Sixty miles west of St. Agnes Light the Unlucky “Altisidora” leaned to
the gentle quartering breeze, homeward bound on the last lap of her
three years’ voyage.
Anderton stood on the poop, gazing out into the starry darkness that
held England folded to its heart. Above him sail piled on sail rose up
in the moonlight, like some tall, fantastic shrine wrought in ebony and
silver to an unknown and mysterious god. The water slipped past her
silently as a swimming seal, with a faint delicate hiss like the tearing
of silk as the clipper’s bow cleft it. His mind ran now forward, now
backward, as men’s minds do when they are nearing one of the milestones
of life.
He remembered almost with a pang of regret the heady exultation which
had been his when he stood on this poop alone for the first time,
realizing that something had slipped away from him unnoticed which he
could never hope to recapture this side the grave. Three years is a long
while, especially to the young; but it was not in point of actual time,
but in experience, that so wide and deep a gulf yawned between himself
and the boy who three years since had left these shores he was now
approaching. She had taught him many things, that old ship--more,
perhaps, than he himself knew....
Rumbold wandered up on to the poop and began to tell smutty tales. The
restlessness which always consumed him when the ship was nearing land
was strong on him. Anderton felt a great pity for him. It would be the
old tale, he supposed, as soon as the ship was made fast: this man, who
had it in him to fight a losing game with death with a laugh on his
lips, would become to the casual observer, a lewd, drunken blackguard,
wallowing in the lowest gutters of Sailortown. What would become of him,
he wondered--picturing him dropping steadily lower and lower on the
ladder, driven to take a second mate’s berth, thence dropping to bos’n,
last to seaman--so on until some final pit of degradation should swallow
him up for ever?
The man was in so queer a mood that Anderton hesitated about leaving the
deck to him. But he reflected that he would have little chance of rest
when she was fairly in the Channel, and decided to go down for a stretch
off the land, so as to have his wits about him when they were most
needed.
He did not know how long he had been asleep when he woke with a start.
The ship’s bells were just striking. He counted the strokes--three
double, one single--seven bells. He might as well go on deck now. She
must have made a landfall by now.
An inexplicable premonition had come over him, which he refused to admit
even to himself, that all was not well. He listened: the ship still held
on her course. There was no sound but the restless chirp of a block
somewhere aloft, the creak of a yard moving against the parrals, the
constant “hush-hush” of the waves as they hastened under the keel. He
slipped into his coat and passed out into the saloon.
The lamp over the table was still burning smokily, mingling its light
with the cold grey light of morning, and giving to the scene that air of
desolation which perhaps nothing else can impart so completely. The
place reeked of drink. Under the lamp, sprawling half across the table,
was Rumbold. One whisky bottle lay on the floor, another on the table
beside his hand, from which the last dregs spattered lazily to the
floor.
The swine--the drunken swine! Anderton seized him by the arm and shook
him furiously.
Rumbold lifted his ravaged face from the table and stared at him
stupidly.
“Thish bockle’sh--water o’ knowledge--good’n’ evil,” he said inanely.
“Mush make--inquirations--morramornin’!”
His head dropped on his arms again.
Anderton took the companion in a couple of bounds.
It was like stepping out into wet cotton-wool. The stars were gone. The
sky was gone, but for one pale high blue patch right overhead. The ship
disappeared into the fog forward of the after hatch as completely as if
she had been cut in two. There wasn’t a soul to be seen but the man at
the wheel, a stolid young Finn who would go on steering the course that
had been given him until the skies fell.
Anderton started to run forward, shouting as he went; and his voice,
tossed back at him out of the dimness, hit him in the face like a stone.
The next moment, the ship had struck.
She took the ground, so it seemed at the time, quite gently: with hardly
a jar, hardly a tremor, only with a little delicate contented shiver all
through her graceful being, like someone settling down well pleased to
rest. You might almost fancy that she said to herself:
“There--I have done with it all at last--done with bearing the blame of
your sins and follies, your weakness, your incapacity, your drunkenness,
your indecision. I have been your scapegoat too long. Henceforward, bear
your own burdens!”
And just then the mist rolled off like a curtain. She was right under
the land, in the midst of a great jagged confusion of rocks that reached
out to sea for nearly a quarter of a mile. The wonder was she had not
struck sooner. You could see the pink tufts of thrift clinging to the
cliff face, the streaks of green and yellow lichen on the rock, the thin
line of soil crested with grass at the top. Above, sheep were grazing,
and there came the faint querulous cry of young lambs. A scene to fill a
sailor’s heart with sentimental delight under any conditions but these!
There was nothing to be done. The Unlucky “Altisidora” had paid her last
tribute to the Dark Gods. The ship lay jammed hard and fast on a sunken
reef, and was making water rapidly.
They left the ship at sunset. The skipper took his seat in the boat
without a word or a backward glance; the mate--sobered for once--hung
his head like a beaten dog. The melancholy steward carried the faithful
Ginger in a basket.
“Ain’t been such a bad ol’ gal, ’as she?” That was the gist of the
crew’s valedictions. They set off in single file up the narrow path that
led to the top of the cliff--an oddly incongruous little procession in
that rural setting.
Anderton came last of all. One by one his shipmates topped the crest and
vanished. But still he lingered. He wanted just for a minute to be
alone with this old ship that had come so strangely into his life and
was now to go out of it as strangely.
From where he stood he looked down upon her, lying almost at his feet.
He could see all her decks, the poop, the galley, the forecastle
head--everything that had grown so familiar to him through years of ship
incident and ship routine. How friendly it all looked, now that he was
leaving it! He wondered how he could ever have thought her the agent of
Dark Gods--this patient, lovely, and enduring thing that had done man’s
bidding so long--like him, the instrument of forces beyond her knowing
or his. How good it had all been--how good! The dangers, the hardships,
the toil, the rest, the rough and the smooth of it ... the voices of his
shipmates, the courage and humour of them, their homely faces....
She was part of his life, part of himself, for ever! He would remember
in years to come a hundred little things that now he did not even know
he remembered, yet which lay safely folded away in the treasure-house of
memory, till some chance word, some trick of sun or shade, some smell,
some sound, should bring them to light ... and he would say, “Aye, that
was in the old ‘Altisidora,’” ... and perhaps be silent a little, and be
a little happy and sad together, as men are when they think upon their
youth....
Was that what the old ship had been trying to tell him all the time--the
secret that had fled before him round the world, for ever near, yet for
ever just out of reach, like the many-coloured arch of spray that hung
gleaming before her bows? That the hard things of life were the things
best worth having in the end?... A big green wave that flooded over
you, that took the breath out of you, that went clean over your
head--life was like that. Run away from it and it would sweep you off
your feet, smash you up against things, drown you, very likely, at the
finish.... You had got to hang on to something, no matter what--a job of
work, an idea, anything so long as you could get a grip on it--hang on
like grim death, and the wave would go over you and leave you safe and
sound....
The sky was full of windy plumes of cloud. A long swell had begun to
thunder in from the west, grinding and pounding her with leisurely
irresistible strokes like blows from a giant hammer. The sea, the
breaker of ships, was already at his work of destruction. Soon there
would be a roaring as of a thousand chariots along all the headlands,
and the whole coast would be one thunder and confusion of blown foam.
A call came to him from the cliff-top. It was time to be going--time for
him to leave her! Presently he too topped the crest, and, when he next
looked back, he could see the ship no longer. The Unlucky “Altisidora”
had passed from his sight for ever.
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