The _Roebuck_ let go her moorings in the gray of the July morning;
one of the boats towed her out of the run and into the river; then
under mainsail, topsail, and jibs she pointed her nose downstream on
the tedious journey to the capes. The tide ran out strongly, and the
wind favored the vessel's progress; she had dropped the city behind
by sun-up, the flats went by, and she picked up the towns on the
river-bank one by one. The bay opened out late in the afternoon; the
mate marked the lights of Lewes well into the night; and by morning
they were at sea, under full sail and headed directly east.
The mulatto proved a good cook, and the breakfast he brought into
the main cabin was excellent and plentiful. There was a large cut of
Westphalia ham upon a broad platter, hot, candied, and delicious; there
was a dish of rice like a hillock of snow, ship's biscuit, and steaming
chocolate in a tall, slim pot.
"We are to be well fed, at all events," said Anthony, as he sat to the
breakfast, with satisfaction. Mademoiselle and Tom Horn had been seated
before he came in, and the clerk had a chart, marked in red and blue
and black ink, upon the table between them. "The schooner is pointed
due east," said Anthony. "Corkery tells me those were your directions."
"East, on the inner skirt of the circle until we reach the Azores,"
said Tom Horn, pointing to the characters on his chart and following
them with a finger. "Then south to the Sargasso."
Mademoiselle, as she followed the tracing finger, bent forward; and, as
it stopped at the region where lay the sea of grass, she saw its place
was marked by a widening circle of skulls. She shivered a little and
drew back.
"With the wind holding," said Anthony, "We should raise the Azores in
two weeks."
"We must cling to the inner rim of the circle," said Tom Horn, still
with his finger on the chart, "for all things carried by the current
drift toward its center; the moon and the running tides and the turning
of the world draw them. And we must follow the circle to the place
where it begins to bend to the south; the hulk we seek may have been
delayed in its passage, for no man knows what the sea will do, and no
one can judge the mysteries of the wind."
All through the breakfast, Anthony and mademoiselle talked with Tom
Horn, and more than one of his peculiar charts came to the table while
they sat there; then the two went on deck, leaving the man poring
over his figures, his signs, and his curving lines. The morning was
sparkling: the west wind pushed boisterously in the sails, and the
little schooner leaped ahead. Corkery approached from amidships, at a
look from Anthony.
"How does she set into her work?" asked the young man.
"As ably as a craft twice her bulk," said the mate. "This is no narrow
spread of sail," with a look up at the strong, weather-stained canvas,
"and yet see how steadily she stands under it."
The _Roebuck_ slipped easily up the long sides of the sea, her sharp
prow split its crests, and then she'd sleek jauntily down into the vast
hollows, flirting the water from her like a duck. The sky was a rare
color, with racing clouds upon its breast; the sun lifted higher and
higher, and the gleam of the sea grew brighter, throwing back the sky's
own blue, the waves thinning to a green and breaking into a sudden,
hissing white. The face of mademoiselle was filled with wonder.
"I have never before been to sea in a little ship," she said, "and so
I have not known what being at sea means." Her eyes swept the sky and
heaving water; she breathed in the wonderful, singing air; her body
swayed with the spring of the craft beneath her. "It is glorious!" she
said.
Anthony nodded: _he_ did not look at the sea and sky; he looked at
_her_. And he said:
"Yes, it is glorious."
The full west wind held and blew the _Roebuck_ before it all that day;
it whistled sharply through the night, and Anthony, whose watch it was
on deck stripped the schooner of a part of her sail. The second morning
saw the sea running grayer and longer; the sky was steely, and the
sun was hidden. This held for twenty-four hours; then the wind hauled
around to the east and scraped the sky's gray into mountains of black;
the rain and wind lashed about, and the sea leaped to meet them; the
schooner, under topsail and jib, was tossed like a chip, but she held
stanchly upright and fought her way through, the blow scarcely wetting
her decks. At the end of the fourth day out, Anthony, who stood near
the helmsman, mademoiselle at his side, saw a blue gleam through the
sober sky.
"The sun will shine to-morrow," he said, "and the sea will run down
during the night."
"I am almost sorry," she said. "The angry sea is amazing; I'm afraid I
shall not like it, smiling, as greatly as I did before."
As Anthony foretold, the wind slackened during the night and the sea
ran down; the sun rose, huge and yellow, in the morning, and the sky
bent lightly to the water on the horizon's edge. The wind continued
good and from the southwest; the schooner heeled a little to it, her
sails bulging full; and either Anthony or Corkery constantly walked
the deck. But no eye on board was as watchful as Tom Horn's, as those
smooth, rolling days at sea slipped by. He'd take his place in the bow,
early of a morning, and there he'd stay with intent face until far into
the night. The water racing past the vessel's side seemed to fascinate
him; he'd brood over its passage, wearing a strange look; and as the
earth slowly turned, giving a new facet to the sun's warmth, the odd
clerk would watch its progress in wonder and in silence.
The lowering sun, almost level in the west, one evening caught an
object to the east and held it glittering.
"St. Michael's," said Anthony, searching the spot with a glass.
The rising of the Azores caused a deal of excitement in Tom Horn. He
came aft to where Anthony stood, and the young man felt a shaking hand
upon his arm.
"South," said Tom Horn. "South, and a trifle to the west, the merest
trifle; for that is as the waters run. The ship may be in those seas,"
and he pointed to starboard: "she may be drifting there, still outside
the rim of dead things. We must watch, night and day; we must watch!"
The _Roebuck_ was headed south, and so held for a week; there followed
a succession of light winds; they made but little headway; and with
each day the sea grew quieter; there seemed a gathering of drift on
the surface; the sky was shot with yellow; the dulled sun threw off
a sweltering heat. At last the sails hung idle; rocking gently, the
schooner was borne on through a thickening sea.
"Slowly," said Tom Horn, "very slowly." He gazed about over the
forbidding waters, a look that seemed both exaltation and fear, in his
strange eyes. "It was about here that the _William and Mary_ first
touched the edge of that strange place," he said. "She drifted as we
are drifting; sometimes it seemed that she did not move at all. But
she came to it at last, as all helpless things must come to it when
once the circle draws them. Without wind we are as helpless as she
was," said Tom Horn. "Just as helpless. And we are being carried on,
as she was carried on, and as the _Rufus Stevens_ is being carried on,
somewhere outside our vision."
Corkery, who stood by, and heard the man's words, cocked an eye after
him as he went forward; and he said to Anthony:
"He's worse than I ever saw him before. I've heard say he was out of
balance, but up to now I have noticed only that he kept stiller than
most."
"He is excited," said Anthony. "This region brings up memories of
certain suffering he's gone through."
Corkery said nothing for a space, and his keen eye went backward and
forward over the sluggish sea. Then he spoke:
"You haven't said what your meaning is in this voyage, and I haven't
asked any questions. But in the last few days I've come to see that
our friend there," and he nodded toward Tom Horn, who had taken his
accustomed place in the bow, "has something to do with it; and so I
bid you look to your facts. Even now we are in strange seas; and we're
headed for stranger still."
Anthony nodded.
"The ship is commissioned for an errand out of the common," he said.
"And we are headed now as I intended to head from the first."
Corkery looked at the sky to the north, and then at the limp sails.
"We'll have a stir of wind in a little," he said. "And I'll be pleased
enough when it comes."
But the breeze was a light one, and, though it huddled into the sails,
it increased the schooner's pace but little. Mademoiselle Lafargue, who
had come on deck, gazed out across the water with its masses of weed
and its bits of wreckage.
"I had been trying to read," she said. "But there is something
oppressive in the air, and I could not. So I sat and looked out at
the port; the sea looks strange, and the birds that hover about are
stranger still."
She pointed to where some dirty, evil-looking fowl hung, poised, near
the schooner; their great wings seldom stirred, and their narrow eyes
were fixed upon the _Roebuck_.
"Tom Horn has told me of those," said Anthony. "It seems to be a sort
of vulture, and, no doubt, there is much drifts into these seas which
goes to keeping them sleek."
She shivered as she looked at the birds.
"What can be to the south of us," she said, "when the approach is so
full of anxiety? The very air seems poisonous."
"It blows over the grave of many a hope, if all I hear is true," said
Anthony. "But let us not think of that. To us it offers a chance of
victory; and we can't let our nerves grow slack because of the tales of
other men, whether false or true. Ahead is our direction." He looked at
her soberly. "And ahead we must go, no matter what foul promises grow
in our sight."
She looked into his face; and deep in her woman's eyes was the candor
of a child.
"That is like you," she said. "It is very like you. I am ashamed."
"God knows," he said, "I like the place no more than you! Give me clear
water, and it may rage as it likes, for that is only natural. But a sea
which runs with a kind of slime, and whose birds are eaters of carrion,
has no place in the book of things. Nevertheless," and he nodded
to her and smiled, "we'll move deeper into it; and then I may have
occasion to alter my views."
Two weeks passed; often their sails hung idle, while time went
completely around the clock; a slow, hot wind sometimes blew; and
they held to the south and made what time they might. The drift grew
thicker; the weed sometimes choked their progress; a green, stiff
sea spread out before them; strange life crept upon it, and the
hideous birds perched upon bits of wreckage, much as crows might in a
stump-filled field.
In the mists of one morning a cry came from Tom Horn; and Corkery,
whose watch on deck it was, advanced toward him. The clerk, trembling
and clinging to the forward rail with one hand, was pointing away to
the south with the other.
Corkery followed the direction indicated; through the piling formations
of mist he saw a vast huddle; it loomed up out of the sea, hung with
flying tendrils of fog; a dim light set through its spaces, pale,
phosphorescent, unreal.
"Land!" said Corkery. "Land, by God!"
"No," said Tom Horn. "It is the place of my captivity! It is the city
of dead ships!"