HOLDSWORTH’S RECOVERY.
The cabin in which Holdsworth lay was a spare one, next the captain’s.
It was lighted by an oblong piece of frosted glass let into the deck
overhead, and by a port-hole which was a standing and comfortable
illustration of the immense thickness of the timbers that separated the
inmate from the sea. There was a square of cocoa-nut matting on the
deck to tread on; up in a corner an immovable washstand, containing a
pewter basin; a row of pegs against the door; and a mahogany bunk.
In this bunk lay Holdsworth, and at the hour of which I am now writing,
Mr. Sherman sat beside him in an easy-chair, his legs up and his head
back, in a deep sleep. From the centre of a beam hung a small oil-lamp,
the frame carefully protected by wire network; and the light diffused
by this lamp was clear enough to exhibit Holdsworth’s face distinctly.
He, too, was asleep, if sleep that can be called which, plunging the
senses into unconsciousness, yet leaves pain and misery to play their
active part upon the darkened stage of the mind. Of his youth, of his
beauty, I might almost say of his very manhood--such as was wont to be
suggested by the open, brave, and winning expression of his face--not a
trace was left. The spoliation of suffering had been so complete, that
the bare wreck of the noble temple it had ruined was all that remained.
Now, even more completely than in his waking hours, might we master the
full extent of the cruel transformation that had been wrought, since
the candour of sleep was on the slumberer, and the self-consciousness
that masks the subtle facial truths, inactive. His hair, formerly dark
and luxuriant, was thinned about the forehead, was tangled and coarse,
and mixed with gray and white. The protrusion of the cheek-bones formed
a conspicuous feature; under them the flesh fell into a hollow, and, as
much of it as the bristly moustache and whiskers suffered to be seen,
was puckered and dried up like the rind of an old winter apple. The
under lip was enlarged, and entirely altered the remembered aspect of
the mouth. The eyebrows drooped where they had formerly arched, and
the hair of them near the temples had fallen off. Time might, perhaps,
efface some of these disfigurements deep graven by the stylet of
pain; but no man could have looked upon that sleeping face without a
conviction of the permanency of much that he beheld.
He slept; but though his slumber was deep, his movements were so
restless, convulsive, and feverish, that it seemed every moment as if
he must start up.
Once during the night the ship’s bell sounding seven awakened him,
and he opened his eyes and raised his head, but soon let it fall
again. Then it was during this short interval of wakefulness that
the bewildered look of which Mr. Sherman had spoken might have been
perceived; and it lingered for some minutes on his face after he had
dropped asleep once more.
Several times during the night the kind-hearted man who watched by the
poor fellow’s side rose from his chair, and scrutinised him anxiously;
and once Mr. Banks popped his shaggy head in to ask how the sufferer
did, but found both patient and doctor asleep.
The morning crept over the sky, and turned the port-hole and the piece
of deck-glass white; and at six o’clock Mr. Sherman woke, and crept
quietly to his cabin to refresh himself with a plunge in cold water;
then went on deck, where he found the captain smoking a cigar, his feet
in galoshes, and the hands washing down. A sparkling, genial morning,
with a warm breeze from the west, the barque in full sail, and the
green seas caressing her bows, and leaping back from their keen salute
in avalanches of foam.
“Good morning, Mr. Sherman,” said the skipper. “This is the weather,
eh, sir? Out of the Doldrums by Tuesday week, I hope. How’s your
patient?”
“Sleeping soundly. He has passed a good night. If he can only get over
the next few days, the tropical sun will set him to rights.”
“Is he awake now?”
“I think not. But we’ll go and see if you like.”
The captain threw away his cigar and followed Mr. Sherman below, not,
however, before casting a look above and around, and singing out to the
man at the wheel to “keep her at that.”
Opening the cabin door they crept to the bunk and stood looking at the
sleeping man, who, aroused perhaps by the magnetic influence of four
eyes upon him, started and stared up at them from his pillow.
Captain Duff drew back a step, scared a little by the wild gaze
that Holdsworth fixed upon him, and which was made in some measure
repellent by his gaunt and wasted face, and by the pitiable expression
of bewilderment that passed slowly into it, and made it almost as
meaningless as an idiot’s.
“How do you feel, my poor fellow?” asked Mr. Sherman; “stronger, I
hope?”
Holdsworth made no answer, but knitted his brow with an air of profound
perplexity, gazed slowly round him, then attentively at Mr. Sherman,
then at the skipper, then at himself, finally pressing his hand to his
head.
“How do you know he is English? Perhaps he don’t understand you,” said
Captain Duff.
“I heard him mutter in English before I joined you last night,”
answered Mr. Sherman.
“Pray tell me where I am?” said Holdsworth, in a faint voice.
“That’s English!” exclaimed the captain, though he looked as if he must
take a thought of it yet, before he should allow himself to feel sure.
“You are among friends,” replied Mr. Sherman softly, and in a voice
full of sympathy; “on board a vessel called the ‘Jessie Maxwell,’ bound
to Australia. We sighted your boat yesterday morning.”
“My boat!” whispered Holdsworth, with an expression on his face of such
deep bewilderment that it was painful to behold it.
“Do you not remember?”
“My boat! my boat!” repeated Holdsworth; but no light came into his
eyes to show that he apprehended the other’s meaning.
“He has lost his memory,” said Mr. Sherman aside to the captain. And
then to Holdsworth: “Do you feel as if you could eat anything?”
“Yes, I am hungry,” answered Holdsworth.
“That is a good sign!” exclaimed Mr. Sherman, cheerfully. “Captain,
will you stop here a few minutes, while I ask the steward to get the
soup heated?”
The skipper, being left alone, stationed himself near the door, and
watched Holdsworth with mixed emotions. Brave to foolhardiness in
a gale of wind, on a lee-shore, in confronting a mutinous crew, in
dealing with the severest of marine exigencies, this little gentleman,
in some trivial matters, was as timorous as a mouse, and would have
made his escape overboard, rather than be grasped by Holdsworth,
who, if he were not the dissembled madman his ragged, withered face
suggested him to be, was still hedged about with enough of mysterious
and secret horror to make him awful in the practical little Scotchman’s
eyes.
Meanwhile, Holdsworth rested upon his pillow, casting eager and
restless glances about the cabin, and at the skipper, and battling with
an oblivion of the past as thick and as impenetrable as that mystery of
being which the infant emerges from at its birth.
“Tell me, sir, who I am--where I have been taken from!” he exclaimed,
presently, looking with imploring eyes at the skipper.
“Indeed, my man, I can’t tell you who you are,” replied the captain,
wishing that Mr. Sherman would return, or that a squall would give him
an excuse to withdraw. “All that I know is, we found you in a boat, and
picked you up, and that the gentleman who has just gone out, saved your
life.”
“Strange!” muttered Holdsworth; “I remember nothing.”
“Oh, it will all come if you give it time. Memory often leaves people
after a bad illness, but returns again with the strength. Ech!” he
cried, struck, as though for the first time, by the poor creature’s
lean and hollow face. “But you have kenn’d some awfu’ times, man, since
ye last stood upon honest shipboard. Sailoring, if you are a sailor, is
a poor look-out when it comes to wanting bread and water.”
The door opened and Mr. Sherman came in, followed by the steward
bearing a dish of soup and some mild brandy and water, with which Mr.
Sherman proceeded to feed Holdsworth. When as much of the soup as was
thought good had been administered, Mr. Sherman bade his patient turn
his back to the light and get some sleep.
“I will, sir; thank you for your kindness,” returned Holdsworth, with
affecting docility. “But, first, will you help me--will you help me to
recall something--anything--to give my mind rest? I can see nothing for
the darkness that is over me.”
“I have told him that his memory will come back with his strength,”
said Captain Duff.
“Yes, have a little patience!” exclaimed Mr. Sherman. “We will get you
on deck in a day or two, and when you see the boat we took you from
your memory will return to you.”
“Can you not tell me my name?” asked Holdsworth, with that striking
expression of painful anxiety you may see on the face of a blind man
deserted by his guide and totally at fault.
“We will endeavour to find it out,” replied Mr. Sherman. “Come,
captain, our friend must talk no more, or all our trouble to get him
well will be of no use.”
Holdsworth put out his hand with a smile of gratitude that softened and
almost sweetened his miserable and skeleton-like face; then turned in
his bunk and closed his eyes.
“A strange thing to happen to a man,” said the captain to Mr. Sherman,
as they went on deck. “I never could have believed that the memory of
a creature could go out of his brain like that!”
“We may guess the nature and magnitude of his sufferings by this
effect,” answered Mr. Sherman. “God alone knows how many days he may
have passed in that boat, and what scenes of horror he has witnessed
and what torments he has endured. But we must help his memory as far as
he can. Will you allow me to go forward and examine the boat?”
They walked to the main-deck, where the boat was stowed. A little knot
of men gathered around and watched their movements with interest. But,
in truth, the boat was as unsuggestive as a sheet of blank paper. There
was no name in her; nor by her build, sail, oars, shape, or anything
else, was it possible to tell her paternity. The broken bottles and
bags of bread that had been fished out of her locker were in her
bottom, but no clue was to be got from them; nothing but a story of
deepest tragical misery. The captain sent for the shawl that had been
unhitched from the mast-head, and he and Mr. Sherman held it open
between them and inspected it. Browned by the wet and the heat--in its
frayed and tattered shape, its very texture modified by exposure--it
was positively no more than a black rag.
They returned to the after-deck, and sent the steward for the clothes
which had been removed from the two men. Holdsworth’s pilot coat was
of good quality, and his linen also seemed to suggest that he had
held a very superior position to that of Johnson, whose dress was a
sailor’s, a brown woollen shirt, serge trousers, boots with high tops,
and the invariable belt and knife. Holdsworth’s linen was marked with
H; nothing more. They found in his pockets a watch, a clasp-knife, some
money, and one or two other articles, which Mr. Sherman made into a
parcel, hoping that the sight of things which would be familiar might
help the poor fellow’s memory.
“It is evident,” says the skipper, “that whatever we are to learn must
come from the man himself. His clothes tell us nothing.”
“They are a sailor’s, don’t you think?”
“Why, they are such clothes as I or Banks might wear; but that don’t
prove that the man was a sailor. He certainly hasn’t a nautical cut.”
“His language is that of an educated man, and his linen is that of a
gentleman. Pray God that the poor soul’s memory will return. Without it
he will be scarcely better off with us than he was in the boat.”
“Eh?” cried the literal skipper, “not better off with good meat and
drink and a good bunk to lie in, than when he was perishing of thirst,
with no better blanket than the sky to cover him?”
“I mean that he may have friends at home who, while his memory remains
torpid, must be as dead to him and he to them, as if he had remained in
his open boat.”
“Yes, I see your idea, sir,” replied the skipper. “And now about the
other puir creature. We must bury him this morning. He is dead you say?”
“We will go and look at him.”
“Why,” returned Captain Duff, shrinking, “to tell you the plain truth,
I am not over fond of these girning bodies. By your leave, sir, I’ll
hae the puir creature sewn up in canvas, and if you’ll tak’ the reading
of the Burial office I shall feel obliged, Mr. Sherman, as I have but
a varra moderate capacity for the delivery o’ written words.”
At this juncture, Adam, the steward, rang the breakfast-bell, and the
captain and Mr. Sherman went below.
* * * * *
There is scarcely any ceremony more impressive than a burial at sea;
perhaps because nowhere does man feel his littleness more than when
the mighty ocean surrounds him. The graves of the dead on shore in a
measure localise their inmates, and our associations are fortified by
the power of referring to the departed as beings who slumber in green
places, and are at all seasons visitable.
But a burial at sea is the launching of the dead into infinity. The
sense of his extinction is absolute. He is swallowed up and annihilated
by the universe of water, which also seems to overwhelm his very memory.
At twelve o’clock the body of Johnson, sewn up in canvas, with a weight
of lead attached to his feet, lay extended upon one of the gratings
of the main-hatchway, one end resting on the bulwarks of the ship,
the other upon the shoulders of two sailors. The crew stood round,
holding their caps in their hands; and near the body stood Mr. Sherman
reading the Burial Service. The mournful and impressive spectacle was
greatly heightened by the tolling of the bell on the quarter-deck,
which mingled its clear chimes with the words delivered by Mr. Sherman.
The vessel was sailing on an even keel, her white sails swelling and
soaring one above another, and forming a lovely picture against the
bright blue sky. The water leaped and sparkled and frothed against her
clean sides, and those swallows of the deep, the stormy petrels, chased
her flashing wake, and gave by their presence a finishing detail to the
whole of the sun-lighted scene.
How unutterable the mystery hedging the motionless figure in the
canvas shroud--his name unknown, a waif of dead humanity snatched for
a brief moment from the imperious deep, whose will it was to keep him!
The seamen sent shrinking glances at the bundle on the grating. That
he had suffered; that famine had made a skeleton of him; that thirst
had twisted his lean face into an expression of agony which death was
powerless to smooth out, was all they knew.
“_We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into
corruption_----”
The captain motioned with his hand; the grating was tilted, and its
burden went like a flash from the bulwarks; the steersman turned his
face upon his shoulder, hearing the hollow plunge; but those on the
main-deck stood without a move among them, listening to the final,
comfortable, glorious words:--
“_Looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up
her dead), and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus
Christ, who at His coming shall change our vile body, that it may be
like His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is
able to subdue all things to Himself._”
The reader closed the book; the grating was restored to its place; and
the men in twos and threes moved slowly forward, talking in subdued
tones; and for the remainder of that day at least no sound of loose
laughter or reckless words was to be heard in the forecastle.