Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  As Barlow came over the gangway, I stepped up to him and gripped his shoulder. I was strangely muddled in my feelings. I felt that I had no sure position aboard my own yacht. Yet all I said was:

  “Thank God, you’re safe, old man!” And I meant it from my heart.

  He looked at me in a doubtful, puzzled sort of manner, and passed his hand across his forehead. “Yes,” he replied; but his voice was strangely toneless, save that some puzzledness seemed to have crept into it. For a couple of moments he stared at me in an unseeing way, and once more I was struck by the immobile, tensed-up expression of his features. Immediately afterwards he turned away — having shown neither friendliness nor enmity — and commenced to clamber back over the side into the boat.

  “Come up, Ned!” I cried. “It’s no good. You’ll never manage it that way. Look!” and I stretched out my arm, pointing. Instead of looking, he passed his hand once more across his forehead, with that gesture of puzzled doubt. Then, to my relief, he caught at the rope ladder, and commenced to make his way slowly up the side.

  Reaching the deck, he stood for nearly a minute without saying a word, his back turned to the derelict. Then, still wordless, he walked slowly across to the opposite side, and leant his elbows upon the rail, as though looking back along the way the yacht had come.

  For my part, I said nothing, dividing my attention between him and the men with occasional glances at the quaking weed and the — apparently — hopelessly surrounded Graiken.

  The men were quiet, occasionally turning towards Barlow, as though for some further order. Of me they appeared to take little notice. In this wise, perhaps a quarter of an hour went by; then abruptly Barlow stood upright, waving his arms and shouting:

  “It comes! It comes!” He turned towards us, and his face seemed transfigured, his eyes gleaming almost maniacally.

  I ran across the deck to his side, and looked away to port, and now I saw what it was that had excited him. The weed-barrier through which we had come on our inward journey was divided, a slowly broadening river of oily water showing clean across it.

  Even as I watched it grew broader, the immense masses of weed being moved by some unseen impulsion.

  I was still staring, amazed, when a sudden cry went up from some of the men to starboard. Turning quickly, I saw that the yawning movement was being continued to the mass of weed that lay between us and the Graiken.

  Slowly, the weed was divided, surely as though an invisible wedge were being driven through it. The gulf of weed-clear water reached the derelict, and passed beyond. And now there was no longer anything to stop our rescue of the crew of the derelict.

  VII

  It was Barlow’s voice that gave the order for the mooring ropes to be cast off, and then, as the light wind was right against us, a boat was out ahead, and the yacht was towed towards the ship, whilst a dozen of the men stood ready with their rifles on the fo’c’s’le head.

  As we drew nearer, I began to distinguish the features of the crew, the men strangely grizzled and old looking. And among them, white-faced with emotion, was my chum’s lost sweetheart. I never expect to know a more extraordinary moment.

  I looked at Barlow; he was staring at the whitefaced girl with an extraordinary fixidity of expression that was scarcely the look of a sane man.

  The next minute we were alongside, crushing to a pulp between our steel sides one of those remaining monsters of the deep that had continued to cling steadfastly to the Graiken.

  Yet of that I was scarcely aware, for I had turned again to look at Ned Barlow. He was swaying slowly to his feet, and just as the two vessels closed he reached up both his hands to his head, and fell like a log.

  Brandy was brought, and later Barlow carried to his cabin; yet we had won clear of that hideous weed-world before he recovered consciousness.

  During his illness I learned from his sweetheart how, on a terrible night a long year previously, the Graiken had been caught in a tremendous storm and dismasted, and how, helpless and driven by the gale, they at last found themselves surrounded by the great banks of floating weed, and finally held fast in the remorseless grip of the dread Sargasso.

  She told me of their attempts to free the ship from the weed, and of the attacks of the cuttlefish. And later of various other matters; for all of which I have no room in this story.

  In return I told her of our voyage, and her lover’s strange behavior. How he had wanted to undertake the navigation of the yacht, and had talked of a great world of weed. How I had — believing him unhinged — refused to listen to him. How he had taken matters into his own hands, without which she would most certainly have ended her days surrounded by the quaking weed and those great beasts of the deep waters.

  She listened with an evergrowing seriousness, so that I had, time and again, to assure her that I bore my old chum no ill, but rather held myself to be in the wrong. At which she shook her head, but seemed mightily relieved.

  It was during Barlow’s recovery that I made the astonishing discovery that he remembered no detail of his imprisoning of me.

  I am convinced now that for days and weeks he must have lived in a sort of dream in a hyper state, in which I can only imagine that he had possibly been sensitive to more subtle understandings than normal bodily and mental health allows.

  One other thing there is in closing. I found that the Captain and the two Mates had been confined to their cabins by Barlow. The Captain was suffering from a pistol-shot in the arm, due to his having attempted to resist Barlow’s assumption of authority. When I released him he vowed vengeance. Yet Ned Barlow being my chum, I found means to slake both the Captain’s and the two Mates’ thirst for vengeance, and the slaking, thereof is — well, another story.

  THE CALL IN THE DAWN

  To those who have cast doubt upon the reality of the great Sargasso Sea, asserting that the romantic features of this remarkable sea of weed have been greatly exaggerated, I would point out that this mass of weed lurking in the central parts of the Atlantic Ocean is a fluctuating quantity, not confined strictly to an area, but moving bodily for many hundred of miles according to storms and prevailing winds, though always within certain limits.

  Thus it may be that those who have gone in search of it, and not having found it where they expected, have therefore foolishly considered it to be little more than a myth built around those odd patches and small conglomerations of the weed which they may have chanced across. And all the time somewhere to the North or South, East or West, the great shifting bulk of the weed has lain quiet and lonesome and impassable — a cemetery of lost ships and wrack and forgotten things. And so my story will prove to all who read.

  I was, at the time of this happening, a passenger in a large barque of eight hundred and ninety tons, bound down to the Barbadoes. We had very fine, light weather for the first twenty days out with the wind variable, giving the men a great deal of work with the yards.

  On the twenty-first day, however, we ran into strong weather, and at night-fall Captain Johnson shortened sail right down to the main topsail, and hove the vessel to.

  I questioned him concerning his reason for doing this as the wind was not extraordinarily heavy. He took me down into the saloon, and there by the aid of diagrams, showed me that we were within the Eastern fringe of a great cyclone which was coming up Northward from the vicinity of the Line, but trending constantly Westward in its progress. By heaving the vessel to as he had done, he allowed the cyclone to continue its Westward journey, leaving us free. If, however, he had continued to run the ship on, then he would have ended by running us right into the heart of the storm, where we might have been very easily dismasted or even sunk; for the fury of these storms is prodigious if one comes truly within their scope.

  The Captain gave me his opinion and reasons for supposing that this storm, of which we felt no more than the fringe, as it were, was a cyclone of quite unusual violence and extent. He assured me also that when daylight came on the morrow there would most probably be a
certain proof of this, in the great masses of floating weed and wrack that we should be likely to encounter when once more he put the vessel on her course to the Southward. These weed masses, he informed me, were torn from the great Eddy of the Atlantic Ocean, where enormous quantities of it were gathered, extending — broken and unbroken — for many hundreds of miles. A place to be avoided by all reasonable navigators.

  Now, it all turned out as the Captain had foretold. The storm eased hourly through the night as the cyclone drew off into the Westward sea; so that ere the dawn had come, we lay upon water somewhat broken by the swell of the departed storm, yet almost lacking even a light breath of wind.

  At midnight I went below for sleep; but was again on deck in a few hours, being restless. I found Captain Johnson there walking with the Mate, and after greeting him I went over to the lee rail to watch the coming of the dawn which even then made some lightness in the Eastward sky. It came with no more than moderate quickness, for we had not yet come into the tropics, and I watched very earnestly because the dawn-light has always held for me a strange attraction.

  There grew first in the East a pale shimmering of light, very solemn, coming so quietly into the sky it might have been a ghostlight spying secretly upon the sleeping world. And then, even as I took account of this thing, there went a spreading of gentle rose hues to the Northward, and upon this a dull orange light in the mid-sky. Presently there was a great loom of greenness, most wondrous, in the upper sky, and from this green and aerial splendour of utter quietness there dropped curtains of lemon that enticed the sight to peer through their mystery into the lost distance, so that my thoughts were all very far from this world.

  And the lights grew and strengthened as if they had a great pulse, and the wonder of the dawn-lights beat steadily upon the eye, in an ever-continuing brightness, until all the Eastward sky was full of a pale and translucent lemon, flaked athwart with clouds of transparent greyness and gentle silver. And in the end there came a little light upon the sea, very solemn and dreary, making all that vast ocean but a greater mystery.

  And surely, as I looked outward upon the sea, there was something that broke the faint looming of light upon the waters, but what it was I could not at first see. Out of the mists of the lost horizon there climbed, presently, a little golden glory, so that I knew the sun had near come out of the dark. And the golden light made a halo in that part of the far world, sending a ray across the mystery of the dark waters. Then I saw somewhat more plainly the thing that had lain upon the sea, between me and the far lights of the dawn. It was a great, low-seeming island in the midst of the loneliness of the ocean. Yet, as I knew well from the charts, there was no proper island in these parts; and I conceived therefore that this thing must be an island of the weed, of which the Captain had spoken the previous day.

  “Captain Johnson,” I called to him, softly, because there seemed so great a quietness beyond the ship, “Captain Johnson. Bring the glasses.” And presently we were spying across the vanishing dark at this floating land of the storm.

  Now as we looked earnestly across all that quiet greyness of the sea at the dim seen island, I became doubly filled with the mystery and utter hush of the dawn-time, and of the lights and of the lesson of the morning which is told silently at each dawn over the world. I seemed to hear newly and with great plainness each sound and vague noise that was about me; so that the gentle creaking of the masts and gear was as a harsh calling across that quiet, while the sea made hollow and dank sounds against the wet sides of the ship, and the noise of one walking on the fo’cas’le was a thing that made all the vessel seem to resound emptily.

  But when I listened to the far off parts of the sea, even whilst I looked with solemn feelings at that ghostly island half seen in the dawn, it was as if no sound had ever been out there, except it might be some damp wind that wandered forlorn in the distance of the ocean.

  And by all this you will understand something of the mood that had come upon me; and indeed, I think this mood was not mine alone; for the Captain was very quiet, and said little, looking constantly towards the grey gloom of the island in the dawn.

  And then, as the sun cast the first beam of light clear over the mists of the hid horizon, there came a little thin noise out of all the dawn of the world. It was as if I heard a small voice far off in the miles, coming to me out of an infinite distance:

  “Son of Man!

  “Son of Man!

  “Son of Man!”

  I heard it very faint and lost-seeming in all that mystery of the Eastward sea, drifting out of the quiet of the dawn. Towards the East there was only emptiness and greyness, and the quiver of the dawn-shine, and the first rays of the morning upon the silver-grey shimmer of the sea. Only these things, and the low-lying stretch of the weed island, maybe half a mile to the Eastward — a desolate shadow, quiet upon the water.

  I set my hand to my ear and listened, looking at the Captain; he likewise listening, having looked first well through his glasses. But now he stared at me, half questioning with his eyes.

  The sun stood up over the edge of the grey-glimmering ocean like a roadway of flame, broken midway by the dull stretch of the weed-island. And in that moment the sound came again:

  “Son of Man!

  “Son of Man!

  “Son of Man!” out of morning light that made glows in the Eastward sea. Far and faint and lonesome was the voice, and so thin and aethereal it might have been a ghost calling vaguely out of the scattering greynesses — the shadow of a voice amid the fleeting shadows.

  I started round at all the sea, and surely on every side it was studded with islets of weed, clearly seen upon the silver of the morning sea through the quiet miles into the horizons. As I looked this way and that way with something of astonishment, there came again to my hearing a faint sound, as if I heard a thin, attenuated piping in the East, coming very incredible and far-off sounding and unreal over the hush of the water. Shrill and dree and yet vague it was; and presently I heard it no more.

  The Captain and I looked often at one another during this time; and again we searched the width of the Eastward sea, and the desolateness of the long, low island of the weed; but there was nowhere anything that might lead us to an understanding of this thing that bewildered us.

  The Mate also had stood near to us listening, and had heard the strange thin, far-off calling and piping; but he, likewise, had no knowledge or understanding by which we might judge the thing.

  While we were drinking our morning coffee Captain Johnson and I discoursed upon this mysterious happening, and could in nowise come any the nearer to an understanding, unless it was some lone derelict held in the weed of the great island that lay Eastward of us. This was, in truth, a proper enough explanation, if only we might set proof upon it; and to this end the Captain ordered one of the boats to be lowered, and a large crew to man the boat, and each man to be armed with a musket and a cutlass. Moreover, he sent down into the boat two axes and three double-edged whale-pikes or lances, with six feet blades, very keen and as broad as my palm.

  To me he dealt a brace of pistols, and likewise a brace to himself, and the two of us had our knives. And by all of these things you can see, as I have told, that he had known previous adventures with the weed, and that he had knowledge of dangers that were peculiar thereto.

  We put out presently in the clear morning light towards the great island of the weed that lay to the Eastward. And this island was, maybe, nearly two miles long, and, as we found, something more than half of a mile broadwise, or as the sailors named it “in the beam.” We came to it pretty quickly, and Captain Johnson bid the men back-water when we were some twenty fathoms off from the midmost part which was opposite to the ship. Here we lay awhile, and looked through our glasses at the weed, searching it all ways, but saw nowhere any sign of derelict craft, nor aught that spoke of human life.

  Yet of the life of sea animals there was no end; for all the weed, upon the outer edges seemed a-crawl with various matt
ers; though at first we had not been able to perceive these because of the similarity in colour with the yellowness of the weed, which was very yellow in the light outward fronds spreading out upon the waters. Inward of the mass of the island I saw that there went a dark and greener shading of the yellow, and there I discovered that this green darkness was the colour of the great weedstems that made up the bulk of the island, like so many great cables and serpents of a yellow green, very dank and gloomy, wandering amid their twistings and turning and vast entanglements that made so huge and dreary a labyrinth.

  After we had made a pretty good survey of that part we turned to the Northward, and Captain Johnson bid the men pull slowly along the coast of that great island of weed. In this wise we went a good mile until we came to the end, where we set the boat to the Eastward so as to come round to the other side. And all the while as we went forward the Captain and I made constant observation of the island and of the sea about it, using our glasses to the purpose.

  This way I saw a thousand matters to give me cause for interest and wonder; for the weed all about the borders of the island had living creatures a-move within amid the fronds, and the sea showed frequently in this place and the glitter of strange fish, very plentiful and various.

  Now I took a particular heed to note the many creatures that lived amid the weed; for I was always interested in the weed-sea from the many accounts which I had heard concerning it, both from Captain Johnson and from other men of the sea that had been ship masters in my voyages. And surely these islands and gatherings together of the weed had been rent from that same great weed-sea which Captain Johnson spoke of always as the Great Eddy. As I have said, I took very good heed to note what manner of creatures lived in the weed, and in this way I perceived presently that there were more crabs than aught else, so far as the power of my glasses could show me; for there were crabs in every place, and all of them yellow in the top parts as the weed. And some were as small as my thumb top, and many were less, I suppose, had I been closer to discover them; but others crawling amid the weed fronds must have spread a great foot across the back, and were all yellow, so that save when they moved they might lie hidden entirely by matching the shades of the weed in which they lived.