THALASS.
Coming forth upon the poop, I desponded in my mind, thinking of home
and England; and the sea, with all the beauty of its clear and flashing
blue waters, was hateful to me; yea, it cruelly smiled on me with its
shining face.
For I suffered loneliness, such loneliness as exiles know; than which,
to sensible men, there is not on the earth a more cruel affliction.
Here, indeed, on this populous King’s ship, of which my very brother
was in command, I did find myself alone with a desolation very far
greater than solitude of place. Doubtless there was something of God in
the villainous men, deep in the hearts of them, as there is something
of God in all things; and the rest (to speak truly) is but distortion
and shadow and absence and darkness. But I did not understand it so,
and looked but on the appearance, loathing them for their villainous
demeanour, and filthy discourse.
A woful suffering it was; a stifling of the heart; a hand upon the
brain, goading it to madness; an upheaval of the deeps, breaking up
the standing surface-mould. But, amid the stress of it all, and as
with a flash of seismic fire, there was made to me a revelation. _All
loneliness and loss were delusions; for the hearts of all are knit
together in the heart of God._
So the affliction departed from me, and I came to myself. Yet it left
me sore distraught, so that I shook with cold like one in an ague; and
I made to go to the galley, where was a fire.
I descended the weather-ladder; but, coming under the break of the
poop, I caught a curious sound of singing that proceeded from within
the alley-way.
I passed in, and the sound led me towards the master’s cabin. Therein
I beheld the Mosquito Indian. He was alone with the dead Englishman,
pacing up and down before the body; and, ever as he went, he kept
crooning and chanting a wild music, and swayed his body from side
to side, and moved his hands and arms in strange mystic passes and
convolutions.
Wild and inarticulate was the dirge, and the motions, I doubt not, were
but the ceremonies of a savage fetish; but I watched and hearkened
entranced. How much of what followed is accountable to the woful strain
that recent trials--and especially that last great trial--had put upon
me, I know not; but I think that there was nothing earthly in that
chant, or rune (whatever it was), nothing of human artifice, and that
it proceeded from the occult heart of things.
I saw a vision of a boundless expanse: the heavens loaden with masses
of cloud ebon black, the firmament illumined with a spectral light,
and, beneath it all, the _deep_! That was black as the clouds above,
and surging in billows (though without foam) so stupendous, that
the tops of them might not be descried, and sweeping together with a
shock and tumult such as no man could imagine. But that which held my
gaze--yea, and nigh unseated my reason!--was the Thing, whether brute
or demon, that seemed to be the sole denizen of the waters, swimming
and wallowing there. Merciful God! may I never look upon the like of it
again.
Slowly the mood and measure of the singing changed; and now I beheld
other scenes, and other images, which concerned the mid-period of
things.
Again the measure changed; and, now, indeed, I saw god-like forms and
god-like deeds: and there appeared before me (but oh, how transfigured,
how glorified!) the similitudes of those whom I had known and loved:
my mother, who was dead, my friends and playmates as a child, and my
father, the Squire. They smiled on me; and so near they seemed, that I
stretched forth my hand to have touched them, and would have spoken to
them, when lo! they were gone. The Mosquito Indian had ceased from his
singing, and stood silent and motionless, with bowed head.
I sprang to my feet. “Now, what manner of man are you?” cried I. “What
was it that you sang?”
But he turned, and looked on me so friendly, and yet withal so manly,
grave and majestic, that I was drawn to him. He saluted me; solemnly we
shook hands, in testimony of friendship, a friendship that endured to
the end--yea, to the end!
The Mosquito Indian was sufficiently acquainted with the English
tongue, though he did patter it but queerly. He told me the name he
went by amongst the English, and was very proud of it, knowing no
better. For ’twas but a ridiculous name, given him by some buffoon. So
I called him Thalassios (afterwards shortened to Thalass), because it
was a high-sounding word to please him, and because he had been taken
up from the sea.
Soon after came two seamen to bear away the dead body of the
Englishman. I followed them forth to where my brother stood awaiting
them under the break of the poop. He immediately bade them to throw the
body into the sea.
On this, however, the boatswain, who stood near, putting off his cap to
the Captain, begged leave to ask whether he would not give the body a
volley for ceremony, or, at any rate, cause it to be sewn up in a sheet
or an old topsail, and a weight fastened to it to sink it in the sea.
“For,” said he, “if you throw him in as he be, I doubt he’ll rise and
haunt us, Cap’n.”
But the Captain, being in a very ill-temper, took this in dudgeon,
and roughly bid the boatswain to keep his tongue quiet, and the
mariners to act their part without more ado. This they did--albeit but
unwillingly for what the boatswain had said about the spirit haunting
the ship--and, as the body splashed into the sea, they looked one on
another very glumly; and, after the Captain’s back was turned, they
began to murmur against him, saying he had put a curse upon them, and
that henceforward we should meet with no luck in our voyage, and that,
in all likelihood, the ship would be quite lost.
Towards evening the wind freshened very much, so that they said evil
already began to fall upon us. But, on this coming to my brother’s
ears, he went and spoke to them, and appeased their minds; for he
showed them that the wind was favourable to our course, and that it did
but speed them the faster to the island whither they were bound and
where they would all make their fortunes.
When dark came, we had a great rippling sea, and a high wind, which
sometimes came in pushes, forcing us to hand our topsails often. It
increased to a gale, and came so furious at last, that we scudded under
a mainsail.
This gave the men work enough all night.