falling heavily, sprawled, pressing their palms to the smooth teak
wood. Round them the backwash of waves seethed white and hissing. All
the doors had become trap-doors, of course. The first was the galley
door. The galley extended from side to side, and they could hear the
sea splashing with hollow noises in there. The next door was that of
the carpenter’s shop. They lifted it, and looked down. The room seemed
to have been devastated by an earthquake. Everything in it had tumbled
on the bulkhead facing the door, and on the other side of that bulkhead
there was Jimmy dead or alive. The bench, a half-finished meat-safe,
saws, chisels, wire rods, axes, crowbars, lay in a heap besprinkled
with loose nails. A sharp adze stuck up with a shining edge that
gleamed dangerously down there like a wicked smile. The men clung to
one another, peering. A sickening, sly lurch of the ship nearly sent
them overboard in a body. Belfast howled “Here goes!” and leaped down.
Archie followed cannily, catching at shelves that gave way with him,
and eased himself in a great crash of ripped wood. There was hardly
room for three men to move. And in the sunshiny blue square of the
door, the boatswain’s face, bearded and dark, Wamibo’s face, wild and
pale, hung over—watching.
Together they shouted: “Jimmy! Jim!” From above the boatswain
contributed a deep growl: “You. Wait!” In a pause, Belfast entreated:
“Jimmy, darlin’, are ye aloive?” The boatswain said: “Again! All
together, boys!” All yelled excitedly. Wamibo made noises resembling
loud barks. Belfast drummed on the side of the bulkhead with a piece of
iron. All ceased suddenly. The sound of screaming and hammering went
on thin and distinct—like a solo after a chorus. He was alive. He was
screaming and knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely
shut up in a coffin. We went to work. We attacked with desperation the
abominable heap of things heavy, of things sharp, of things clumsy to
handle. The boatswain crawled away to find somewhere a flying end of
a rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts:—“Don’t jump!... Don’t come
in here, muddle-head!”—remained glaring above us—all shining eyes,
gleaming fangs, tumbled hair; resembling an amazed and half-witted
fiend gloating over the extraordinary agitation of the damned. The
boatswain adjured us to “bear a hand,” and a rope descended. We made
things fast to it and they went up spinning, never to be seen by
man again. A rage to fling things overboard possessed us. We worked
fiercely, cutting our hands and speaking brutally to one another. Jimmy
kept up a distracting row; he screamed piercingly, without drawing
breath, like a tortured woman; he banged with hands and feet. The agony
of his fear wrung our hearts so terribly that we longed to abandon him,
to get out of that place deep as a well and swaying like a tree, to get
out of his hearing, back on the poop where we could wait passively for
death in incomparable repose. We shouted to him to “shut up, for God’s
sake.” He redoubled his cries. He must have fancied we could not hear
him. Probably he heard his own clamour but faintly. We could picture
him crouching on the edge of the upper berth, letting out with both
fists at the wood, in the dark, and with his mouth wide open for that
unceasing cry. Those were loathsome moments. A cloud driving across the
sun would darken the doorway menacingly. Every movement of the ship was
pain. We scrambled about with no room to breathe, and felt frightfully
sick. The boatswain yelled down at us:—“Bear a hand! Bear a hand! We
two will be washed away from here directly if you ain’t quick!” Three
times a sea leaped over the high side and flung bucketfuls of water
on our heads. Then Jimmy, startled by the shock, would stop his noise
for a moment—waiting for the ship to sink, perhaps—and began again,
distressingly loud, as if invigorated by the gust of fear. At the
bottom the nails lay in a layer several inches thick. It was ghastly.
Every nail in the world, not driven in firmly somewhere, seemed to
have found its way into that carpenter’s shop. There they were, of all
kinds, the remnants of stores from seven voyages. Tin-tacks, copper
tacks (sharp as needles); pump nails with big heads, like tiny iron
mushrooms; nails without any heads (horrible); French nails polished
and slim. They lay in a solid mass more inabordable than a hedgehog.
We hesitated, yearning for a shovel, while Jimmy below us yelled as
though he had been flayed. Groaning, we dug our fingers in, and very
much hurt, shook our hands, scattering nails and drops of blood. We
passed up our hats full of assorted nails to the boatswain, who, as
if performing a mysterious and appeasing rite, cast them wide upon a
raging sea.
We got to the bulkhead at last. Those were stout planks. She was a
ship, well finished in every detail—the Narcissus was. They were the
stoutest planks ever put into a ship’s bulkhead—we thought—and then
we perceived that, in our hurry, we had sent all the tools overboard.
Absurd little Belfast wanted to break it down with his own weight, and
with both feet leaped straight up like a springbok, cursing the Clyde
shipwrights for not scamping their work. Incidentally he reviled all
North Britain, the rest of the earth, the sea—and all his companions.
He swore, as he alighted heavily on his heels, that he would never,
never any more associate with any fool that “hadn’t savee enough to
know his knee from his elbow.” He managed by his thumping to scare the
last remnant of wits out of Jimmy. We could hear the object of our
exasperated solicitude darting to and fro under the planks. He had
cracked his voice at last, and could only squeak miserably. His back
or else his head rubbed the planks, now here, now there, in a puzzling
manner. He squeaked as he dodged the invisible blows. It was more
heartrending even than his yells. Suddenly Archie produced a crowbar.
He had kept it back; also a small hatchet. We howled with satisfaction.
He struck a mighty blow and small chips flew at our eyes. The boatswain
above shouted:—“Look out! Look out there. Don’t kill the man. Easy does
it!” Wamibo, maddened with excitement, hung head down and insanely
urged us:—“Hoo! Strook’im! Hoo! Hoo!” We were afraid he would fall
in and kill one of us and, hurriedly, we entreated the boatswain to
“shove the blamed Finn overboard.” Then, all together, we yelled down
at the planks:—“Stand from under! Get forward,” and listened. We only
heard the deep hum and moan of the wind above us, the mingled roar
and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if overcome with despair, wallowed
lifelessly, and our heads swam with that unnatural motion. Belfast
clamoured:—“For the love of God, Jimmy, where are ye?... Knock! Jimmy
darlint!... Knock! You bloody black beast! Knock!” He was as quiet as
a dead man inside a grave; and, like men standing above a grave, we
were on the verge of tears—but with vexation, the strain, the fatigue;
with the great longing to be done with it, to get away, and lie down
to rest somewhere where we could see our danger and breathe. Archie
shouted:—“Gi’e me room!” We crouched behind him, guarding our heads,
and he struck time after time in the joint of planks. They cracked.
Suddenly the crowbar went halfway in through a splintered oblong hole.
It must have missed Jimmy’s head by less than an inch. Archie withdrew
it quickly, and that infamous nigger rushed at the hole, put his lips
to it, and whispered “Help” in an almost extinct voice; he pressed
his head to it, trying madly to get out through that opening one inch
wide and three inches long. In our disturbed state we were absolutely
paralysed by his incredible action. It seemed impossible to drive him
away. Even Archie at last lost his composure. “If ye don’t clear oot
I’ll drive the crowbar thro’ your head,” he shouted in a determined
voice. He meant what he said, and his earnestness seemed to make an
impression on Jimmy. He disappeared suddenly, and we set to prising
and tearing at the planks with the eagerness of men trying to get at a
mortal enemy, and spurred by the desire to tear him limb from limb. The
wood split, cracked, gave way. Belfast plunged in head and shoulders
and groped viciously. “I’ve got ’im! Got ’im,” he shouted. “Oh!
There!... He’s gone; I’ve got ’im!... Pull at my legs!... Pull!” Wamibo
hooted unceasingly. The boatswain shouted directions:—“Catch hold of
his hair, Belfast; pull straight up, you two!... Pull fair!” We pulled
fair. We pulled Belfast out with a jerk, and dropped him with disgust.
In a sitting posture, purple-faced, he sobbed despairingly:—“How can
I hold on to ’is blooming short wool?” Suddenly Jimmy’s head and
shoulders appeared. He stuck halfway, and with rolling eyes foamed at
our feet. We flew at him with brutal impatience, we tore the shirt
off his back, we tugged at his ears, we panted over him; and all at
once he came away in our hands as though somebody had let go his legs.
With the same movement, without a pause, we swung him up. His breath
whistled, he kicked our upturned faces, he grasped two pairs of arms
above his head, and he squirmed up with such precipitation that he
seemed positively to escape from our hands like a bladder full of gas.
Streaming with perspiration, we swarmed up the rope, and, coming into
the blast of cold wind, gasped like men plunged into icy water. With
burning faces we shivered to the very marrow of our bones. Never before
had the gale seemed to us more furious, the sea more mad, the sunshine
more merciless and mocking, and the position of the ship more hopeless
and appalling. Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her
agony and of the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door,
and, alarmed by a sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. It appeared to us
that the side of the house was more smooth than glass and more slippery
than ice. There was nothing to hang on to but a long brass hook used
sometimes to keep back an open door. Wamibo held on to it and we held
on to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had completely collapsed now.
He did not seem to have the strength to close his hand. We stuck to
him blindly in our fear. We were not afraid of Wamibo letting go (we
remembered that the brute was stronger than any three men in the ship),
but we were afraid of the hook giving way, and we also believed that
the ship had made up her mind to turn over at last. But she didn’t.
A sea swept over us. The boatswain spluttered:—“Up and away. There’s
a lull. Away aft with you, or we will all go to the devil here.” We
stood up surrounding Jimmy. We begged him to hold up, to hold on, at
least. He glared with his bulging eyes, mute as a fish, and with all
the stiffening knocked out of him. He wouldn’t stand; he wouldn’t even
as much as clutch at our necks; he was only a cold black skin loosely
stuffed with soft cotton wool; his arms and legs swung jointless and
pliable; his head rolled about; the lower lip hung down, enormous and
heavy. We pressed round him, bothered and dismayed; sheltering him we
swung here and there in a body; and on the very brink of eternity we
tottered all together with concealing and absurd gestures, like a lot
of drunken men embarrassed with a stolen corpse.
Something had to be done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack
under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we
hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as
ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and
we started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along
with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was not very
heavy, but had he weighed a ton he could not have been more awkward to
handle. We literally passed him from hand to hand. Now and then we had
to hang him up on a handy belaying-pin, to draw a breath and reform
the line. Had the pin broken he would have irretrievably gone into
the Southern Ocean, but he had to take his chance of that; and after
a little while, becoming apparently aware of it, he groaned slightly,
and with a great effort whispered a few words. We listened eagerly. He
was reproaching us with our carelessness in letting him run such risks:
“Now, after I got myself out from there,” he breathed out weakly.
“There” was his cabin. And he got himself out. We had nothing to do
with it apparently!... No matter.... We went on and let him take his
chances, simply because we could not help it; for though at that time
we hated him more than ever—more than anything under heaven—we did not
want to lose him. We had so far saved him; and it had become a personal
matter between us and the sea. We meant to stick to him. Had we (by an
incredible hypothesis) undergone similar toil and trouble for an empty
cask, that cask would have become as precious to us as Jimmy was. More
precious, in fact, because we would have had no reason to hate the
cask. And we hated James Wait. We could not get rid of the monstrous
suspicion that this astounding black-man was shamming sick, had been
malingering heartlessly in the face of our toil, of our scorn, of our
patience—and now was malingering in the face of our devotion—in the
face of death. Our vague and imperfect morality rose with disgust at
his unmanly lie. But he stuck to it manfully—amazingly. No! It couldn’t
be. He was at all extremity. His cantankerous temper was only the
result of the provoking invincible-ness of that death he felt by his
side. Any man may be angry with such a masterful chum. But, then, what
kind of men were we—with our thoughts! Indignation and doubt grappled
within us in a scuffle that trampled upon the finest of our feelings.
And we hated him because of the suspicion; we detested him because of
the doubt. We could not scorn him safely—neither could we pity him
without risk to our dignity. So we hated him and passed him carefully
from hand to hand. We cried, “Got him?”—“Yes. All right. Let go.”
And he swung from one enemy to another, showing about as much life as
an old bolster would do. His eyes made two narrow white slits in the
black face. The air escaped through his lips with a noise like the
sound of bellows. We reached the poop ladder at last, and it being a
comparatively safe place, we lay for a moment in an exhausted heap to
rest a little. He began to mutter. We were always incurably anxious to
hear what he had to say. This time he mumbled peevishly, “It took you
some time to come! I began to think the whole smart lot of you had been
washed overboard. What kept you back? Hey? Funk?” We said nothing. With
sighs we started again to drag him up. The secret and ardent desire of
our hearts was the desire to beat him viciously with our fists about
the head; and we handled him as tenderly as though he had been made of
glass....
The return on the poop was like the return of wanderers after many
years amongst people marked by the desolation of time. Eyes were turned
slowly in their sockets, glancing at us. Faint murmurs were heard,
“Have you got ’im after all?” The well-known faces looked strange and
familiar; they seemed faded and grimy; they had a mingled expression of
fatigue and eagerness. They seemed to have become much thinner during
our absence, as if all these men had been starving for a long time in
their abandoned attitudes. The captain, with a round turn of a rope on
his wrist, and kneeling on one knee, swung with a face cold and stiff;
but with living eyes he was still holding the ship up, heeding no one,
as if lost in the unearthly effort of that endeavour. We fastened up
James Wait in a safe place. Mr. Baker scrambled along to lend a hand.
Mr. Creighton, on his back, and very pale, muttered, “Well done,”
and gave us, Jimmy and the sky, a scornful glance, then closed his
eyes slowly. Here and there a man stirred a little, but most of them
remained apathetic, in cramped positions, muttering between shivers.
The sun was setting. A sun enormous, unclouded and red, declining low
as if bending down to look into their faces. The wind whistled across
long sunbeams that, resplendent and cold, struck full on the dilated
pupils of staring eyes without making them wink. The wisps of hair
and the tangled beards were grey with the salt of the sea. The faces
were earthy, and the dark patches under the eyes extended to the ears,
smudged into the hollows of sunken cheeks. The lips were livid and
thin, and when they moved it was with difficulty, as though they had
been glued to the teeth. Some grinned sadly in the sunlight, shaking
with cold. Others were sad and still. Charley, subdued by the sudden
disclosure of the insignificance of his youth, darted fearful glances.
The two smooth-faced Norwegians resembled decrepit children, staring
stupidly. To leeward, on the edge of the horizon, black seas leaped up
towards the glowing sun. It sank slowly, round and blazing, and the
crests of waves splashed on the edge of the luminous circle. One of the
Norwegians appeared to catch sight of it, and, after giving a violent
start, began to speak. His voice, startling the others, made them stir.
They moved their heads stiffly, or turning with difficulty, looked at
him with surprise, with fear, or in grave silence. He chattered at the
setting sun, nodding his head, while the big seas began to roll across
the crimson disc; and over miles of turbulent waters the shadows of
high waves swept with a running darkness the faces of men. A crested
roller broke with a loud hissing roar, and the sun, as if put out,
disappeared. The chattering voice faltered, went out together with the
light. There were sighs. In the sudden lull that follows the crash of
a broken sea a man said wearily, “Here’s that blooming Dutchman gone
off his chump.” A seaman, lashed by the middle, tapped the deck with
his open hand with unceasing quick flaps. In the gathering greyness of
twilight a bulky form was seen rising aft, and began marching on all
fours with the movements of some big cautious beast. It was Mr. Baker
passing along the line of men. He grunted encouragingly over every
one, felt their fastenings. Some, with half-open eyes, puffed like men
oppressed by heat; others mechanically and in dreamy voices answered
him, “Aye! aye! sir!” He went from one to another grunting, “Ough!...
See her through it yet;” and unexpectedly, with loud angry outbursts,
blew up Knowles for cutting off a long piece from the fall of the
relieving tackle. “Ough!—Ashamed of yourself—Relieving tackle—Don’t
you know better!—Ough!—Able seaman! Ough!” The lame man was crushed.
He muttered, “Get som’think for a lashing for myself, sir.”—“Ough!
Lashing—yourself. Are you a tinker or a sailor—What? Ough!—May want
that tackle directly—Ough!—More use to the ship than your lame carcass.
Ough!—Keep it!—Keep it, now you’ve done it.”
He crawled away slowly, muttering to himself about some men being
“worse than children.” It had been a comforting row. Low exclamations
were heard: “Hallo ... Hallo.” ... Those who had been painfully dozing
asked with convulsive starts, “What’s up?... What is it?” The answers
came with unexpected cheerfulness: “The mate is going bald-headed for
lame Jack about something or other.” “No!”.... “What ’as he done?” Some
one even chuckled. It was like a whiff of hope, like a reminder of safe
days. Donkin, who had been stupefied with fear, revived suddenly and
began to shout:—“’Ear ’im; that’s the way they tawlk to us. Vy donch
’ee ’it ’im—one ov yer? ’It ’im. ’It ’im! Comin’ the mate over us.
We are as good men as ’ee! We’re all goin’ to ’ell now. We ’ave been
starved in this rotten ship, an’ now we’re goin’ to be drowned for them
black ’earted bullies! ’It ’im!” He shrieked in the deepening gloom,
he blubbered and sobbed, screaming:—“’It ’im! ’It ’im!” The rage and
fear of his disregarded right to live tried the steadfastness of hearts
more than the menacing shadows of the night that advanced through the
unceasing clamour of the gale. From aft Mr. Baker was heard:—“Is one
of you men going to stop him—must I come along?” “Shut up!”... “Keep
quiet!” cried various voices, exasperated, trembling with cold.—“You’ll
get one across the mug from me directly,” said an invisible seaman,
in a weary tone, “I won’t let the mate have the trouble.” He ceased
and lay still with the silence of despair. On the black sky the stars,
coming out, gleamed over an inky sea that, speckled with foam, flashed
back at them the evanescent and pale light of a dazzling whiteness born
from the black turmoil of the waves. Remote in the eternal calm they
glittered hard and cold above the uproar of the earth; they surrounded
the vanquished and tormented ship on all sides: more pitiless than the
eyes of a triumphant mob, and as unapproachable as the hearts of men.
The icy south wind howled exultingly under the sombre splendour of the
sky. The cold shook the men with a resistless violence as though it
had tried to shake them to pieces. Short moans were swept unheard off
the stiff lips. Some complained in mutters of “not feeling themselves
below the waist;” while those who had closed their eyes, imagined they
had a block of ice on their chests. Others, alarmed at not feeling any
pain in their fingers, beat the deck feebly with their hands—obstinate
and exhausted. Wamibo stared vacant and dreamy. The Scandinavians kept
on a meaningless mutter through chattering teeth. The spare Scotchmen,
with determined efforts, kept their lower jaws still. The West-country
men lay big and stolid in an invulnerable surliness. A man yawned
and swore in turns. Another breathed with a rattle in his throat.
Two elderly hard-weather shellbacks, fast side by side, whispered
dismally to one another about the landlady of a boarding-house in
Sunderland, whom they both knew. They extolled her motherliness and
her liberality; they tried to talk about the joint of beef and the
big fire in the downstairs kitchen. The words dying faintly on their
lips, ended in light sighs. A sudden voice cried into the cold night,
“O Lord!” No one changed his position or took any notice of the cry.
One or two passed, with a repeated and vague gesture, their hand
over their faces, but most of them kept very still. In the benumbed
immobility of their bodies they were excessively wearied by their
thoughts, which rushed with the rapidity and vividness of dreams. Now
and then, by an abrupt and startling exclamation, they answered the
weird hail of some illusion; then, again, in silence contemplated the
vision of known faces and familiar things. They recalled the aspect of
forgotten shipmates and heard the voice of dead and gone skippers. They
remembered the noise of gaslit streets, the steamy heat of tap-rooms or
the scorching sunshine of calm days at sea.