"I may not then?" Shawn displayed no anger, though Ben had almost hoped
for it. The blue eyes dilated a little, perhaps in hurt, but he did not
cease smiling. "Well--well, Cory, why would we be tacking, and a good
little westerly breeze on the sta'board quarter that do be sending us
where we wish to go?"
"And where is that?"
"Why, tomorrow, Cory, I fear you'll see little except water--a great
deal of it--but you'll see tacking enough if that's your wish, and
you'll be learning something about the handling of sail on small craft
in the forenoon watch, I'm hoping, and later. And now and then, man
dear, away far off up in the northwest or sometimes due north, you'll
find me a wee blue lump on the horizon--why, so faint and small that
sometimes your eyes will say it's not there at all, but it'll be there.
And it'll be there the following day, and maybe the day after that, for
we'll be standing off and on. Now that's a way of waiting, Cory, that's
the way a vessel must wait if she's in the open waters and biding her
time for a certain thing to happen--it's the way of a hawk in the air,
if you like, the way he must move about continually up there in the
great sky, biding his time for a certain thing to happen." He was
coming to Ben, and his broad hands fell heavy on Ben's shoulders. The
blue stare dilated to black; Ben met it, refusing to shrink away. "That
blue lump will be an island, Cory, a sprawling island where it happens
I've never gone ashore, but I know how it lies. I'm of no mind to go
there on my errand, do you see, because on land--why, on land I'm
compassed about, I have enemies, Mother of God, and some of them are
agents of--puh!--Her Majesty Queen Anne."
"What's that you say?"
"Easy, Cory, easy! You have a new allegiance. That I will explain later,
not now."
"I have no new allegiance."
"Later, friend, I said. The name of the island is Nantucket. Now sooner
or later--on the second, the third day, it doesn't matter--a lovely
small vessel will put out from Sherburne. We shall speak her, the island
then being over the horizon."
"I think I understand your meaning," Ben said. "I think I understood it
when that murderer struck me in the face."
"I'm hoping he did not harm you," said Shawn mildly. The eyes were
altogether black; the smile remained. "No murderer, Ben. He acted at
command of a certain voice--more of that later too, you wouldn't be
understanding it now. As for striking you--mere shipboard discipline,
Cory. You might be thanking him for that one day, when you've come
around to learning how to obey a captain's orders."
"If I understand your meaning, I will have no part of it."
"Can you walk on water? Swim among the fishes?"
"That's not worth an answer," said Ben, and he heard Manuel suck in his
breath as if in pain, but would not look his way. "I met you last night
in friendship. I came aboard here, and drank with you as a friend
because I supposed you to be one. Oh, my brother...."
"Your brother?"
Terror stabbed at Ben, and caution gave him wisdom. He had almost said:
"My brother was right, and you no friend." It was possible that some day
Shawn would be ashore again, where Reuben was. "Nothing about my
brother," said Ben--"merely that he told me I ought not to set my heart
on sailing, as I did. I told you how I had hoped for it, and you knew
last night, you know this moment that I meant it honest--not this, not
this--I say I'll never have no part of it."
"But," said Shawn peacefully, "I must have an answer to what I asked. Do
you wish to live?"
"Yes, like any man. Not at cost of betraying my own people or doing what
my heart refuses."
"Why, that's very bravely spoken."
"You thought I'd help you take _Artemis_?"
"Oh," said Shawn, and took out the copper coin and frowned at it. "Who's
to know all the whims of a green boy?"
"Whims, Mr. Shawn? Well, not that or any other dirty piracy."
"Oh!" said Shawn again, and held up the coin, turning it about in the
gray light. His forehead was damp, perhaps from the spray. "A St.
Patrick farthing, Beneen. From Dromore. Sometimes I'm wondering why I
keep it. Not much there, ha, to make a man think of the green land?...
Well, you'll forget you said that--in time, time. Your heart, is it? And
so, do you see, it's your heart I must teach. I must change it, the way
you'll be breaking the old bonds and will sail with me to the new lands.
Time--that's all. The old gray mother'll give you the truth of it, and
I'll change your heart."
"That no one can do."
"But I can," said Shawn, and strode away smiling....
_Artemis_ was overtaken on the third day.
The weather shone fair, the winds themselves giving Shawn their favor,
mild westerlies holding, shifting on the third day a little toward the
northwest. The island, as Shawn had said, was a faraway thing, at times
not visible, reappearing as the blue fragment of a dream. It was early
morning, and Shawn, fortunate in this too, had tacked well away to the
southeast of the island when the clean white of new sail first appeared.
Shawn needed only a moment's study through his glass. His face, that had
been smiling, changed to an ivory stillness, and he took the helm.
_Artemis_, gliding out of Sherburne, had clapped on all sail--jib and
topsail and mainsail bellying taut, her fore-and-aft mizzen a great wing
of purpose and of splendor. For her the northwesterly was a following
wind, not her best wind but good enough; her low-slung bowsprit leaned
joyfully to the sparkle of harmless whitecaps, outward bound.
Shawn's little sloop danced about, settling into the long starboard
tack; it would intercept the course of _Artemis_--but not until the
island was well below the horizon, and none to observe but the gulls
that still dipped and wheeled above and around _Artemis_, careless
angels in the sun. Shawn gave one order in one roared word: "Judah!"
It must have all been arranged long beforehand. Ben at that moment was
trying to understand a snapped order from Judah Marsh. Trim something or
other--he hadn't quite heard or understood, and was undecided whether to
obey as he had tried to do yesterday or to choose this time for hopeless
rebellion. Startled by that thunder from the helm, he turned his head to
glance at Shawn--and was face down on the deck, his hands wrenched
behind him and bound fast at the wrists. His threshing legs were secured
at knees and ankles. The creature Dummy was doing most of this, as Ben
knew from the moaning slobber at his ear.
He was tied then at the foot of the mast, by back and ankles, legs bent
under him so that he could not lift his knees, a rag jammed in his
mouth, a tarpaulin flung over him up to the eyes. He struggled a while,
not in hope, merely in refusal to surrender, and dislodged the tarp.
Judah Marsh noticed this, and fastened two corners of the canvas behind
the mast. Ben could do nothing then but go limp, trying to lessen the
torture of bent legs and keep the edge of the tarpaulin from slipping
against his eyelids. He faced the starboard rail. He could glimpse
_Artemis_ from time to time as the sloop rolled. She grew larger through
the morning.
He saw the sloop's dory readied to go overside, long before _Artemis_
was in hailing distance, the life aboard her only a motion of midgets.
Dummy, swift and excited as an ape, tossed into the dory a broad sheet
of canvas. Judah Marsh and dry little Joey Mills climbed into the dory
and disappeared. They would be a bundle under a rag; Ben ceased to
wonder....
"Ahoy the _Artemis_!"
"Hoy!" The answer came back large and brazen over the mild water, Jenks
with his megaphone no midget now but recognizable, massive at the rail
and calm.
"I'm bearing a message from Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury."
Ben tried to yell. Nothing penetrated the gag--a strangled gurgling that
would not be audible ten feet away. He gave it up, hearing a part of
Jenks' answer: "--'bliged to you. Let me have it."
"A sealed message, sir--must be delivered to you safe hand, says he, no
other way. Will you heave to, sir? I'll send me boat and delay you as
little as I may."
The heavy clang of Captain Peter Jenks' voice cursed once or twice
amiably for the record, and consented.
Shawn was right. He delayed _Artemis_ very little indeed.
Her shortened sail holding her to a crawl, the sloop was rolling more.
Her rising starboard side would close away Ben's view, and then it
seemed to him, not that his own bound body was being moved, his eyes
turned in spite of him to the sun and empty sky, but that the sharp
bright field of agony across the water had been thrust down, rejected
and overwhelmed: sea and sky would not own it nor allow it. He supposed
he was not quite sane. Then with each contrary roll the vision would
return, plainer than ever, and he was sane enough.
Printed on his memory was a moment when Shawn and Jenks stood together
on the deck of _Artemis_ in what seemed to be innocent palaver, the
megaphone dangling idly from Jenks' hand, while the dory with Dummy at
the oars was sliding astern--and then a roll of the sloop to larboard.
Another moment--why, Jenks and Shawn had hardly moved, and Ben could
recognize fat Tom Ball, and the carpenter Matthew Ledyard--but the dory
had been made fast. Three rats like men were climbing. Surely the
helmsman could see them! Or the red-haired man--yes, but what the devil
was the cook doing on deck at a conference of captains, and with
something black hanging from his right hand? Another roll to
larboard--the sloop in her whimsy hung there, tormenting him through a
time of sunny blindness and no breathing.
Then Ben discovered why the red-haired cook was present. The same glance
embraced the helmsman--anyway a human creature wearing a green kerchief
around his head such as the helmsman had been wearing--tumbling
strangely from the stem of the beautiful slow-gliding vessel, striking
the water with no great splash, floating briefly with no struggle as of
life, and disappearing. The sloop rolled to larboard.
Ben in the sunlight could remember Reuben in the red gleam of burning
houses, stricken and condemning himself because he had not prayed. _And
I have not prayed. But--but...._
From the pain in his legs or the beating sun, Ben might have fainted for
a while. Later he could recall no more of the dance of death; nothing
until he was aware of the dory skimming back toward him, no one in it
but Judah Marsh. Manuel came to release him.
Marsh troubled himself with nothing aboard the sloop, not even the
sails; his only errand was to bring the dory for Ben and Manuel, and
herd them into it with the lash of a word or two. Manuel was obliged to
drop Ben into it, his legs being still numb and useless.
An hour later, as _Artemis_ sped southward, the sloop was still visible,
yawing this way and that, making poor silly rushes downwind, dropping in
a trough and swinging until caught aback. When Ben last glimpsed her, he
and Manuel and Dummy were employed in holystoning the deck of _Artemis_,
and Manuel laughed to see her, and nudged Dummy so that he might enjoy
it too, even though Judah Marsh was standing by with a belt. Very
comical was Mr. Harkness' sloop stumbling about back there, a puzzled
pup ordered to go home. Ben could see that. To protest this present
labor was to receive the buckle end of the belt; Ben could see that such
a cause was not worth a protest--any deck should be made decent, one
granted that. The stains were already browning in the sun, difficult to
remove, but Captain Shawn would not gather his crew to hear, approve and
sign the articles until that deck was clean....
"We here gathered, who have hereunder set our names, do declare
ourselves prepared to undertake all such enterprises of discovery as our
Captain shall design, and all acts of seizure, search, requisition,
defense and warfare that may be needful thereto.
"We here and now and forever forswear all allegiance to any crown,
republic, dominion, principality on the face of the earth.
"We here and now and forever swear loyalty unto one another, and to our
Captain obedience in all things, and unto the following laws we do
agree:
"1. That man that shall refuse any order of our Captain, or of
those to whom he may assign command, shall for a first offending
receive Moses' Law, that is forty stripes less one on the bare
back; for second offending his punishment shall be as the Captain
may direct; but for a third offending he shall suffer present
death.
"2. Of prizes taken, the Captain shall have one share and a
quarter; the mates, the gunner, the carpenter and the boatswain
shall have each one share and one eighth; and every man one share;
but that man that shall display devotion beyond the common unto our
endeavors, he shall have such additional reward as the Captain may
decide.
"3. That man that shall utter blasphemy or foul speech in the
presence of the Captain, or suffer any filth or uncleanness to
remain on the deck of the vessel or in the hold, shall receive ten
stripes.
"4. That man that shall snap his arms, or smoke tobacco in the hold
with pipe uncapped, or carry a lit candle without a lanthorn, or
strike flint or carry flame within three paces of gunpowder except
he be the gunner, shall receive not less than twenty and not more
than thirty stripes on the bare back.
"5. That man that shall offer to meddle with a prudent woman
without her consent shall suffer the loss of his tongue and both
hands, and shall be set adrift, or marooned, as the Captain may
direct.
"6. That man that shall secretly bring a lewd woman aboard this or
other vessel of our company, with intent she shall remain aboard,
the vessel being at sea, shall be bound to his doxy by wrists and
ankles and they both be cast into the sea beyond sight of land.
"7. That man that shall be found in liquor during his hours of duty
or in the presence of an enemy, shall receive Moses' law for three
succeeding days; but for a second offending he shall suffer death.
"8. That man that shall display cowardice in battle shall be hanged
by the neck from the yardarm until dead.
"9. That man that shall practise the vice of Sodom or other
unnatural lust shall be hanged by the neck from the yardarm in
presence of the entire company, his body there to remain for the
space of three days, when it shall be quartered and cast into the
sea.
"10. If it shall become known that any man, woman or child hath
entered aboard this or other vessel of our company as a spy or
agent of the Crown of England or any other foreign power, such spy
or agent shall be put to death in whatever manner the Captain shall
direct; but if such spy or agent be one who hath signed these
articles and presented himself to be an honest member of our
company, he shall before his dispatch be nailed by the hands to the
foremast for the space of five days without meat or drink.
"This shall be your Decalogue," said Daniel Shawn, "and you agreeing.
And yet if any man among you be not agreeable, I do not rightly know
what we shall do with him the day, seeing I cannot spare a boat, and the
distance to the mainland may be something tedious to the best of
swimmers."
They laughed. All seven, even Judah Marsh, for the dry grunt that came
from him was certainly meant for a laugh. The laugh of Tom Ball, who had
taken over the helm during the ceremony, rolled forward like greasy
bubbles. Ben Cory, an eighth man who stood apart from the group by the
larboard gun and had not been summoned by Shawn to join them, was
reflecting that though the life of his body might continue for a while,
the part of it that had known laughter was surely ended; reflecting also
that his presence here was, in part and obscurely, a result of his own
actions. Drugged and kidnapped, yes, but ever since the morning when
Reuben had spoken out against Shawn, some part of Ben had understood
that his brother was right; another part, swift to deny it, had been
stronger in him at the time, and so--so the drinks in the cabin of the
sloop, and the waking.
And so perhaps a man's every act is but in part his own, in part a
yielding to the thrust of other forces. And perhaps a man is strong in
just so far as his actions may be called his own; and so--little gray
Joey Mills had begun to sputter words, no one preventing him--and so
where is the way where light dwelleth? "Gawd, sir, that part there--I
mean----"
"What part, Joey Mills?" Shawn asked that not loudly, and he spread the
paper against the bulk of the mainmast, his left hand restraining it
against the breeze. Manuel stood by him holding an inkstand and goose
quill from the cabin. So much, Ben thought, for the fireside legends
that such documents were signed with the heart's blood. Or maybe they
were. "Some article you wished to question, Joey Mills?"
"Oh no, sir, nothing like that, sir. I only thought--that there part
about forswearing allegiance--well, sir----"
"You wished it more strongly expressed, belike?"
"Well, sir, you see, sir----"
"Ah, I have it!" Shawn beamed in a great glow of generous satisfaction.
"You're not the big man, Joey Mills, though sure it's the heart of a
gamecock under your old hide, so do you make yourself the greater by
coming forward now and being first to sign, ha? Come, Joey! Let me
behold your handwrite plain and large!"
Ben noticed no tremor in the grimy fist. That might have been because
Joey Mills clutched the quill like a rope, his whole arm toiling in the
grave task of shaping the letters, his tongue protruding from clamped
lips, his brows a cat's cradle of distress, while Shawn's right arm
spread kindly over his sparrowy shoulders. "There, sir! And now,
sir----"
"Whisht, man!--time to speak of all things, but now you've signed, and
happy am I to have your pledged word in writing, but now, man dear, you
must step aside for others."
Joey Mills gave it up and stumbled away, his glance meeting Ben's rather
wildly. He seemed almost to be imploring Ben, of all people, for
something or other, an impression soon blotted out by a weakly
apologetic chuckle. As Joey Mills then scuttled aft to relieve Tom Ball
at the helm, Ben thought of Jesse Plum....
Matthew Ledyard the carpenter, last to join the group, had stalked
forward--from the captain's cabin, Ben thought--and had halted,
demoralized with astonishment at sight of Ben. Ben had supposed Ledyard
was murdered with the others, yet there he stood in the sunlight, gaunt
face flushed to the eyes under the broad birthmark, lips moving without
words. Shawn had drawn him aside for a word or two that seemed to calm
him. He had listened to the articles with a sleepwalker's gaze at
nothing, and now was the second to sign, shaking his head afterward like
a man who hopes to understand something sometime but cannot do so in the
present.
After him came Manuel and Dummy and French Jack, these three guided by
Shawn's hand to make their marks, and he wrote their names for them with
amiable flourishes. Tom Ball then signed, a remarkable lightness and
delicacy in his fat fingers.
Judah Marsh wrote slowly but steadily with a savage gouging, his writing
a pattern of cutlass gashes. Shawn took the quill from him, regarding
the point in sorrow and the man who had nearly ruined it. Some current
of understanding was flowing between them, no affection in it and no
mirth. Shawn signed his name, handsome and large and bold, pocketed the
folded paper, and flung the quill dartwise over the side. "Stay as you
be, men," he said--"we'll choose the watches presently." He jerked his
head for Ben to follow him, and went forward to the bow, leaning there
idly at the rail, the wind at his back. "Cory, I did not require you to
sign. Men go with me of their own will, one way or another."
"And so I'm to go overboard?"
"You seem not to be shaking.... I've not been so instructed."
"Instructed?--I don't understand you."
"Never mind. Time, time."
"We are strangers, Mr. Shawn, who never met before. You could have
forced my hand to take the quill, maybe. I'd never sign such a thing any
other way, and I will not serve you on this venture." Shawn's face did
not change. "Are the others all dead?"
Shawn watched the ocean in the south. "Several died and no help for it,"
he said quietly. "Peter Jenks lives--not harmed, I dare say. A thick
skull. He'll share my cabin for a while at least."
"Share----"
Shawn laughed, not musically but almost soundlessly, a thing Ben had not
seen him do before. "Under restraint, Ben. Like all good vessels,
_Artemis_, who must now be named _Diana_, carries irons for malefactors.
I have had Chips staple a chain in the floor of the cabin for the leg
irons. Unpleasant, but I'm obliged to question Mr. Jenks in certain
particulars. Then no doubt he can be released."
"Released to go overside."
"Time, Ben, time. And so you will not serve me?"
"I will not."
"I like that stubborn will. Mother of God, what a power of strength it
might be when you're a man!... Ben, those fellas back there, they are
servants. Good men--chose 'em with much thought--but servants, cattle.
You are not as they."
"If I did you any service aboard this vessel of Mr. Kenny's I'd be no
better than they are."
But it seemed impossible for Ben to make Shawn angry. The man continued
strangely gentle and reflective in all he said. "I grant I may have done
Mr. Kenny some harm, but he's a wealthy man." About to protest that Mr.
Kenny would be so no longer with _Artemis_ lost, Ben held his peace. "I
do regret it. If you will not serve me--as yet--perhaps you will serve
the ketch? A vessel hath many needs, Mr. Cory. An idle or unskillful
hand may do her much harm, come tempest or other misfortune. You cannot
expect to share in any prizes----"
"Do you fancy I ever would?"
"Shall we hope to soften this Puritan virtue to some degree?"
But Shawn was not at all angry. "I say, you cannot share in prizes, but
while aboard you will be fed and clothed like the others, and for this
perhaps you might make some return in labor, if only for _Artemis'_
sake?"
"I suppose I must, as a captive slave, if I wish to live. But I will do
no act of piracy, I will do no violence to anyone except in defense of
my life, and I will escape you when I can. I believe any slave has that
privilege."
"Then I'll require of you no act of violence, only the labor of a
foremast hand--can I say more? You have my word on it. And tell me
something--have you ever spoken in this fashion to any man before?"
"I never did. I never had cause."
"Knowing quite well that by a lift of my finger I could have you put to
death? Human life is nothing to these men, you know. And there'll be
muttering a-plenty because you haven't signed."
"Knowing that, of course."
Shawn's hand swung out and gripped Ben's upper arm, not with intentional
cruelty, Ben guessed, but he could feel the nerves of his forearm going
numb. "Ben, Ben, do you not also hear a voice, sometimes behind your
shoulder as it were?--saying now for instance, 'Resist old Shawn, resist
him even if you die for it!'" Shawn shook him impatiently. "Is there not
such a voice?"
"I don't understand you."
"Tell me the truth!"
"I hear my own mind--heart, conscience, whatever you wish to call it. It
serves me as well as it may, and I listen to it."
"Strange! You are not a believer, I think? Do you pray?"
"I haven't truly prayed since my father and mother were murdered.... Is
not conscience enough?"
Shawn released him and sighed and turned away. "You spoke of slavery.
Ah, Beneen, don't you see, all this is but prologue? I serve a great
end. I spoke to you of the western sea and the new lands, and I did see
the thought strike fire in you, don't try to deny it. Why, I'd not go on
the account, nor meddle with this rabble, nor do violence to anyone, if
I could help it. Mother of God, two or three fine ships, a handful of
brave men, say fifty, sixty--it needs no more. We need no women--we'll
take us native women in the new lands and raise up a new breed of men,
and they shall be like gods. You must see it, Beneen, the way I have no
choice?"
"I do see--as my father and my mother taught me, as I learned from my
tutor and my great-uncle, and above all from my brother, whose
understanding is better than mine--I do see, Mr. Shawn, that you cannot
serve a good end by evil means."
"Ochone!--a Puritan indeed but very young, now that's no lie. I know
that talk, that doctrine, Ben, know it of old, a stick to beat the young
and no truth in it, and so I deny it altogether."
"I will affirm it while I live. Damnation, Mr. Shawn, it's no article of
faith, only a plain observation any man can make. Your great end lies in
the future, but the future grows from the present. The evil you do in
the present can only generate evil in the future and not the good end
you dream of."
"Puritan and philosopher! Now I have seen flowers growing from a
dunghill."
"They grow from the seed of other flowers and would do so in common
ground. The dunghill itself only makes a stink."
"Feeds them, does it not?"
"I dare say nothing's purely good or purely evil. What's good in the
dunghill feeds them, the rest is a stink."
"Damn the thing, blind and stubborn as you are, I like you, Ben Cory....
Do you play chess?"
"A little."
"I found a set of men in the cabin. We must play now and then."
"If you like...."
"Nothing left then, Beneen, of the friendship I hoped there was between
thee and me?"
"I don't know how to answer that. I don't see how there can be
friendship if one man enslaves another, if one man does what another
must hate and reject."
"You're very bitter, boy."
"I don't possess my own life, if it can be destroyed at your whim, a
lift of your finger. I think his life is all any man owns. I think
that's cause for bitterness, Shawn. I refused as soon as I understood,
the first day. There've been three nights when you could have stood in
to shore and let me swim for it." Shawn laughed a little, silently. "I
know--you couldn't have me spreading word of you. And it's true, I
would have done so at once."
Shawn said slowly: "I could not destroy your life, I think. I spoke as
if I might, only in hope of persuading you, opening your eyes. I keep
you with me for the same reason, now that's no lie. The friendship
abides in me, though you've turned against me. And now you have my word
on this: when I have won my little fleet, and my men, and am ready for
the regions where none will follow me, I will be finding some means to
set you free, and you still unwilling to go with me. I'll put you aboard
some other ship, or leave you in a foreign port if I can. You have my
word on it--yet I think you may go with me. And for the present I do be
asking nothing of you but a seaman's labor, no violence. No violence,
Beneen."
Ben knew somehow that, even in that moment, when brown stains were still
visible on the deck in spite of all the scrubbing and washing down,
Shawn's sorrow at Ben's rejection of him was quite real, quite honest
and deep, and so was his belief that Ben's mind would change and that he
himself could change it. A most divided man, who could condemn war and
practice it. One could picture him sheltering a fallen nestling in his
hand, while his heel pressed on the bloody corpse of one of his own
breed. But Ben was forced to understand after a while that such insane
division is not, by most men, called insanity. They call it necessity.
For a year now, Shawn had kept his word. No violence was required of
Ben. When action approached, as it did hardly more than a dozen times in
the whole year, Ben was tied, not cruelly, down in the forecastle, and
saw only the aftermath.
It seemed to Ben now as he watched the tropic glory of the May
moon--this fading slowly, for morning was not far away--that it was true
enough, as was said in the Book of Proverbs: _For as he thinketh in his
heart, so is he_--and maybe, Ben speculated, any madman is merely one
who believes a thing which the one who names him mad is forced to call a
lie.
Shawn's blunders in chess were of a curious kind. Ben could beat him as
a rule, with effort, and Shawn took it graciously except for a
compulsion to curse at his own mistakes. Ben was reminded each time
(but did not say) how Reuben could have given the man a handicap of a
rook or better and still have beaten him in fourteen or fifteen moves.
Shawn would prepare a good enough attack--squatting by the board in the
sunlight of the quarterdeck, on days of small wind when the _Diana_ held
an even keel and no work needed to be done--and he would be cheerful in
the beginning, a little excited, humming in his teeth, moving his pieces
with a mirthful flourish. One could not think of him then as anything
but a kindly, humorous, thoughtful man, almost a young man, a man on
holiday. But in the decisive moment, when he must push through the
attack or be damned to it, the humming would cease, the copper farthing
would appear in his fingers, and Shawn would either abandon the attack
for some meaningless scrimmage in another part of the field, or make one
of his blatant errors--a piece left hanging unprotected, a reckless
sacrifice gaining nothing. After that, Ben's limited knowledge was
sufficient to demolish him. Daniel Shawn would never seem to understand
just how this had happened, and Ben did not tell him.
The _Diana_ won no big prizes in that year of prowling up and down the
Caribbean. True, she was woefully undermanned, reason enough for risking
no lives on anything less than a flat certainty. All the same (said
Judah Marsh in Ben's hearing), John Quelch would not have chased a
French sloop for three days and then turned tail merely because the
little rascal put about in despair and uncovered a gun she shouldn't
have possessed. Shawn heard that too, and stared blankly at Marsh,
rubbing the coin, until Marsh turned away; but Shawn turned away too,
without a reply.
There were braver occasions, such as the breathless evening in July when
the sloop _Schouven_ died. That was an open battle with everything
risked. Tied securely in the stifling forecastle, Ben could hear as much
for himself--the coughing thunder above him of the _Diana's_ larboard
gun, presently a distant animal howling, a banging of small arms, a
piercing squeal like a stuck pig that was French Jack's war cry. When
Ben was released to come on deck the _Schouven_ was already afire, the
_Diana_ leaving her behind in the gathering night. Tom Ball and Dummy
and Jack were gaudily bleeding from minor wounds, but the _Diana_ had
lost nothing. She had won about fifty pounds in silver, a month's
provisions, a little long-tailed black monkey and a man--a tall, gray,
soft-spoken scoundrel, Cornelius Barentsz, who was even then scrawling
his name on the _Diana's_ articles with Shawn's blessing. The terrified
monkey clung frantically to Dummy and found a friend....
Ben saw little of Barentsz, who spoke almost no English and was assigned
to Mr. Ball's watch, relieving French Jack of his occasional double duty
for a week or so until Barentsz was hanged. Ben never altogether
understood that. The execution was carried out with no ceremony in the
silent hours of the first watch, when Ben was asleep below. Manuel at
that time was serving on the larboard watch, and Joey Mills on Marsh's
watch with Ben; the two changed places after the hanging, at the request
of Mr. Ball, who said he didn't wish to be tempted to do violence to the
dirty Portagee when the ketch was so short-handed. It was Matthew
Ledyard, in one of his rare impulses to communication, who snarlingly
explained the incident to Ben. Barentsz had been discovered in the
darkness of the first watch trying to embrace poor giggling weakwitted
Manuel like a woman. The articles of the _Diana_ were specific. A week
later, though, after the body had been disposed of in the manner
prescribed, Shawn asked in the middle of a chess game: "Do you know the
true reason why that Dutchman was hanged?" And he set down a Bishop
where it could not legally go.
"The piece can't be played there," said Ben.
"Ha?" Shawn stood abruptly and pushed the board aside with his foot.
"Devil with the game, my mind's not on it." He had already made his
blunder. "You heard my question?"
"I can't say I know the true reason for anything you do."
"I did not hang him, Ben. His destiny hanged him. Nor I don't make much
of poor Manuel trying to cut the body down, for 'tis Manuel's destiny to
remain weak in the wits and no harm in him, except he may be used for
harm by others. But--ah well, 'tis true enough what I told the men, I
did find Barentsz so, and I'll have no such Devil's foulness under my
command, now that's no lie. But"--he glanced about the sunny deck, where
no one else was in earshot--"there was another reason, one I didn't
wish the men to know. On second thought--on further instruction--it
doesn't matter. You may even tell them if you see fit." He waited, the
silence forcing Ben to look up at him at last. "It might be of especial
importance to you, Ben Cory, to know that I know Barentsz's true reason
for coming aboard my ketch."
"His reason! He was brought aboard a captive, that or be drowned."
"That was the seeming," said Shawn, rubbing his coin, looking gravely
down with the sun behind him, his eyes all black. "Yet Barentsz could
have gone with the others. They thought (not understanding the end I
serve) that I would give them a boat. But no, this Barentsz chose to
make a show of favoring my enterprise, so to deceive me and get himself
aboard my ketch. Then soon enough, hearing what he muttered under his
breath, I understood why."
"I could make nothing of what he tried to say in English."
"That's no matter."
"Do you speak Dutch?"
"Enough."
"Well?"
"You wouldn't care to say 'Well, sir?' or 'Well, Captain?'"
"Well, Shawn?"
"How you do play with your own life, the way it might be a thing of no
value!"
"While I'm a slave it's of no value," said Ben, knowing that this was
not at all true.
"Mother of God, it's your very impudence that saves you. If you were
what I've sometimes feared you might be, your conversation would not be
so. You'd be sly, I think. You'd try to please me, I think, and not spit
back at me like a little wildcat.... Well--Cornelius Barentsz was an
agent, and that in the service of Queen Anne of England."
"I don't believe it."
"It doesn't matter. You haven't my ways of discovering truth. But now
that you know I know this, will there be any particular thing you wish
to tell me, Ben Cory?"
"No, Shawn."
"If you be what I devoutly pray you are, you've nothing to fear even in
your impudence. But those who betray me I do not forgive."
Ben knew--and had known for some time, he supposed--that he was in the
presence of madness, whatever that is. It seemed not to be the simple,
half-supernatural thing that the common speech heard in Ben's childhood
had made of it. Shawn did not rave or babble or foam at the mouth; he
never acted as one possessed of a devil ought to act, and besides, are
there any devils? If so, what are they, and how was one who had lived
three years with the calm skepticism of John Kenny to believe in them?
One remembered Reuben snorting and gurgling and sometimes cursing over
Cotton Mather's _Wonders of the Invisible World_, and then reading with
greater joy the burlesque of it written by the merchant Robert Calef of
Boston, whom Uncle John admired. Never mind about devils.
Ben knew his own life could end at any moment. At that time, however, he
had already lived three months with the nearness of sudden death--his
own defiance, he sometimes thought, the sheerest bluff. Like living in
the same den with a tiger who, for his own reasons, has so far refrained
from destroying you. You can cringe and shiver for only a limited time;
then it becomes tiresome, and you must look after your own occasions of
eating and sleeping and waking no matter what the tiger does. And
doubtless a tiger is more likely to pounce on a creature that cringes
than on one who spits back at him. And in spitting back, in turning his
face directly toward the lightning and to hell with the consequences,
Ben had found, no doubt of it, a hot pleasure as definite, almost as
keen as in the surging moments when Clarissa had loved him.
Shawn played few chess games with Ben after that day, appearing to lose
interest in them. He seemed to Ben to be changing in some gradual,
obscure fashion--more aloof, more silent except for the occasional
furious monologue after some ship had been sighted, and followed a
while, and then allowed to slip away over the horizon because Shawn's
voice told him the moment was not ripe and his forces not sufficient.
Several times Shawn had robbed small interisland vessels--trivial
occasions when Ben was not tied below but allowed to remain on deck with
Manuel and Dummy and the monkey. The _Diana_ swooped down on these
helpless chickens like the wrath of God, but having taken what little
they held of provisions and valuables, and having learned that no man
aboard them was willing or worthy to go with him, Shawn showed
contemptuous mercy and let them depart unharmed. What they could tell,
he said, was no threat to him--he had already satisfied himself, after
the pursuit by the frigate _Dread_, that the _Diana_ could outrun
anything afloat.
Vessels in the _Diana's_ class or larger were always too well manned or
too well armed, or sighted too near the land or in the presence of other
shipping, or simply rejected by the inner voice. Something--("I am
compassed about," said Shawn--"compassed about")--something was always
not quite right.
Shawn spent more and more time in the cabin, where Ben had not been
allowed to go the whole year long.
There was an October afternoon of aching sunlight in the waters off
Grenada, when Ben noticed a thick scattering of silver at Shawn's
temples and wondered how long it could have been there....
No one entered that locked cabin except Shawn, who kept its key and one
other key on a cord at his neck, and Judah Marsh, and Joey Mills. Mills
entered it only long enough to carry in food and fetch out the pail of
slops. Since no one was ever of a mind to question Shawn or Marsh, Ben
and the others (even Tom Ball) relied on Joey Mills for news of Peter
Jenks. Mills did not much enjoy talking on the subject.
It was ever the same, Mills said. Jenks was there, and alive; but what
the Captain wanted of him was beyond the imagination of an old man who'd
been brought up Godfearing in Gloucester. Jenks' ankles were close
together in irons; Ledyard had stapled the chain of the irons to the
floor and nailed a plank over the staple so that nothing less than a
crowbar would ever tear it loose. The chain was long enough to allow
Jenks to lie in his bunk or sit at the stationary bench by the built-in
table. When the ketch was careened for cleaning, Mills said, the Old
Man must be obliged to lie braced against the side boards of his
bunk--never speaking a word. Nothing movable was allowed within Jenks'
reach except a light wooden food tray that Mills pushed to him by a long
stick, and the slop bucket, managed with the same stick, and a leather
flask of rum. Under Shawn's strictest orders, Mills observed all the
precautions one might with a chained bear. Jenks laughed at that
sometimes, Mills said--but spoke not a word. He had not once touched the
rum; Mills was certain of it. The flask lay in a corner, some motion of
the vessel having dislodged it from the table where Shawn had tossed it.
It still lay within Jenks' reach: Mills doubted if he even looked at it.
And the leather had turned green on the outside with tropic mold.
Shawn actually slept in that cabin, the door locked. Beside the bunk
across the cabin from the one Jenks used, Ledyard had built a heavy
wooden screen, and after that Ledyard also had been forbidden the place.
The screen, Mills supposed, would keep the chained bear from hurling his
bucket at Shawn while Shawn slept--if Shawn ever slept....
The May moon sank into a grayness of horizon cloud behind the island,
then sank altogether, lost out of the night, and with its passing the
shadow of the _Diana_ vanished into the black immensity of the sea.
Under the blackness that spread above him like another sea bearing a
foam of stars, Ben stood in a loneliness complete, feeling nothing for a
time but the loyal secret motion of his own heart and the noise of ocean
not concerned with him. He was waiting: waiting at least for the gradual
fading of the dark that must soon begin in the lower sky, maybe for
something more. That light would come in its time, over the open waters
in the east, pouring upward, compelling the sea of blackness to a
luminous change and then dissolving it away. But what is morning to a
slave?
Why, nothing. Nothing unless in some way the light can grow within the
slave as well as upon the world where he drags out his captivity.
I have been too passive, Ben thought, and that for much too long a time.
Defiant, yes, and maybe brave enough, but in a child's way, to no real
purpose. For that first month or so I may have had some excuse--I was
dazed; I had never dreamed any such thing could happen, to me. But since
then, no excuse for drifting, letting things happen. There must have
been something I could have done.
Oh, and passive, too passive by far, a long time before that evening in
the cabin of the sloop. Drifting, letting things happen instead of
taking a hand in forcing them to happen. Maybe a child is compelled to
that. But childhood ended--when? Did not Reuben at fifteen discover a
purpose?
He will have turned sixteen a few days ago, and I not there; and
doubtless he believes I am dead.
Faith surely imagines I am dead, she who said with her lips at my ear
that she would wait for me a thousand years.
There must have been something I could do....
Dry logic of arithmetic asserted itself and Ben noted it. I don't _know_
how one youth steals a ketch from seven grown men. But....
By the contemptuous assent of Daniel Shawn himself, I still possess the
knife my father gave me. He gave me also a word: _readiness...._
The stars weakened; some of them were gone. The sky, no sea of blackness
now, became a paleness and then a glory. Shadows acquired weight and
relief, substance and sharpness in the transfiguration of daylight--the
rail under Ben's hand no pallid blur but familiar with every spot and
imperfection of the polished wood. The headland out yonder at the
southern arm of the cove, a looming dullness not long ago, became the
gray hand of a giant, then green, then manifest jungle, a fragment of
solid earth, and the lonely red flare of the sun burst free in silence
over the rim of the world. Clouds hung high in the west; none lingered
over there on the morning side to obscure the birth, and at the moment
of completion a light sweet wind tranquilly arrived, a northeasterly
breeze, cooling Ben's face, roving across the island, waking in the bare
cordage a music of morning and perhaps of spring.
_There must be something I can do...._
"Mr. Hibbs, was Reuben uncertain what time he would come home?"
"Yes--late, I think, Charity. There was something--a cutting for the
stone to be precise, and the patient living somewhere near Cambridge.
You know he goes with Mr. Welland on nearly all the visits now. On this
occasion, I understand, he's to aid with the surgery, holding
instruments I suppose, or whatever--the which maketh me ill only to
contemplate it, but when I saw Ru this morning he was cool as you
please, and quite unmoved, and cracked a joke or two that I'm sure Mr.
Kenny was able to hear and enjoy. I dare say the doctor is right, that
to visit the sick in all their trials will provide a learning not to be
won from the best of books. Yet I wish it did not mean that he must
neglect his other studies."
"Perhaps he'll come back to them one day."
"Ay--'tis absurd of me, but I feel in a manner cheated. There was so
much more I had hoped to teach him--nay, I dare say any teacher is a
fool, seeing only his small island of knowledge, forgetting how wide is
the world beyond it. Can you stay the night, my dear?"
"Yes. Kate's most kind, allowing me to share her bed. I fear I'm a
plague to her, I'm that restless, but she says not."
"I believe there's another bed in the attic that we could bring down, if
she wishes."
"Ben's?"
"Oh, no! That hath remained in Reuben's room--their room, I'd rather
say. I don't know that Reuben ever said anything of it, but--you can
imagine no one of us would suggest taking it out."
"Of course. I spoke something foolish. I do so often."
"Not at all. It is--may I say this, Charity?--a blessing, that you do
come to us here. In this house we are, all but Reuben--oh, how shall I
say it?--old, dusty, something discouraged perhaps. There was so much of
youth and gaiety, the which we took for granted when we had it, when Ben
was here, the two of them alway in some harmless commotion or
other--why, merely to hear them talk together was--was.... What are you
sewing, Charity? Something for the--for what I believe fair young maids
do call a bride chest?"
"I am no-way fair, Mr. Hibbs. And--honestly now, doth this appear to you
like an item of female apparel?"
"Oh! Marry it don't, now you hold it up--you had it bunched under your
hand so I couldn't see."
"A nightshirt of Mr. Kenny's, and I only trust I may mend this hole so
it won't chafe him. He wears them out in the back, you see, lying on
them constantly, and--oh, the fidgeting that's all he's able to do. I
pray you, Mr. Hibbs, would you sit the other side of the lamp? You're in
peril of my elbow, besides shutting off the light."
"Of course--clumsy of me.... How deftly your little hands do work at
whatever they find, Charity!... _Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit
hora...._"
"I sew very badly, Mr. Hibbs, and I have no Latin."
"Forgive me. I think, though, you sew excellent well."
"Ha!"
"'Twas only a line of Tibullus that cometh now and then to my mind. _Et
teneam moriens deficiente manu...._ I never read Tibullus with the boys.
Not altogether suited, I felt, to their time of life. And yet sometimes,
as in those particular lines, my dear, he is quite innocent, indeed
expressing sentiments appropriate to a man of honorable feeling. 'May
I'--(saith Tibullus, my dear)--'may I look on thee when cometh my last
hour, and may I hold thy hand as I sink dying!'"
"I must tell Kate this one is nearly past mending, but if she'll make a
pattern for me I believe I could follow it in my blundering fashion. He
ought to have a change of them for every day. I know a place on Sudbury
Street where they have better material than this, and cheap."
"I recall some other lines from the same poem--_me mea paupertas vita
traducat inerti, dum meus adsiduo luceat igne focus...._ 'Let the humble
fortune that is proper to me lead me through a quiet way of life, if
only my hearth may glow with an unfailing fire!' You'd suppose that the
sentiment of an aging man, wouldn't you? And yet they tell that
Tibullus, he died young.... Charity...."
"Yes, Mr. Hibbs?"
"Charity, having spent, I must admit, very nearly twenty
years--beginning, let us say, with the year I commenced study at
Harvard, the which was the thirteenth year of my life--having spent so
much time, I say, in what would seem, to some, a most arid employment,
namely the cultivation of the abstract, the exploration (tentative,
limited by the frailty of mine own poor powers) of the borders of
philosophy--having spent thus much time in--shall I call it, perhaps, a
sanctuary of loneliness?--not altogether unrewarding, you understand;
not without the consolation of the poets; not without an occasional
satisfaction, like unto discovery, within the region of the inquiry:
nevertheless, out of such loneliness--out of----"
"Sir----"
"Nay, forgive me, Charity, I'm most clumsy with words, and could never
speak bold and plain what's in my mind, the which plain speaking I do
much admire to discover in others, but let me essay it. Having spent, I
say, almost twenty years, yes, almost a full score in the--I must call
it the dust of scholarship, save the mark--one may then, suddenly as it
were, look out as through the window of a study, let us say, and observe
that outside this not altogether despicable refuge there is--oh, spring
perhaps, as it is even now, my dear--and one may presume to hope that
one hath not remained so long out of the world, nor grown so old, but
that--but that----"
"Mr. Hibbs, I pray you----"
"Not so old but that perhaps one who is truly at the very brightest
beginning of the springtime might find--might find in one's maturer
years--oh, nothing like the call of youth to youth, my God! but--but....
You have not known how I--how since you began coming here in so much
kindness--I think you have not known----"
"Mr. Hibbs, I must speak too, and I pray you say no more till I have
done. The sentiments you express, the which--oh _bother_! There goes my
thread again and I wasn't even pulling at it, they needn't to make it so
miserable weak, do they? The sentiments--look, Mr. Hibbs: when we moved
to Dorchester last autumn, I found there a place on the shore, just
beyond reach of the high tides, a pretty place, a kind of--what was it
you said?--a sanctuary of loneliness, at any rate I made it one. The
rocks hide it from the house, from the land; 'tis like a room
overlooking the open waters, where all the ships from the south must
pass when they come in for the harbor, and I go there--oh, whenever I
may. My mother thinks I'm looking for seashells or other such employment
suited to children, and so I do bring in any pretty ones I find--and
then throw them away secret-like, la, to make room for more--why, I'm a
deceiving small beast, Mr. Hibbs, learned deception young, marry did I,
I often wonder that anyone can put up with me. Well--even last winter,
if it wasn't outright storming, I'd bundle up in my coat and go out
there. The rocks break the wind. You can look a long way out.... I told
Reuben about this. He understood--well, of course he did. One expects
understanding from Reuben, I don't quite know why."
"I am not certain that I myself understand you, Charity."
"I must say more then?... But perhaps you will tell me, as my mother
would, that at my years I can know nothing of love, and yet I do....
Sometimes I'll see a sail that looks from a distance like the _Artemis_.
But I watch any sail that appears, because--because who can say what
manner of ship it will be that brings him home?--and now you are
weeping, but Mr. Hibbs, I never intended----"
"Nay, I--am not. The fireplace a'n't drawing properly--I'll push these
logs further back."
"I am a beast."
"Hush!... I think he will come home, Charity--older, as you are, but
what you saw in him will not be greatly changed.... But I may be your
gray-headed counselor, and--friend?"
"Of course. You aren't gray."
"Soon enough."
"What is it, Mr. Hibbs--what _is_ it that doth compel one to--eh, as
they say, to give away the whole heart to another? I would be better, I
would be happier, I suppose, if I...."
"I could wish for mine own sake that I knew the answer to that. Why,
Charity, it seems we love where we must and no help for it."
"I remember I was not happy, very far from it, a year and more ago, when
I was a silly child, had not even met him, indeed had none to love
but--oh, poor Sultan. Clarissa of course, but it seems to me I never
knew I loved her until I lost her, only took her for granted like
sunlight until the day she was no longer there."
"Sultan?"
"Don't you remember Sultan, Mr. Hibbs? Why, the child I was would never
forgive your forgetting Sultan. He died, very fat and ancient, soon
after we moved to Dorchester. It was the sea air, my mother said. I wept
like a fountain. But I think it was some while before then that I had
ceased to feel like a child."
_Chapter Three_
The island fell away in the west. All day long, and for three days more,
the ketch _Diana_ held the northeast trade off her larboard bow,
close-hauled. Ben supposed that presently Shawn would turn south and
prepare for another chicken-thief raid somewhere in the Leeward Islands.
On the fifth day he did shift course, but not much, the unchanging wind
now on the larboard beam, the _Diana's_ direction southeast.
A withdrawn, taciturn mood had come over Captain Shawn. The members of
his ragamuffin crew, including Ben, felt it as schoolboys feel a
teacher's cold in the head. For Ben there was the growing urgency of
that secret whisper: _Something I can do...._
Ben was forced to admit that, whatever else might have happened to the
year, he had learned a little seamanship. He had acquired sea-legs even
before the capture of _Artemis_. He was never seasick--Shawn himself
knew green moments from time to time. Ben had learned the ropes--no
mystery after all but quite simple once you agreed to use your head and
accept the buckle end of Marsh's belt as a parallel to the sarcasm of
Gideon Hibbs. Marsh was acidly fair about that: as soon as Ben's hand
had learned to jump for the right rope at the right instant, the belt
was no longer used.
Shawn's instruction had followed a different idiom--articulate
explanation, with continuing patience (not displayed toward anyone but
Ben). Somehow the Irishman conveyed: Let's forget that we seem to be
enemies; let's consider this logic of navigation, the sextant, the
tiller, the handling of sail, powers of wind and current and the pattern
of the clear stars; let's do this as though we were not afraid to turn
our backs to each other, you with the knife I let you keep, and I with
mine. Ben could respond to this; could not help responding.
The secret whisper continued in the dark.
Ben's body was learning too, his hands calloused and enlarged, his
shoulders thickened. Already wiry and tough, he was aware of a
burgeoning strength that never reached exhaustion even in the occasional
days of bad weather when the mainsail could stiffen and fight back like
a living beast. When Ben stripped for swimming, as he had done back
there at the island to the amused horror of all aboard, he had noticed a
whiplash hardness in leg and thigh, surely much greater than he had
possessed a year ago. Ben had been startled to learn--last July, when
the _Diana_ put in for careening at another lonely island--that not one
other man aboard could swim. So Ben, who had learned it fishlike in the
waters of the Pocumtuck River with Reuben darting around him, a little
demon of gold and ivory, frolicked alone in the surf and beyond it,
amazed and delighted at the buoyancy of salt water and the untiring
almightiness of the waves. Even to Shawn it was a mystery. Manuel
giggled helplessly. Tom Ball appeared to regard it as a black art.
Once in November, during a lesson on the sextant, Shawn had happened to
stretch and flex his shoulders, and Ben discovered that he was fully as
tall as Captain Shawn. Another time, Ben spoke with careless sharpness
to Joey Mills--the old man's garrulity could be a nuisance--and Joey had
drawn back in manifest physical fright, astonishing to Ben until he
understood: Well, I could break him in two, couldn't I?
Manuel? One fist, and Manuel would cringe and run.
Ledyard? Maybe, just maybe. That would be a near thing.
Ball? French Jack? Well, hardly. And still, either of them might think
twice before starting anything unarmed, or alone.
Dummy? Never, if he got a grip.
Judah Marsh? Why, knives put aside, by God, I could flatten him like a
bug, and wash my hands.
Shawn?...
The whisper continued in the dark.
Since leaving the island under the northeast trade, Captain Shawn had
spent most of his time in the locked cabin, or on deck in a black and
scowling silence. He ordered the log cast unreasonably often; it was
plain the _Diana_ was maintaining an even speed, better than nine knots.
Ben was present whenever Shawn checked his bearings, and could make his
own calculations. When his trick at the helm began at midnight on the
seventh night out from the island, the _Diana_ had crossed the 18th
parallel and was surely far east of the Leewards, too far if Shawn
intended any business with them, and was still running blandly
southeast. Why?...
In these wartime years, with no pressure of maritime unemployment to
drive hungry men into piracy, some furtive harbors throughout the
Caribbean still nourished the old trade, and at some outwardly
respectable ports a vessel of dubious virtue could still put in to
dispose of this and that with few questions asked. So much had been
common talk at Boston; Ben heard it again from the half-timid chatter of
Joey Mills. Captain Shawn might have found men in those ports to make up
his complement; he never went near one of them, all year long. Joey
Mills dared to ask why, and shook his head and spat over the rail. "Tell
you why," said Joey Mills, watching Ben with squirrely courage and
making sure no one else could hear. "He'll get more men, _he_ says, from
the fine prize we a'n't seen yet--or if we seen it we been evermore
tacking somewheres else, God almighty damn. But this here ketch, Ben
Cory, let alone it seems she a'n't bound for nowhere, she a'n't got
nothing. Salt cod, God almighty damn. Put in at one of them places,
nothing to trade, he'd be laughed at. _They'd_ give him salt cod, yah. I
allow _he_ can't bear no laughing at--now don't betray me, don't never
let it out I said no such of a thing--you wouldn't, boy?" Before Ben
could even promise, he chuckled in apology and fled, and avoided Ben for
days....
Far away ahead this midnight, over the curve of the world, stood the
shoulder of Africa. Somewhere in the south--Ben gazed off idly to his
right in the murmurous dark--down there beyond the Line, the Spanish and
Portuguese settlements of the southern continent. Down there too--so far
that one's thought hardly dared trouble with it--the wild cold
legendary region of the Horn, Magellan's gateway, the path to the
western sea.
Here in the undemanding night Ben found it possible to command the earth
to be not vast but small. Merely to point with the right arm toward the
Horn--did not that reduce the world to a modest map that might be held
in fancy, handled, contemplated?--never mind the thousands of leagues of
open sea where that right arm was no greater than one splash of foam.
The paradox was familiar. Mr. Gideon Hibbs had touched on it at the
borders of philosophy: how, if the container be greater than the thing
contained, that organ in the skull must be somehow wider than a
galaxy....
The shadow coming slowly aft might be Manuel, ready to relieve Ben at
the tiller. No--too soon, and Manuel was aloft. Moonrise had begun some
while ago at Ben's left shoulder, magnificent and calm. The shadow was
not Manuel but Daniel Shawn, prowling the dark as he often did when, as
Ben supposed, he could not sleep. Ben suppressed a word of greeting. His
arm over the tiller held firm with elastic readiness for all of the
_Diana's_ whims, as Shawn himself had patiently taught him it must do.
Captain Shawn stood a long time at the after rail gazing northwestward.
It could happen some night, Ben knew, out of a silence like this. The
unknowable driven brain could abruptly decide that Ben Cory must no
longer live. What is madness?... After the decision, execution--but not
immediate, perhaps. It did not seem to be Shawn's way to kill with his
own hand.
He was capable of it. Joey Mills had told Ben how, in the battle with
the _Schouven_, Shawn had boarded the sloop with the rest, two pistols
in his belt. Disdaining a cutlass after the pistols were empty, Shawn
went in howling with his short knife, and that on a tall Dutchman with
long arms--as if, Mills muttered, death was a nothing to Captain Shawn,
or welcome. But Shawn wasn't for dying that day.