"Seven," I said at length.
"Are ye sure?"
"Yes, perfectly."
"Then take that--and that--and that--and that!" And he pricked me in
seven places with his infernal knife, holding it to my throat between
the stabs in case I should sing out.
"Now," he said, "I'm going to give you a concert all to yourself.
You're going to hear the star of the _Grasmere_ free of charge. But get
you along to the point of the spar first; then you'll be all ready.
What, you won't? Ah, I thought that'd make you!"
I had obeyed him. He had followed me. And now the knife was back in his
mouth--the blood had caked upon his beard--and the melodeon was between
his hands. He played me the "Dead March." I should not have known it,
for I was past listening, but the horrid grin in his mad eyes showed
me that he was doing something clever, and then I discovered what. I
was now past everything but holding on and watching my man, which, as
I have since thought, was better than looking down. He was wearing his
beloved jersey, and he had it the right way on. Upon his legs were a
pair of thick worsted drawers; but his feet were naked, and his head
was bare. It was his head I watched. His hair had been cropped very
close. And the stars swam round and round it as we rose and fell.
I heard four bells struck away aft in the abyss, heard their echo from
the forecastle head. It was two o'clock in the morning. As we dipped to
port, Clunie suddenly lifted his melodeon in both hands, and heaved it
clean over my head.
"Hear the splash?" he hissed. "Well, there'll be a bigger one in a
minute, and you'll hear that. You're going to make it, Brother John!"
His words fell harmlessly on my ears. I had heard no splash. It was as
though we were poised above a bottomless abyss.
The next thing I noted was the monotonous and altered sound in his
voice. He was reciting "The Dream of Eugene Aram," and making the
ghastliest faces close to mine as he did so. But I, too, was now
astride of the spar. My legs were groping in mid-air for the brace.
They found it. They clung to it. I flung myself from the spar, but the
lithe, thin ropes gave with my weight, and I could not--no, I durst not
let go.
And yet I was not stabbed to the heart; for there was Clunie leaning
over me, with Tom Hood's stanzas still flowing from his blooded lips,
and the carver held in readiness, not for me, but for the brace when I
should trust myself to it. Seeing this, I held fast to the spar. But
he stabbed at the back of my hand--I see the puckered white scar as I
write--and I let go as we were heeling over to port. His knife flashed
up among the stars. I was gone.
* * * * *
I wonder the rush of air in mouth and nostrils did not tear the nose
from my face, the head from my body. I wonder the sea did not split
me in two as I went into it like a stone. When I endeavour to recall
those sensations, I invariably fail; but at times they come to me in
my sleep, and when I wake the wonder is ever fresh. Yet many a man
has fallen from aloft, and if he but cleared the deck, has lived to
tell the tale. And I am one of that lucky number. When I came to the
surface, there was the ship waggling and staggering like a wounded
albatross, as they hove her to. Then they saved me in the pinnace,
because I was still alive enough to keep myself afloat. But some may
say that Clunie was as lucky as myself; for he had fallen a few seconds
after me, and his mad brains splashed the deck.