DAWN.
_And some Talk of a Ship that Passed in the Night._
I have it in my mind that it was just upon the stroke of one o’clock of
the morning, or two bells in the middle watch, when this amazing message
came to me. Larry and the Irishman were asleep at that time, the third
officer keeping the bridge and sending down to summon me to the Marconi
instrument. Indefatigable as my friends had been in their energies and
zeal, there are limits to human endurance which no prudent master
ignores; and to their bunks I sent them despite their indignation. For
myself, I can never sleep in the hour of crisis or its developments.
Physically, I am then incapable of sleep. A sense of fatigue is unknown
to me. I seem to be as one apart from the normal life of men,
untrammelled by human necessities and unconscious even of mental effort.
Perhaps the subsequent collapse is the more absolute when it comes. I
have slept for thirty hours upon a question finally answered. The end of
my day is the end also of whatever task I have for the time being
undertaken.
The men were sleeping, and why should I awake them? Fallin, the young
officer, had but little news to report. The Diamond Ship no longer
wasted her shells in angry impotence. Her searchlight had ceased to play
upon the moonlit waters. Such tidings as came were of a steamer’s
masthead light seen for an instant upon our port-bow and then vanishing.
“It’s an unusual course for tramps, sir,” the young officer said, “and
to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure enough about it at all to wake the
Captain. If it were a ship out of Buenos Ayres, she’s keeping more south
than usual, but I’ve altered the course for a star before now, and you
don’t care to wake up such a seaman as Captain Larry to tell him you’ve
done that. His orders to me were to go down and report anything unusual.
Well, a glimpse of a ship’s light shouldn’t be unusual, and that’s a
fact.”
I agreed with him, though, landsman that I was, I thought I could read
the omen better than he. If he had seen the masthead light of a strange
steamer, she could be no other than the second of the relief ships the
Jew awaited.
Herein lay many and disquieting possibilities. Given coal and stores
enough, what was there to prevent the rogues putting in to some South
American port, landing there such plunder as they had, and dispersing to
the cities wherein their friends would shelter them? I foresaw
immediately a complete frustration of my own plans and a conclusion to
my task humiliating beyond belief. Not improbably that great hulk of a
ship sailed already under the colours of some irresponsible republic.
She might, I judged, fly the Venezuelan flag or that of Honduras or
Nicaragua. The ports of such governments would be ready enough to give
her shelter if backsheesh enough were to hand. And what, then, of all
our labours—above all, what, then, of little Joan?
This would be to say that the message still troubled me and that I had
by no means come to a resolution upon it. Let it be admitted that it
found me a little wanting in courage. If reason, the sober reason of one
who has made it his life’s task to read the criminal mind, the
principles which guide it and the limits within which it is logical, if
reason such as this read the Jew’s ultimatum aright, then might it be
derided utterly. The man would dare nothing against Joan Fordibras while
an alternative remained to him. She was his last card. Should he harm
her, henceforth he must become a fugitive, not from the justice of a
state, but from a man’s vengeance. This I plainly
perceived—nevertheless, the lonely watches of the night brought me an
echo of her child’s voice, a word spoken as it were from a child’s
heart; so that I could say that the little Joan, who had turned to me in
her trouble, had looked into the very eyes of my soul, that she was a
prisoner yonder, alone among them all, a hostage in the hands of
ruffians, their first and last hope of ultimate salvation from the
gallows and the cell. She suffered—she must suffer the tortures of
doubt, of suspense, it might even be of insult. And I, who had spoken
such fine words, I could but rage against her persecutors, threaten them
idly or write down a message of their contumely. Such was the penalty of
the hour of waiting. I wonder not that I found it almost insupportable.
I have written that the third officer made his report of a strange
steamer about two bells of the middle watch. Not less curious than he, I
paced the bridge with him until dawn, and heard no further tidings. When
Larry himself turned out, it was just before the hour of sunrise, and we
stood together (McShanus coming up from the saloon with a welcome jorum
of steaming coffee) to see the break of day, and to scan the face of the
waters for any confirmation of the young officer’s story.
How still it was, how sublime, how wonderful! Unchanging in its awe and
mystery, the birth of day, whether it be viewed from the deck of a ship,
the summit of a mountain, or even from the heart of a great and sleeping
city, must ever remain a spectacle of transcendent beauty and majesty.
It is as though the Eternal spoke to the sea and the land from the open
gate of heaven itself—a command to live anew for the work of the day
upon which the Holy Spirit would breathe.
On the ocean there is that added glory of a vast horizon, of the
immeasurable ether and the fading magnitude of the stars. Driven back
reluctantly, as the poet has written, Night draws off her armies and the
sun chariots speed on. You see them afar, a glow of chill grey light
beneath the vault of the stars. Winds moan fretfully; the sails above
you sag and shiver; stillness falls upon the waters—a silence as
profound as that of man’s deepest homage. For a little while a trance
has come upon things inanimate.
Little rills of foam go running to the breasts of the greater waves as
cubs to the she-bear for warmth and safety. A battle is waged in the
heavens, but the hosts are hidden. The clouds labour, but are riven. An
arc of golden iridescence blazons the eastern sky. Day’s outposts march
on to victory, and man lifts his hands to invoke their aid.
A daily scene and yet how unchangingly sublime! Standing there upon the
bridge with my good friends about me, it seemed that the glory of the
morn shone full upon our faces and bade us hope. No longer did the night
baffle our weary eyes. We sailed a freshening sea at the splendour of
the day, and far away upon the clear horizon we espied the relief ship
of which our third officer had spoken.
“No star, sir, after all,” said he, “unless, that is, you would care to
call her a lucky star.”