pure, impersonal, and unconcerned. Colet crouched uncomfortably, without changing his position, as if this posture in an open boat were but briefly provisional, and he were waiting for a return to what was necessary and accustomed. The transition from one existence to the next had been so abrupt that he had not fully accepted the change. And big Gillespie crouching on the opposite bench, staring between his legs at the bottom-boards, was vague. It was hardly Gillespie, in that attitude and that place. Colet was still in a ship’s cabin of another time, for the last minute of that room had survived its clock.
“That’s all, Colet. Time to go.” But he had not gone yet.
Through that immediate apparition Colet presently surmised, as in a dissolving view, a threatening incline of blue water above them, at a surprising height above them. It shut out the sky astern. Before he rightly knew it was there he was soaring on it giddily, and his hand, hanging over the side, was immersed. He hastily withdrew his hand, plucking it, the last bit of himself in that enchantment, out of one dangerous dream into the next. He was transferred. From the summit of that swell he looked round upon an ocean he had never seen before. It was a narrower place, but at its centre it was more intimate and overgrown. The water had touched his hand; it was in hurrying flux near to his eyes; and the seas had become steep, and ranged close round above their mast. They were imprisoned by waves. Their complete assurance of the company of the other boat was intermittent.
They thought they heard singing. They really heard it, when their neighbour was on a crest above them; chance fragments of a song blew over from windward. A quick ear in their own boat caught some odd notes and recognised them. That stoker in the bows began to respond in drawling sardonic sentiment, “I—don’t—care—if you—don’t love—me—I—don’t—care—if you go—to—sea.”
Wilson sat near Colet. He was triturating tobacco between his hands in a musing deliberation which hinted to Colet that there was plenty of this new time. When a movement of the boat threw him out of his balance, Wilson paused, patiently. No need to hurry.
The boat was rather crowded; there was a great variety of heads and caps forward. One fellow rejoiced to recognise a pal in the bows.
“’Ullo, Percy, I see you. Coming for a nice sail?”
There was a long silence; nothing was to be heard but the shrill swish and flight of the waters along the gunwale, and the creaking of the boat. When she mounted a sea and was exposed to the wind, she heeled and jammed into the broad round of the hill-top. Collins sat mute and observant, but occasionally made a request to a man:
“Keep watch by the halyards there.”
Presently Gillespie spoke to him:
“You and Sinclair agreed about it?”
“Yes, the old mah gave us our orders. The only thing to do. We ought to be picked up, on this course.”
They heard, breaking another long interval of quiet, a plaintive voice in the crowd forward.
“Alf, ’ave you noticed where the gentlemen’s room is in this ship?”
It grew hot, but there was no shelter from the glare. They must keep still, and ache. They could not ease away from the white fire. Colet, like his fellows, watched the seas. There was no more singing. They had begun already to peer beyond intently for the chance which would take them out of this huddled discomfort. Their narrow foothold was as lively as a bubble, flinching from every minor torment of the ascent and the dive. The inclines of the ocean were mesmeric with the horror of bulk whelming in unrest. The waters never paused. Respite was not there, and Colet found himself sighing for an outlook that would keep straight and still, and let him have his thoughts in peace. The sun continued its fire from a cloudless sky on the shelterless and silent boatful; but, whenever they were superior on a summit, and could see beyond the shifting and translucent parapets of their prison, only Sinclair and his crowd were in sight. And Sinclair’s boat looked overladen and trifling. The inconsequence of their neighbour, when she was sighted below, as if fixed in a spacious hollow, was a warning to themselves; they, too, were like that. Colet spied Sinclair’s charge with relief, if it were but the top of her mast above an intervening ridge. All right, so far. Sinclair was still there.
Gillespie sat noting the pursuit of the following seas. He exclaimed to the helmsman:
“Look out, Collins. Here’s a beauty coming.”
Collins smiled, but kept his back to whatever was after them astern. The boat went squattering on the running hill till it found the wind at the top of it, and the hill was swinging ahead from under them. Not that time. Gillespie shook his head with dislike of it; but his eyes went again up their wake to look for the next attack.
The seas quivered in their mass with the original eagerness of that impulse which first sent them rolling round the globe. They would never stop. Their glassy inclines were fretted with lesser waves and hurrying cornices.
They were flanged by outliers which deceived with hidden valleys, and the boat, rising briefly, dropped unexpectedly under the shadow of the superior headlong hill.
“Look out!” The startled watcher beside the steersman was compelled then to an involuntary shout of warning.
“It could be worse,” said Collins. “She’s not bad to steer, but it makes me sleepy. Here Wilson. Take a turn at it.”
Collins then superintended the distribution of some rations. A little water, a very little water, and some biscuit went round.
“And listen, you men,” he called out; “if you don’t want to go balmy, leave the sea-water alone. Bear that in mind tomorrow. All loonies will be put overside.”
“Good for you, sir. We’ll watch it. But chase the cook along with the ham and eggs.”
The sunset suffused with red and gold the transparent crests of the heights roving about them, and reflected in flashes from every transient facet of that region of crystal, where the foam glowed as runnels of coloured fire. Their little craft was transfigured. Its sail and boards were of a radiant and filmy substance too aerial to be scathed any more by the winds of earth. Its company were shining immortals, who had passed through their tribulation and were released at last from the labour and the wrecks where time is, and the lower seas of a troubled world.
“I doubt it will be a cold night,” mused Gillespie, looking round on the brightness, “and my pants are wet now.” A noisy shower of rubies swept over the crowd forward.
“That’s it,” said the engineer, “and wet shirts for the laddies.”
The group aft, about Wilson, murmured a conversation, in which Wilson learned the name of the star which was in the general direction of their course, and how he should use it. They continued some speculations about the stars, whispering their attempts at mysteries, while the navigator gave names, haunting and occult names, to the glittering points of night.
“We shall have to keep this man awake,” said Collins. “I was not quite all there all the time I was steering.”
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