Their gossip went back to the ship. They guessed at where her plates had parted. They spoke of their old ship, but they did not name her master. Collins explained his hopes of the course they were on, and they wondered how long it would be before a ship was sighted. Frequently they glanced to the spark which showed where Sinclair was in the night. Then Gillespie was left to keep the steersman company, and to call Colet at midnight to sit with the second officer.
Colet tried to sleep, but he had no sooner forgotten the cramp and the cold than the boat kicked him awake again. He turned about, to try the other side, and so got a memory of Wilson’s head bent forward, a presiding head, austere and calm, isolated in the gloom. A fellow at the other end was retching. The hours stood still. He thought he would never sleep; but then again the boat jolted him into full consciousness of the cold, and in surprise he saw over them the dark wing of the sail. He turned back again. The bench was hard and wet, and gave nowhere. He could feel the slight timber vibrating under his arm; she was as giddy as an air-ball. Impossible to sleep, while listening to the fall of waters in the dark. When Gillespie gently pressed his knee, he sat up abruptly as if he had been dreaming of a crisis. Collins was taking Wilson’s place.
“Eight bells,” said Gillespie, “and all’s well. Change over.”
Colet’s teeth chattered on their own account. They got into full speed before they were checked. And nobody would have guessed that night itself could be so dark, when there was nothing in it but the sound of unseen waters in flight, and the thin protests of their frail security as it was hurled along through nothing.
Colet took a seat beside the steersman.
“Well, what have you got to say. Something good?” asked Collins. “Get any sleep?”
“Tell him about feather-beds,” murmured a voice.
Then another voice piped up, with a quaver in it. “No. Tell him about all the pubs you know, sir. I know a nice warm little place kept by a widder.”
“Shut up. You’d better go to sleep,” said Collins.
“How can I sleep, sir? There’s a bloke’s boots in my mouth. Besides, she wants baling.”
“Is there much water there?”
“Only enough for a drop of gin, as you might say, sir. It’ll all soak in my shirt, the next time she heels.”
Some one drawled a protest.
“It’s a lie, Jim. You fellers on the lee side are as well orf as what we are. Our shirts ’ere got no more stowage.”
“I don’t wonder at it, Dave. It was Dave spoke, wasn’t it? I know you, Dave, and I know that shirt of yourn. It’s the same one, ain’t it?”
There was a thumping on the boards forward.
“Put a stopper in it, aft. We’re trying to forget it, up here.”
“Then yore wasting yore perishing time, Alec, my lad. Only brass monkeys could forget it.” She lurched, and a heavy shower fell across her, by the mast. The men up there groaned and swore. But they heard a laugh in the dark at the after end.
“Got that lot, Alec? Try to forget it.”
Chapter XX
The interminable days merged for those open boats. Time lapsed into an uneventful fortitude, a thirsty desert, to which apathy could see no end. The sail of each boat was double-reefed and goose-winged, perhaps because Sinclair was afraid cf running too far, or because he thought exhaustion would make his men careless. Smoke was sighted, one day. It was a smear which persisted for so long that the castaways thought they could make to windward till they were seen. They never lifted that steamer. And more than once a light had been glimpsed at night, when Collins’ boat was on the back of a high sea.
“Light ahead!”
The men waited hopefully for the next lucky impulse which would lift them to a clear view towards the horizon. Yes.
“There it is. A light!”
But Mr. Collins had sighted it too. “That? That’s a star.”
The men huddled down again without another word.
“Better luck next time,” their officer assured them. “Keep a good look-out. We’re in the way of traffic.”
It was strange. Colet, if he stood, was now easily thrown out of his balance by a movement of the boat. He was a little surprised by that. It was not, of course, that he was weak. He wasn’t weak. He did not care much; that was all. But he ought not to fall over, though that would be the easiest thing to do. No good. Almost sure to knock against somebody. Pull yourself together, old son. Look at young Collins. Fine fellow, Collins; and he’d hardly had a word with him till after the ship went down. Never thought there was much in Collins. But that youngster’s pasture, wherever it was, was the place for mettle. And Wilson, too. The whole lot of them. Not a murmur. There was something damned fine in this ordinary stuff.
If he could only keep seated he could last till domesday. He could steer that boat into the Styx, and save the passage money. Hullo, Charon, now watch a bit of real boat work. Beat that. He was only thirsty. Not hungry. It would be all right if that thick slime could be washed out of the mouth.
“You off biscuits?” asked Collins that morning. “So am I. I can’t make anything of ’em, except to spit dust.”
A few of the men lay as if dead on the bottom boards. If they were trodden on they did not move, and did not speak. You had to look at their faces again to make sure. The unshaven faces of the men were like those of destitute but bearded children. The purser sat considering vacancy, steering the boat. The way she was going, you kept the draught on your left jaw.
“We ought to see something any time,” Collins soliloquised, a little querulously. “No need to worry.”
The purser smiled, with his eye on the quivering luff of the sail. He felt resigned.
“I’m not worrying.” That was the strange thing about it. He imagined his mind had never been clearer. It was like a steady light inside him. Nothing could blow that out. No wind could flicker it. Never knew before he had a mind. Sure of it now. He felt pale and lucid inside, but he did not want to move. He could look on, a sort of lamp, till the last wave of the sea had unrolled. The sea and sky could pass away, if they liked. They were passing away. They had got more distant, and less impressive. They could no longer daunt with their show of grandeur and dominance, and so they were going. Their game was up. But this old boat, she could go on till they had sighted Helicon. They might beat to windward round the Last Hope. Something like seafaring, something like life, when you knew you could hold on till the dark was encircled. Get right round it. One more drink, and he could sit there till the sail was a film, the men were ghosts, and they had the Pleiades close abeam. He gave her a touch, and she nicely missed an ugly one.
“Purser, you might have been doing this all your life,” the officer told him.
Colet reflected. “I think I have.” he said. Quite true; all the life he had had. Collins glanced at him, with a trace of alarm.
“I say, Colet. Don’t you go light-headed like some of ’em.”
“I’m all right.”
“I wish it would rain.”
“A drop would about save the worst cases. Lycett’s bad.”
“Yes. I can’t do any more, can I?”
“Collins, you’re fine. We’re lucky.”
“I wonder how Sinclair’s bunch is getting on?”
There she was, just on the round of a sea, a tiny model. They sighted her together.
“About the same, of course.”
“Well, we’ll hear when we’re picked up. I say, Colet, it wouldn’t do to give the fellows more water, would it?”
“No. Not the way we’ve reckoned it. Wouldn’t do. We must wait.”
“Yes. Take our chance. Colet … talking of drink. Lord. I was going to talk about it, but I won’t.”
“No. Keep off the drink, Collins.”
“I know. My mouth’s coated with gum.”
The quivering of the sail had a strange effect. It was like a ceaseless glittering. It was like sun-points on a milldam on a drowsy summer afternoon, when you cou
ld just hear the rumbling of the mill. Colet took his eyes off that hypnotising movement, and glanced to windward. A mass of smooth glass was about to pass under them, and deep in its body he saw a long phantom, a suspended monster, that writhed once, and faded. It had gone under the boat.
The steersman’s eyes went back to the sail. Collins was still talking, but his voice was only like the muttering of the mill. The men were very still. Somebody ought to cover up Lycett’s face. The sun was too bright.
“Wilson,” he said, “cover up Lycett’s face.” But he did not hear his own voice in that silence. It was impossible to break that silence. Wilson did not move. The seaman sat like a statue. He was the Sphinx, his hands on his knees, staring like that.
Nobody moved. Nobody. They couldn’t. They would never move again. They were dead. There was only a deep humming. That was the world. It was droning in space. That was the sound of its sleep. They were floating off. All their weight had gone. Their boat was under them, and so plain you could still see it. There it was, that shadow inside the sea, but it was fading, fading. The old world was sinking under them. That was why they could hear it. It was dwindling and droning away. Wilson was watching the world leave them, and it was all right. You could trust Wilson. They were getting near that star now. Light ahead! The star was coming their way, and it was growing, growing round, like the sun, growing bigger every minute: so bright that it was a white blaze, the white centre of eternity with time streaming from it in spears. That was God. His face was going to show in that white light. They must keep looking.…
“Colet!”
“What’s that?”
“Were you asleep?”
“Not me … I dunno.”
“The sun’s cruel hot. I wish a squall would come along. Some rain.… Those men look pretty sick.”
They sat with their heads close together, their tousled hair grizzled with dry salt. They looked aged, with grey beards. Only the boat retained youth and eagerness. She was as buoyant as ever. They could find nothing more to say. Collins sighed, and stood up. He looked to Sinclair’s charge, a mile away to windward. His eyes circled round, and suddenly his hand gripped hard the steersman’s shoulder.
“Coming up astern! Colet, a ship.”
His voice was raised and confident.
“Sail-ho!”
The dead figures stirred. They came to life. Some of them rose, clutching the gunwale, crouching with a grip on the thwarts, or clasping the mast. They were staring aft.
“All over, boys. Here she comes.”
“It’s a liner, sir,” said Wilson.
“Of course it is. That’s what we want. Share round what’s in the breaker, Wilson. She can’t miss us.”
Sinclair had seen it too. His boat had luffed. Colet did not remember afterwards very much of what followed. Collins took the helm. She was black, the liner, with a long row of round ports, circles of gold. She was enormous, when she stopped. She was bigger than the sea; she blotted it out. Her upper works were white, and she hardly moved, though the waters were dancing beneath her. There was some one shouting from her bridge. Along her rail was a row of still figures, regarding them silently, from a great height. Colet sat in dazed astonishment. Women in white dresses were looking down at them.
Chapter XXI
The liner’s deck was a neat road, a disciplined promenade, and the seams of its scoured woodwork ran so far and straight that they were as incredible as plain truth. It had garden seats. The extraordinary thing about that deck was that it was too solid and steady. Colet could only flop loose feet upon it. It was funny, trying to walk on a steady deck. The feet didn’t know it was steady.
“Purser, I can’t move,” complained Collins, in a whisper. “I can’t walk.”
A beneficence had come unexpectedly out of the blue, just as the apparitions of monsters had loomed beside the boat in the body of the sea, and as the hopeful lights of ships, in night watches, had declined into setting stars. But it had come. It enfolded them. They were in luck. Colet was tucked into a cabin, a luxurious place, not yet to be believed, but quite solid, for all that, and there he lay in the surrender of release, while yet his body was responsive to the soaring lightness of that boat. His body still had a ghostly apprehension of the swift lift and the descent. Couldn’t forget that. Never forget that; nor the swaying ridges of the great seas overshadowing them at dusk. Hale’s last words: “That’s all, Colet. Time to go.” And Wilson’s head at daybreak, watching; watching without a movement the march of the seas as if he knew all about them, but doubted the loyalty of their inferior nature. Nothing to do now but to snuff up the smell of cool linen again, and forget a book while listening to the soporific whirr of the electric fan. The surgeon would then come in, easy and bland.
“Morning, doctor. How’s the rest? How’s Lycett?”
“That’s how you feel, is it. All is well with the child.”
“And Sinclair, our chief officer? You’ve seen him, too?”
“Ah, the red-headed pirate. Couldn’t help seeing him. He’s picking up. He just told me to go to hell.”
“Gillespie?”
“Don’t know him. Oh, you mean the dear old Glasgow Highlander who keeps on asking for a long whisky and soda? Unless his anxiety exhausts him first, he’ll smell whisky again, some day.”
“Don’t be hard on him. He’s all right.”
“So the engineers say. But he hates me. You all do, you know. I’ve never seen such a crew. Some of the women here are nervous. It’s as much as I can do to keep them out of your cabins.”
“They’re not coming, are they?”
“Not unless you don’t do what I tell you.”
The youthful but white-haired surgeon, tall, deliberate, and gracious, who in his white uniform could have been a functionary, immaculate and revered, in a sphere where all was pure and noble, one morning took Colet, shrunk within a borrowed suit, which made him feel like an awkward mortal who had blundered into the abode of the blest, to the smoke-room. There was Sinclair, with some strangers about him. Sinclair came to meet him. He was much amused by something in Colet’s appearance. He held him off at arm’s length, and laughed.
“You look holy, purser. You look as if you were just coming out of the wilderness after turning down the devil. Come and have a pick-me-up.”
The strangers made room for him, adjusting wicker chairs about one of the tables with an air of quickly providing for a welcome guest who was really invisible to them. Colet noticed that they observed him cautiously only when they supposed they were unobserved. They continued their conversation as though he had not come. They did not want to embarrass him by showing they were aware of his unusual presence. The shyness of Englishmen was so delicate and polite, he thought, and so encouraging, that a nervous kitten might be deluded into thinking that it had the room to itself, until it was trodden on. They evidently knew nothing about the rescue of any castaways. They had never heard of it. Luckily for him, no boats had been picked up in mid-ocean, so there was no need, if challenged, to confess to an episode which probably had never happened. They talked of rubber, of one or two important men who ought to be shot, of one or two unimportant women who had provided the ship, that voyage, with a little welcome unexpectedness, and of a fellow-passenger whose luck at cards was evidence of the existence of the devil. But presently, when the conversation became various with subjects discreet between pairs of these strangers, the man next to Colet tapped out his pipe and leaned over to him, as though with a chance private thought.
“Feeling all right now?”
“Fine.”
That was as far as it went. The stranger began to refill a beautiful briar with some rich tobacco which moved Colet with a sudden yearning. But the stranger was unaware of it. He lovingly loaded that ripe bowl, and Colet watched the rite with the happy knowledge that he had come back to the sun, that sights and smells were good, and that there were pleasant things to be done.
“What happens to you, may I ask, after a
n occasion of this sort? What do you do?”
“I’ve no idea. Sent home, I suppose.”
“But an official has to worry about it, presumably. They ought not to land you at Rangoon and just leave it at that.”
“Rangoon?”
“Where we’re going. You knew that?”
“No. I forgot to ask.”
The stranger was amused. “I guess you’re right. Any old place would do for me, after an outing like yours.”
“Do you know Rangoon?”
“Pretty well. All round from that purgatory to Bangkok.”
“The names sound very attractive.”
“They do? How one forgets!” His amusement was faint but provocative. “Yes, I suppose they sound attractive. Must have sounded so to me once. Must have.”
“And now they don’t. That’s the worst of disillusionment. The real thing goes.”
“Eh? I’m not disillusioned. I’m busy. I heard you all right, didn’t I? Didn’t you say the real thing goes when we know the reality? Now, what on earth do you mean by that?”
“Well … of course it means nothing. Only a little doubt about the nature of the reality, perhaps.”
“You’ll feel stronger presently. We understand reality well enough, when we bark our shins on it. Now, I say that’s the fun of it, seeing what things are in good time, and treating them as they deserve; don’t you?”
“I expect you are right.”
“Sure of it. Like testing a piece of rock. That’s my job. Most people would call it road metalling. Good enough for them. But if you know what to do with it, it might mean—it might mean kissing your hand to those places with names you think so attractive, and getting that deer park at home.”
Colet laughed. “Have you come across that magic lump of road metalling yet?”
“Not so far. Only something a bit like it. Enough to keep me going on. Can’t have the park yet, but I could buy a fawn—one or two nice little fawns.”
“Perhaps the fun is in the search, not in finding.”
“Say that again. It sounds interesting. Though I’d like to hear you say it after you’d ploughed through Siamese forests in the rains, punctured from head to foot by ticks and leeches, and no more to show for it than enough to buy quinine for the next bout of ‘the shakes.’ ”
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