It so chanced that Tom Horn did not appear at Christopher Dent's for
some nights; and so Mademoiselle Lafargue, with brisk little shoes
clicking upon the floor, and silken gloves upon her hands, and a lace
shawl about her head, came into the apothecary's shop in the twilight
before he had kindled his lamps. She forthwith demanded that he keep
his promise and go with her to Tom Horn's lodgings, that she might
speak with the odd clerk in the matter he had dwelt so earnestly upon
some nights before.
Christopher eagerly put on his hat and tailed coat, and wrote a legend
announcing that because of unavoidable matters his shop would be closed
for a few hours, which he stuck upon the door; then he turned the key
in the lock with care and, with mademoiselle at his side, proceeded
in the direction of Pump Court. This was a wide court, of no great
depth, with three broad-fronted houses on each side of it, and a cool
flagged space between; and in the center stood the pump, with a tub
under its spout, from which the court took its name. There was a little
fringe of grass about the edge of each of the houses, and vines climbed
the walls; the shutters were green and stood wide; the door- and
window-frames were white. Christopher pointed to the sloping roof of
one of the houses, where a dormer-window leaned outward.
"That," said the little apothecary, "is Tom Horn's lodgings."
They climbed the wide, solid steps, and at the top of the house knocked
upon a door. Tom Horn opened it; he did not seem at all surprised, but
only opened it a great deal wider when he saw who it was.
"Come in," he said. "I am glad to see you."
The room was a very large one and sparely furnished; on a broad table,
with lighted candles set about it, was a great clutter of papers.
"Figures," said Christopher, as he looked down at the papers. "All
figures." He looked at Tom Horn and rubbed his own shining crown. "They
must be like a spoken language to you."
"Figures are truer and more dependable than a language made of words,"
said Tom Horn. "The circles come at through them are perfect ones.
There is no bending them to other shapes. Words, now, can be wrought to
fit both prejudice and unreason."
"That is true," said the little apothecary, and he turned a look upon
mademoiselle which told of his admiration for the saying. "That is very
true, indeed."
There were bare spaces upon the walls of Tom Horn's lodgings, and
pinned there were what looked like maps, but maps such as neither
mademoiselle nor Christopher had ever seen before. For about the
islands and along the headlands and through the bulk of the sea
itself were drawn long lines which curled slowly toward an inevitable
roundness. Figures were set down in red ink along these lines, and
arrows of blue pointed out their circular, grasping sweep. Upon the
mantel was a slim array of books, and mademoiselle, as she looked
at their worn sheep bindings and their inked-in titles, saw that
astronomy, navigation, and geometry were the matters there dealt with.
The place had a clean, bare look; the single twinkling light in the
court could be seen from the high window; a thrush on an open perch
stirred now and then and chirped sleepily; and a wooden-wheeled clock
ticked and grumbled in its high case. Mademoiselle listened to the two
men for a space after they had settled down, and then, in a silence
between them, she spoke to Tom Horn.
"Mr. Dent has told me of the interest he feels in your theory of tides
and currents, and especially in how they might have affected the ship
_Rufus Stevens_. And we have come to-night to hear more of it, if you
are of the mind to tell it."
"We have a curiosity concerning your idea," said Christopher
cautiously. "And so, if there is any more to tell, we beg of you to
tell it plainly, for it may be a thought with a deal of value, and
which could be put to a practical use."
Never had Tom Horn looked so worn and fragile as he did at that
moment, sitting with the mass of calculations before him and with the
candle-light upon him; never before had the strange, luminous quality
that he threw off been so pronounced, never had the odd, hopeful look
in his eyes shown so fully through their fixed despair.
"I will say what I can," he said, "and that is not much; for no man can
speak with authority on things urged by powers whose weight he can only
surmise. But this I know: In the south region of the world, the edge of
Africa and that of South America make the two sides of a vast throat,
and through this the waters warmed by the tropics force themselves
northward. The current clings to the American side and, when opposite
the mouth of the Amazon, begins to thicken. It sweeps between Trinidad
and the Barbados into the Carribbean; it rounds the West Indies to the
south and curves into the gulf, and then, out and away, along the North
American coast."
"And holds all its parts to itself on the way," marveled Christopher.
"That is wonderful, indeed. It is as though it were a vast living
thing."
"From the north," said Tom Horn, and he pointed a long finger at one
of the maps on the wall, "comes a second current, cold, holding to
the coast and meeting the warm current where the ocean's bed rises so
abruptly off Newfoundland. Here the two merge and swing off toward
the east. But the land turns them south; holding to the African rim
they flow back through the great throat, completing the circle. And
somewhere inside that circle," said Tom Horn, "is the Sargasso; it lies
to the south of the Azores, to the west of the Canaries, and northwest
of the Cape Verdes Islands, a vast pool of slack water; and into it is
drawn all those things which the currents have ravished from the world."
"It is your thought, then," said mademoiselle, "that the ship _Rufus
Stevens_, if still afloat, may have fallen into the grip of this great
circle. But might it not be that the storm blew her out of reach of the
currents? Who can say what happened in a great wind like that?"
Tom Horn took one of the sheets from the table.
"It was Captain Frisbee who saw the ship. And the spot where he saw
her, made by dead reckoning, is set down here. It was three in the
afternoon, and the wind was blowing from the southwest. Captain Frisbee
told me these things himself," said Tom Horn. "I went to him and asked.
And he judged that the gale was blowing at seventy miles an hour, and
held so until nightfall on the following day, when it had blown itself
out. That gives twenty-seven hours of wicked weather, the wind blowing
into the east by north all the time.
"With that body of wind," the clerk went on, "and that number of hours,
a ship without masts or sails can be figured to have been driven so
many leagues. And my calculations show me that when the storm fell
the _Rufus Stevens_ lay at or near this spot on the ocean's water,"
and he picked the place out on the paper with his finger, "at or near
this spot, which is south of the Azores, and on the inner rim of the
great circle. And being so situated, and without help," said Tom Horn,
"nothing can prevent her from drifting into the Grassy Sea."
"Could it not be," said Christopher Dent, "that she might have settled
into some other current after the wind fell, and so floated away in
another direction?"
"One whole year I drifted in the _William and Mary_," said Tom Horn.
"Each day of that year I marked down in a book, and underneath I wrote
what I saw in the sea and in the sky. The _William and Mary_ was a good
ship, but misfortune touched her. Time has told me that it was not the
misfortune of chance; men had to do with it; there was a purpose in it;
but what, or how, I could never contrive. The ship was down by the head
when they left her; they desired me to get into a boat with the second
mate, Ezra Hardy, who was a plain, honest man. But I said I would stay
with the ship. And that boat, with all who were in her, was never heard
of again."
"And the others?" asked Christopher Dent.
"The boat of the captain was a strong one," said Tom Horn. "And so was
the first mate's. They lived: oh, yes, that was seen to. They lived
buoyantly through the storm."
"Do you say," and mademoiselle's voice shook, "that you refused to
leave the ship because you believed the second mate's boat was meant to
go down?"
"First," said Tom Horn, "I desired to remain with the cargo while there
was a chance of saving it. Second," and he whispered this, "it was as
you say."
"Now, God save us!" said Christopher Dent in horror. "God in His Heaven
save us!"
"I watched the sea all that day," said the clerk, "and I listened
through the night; for it was heavy in my mind that the captain
and first mate would return. For I knew the men who were in their
boats,--hardy, desperate, unsparing men,--and I feared for my life."
"They did not return!" said the little apothecary. "Oh, no, I trust
not! I dread to think otherwise."
"The drifting water took the hulk, weighted as it was," said Tom Horn;
"with her forecastle down and her forward hatch almost under, the great
circle took her and carried her away; and so the villains lost all
track of her, and I drifted into the lonely sea. The sun shone through
a haze," said the clerk; "its color was russet and streaked with white;
so still was the air I saw spirals of mist, like ropes, lowered from
the sky. On every side the sea was like a grassy field; I saw planks
and spars lying on what seemed solid ground; great birds sat and
watched me as though waiting for the time when I should die. There was
a ghastly kind of vegetation: pallid, slimy plants,--bloodless,--like
things that had grown in the dark; they were horrible to see and more
horrible to touch. And," said Tom Horn, "a monstrous life stirred
beneath the green scum of the sea. Since time began, God's hand has
been turned to many dreadful tasks; but He has hidden them from most
men's eyes."
"We will grant," said the girl, "that a ship, circumstanced as you
believe the _Rufus Stevens_ was at the end of the storm, must have
fallen into the grasp of the great current and so came, or will come,
to the Grassy Sea. But before going so far we must assure ourselves she
remained afloat."
"Any one who watched her building," said Tom Horn, "must have seen she
was a strong vessel. Siddons is an honest man; he never slights a task;
he does honest, sound work. Live-oak is tough; hammered iron does not
give readily; the ship was new, and, though the masts were out of her
when Frisbee saw her, the decks were sound and the hatches fast down. I
questioned him about that, and he was quite sure. The ship was like a
cask," said Tom Horn. "The sea could not harm her, there being nothing
to dash her against. Mark me! she is adrift at this moment in the
slimy grass of that silent place; and her cargo is as dry and safe as
it would be if it were in a merchant's storehouse."
Mademoiselle's hands trembled, but her voice was steady as she said:
"Would it be possible to find this strange ocean backwater? Could
you--could any one--take a ship into it?"
"South of the Azores," said Tom Horn, "northwest of the Cape Verdes,
and west of the Canaries." He nodded his head. "I could find my way
back to it," said he. "Through all the vast spaces of the sea I could
find my way back there, for it is so fixed in my mind that the very sky
above it would be known to me if I once lifted it to the horizon-line."
"Anthony Stevens!" said mademoiselle to Christopher. "He must be told!"
"But his health!" protested the little apothecary.
"This will be health to him," said the girl. "This news would put life
in him if he stood on the verge of the grave."
"Very well. He shall be told," said Christopher. "He shall be told, and
at once."