Manuel’s escape was the last event of that memorable night. Nothing more
happened, and nothing more could be done; but there remained much talk
and wonderment to get through. I did all the talking, of course, under
the cuddy lamps. Williams, red and stout, sat staring at me across the
table. His round eyes were perfectly motionless with astonishment--the
story of what had happened in the Casa Riego was not what he had
expected of the small, badly reputed Cuban town.
Sebright, who had all the duties of the soiled ship and chipped men
to attend to, came in from the deck several times, and would stand
listening for minutes with his fingers playing thoughtfully about his
slight moustache. The dawn was not very far when he led me into his
own cabin. I was half dead with fatigue, and troubled by an inward
restlessness.
“Turn in into my berth,” said Sebright.
I protested with a stiff tongue, but he gave me a friendly push, and
I tumbled like a log on to the bedclothes. As soon as my head felt the
pillow the fresh colouring of his face appeared blurred, and an arm,
mistily large, was extended to put out the light of the lamp screwed to
the bulkhead.
“I suppose you know there are warrants out in Jamaica against you--for
that row with the admiral,” he said.
An irresistible and unexpected drowsiness had relaxed all my limbs.
“Hang Jamaica!” I said, with difficult animation. “We are going home.”
“Hang Jamaica!” he agreed. Then, in the dark, as if coming after me
across the obscure threshold of sleep, his voice meditated, “I am sorry,
though, we are bound for Havana. Pity. Great pity! Has it occurred to
you, Mr. Kemp, that...”
It is very possible that he did not finish his sentence; no more
penetrated, at least, into my drowsy ear. I awoke slowly from a
trance-like sleep, with a confused notion of having to pick up the
thread of a dropped hint. I went up on deck.
The sun shone, a faint breeze blew, the sea sparkled freshly, and the
wet decks glistened. I stood still, touched by the new glory of light
falling on me; it was a new world--new and familiar, yet disturbingly
beautiful. I seemed to discover all sorts of secret charms that I had
never seen in things I had seen a hundred times. The watch on deck
were busy with brooms and buckets; a sailor, coiling a rope over a
pin, paused in his work to point over the port-quarter, with a massive
fore-arm like a billet of red mahogany.
I looked about, rubbing my eyes. The “Lion”, close hauled, was heading
straight away from the coast, which stood out, not very far yet,
outlined heavily and flooded with light. Astern, and to leeward of us,
against a headland of black and indigo, a dazzling white speck resembled
a snowflake fallen upon the blue of the sea.
“That’s a schooner,” said the seaman.
They were the first words I heard that morning, and their friendly
hoarseness brushed away whatever of doubt might seem to mar the
inexplicability of my new glow of my happiness. It was because we were
safe--she and I--and because my undisturbed love let my heart open to
the beauty of the young day and the joyousness of a splendid sea. I took
deep breaths, and my eyes went all over the ship, embracing, like an
affectionate contact, her elongated shape, the flashing brasses,
the tall masts, the gentle curves of her sails soothed into perfect
stillness by the wind. I felt that she was a shrine, for was not
Seraphina sleeping in her, as safe as a child in its cradle? And
presently the beauty, the serenity, the purity, and the splendour of the
world would be reflected in her clear eyes, and made over to me by her
glance.
There are times when an austere and just Providence, in its march
along the inscrutable way, brings our hearts to the test of their own
unreason. Which of us has not been tried by irrational awe, fear, pride,
abasement, exultation? And such moments remain marked by indelible
physical impressions, standing out of the ghostly level of memory
like rocks out of the sea, like towers on a plain. I had many of these
unforgettable emotions--the profound horror of Don Balthasar’s death;
the first floating of the boat, like the opening of wings in space; the
first fluttering of the flames in the fog--many others afterwards, more
cruel, more terrible, with a terror worse than death, in which the very
suffering was lost; and also this--this moment of elation in the clear
morning, as if the universe had shed its glory upon my feelings as the
sunshine glorifies the sea. I laughed in very lightness of heart, in a
profound sense of success; I laughed, irresponsible and oblivious, as
one laughs in the thrilling delight of a dream.
“Do I look so confoundedly silly?” asked Sebright, speaking as though
he had a heavy cold. “I am stupid--tired. I’ve been on my feet this
twenty-four hours--about the liveliest in my life, too. You haven’t
slept very long either--none of us have. I’m sure I hope your young lady
has rested.”
He put his hands in his pockets. He might have been very tired, but
I had never seen a boy fresh out of bed with a rosier face. The black
pin-points of his pupils seemed to bore through distance, exploring the
horizon beyond my shoulder. The man called Mike, the one I had had the
tussle with overnight, came up behind the indefatigable mate, and shyly
offered me my pistol. His head was bound over the top, and under the
chin, as if for toothache, and his bronzed, rough-hewn face looked out
astonishingly through the snowy whiteness of the linen. Only a few hours
before, we had been doing our best to kill each other. In my cordial
glow, I bantered him light-heartedly about his ferocity and his
strength.
He stood before me, patiently rubbing the brown instep of one thick foot
with the horny sole of the other.
“You paid me off for that bit, sir,” he said bashfully. “It was in the
way of duty.”
“I’m uncommon glad you didn’t squeeze the ghost out of me,” I said; “a
morning like this is enough to make you glad you can breathe.”
To this day I remember the beauty of that rugged, grizzled, hairy
seaman’s eyelashes. They were long and thick, shadowing the eyes softly
like the lashes of a young girl.
“I’m sure, sir, we wish you luck--to you and the young lady--all of us,”
he said shamefacedly; and his bass, half-concealed mutter was quite as
sweet to my ears as a celestial melody; it was, after all, the sanction
of simple earnestness to my desires and hopes--a witness that he and his
like were on my side in the world of romance.
“Well, go forward now, Mike,” Sebright said, as I took the pistol.
“It’s a blessing to talk to one’s own people,” I said, expansively, to
him. “He’s a fine fellow.” I stuck the pistol in my belt. “I trust I
shall never need to use barrel or butt again, as long as I live.”
“A very sensible wish,” Sebright answered, with a sort of reserve of
meaning in his tone; “especially as on board here we couldn’t find you a
single pinch of powder for a priming. Do you notice the consort we have
this morning?”
“What do I want with powder?” I asked. “Do you mean that?” I pointed
to the white sail of the schooner. Sebright, looking hard at me, nodded
several times.
“We sighted her as soon as day broke. D’you know what she means?”