succeeded one another. They spoke in clear voices, pronounced cheerful
words, repeated old jokes, listened to him; and each, going out, seemed
to leave behind a little of his own vitality, surrender some of his
own strength, renew the assurance of life—the indestructible thing! He
did not like to be alone in his cabin, because, when he was alone, it
seemed to him as if he hadn’t been there at all. There was nothing.
No pain. Not now. Perfectly right—but he couldn’t enjoy his healthful
repose unless some one was by to see it. This man would do as well
as anybody. Donkin watched him stealthily:—“Soon home now,” observed
Wait.—“Vy d’yer whisper?” asked Donkin with interest, “can’t yer speak
up?” Jimmy looked annoyed and said nothing for a while; then in a
lifeless, unringing voice:—“Why should I shout? You ain’t deaf that I
know.”—“Oh! I can ’ear right enough,” answered Donkin in a low tone,
and looked down. He was thinking sadly of going out when Jimmy spoke
again.—“Time we did get home ... to get something decent to eat ...
I am always hungry.” Donkin felt angry all of a sudden.—“What about
me,” he hissed, “I am ’ungry too an’ got ter work. You, ’ungry!”—“Your
work won’t kill you,” commented Wait, feebly; “there’s a couple of
biscuits in the lower bunk there—you may have one. I can’t eat them.”
Donkin dived in, groped in the corner and when he came up again his
mouth was full. He munched with ardour. Jimmy seemed to doze with open
eyes. Donkin finished his hard bread and got up.—“You’re not going?”
asked Jimmy, staring at the ceiling.—“No,” said Donkin, impulsively,
and instead of going out leaned his back against the closed door. He
looked at James Wait, and saw him long, lean, dried up, as though all
his flesh had shrivelled on his bones in the heat of a white furnace;
the meagre fingers of one hand moved lightly upon the edge of the bunk
playing an endless tune. To look at him was irritating and fatiguing;
he could last like this for days; he was outrageous—belonging wholly
neither to death nor life, and perfectly invulnerable in his apparent
ignorance of both. Donkin felt tempted to enlighten him.—“What are yer
thinkin’ of?” he asked, surlily. James Wait had a grimacing smile that
passed over the deathlike impassiveness of his bony face, incredible
and frightful as would, in a dream, have been the sudden smile of a
corpse.
“There is a girl,” whispered Wait.... “Canton Street girl.—She chucked
a third engineer of a Rennie boat—for me. Cooks oysters just as I
like... She says—she would chuck—any toff—louder.”
Donkin could hardly believe his ears. He was scandalised—“Would she?
Yer wouldn’t be any good to ’er,” he said with unrestrained disgust.
Wait was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up the East India
Dock Road; saying kindly, “Come along for a treat,” pushing glass
swing-doors, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above a
mahogany counter.—“D’yer think yer will ever get ashore?” asked Donkin,
angrily. Wait came back with a start.—“Ten days,” he said, promptly,
and returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of
time. He felt untired, calm, and safely withdrawn within himself
beyond the reach of every grave incertitude. There was something of
the immutable quality of eternity in the slow moments of his complete
restfulness. He was very quiet and easy amongst his vivid reminiscences
which he mistook joyfully for images of an undoubted future. He cared
for no one. Donkin felt this vaguely like a blind man feeling in his
darkness the fatal antagonism of all the surrounding existences, that
to him shall for ever remain irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had
a desire to assert his importance, to break, to crush; to be even with
everybody for everything; to tear the veil, unmask, expose, leave no
refuge—a perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking
splutter and said:
“Ten days. Strike me blind if ever!... You will be dead by this time
to-morrow p’r’aps. Ten days!” He waited for a while. “D’ye ’ear me?
Blamme if yer don’t look dead already.”
Wait must have been collecting his strength, for he said almost
aloud—“You’re a stinking, cadging liar. Every one knows you.” And
sitting up, against all probability, startled his visitor horribly. But
very soon Donkin recovered himself. He blustered, “What? What? Who’s
a liar? You are—the crowd are—the skipper—everybody. I ain’t! Putting
on airs! Who’s yer?” He nearly choked himself with indignation. “Who’s
yer to put on airs,” he repeated, trembling. “’Ave one—’ave one, says
’ee—an’ cawn’t eat ’em ’isself. Now I’ll ’ave both. By Gawd—I will! Yer
nobody!”
He plunged into the lower bunk, rooted in there and brought to light
another dusty biscuit. He held it up before Jimmy—then took a bite
defiantly.
“What now?” he asked with feverish impudence. “Yer may take one—says
yer. Why not giv’ me both? No. I’m a mangy dorg. One fur a mangy dorg.
I’ll tyke both. Can yer stop me? Try. Come on. Try.”
Jimmy was clasping his legs and hiding his face on the knees. His shirt
clung to him. Every rib was visible. His emaciated back was shaken in
repeated jerks by the panting catches of his breath.
“Yer won’t? Yer can’t! What did I say?” went on Donkin, fiercely. He
swallowed another dry mouthful with a hasty effort. The other’s silent
helplessness, his weakness, his shrinking attitude exasperated him.
“Ye’re done!” he cried. “Who’s yer to be lied to; to be waited on ’and
an’ foot like a bloomin’ ymperor. Yer nobody. Yer no one at all!” he
spluttered with such a strength of unerring conviction that it shook
him from head to foot in coming out, and left him vibrating like a
released string.
James Wait rallied again. He lifted his head and turned bravely at
Donkin, who saw a strange face, an unknown face, a fantastic and
grimacing mask of despair and fury. Its lips moved rapidly; and hollow,
moaning, whistling sounds filled the cabin with a vague mutter full
of menace, complaint and desolation, like the far-off murmur of a
rising wind. Wait shook his head; rolled his eyes; he denied, cursed,
threatened—and not a word had the strength to pass beyond the sorrowful
pout of those black lips. It was incomprehensible and disturbing; a
gibberish of emotions, a frantic dumb show of speech pleading for
impossible things, promising a shadowy vengeance. It sobered Donkin
into a scrutinising watchfulness.
“Yer can’t oller. See? What did I tell yer?” he said, slowly, after
a moment of attentive examination. The other kept on headlong and
unheard, nodding passionately, grinning with grotesque and appalling
flashes of big white teeth. Donkin, as if fascinated by the dumb
eloquence and anger of that black phantom, approached, stretching his
neck out with distrustful curiosity; and it seemed to him suddenly
that he was looking only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the
bunk on the level with his eyes.—“What? What?” he said. He seemed to
catch the shape of some words in the continuous panting hiss. “Yer
will tell Belfast! Will yer? Are yer a bloomin’ kid?” He trembled with
alarm and rage, “Tell yer gran’mother! Yer afeard! Who’s yer ter be
afeard more’n any one?” His passionate sense of his own importance ran
away with a last remnant of caution. “Tell an’ be damned! Tell, if yer
can!” he cried. “I’ve been treated worser’n a dorg by your blooming
back-lickers. They ’as set me on, only to turn aginst me. I am the only
man ’ere. They clouted me, kicked me—an’ yer laffed—yer black, rotten
incumbrance, you! You will pay fur it. They giv’ yer their grub, their
water—yer will pay fur it to me, by Gawd! Who axed me ter ’ave a drink
of water? They put their bloomin’ rags on yer that night, an’ what did
they giv’ ter me—a clout on the bloomin’ mouth—blast their... S’elp
me!... Yer will pay fur it with yer money. I’m goin’ ter ’ave it in a
minyte; as soon has ye’re dead, yer bloomin’ useless fraud. That’s the
man I am. An’ ye’re a thing—a bloody thing. Yah—you corpse!” He flung
at Jimmy’s head the biscuit he had been all the time clutching hard,
but it only grazed, and striking with a loud crack the bulkhead beyond
burst like a hand-grenade into flying pieces. James Wait, as if wounded
mortally, fell back on the pillow. His lips ceased to move and the
rolling eyes became quiet and stared upwards with an intense and steady
persistence. Donkin was surprised; he sat suddenly on the chest, and
looked down, exhausted and gloomy. After a moment, he began to mutter
to himself, “Die, you beggar—die. Somebody’ll come in... I wish I was
drunk... Ten days... oysters...” He looked up and spoke louder. “No...
No more for yer... no more bloomin’ gals that cook oysters... Who’s
yer? It’s my turn now... I wish I was drunk; I would soon giv’ you a
leg up. That’s where yer bound to go. Feet fust, through a port...
Splash! Never see yer any more. Overboard! Good ’nuff fur yer.” Jimmy’s
head moved slightly and he turned his eyes to Donkin’s face; a gaze
unbelieving, desolated and appealing, of a child frightened by the
menace of being shut up alone in the dark. Donkin observed him from the
chest with hopeful eyes; then, without rising, tried the lid. Locked.
“I wish I was drunk,” he muttered and getting up listened anxiously to
the distant sound of footsteps on the deck. They approached—ceased.
Some one yawned interminably just outside the door, and the footsteps
went away shuffling lazily. Donkin’s fluttering heart eased its pace,
and when he looked towards the bunk again Jimmy was staring as before
at the white beam.—“’Ow d’yer feel now?” he asked.—“Bad,” breathed out
Jimmy.
Donkin sat down patient and purposeful. Every half-hour the bells spoke
to one another ringing along the whole length of the ship. Jimmy’s
respiration was so rapid that it couldn’t be counted, so faint that
it couldn’t be heard. His eyes were terrified as though he had been
looking at unspeakable horrors; and by his face one could see that he
was thinking of abominable things. Suddenly with an incredibly strong
and heartbreaking voice he sobbed out:
“Overboard!... I!... My God!” Donkin writhed a little on the box.
He looked unwillingly. James Wait was mute. His two long bony hands
smoothed the blanket upwards, as though he had wished to gather it all
up under his chin. A tear, a big solitary tear, escaped from the corner
of his eye and, without touching the hollow cheek, fell on the pillow.
His throat rattled faintly.
And Donkin, watching the end of that hateful nigger, felt the
anguishing grasp of a great sorrow on his heart at the thought that
he himself, some day, would have to go through it all—just like
this—perhaps! His eyes became moist. “Poor beggar,” he murmured. The
night seemed to go by in a flash; it seemed to him he could hear the
irremediable rush of precious minutes. How long would this blooming
affair last? Too long surely. No luck. He could not restrain himself.
He got up and approached the bunk. Wait did not stir. Only his eyes
appeared alive and his hands continued their smoothing movement with a
horrible and tireless industry. Donkin bent over.
“Jimmy,” he called low. There was no answer, but the rattle stopped.
“D’yer see me?” he asked, trembling. Jimmy’s chest heaved. Donkin,
looking away, bent his ear to Jimmy’s lips, and heard a sound like the
rustle of a single dry leaf driven along the smooth sand of a beach. It
shaped itself.
“Light ... the lamp ... and ... go,” breathed out Wait.
Donkin, instinctively, glanced over his shoulder at the brilliant
flame; then, still looking away, felt under the pillow for a key. He
got it at once and for the next few minutes remained on his knees
shakily but swiftly busy inside the box. When he got up, his face—for
the first time in his life—had a pink flush—perhaps of triumph.
He slipped the key under the pillow again, avoiding to glance at
Jimmy, who had not moved. He turned his back squarely from the bunk,
and started to the door as though he were going to walk a mile. At
his second stride he had his nose against it. He clutched the handle
cautiously, but at that moment he received the irresistible impression
of something happening behind his back. He spun round as though he had
been tapped on the shoulder. He was just in time to see Wait’s eyes
blaze up and go out at once, like two lamps overturned together by a
sweeping blow. Something resembling a scarlet thread hung down his chin
out of the corner of his lips—and he had ceased to breathe.
Donkin closed the door behind him gently but firmly. Sleeping men,
huddled under jackets, made on the lighted deck shapeless dark mounds
that had the appearance of neglected graves. Nothing had been done
all through the night and he hadn’t been missed. He stood motionless
and perfectly astounded to find the world outside as he had left it;
there was the sea, the ship—sleeping men; and he wondered absurdly at
it, as though he had expected to find the men dead, familiar things
gone for ever: as though, like a wanderer returning after many years,
he had expected to see bewildering changes. He shuddered a little in
the penetrating freshness of the air, and hugged himself forlornly.
The declining moon drooped sadly in the western board as if withered
by the cold touch of a pale dawn. The ship slept. And the immortal
sea stretched away immense and hazy, like the image of life, with a
glittering surface and lightless depths. Donkin gave it a defiant
glance and slunk off noiselessly as if judged and cast out by the
august silence of its might.
Jimmy’s death, after all, came as a tremendous surprise. We did not
know till then how much faith we had put in his delusions. We had taken
his chances of life so much at his own valuation that his death, like
the death of an old belief, shook the foundations of our society. A
common bond was gone; the strong, effective and respectable bond of a
sentimental lie. All that day we mooned at our work, with suspicious
looks and a disabused air. In our hearts we thought that in the matter
of his departure Jimmy had acted in a perverse and unfriendly manner.
He didn’t back us up, as a shipmate should. In going he took away with
himself the gloomy and solemn shadow in which our folly had posed, with
humane satisfaction, as a tender arbiter of fate. And now we saw it was
no such thing. It was just common foolishness; a silly and ineffectual
meddling with issues of majestic import—that is, if Podmore was right.
Perhaps he was? Doubt survived Jimmy; and, like a community of banded
criminals disintegrated by a touch of grace, we were profoundly
scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums.
Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised.
“Dead—is he? Of course,” he said, pointing at the island right abeam:
for the calm still held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores.
Dead—of course. He wasn’t surprised. Here was the land, and there, on
the fore-hatch and waiting for the sailmaker—there was that corpse.
Cause and effect. And for the first time that voyage, the old seaman
became quite cheery and garrulous, explaining and illustrating from the
stores of experience how, in sickness, the sight of an island (even a
very small one) is generally more fatal than the view of a continent.
But he couldn’t explain why.
Jimmy was to be buried at five, and it was a long day till then—a
day of mental disquiet and even of physical disturbance. We took no
interest in our work and, very properly, were rebuked for it. This,
in our constant state of hungry irritation, was exasperating. Donkin
worked with his brow bound in a dirty rag, and looked so ghastly that
Mr. Baker was touched with compassion at the sight of this plucky
suffering.—“Ough! You, Donkin! Put down your work and go lay-up this
watch. You look ill.”—“I am bad, sir—in my ’ead,” he said in a subdued
voice, and vanished speedily. This annoyed many, and they thought the
mate “bloomin’ soft to-day.” Captain Allistoun could be seen on the
poop watching the sky to the southwest, and it soon got to be known
about the decks that the barometer had begun to fall in the night,
and that a breeze might be expected before long. This, by a subtle
association of ideas, led to violent quarrelling as to the exact moment
of Jimmy’s death. Was it before or after “that ’ere glass started
down?” It was impossible to know, and it caused much contemptuous
growling at one another. All of a sudden there was a great tumult
forward. Pacific Knowles and good-tempered Davis had come to blows over
it. The watch below interfered with spirit, and for ten minutes there
was a noisy scrimmage round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade
of the sails, Jimmy’s body, wrapped up in a white blanket, was watched
over by the sorrowful Belfast, who, in his desolation, disdained the
fray. When the noise had ceased, and the passions had calmed into surly
silence, he stood up at the head of the swathed body, lifting both arms
on high, cried with pained indignation:—“You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves!...” We were.
Belfast took his bereavement very hard. He gave proofs of
unextinguishable devotion. It was he, and no other man, who would
help the sailmaker to prepare what was left of Jimmy for a solemn
surrender to the insatiable sea. He arranged the weights carefully at
the feet: two holystones, an old anchor-shackle without its pin, some
broken links of a worn-out stream cable. He arranged them this way,
then that. “Bless my soul! you aren’t afraid he will chafe his heel?”
said the sailmaker, who hated the job. He pushed the needle, purring
furiously, with his head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the
flaps over, pulled at the stitches, stretched at the canvas.—“Lift his
shoulders.... Pull to you a bit.... So—o—o. Steady.” Belfast obeyed,
pulled, lifted, overcome with sorrow, dropping tears on the tarred
twine.—. “Don’t you drag the canvas too taut over his poor face,
Sails,” he entreated, tearfully.—“What are you fashing yourself for?
He will be comfortable enough,” assured the sailmaker, cutting the
thread after the last stitch, which came about the middle of Jimmy’s
forehead. He rolled up the remaining canvas, put away the needles.
“What makes you take on so?” he asked. Belfast looked down at the long
package of grey sailcloth.—“I pulled him out,” he whispered, “and he
did not want to go. If I had sat up with him last night he would have
kept alive for me ... but something made me tired.” The sailmaker
took vigorous draws at his pipe and mumbled:—“When I... West India
Station... In the Blanche frigate... Yellow Jack... sewed in twenty men
a week... Portsmouth—Devonport men—townies—knew their fathers, mothers,
sisters—the whole boiling of ’em. Thought nothing of it. And these
niggers like this one—you don’t know where it comes from. Got nobody.
No use to nobody. Who will miss him?”—“I do—I pulled him out,” mourned
Belfast dismally.
On two planks nailed together and apparently resigned and still under
the folds of the Union Jack with a white border, James Wait, carried
aft by four men, was deposited slowly, with his feet pointing at an
open port. A swell had set in from the westward, and following on
the roll of the ship, the red ensign, at half-mast, darted out and
collapsed again on the grey sky, like a tongue of flickering fire;
Charley tolled the bell; and at every swing to starboard the whole
vast semi-circle of steely waters visible on that side seemed to come
up with a rush to the edge of the port, as if impatient to get at our
Jimmy. Every one was there but Donkin, who was too ill to come; the
Captain and Mr. Creighton stood bareheaded on the break of the poop;
Mr. Baker, directed by the master, who had said to him gravely:—“You
know more about the prayer book than I do,” came out of the cabin door
quickly and a little embarrassed. All the caps went off. He began to
read in a low tone, and with his usual harmlessly menacing utterance,
as though he had been for the last time reproving confidentially that
dead seaman at his feet. The men listened in scattered groups; they
leaned on the fife rail, gazing on the deck; they held their chins in
their hands thoughtfully, or, with crossed arms and one knee slightly
bent, hung their heads in an attitude of upright meditation. Wamibo
dreamed. Mr. Baker read on, grunting reverently at the turn of every
page. The words, missing the unsteady hearts of men, rolled out to
wander without a home upon the heartless sea; and James Wait, silenced
for ever, lay uncritical and passive under the hoarse murmur of despair
and hopes.
Two men made ready and waited for those words that send so many of our
brothers to their last plunge. Mr. Baker began the passage. “Stand by,”
muttered the boatswain. Mr. Baker read out: “To the deep,” and paused.
The men lifted the inboard end of the planks, the boatswain snatched
off the Union Jack, and James Wait did not move.—“Higher,” muttered
the boatswain angrily. All the heads were raised; every man stirred
uneasily, but James Wait gave no sign of going. In death and swathed up
for all eternity, he yet seemed to cling to the ship with the grip of
an undying fear. “Higher! Lift!” whispered the boatswain, fiercely.—“He
won’t go,” stammered one of the men, shakily, and both appeared ready
to drop everything. Mr. Baker waited, burying his face in the book, and
shuffling his feet nervously. All the men looked profoundly disturbed;
from their midst a faint humming noise spread out—growing louder....
“Jimmy!” cried Belfast in a wailing tone, and there was a second of
shuddering dismay.
“Jimmy, be a man!” he shrieked, passionately. Every mouth was wide
open, not an eyelid winked. He stared wildly, twitching all over;
he bent his body forward like a man peering at an horror. “Go!” he
shouted, and sprang out of the crowd with his arm extended. “Go,
Jimmy!—Jimmy, go! Go!” His fingers touched the head of the body, and
the grey package started reluctantly to whizz off the lifted planks all
at once, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. The crowd stepped
forward like one man; a deep Ah—h—h! came out vibrating from the
broad chests. The ship rolled as if relieved of an unfair burden; the
sails flapped. Belfast, supported by Archie, gasped hysterically; and
Charley, who anxious to see Jimmy’s last dive, leaped headlong on the
rail, was too late to see anything but the faint circle of a vanishing
ripple.
Mr. Baker, perspiring abundantly, read out the last prayer in a deep
rumour of excited men and fluttering sails. “Amen!” he said in an
unsteady growl, and closed the book.
“Square the yards!” thundered a voice above his head. All hands
gave a jump; one or two dropped their caps; Mr. Baker looked up
surprised. The master, standing on the break of the poop, pointed to
the westward. “Breeze coming,” he said, “Man the weather braces.” Mr.
Baker crammed the book hurriedly into his pocket. “Forward, there—let
go the foretack!” he hailed joyfully, bareheaded and brisk; “Square
the foreyard, you port-watch!”—“Fair wind—fair wind,” muttered the men
going to the braces.—“What did I tell you?” mumbled old Singleton,
flinging down coil after coil with hasty energy; “I knowed it—he’s
gone, and here it comes.”
It came with the sound of a lofty and powerful sigh. The sails filled,
the ship gathered way, and the waking sea began to murmur sleepily of
home to the ears of men.
That night, while the ship rushed foaming to the Northward before a
freshening gale, the boatswain unbosomed himself to the petty officers’
berth:—“The chap was nothing but trouble,” he said, “from the moment
he came aboard—d’ye remember—that night in Bombay? Been bullying all
that softy crowd—cheeked the old man—we had to go fooling all over a
half-drowned ship to save him. Dam’ nigh a mutiny all for him—and now
the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump of
grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better,
too, than to leave a nail sticking up—hey, Chips?”
“And you ought to have known better than to chuck all my tools
overboard for ’im, like a skeary greenhorn,” retorted the morose
carpenter. “Well—he’s gone after ’em now,” he added in an unforgiving
tone.—“On the China Station, I remember once, the Admiral he says to
me...” began the sailmaker.
* * * * *
A week afterwards the Narcissus entered the chops of the Channel.
Under white wings she skimmed low over the blue sea like a great tired
bird speeding to its nest. The clouds raced with her mastheads; they
rose astern enormous and white, soared to the zenith, flew past, and
falling down the wide curve of the sky, seemed to dash headlong into
the sea—the clouds swifter than the ship, more free, but without a
home. The coast to welcome her stepped out of space into the sunshine.
The lofty headlands trod masterfully into the sea; the wide bays smiled
in the light; the shadows of homeless clouds ran along the sunny
plains, leaped over valleys, without a check darted up the hills,
rolled down the slopes; and the sunshine pursued them with patches of
running brightness. On the brows of dark cliffs white lighthouses shone
in pillars of light. The Channel glittered like a blue mantle shot
with gold and starred by the silver of the capping seas. The Narcissus
rushed past the headlands and the bays. Outward-bound vessels crossed
her track, lying over, and with their masts stripped for a slogging
fight with the hard sou’wester. And, inshore, a string of smoking
steamboats waddled, hugging the coast, like migrating and amphibious
monsters, distrustful of the restless waves.