JULIA CALLS "JOHNNY!"
It was about half-past two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun shone
hotly. The breeze was a pleasant wind for that boat, and the captain
put her dead before it and blew onwards into the boundless distance,
squarely seated at the amidship helm, with the white and placid face of
the drugged girl at his feet.
He would often look at her with a passionate eagerness, and then
direct his brilliant eyes over the sea, and his countenance was now
shocking with its expression of real madness, charged with the ghastly
illumination of his one maniacal belief, that the girl, who was fresh
from the sea when he missed his boy, knew where he was and would take
him to the child, and then they would return to the ship, and once more
the drum would rattle and the whistle awaken the birds in the rigging.
Never before in all human tradition of ocean life had fate painted
upon the bosom of the deep a picture more wonderful by virtue of its
secret and tragic meaning. There would be nothing in the mere scene of
a beautiful clipper ship under all plain sail, her canvas hollowing
inwards visibly, to all intents and purposes derelict; there would be
nothing in the spectacle of a little open boat borne onwards by the
humming heart of its swelling square of canvas, steered by a lonely
figure, the other being hidden. It might be to a distant eye the flight
of a single survivor from a floating pest-house. But it was the story
of the thing which makes it so extraordinary that I who am writing
pause with astonishment, dismayed also by the lack of the exquisite
cunning I need to submit the truth.
The girl had been drugged with morphia, but in what dose, and in what
doses the men, it is impossible to conjecture. The madman reading the
book of directions may have understood it, but insanity had rendered
memory useless when it came to his mixing the poison with the liquor
and the wine. But she was not dead; he would have found that out if he
had bared her breast and put his ear to the white softness. But would
she die in that sleep which was as death? for I believe it is the
heart's action that fails in such cases, and at any moment her soul
might return to God.
But he! poor unhappy wretch, if he understood what his mad but most
moving love for his child had impelled him to do, his perception would
not be as ours. His heart burned with desire that she should awake and
tell him in which direction he should steer, for already the ship was a
toy astern, three spires of ice-like radiance dipping to the eye on the
brows of the blue swell as the boat rose and sank, jewelling the water
with two foam-threaded lines of little yeasty bubbles.
Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some
a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's
rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the
brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the
early hours of the night.
But these were not _his_ speculations. His mind was intent on one
object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her
to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was.
It passed into about an hour before sunset.
From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's
brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like
a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to
understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his
forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And
once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor
brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld
the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had
created it he sighed and frowned.
He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but
he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the
westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering
toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the
moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows.
All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes
to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted
reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's
sail--so low seated was the gunwale of that boat--lay a small vessel,
partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts
were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the
trysail was stowed.
"He will be there! he will be there!" cried the captain in a voice that
swept like a shriek from his lips, and as the words left him the girl,
with a long, strange sigh, opened her eyes full upon the wild nightmare
face that was on a line with her head, for he had sprung to his feet.
"He is there!" he shouted again.
Then looking down he saw her watching him, and had he been sane would
have witnessed the awakening reason in her darkening into horror. She
tried to sit up, but her body was heavy as lead.
"Oh, what is this? Where am I?" she asked, more in a mutter than in
clear speech.
"He is there!" he cried, pointing with a frantic gesture, "and you
have known it throughout your sleep. Look!" He stooped, put his hands
under her arms and lifted her out of the bottom of the boat into the
stern-sheets, against whose back-board she sank.
Now morphia gives you but sleep if it does not kill you, and reason
with many is immediately active when slumber is ended; but the
captain's face alone would have sufficed to stimulate the most sluggish
consciousness into clear perception, and without understanding the
reason of it she grasped her situation.
She was alone in a boat with the mad captain of the _York_, and there
was nothing in sight save the everlasting circle of the sea girdling a
small broken vessel toward which the boat was running, for the captain
had his hand upon the yoke, and the little fabric was dead before it
once again.
Despair laid the ice-cold hand of death upon the poor girl's heart.
What could she do? What would _he_ do?
As the sun slowly floated down the slope he was glorifying, the moon
brightened her broken face. Julia's lips were dry; her tongue had the
rasp of a cat's upon the roof of her mouth.
"Is there water here?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. You shall have water. Put your hand upon this. What sha'n't
you have who have helped me to find him!"
She extended her hand and held the yoke steady, and he went into the
bows with the glass and filled it from the breaker, all as sensibly as
though he was right in mind; but he stood two or three moments to look
at the vessel they were nearing and talk to her.
She drank with the thirst of fever, and then perfect realisation
possessing her, a little impulse of hope quickened the beat of her
heart, for she thought to herself, made cool by hope, "There are people
in that ship, and I shall be saved."
The vessel was a small brig, floating on a cargo of timber. She showed
a tolerable height of side, and judging from her condition she had
started a butt, and the inrush had overmastered the pump, and as her
davits were empty her people had no doubt got away in the boats. She
made a churchyard picture for forlornness, with the broken moon hanging
over her, though daylight still throbbed in folds of cloud in the deep
west.
Julia saw with a fainting heart that the brig was deserted, and she
turned her eyes up to God and asked what should she do?
The captain stood in silence, with one hand backward upon the yoke, his
head inclined forward with intent, searching stare.
"He may be in that brig," at last he said. "What moved then? No, 'twas
the swing of the forebrace. And if he is not in that vessel," he
continued, in a voice of cunning, "you who know where he is will tell
me where to steer."
She brought the whole of her wits together in her resolution to live,
and remembered that she had given some order to this man's insanity
by her system of answering his talk. She exclaimed with all the
tranquillity she could summon:
"If he is not in that vessel, Captain Layard, you will let me rest in
her for the night, because if you keep me sitting in this open boat
I shall be worn out, or I might die--I am not strong--and how, then,
could I help you to find little Johnny?"
"Right! You are right," he answered, swiftly; "you shall rest in that
brig if he is not there; but if he is there," changing his voice into a
note of triumph, he added, "we must rejoin the ship, because I want the
men to see him. And I am dying for his company at night, and for the
sound of his drum."
As he spoke these words the boat was alongside the abandoned timberman,
and with the dexterity of a sailor--for in all professional work he
was as sane as the sanest--he put the helm down, sprang to let go the
halliards of the lug, and secured the boat by passing her painter
through a channel plate.
This brig had old-fashioned channels, which were platforms secured
to the ship's side so as to give a wide spread to the shrouds and
backstays. The boat sat close beside the main-channel. With the
resolution of one who works for life the girl seized the lanyards of
the dead-eyes, and with the ease which her graceful figure would have
promised gained the platform of channel, and a minute later the deck.
With aberration disciplined by professional habit the captain went to
work, his intentions being perfectly sane, save that he discovered an
extraordinary anxiety and eagerness to get on board the brig. He knew
that he and the girl were to pass the night in the vessel, and so, with
the quick motions of madness and with the strength which madness often
confers, he got the breaker of water into the main-channel, then placed
beside it the stock of provisions he had stowed away aft, and called to
Julia:
"Do you see him?"
"Come on deck, and we will look," she answered, for now that she stood
on a solid deck her nerve had returned.
"Steady this breaker on the rail," he called.
He handed it on to the rail, and she held it. He then threw the
provisions on to the deck, leapt inboard, and placed the breaker
betwixt a couple of loose planks. The moon was shining brightly, and
its light rippled in lines of lustrous pearl. The heave of the sea was
slow and solemn, the wind was soft and weak, and the west was still
scored with streaks of crimson; but night was at hand, and some stars
were trembling in the east.
She was one of those little brigs which are among the quaintest of
the marine objects of the port or harbour. Her forward-deck from the
main-hatchway was heaped with timber cleverly stowed, with room for
a little caboose and a narrow alley to it from the hatch. Some of the
running rigging lay loose about the decks, and this gave her a look of
confusion. Otherwise, from the appearance of her deck cargo, it was
clear that she had not been hurt by weather. A deck-house nearly filled
the quarter-deck; there was just room on either hand for a man to walk.
The captain stood silent for a minute staring about him. He then
muttered:
"Nothing moves; I see nothing alive. He may be there. Come, for it will
be you to see him first."
He went to the door of the deck-house, and Julia followed. Two windows
stood on either side the door, and four windows ran down either wall.
But when they entered the moon made so faint a light through the door
and the windows that it was difficult to see. Yet distinctive features
of the interior were visible: a table, three or four chairs, and a
bulkhead abaft, which might screen from the living-room two holes for
the skipper and his mate to sleep in.
"Call him," whispered the captain, as though he stood in a dead-house.
"Johnny!" cried the girl, "come to father if you are here, Johnny!"
She had a wonderful spirit to say this. She felt the horrible mockery
of it and the recoil of its ghastly derisiveness upon her heart, but
she knew that Hardy could not be far off, and would seek her. The
passion of life was strong in her, and she judged that her only chance
lay in inspiriting the poor man's dreadful conviction that she could
help him to find his son.
"Call him again," said the captain, and again she called.
He advanced a step, and she saw him in the faint suffusion straining
in a posture of desperate gaze, of desperate hearkening, as though his
teeth were set and the sweat of blood was on his brow, and the palms of
his hands were bloody with the penetration of the finger-nails.
At that moment she heard a single stroke of a bell. She started with
a cry, with instant rejoicing, for she believed there were men in the
vessel.
"What was that?" said the captain.
"A bell!" she exclaimed.
"O God! it may be Johnny!" he shouted, and he rushed through the open
door.
She quickly followed; she was not a superstitious fool, she was a girl
at sea, and, as a girl might, she supposed that if a bell were struck
upon a ship's deck it was by a man.
A small bell was hung betwixt the foremast and the foremost end of the
galley or caboose, and immediately under it lay, bottom up, secured
to the deck, a small tub of a boat. It was easy to understand why the
bell should have tolled. It had been struck by some bight of buntline
or clewline in the sway of the brig as she heeled to the fold, and the
sharp return of the bell jerked the tongue against the metal side in a
single stroke.
But the captain was too mad to understand this, and Julia was a girl at
sea without eyes for bights of running gear. She was startled, nay, a
sudden horror of superstition visited her when following the captain.
She stood near the bell and saw no signs of human creature. She cast
looks of fear all about; one, even one, man would protect her against
the horrible yokedom of this passage. The planks had the sheen of satin
in the moonlight, and the power of the satellite sufficed to fling dark
shadows upon the decks, and these shadows moved as the brig rolled. But
she saw no man; and what ghostly hand then had struck that bell? For
the night might go before the swing of the bight of gear should, by
adjustment of the rolling of the vessel, exactly hit the bell again and
make it ring.
The captain began to call, "Johnny, Johnny, where are you? Come out of
your hiding-place, little sonny. Here's father waiting for you."
He breathed deep, listening and gazing about him; but no other reply
reached his ear than the sob of water under the bow, the moan of night
wind in the rigging, the sullen slap of canvas against the mast.
"Do you see him?" the captain asked, and the eyes of madness sparkled
in the moonshine as he turned his gaze upon the girl.
She answered, huskily, "No, I do not see him. Who struck that bell?"
"He did," said the captain. "O God! O everlasting Father! Why does he
hide himself from me?"
He clasped his hands and raised them and looked up, and in that posture
he muttered as though he prayed, and all the while Julia was staring
about her, faint with fear, and with the sight of that imploring figure
of afflicted manhood; for who had struck the bell? And did the dead
come to life again in phantoms? And was the spirit of Johnny invisibly
present?
Poor Julia!
"He may come out of his hiding-place if we go aft," said the captain in
his voice of cunning. "Stop!"
He stepped to the little caboose and entered it.
"Not here, not here," he groaned as he came out, "but we must have
patience. We will sit and wait. We'll sit and watch the deck, and at
any moment you may see his little figure coming along."
Weak with fear and superstition, and the horror of her ghastly
situation, she followed the miserable man to the deck-house. He entered
and brought out two chairs, which he placed in front of the door,
and they sat down. It was certain that the man believed the child to
be in this abandoned vessel, and this was assurance to Julia that he
would not compel her to enter the boat and sail away in search of the
boy. The thought inspired some faint hope; she knew that this was no
unfrequented tract of ocean, and that even if Hardy did not seek her,
any hour next day might bring along some ship which she could signal to
by flourishing her handkerchief. But Hardy! She began to think whilst
her dreadful companion sat beside her staring along the moonlighted
deck, and waiting for his boy to come. She fully understood that she
had been drugged; her thoughts went to the medicine-chest; had the
captain poisoned Hardy and the rest of the crew that he might steal
her from the ship? This puzzled her, for if the crew had been drugged
they might have been drugged to death by the irresponsible hand of this
madman, and Hardy would be lost to her for ever, and his ship would not
come to rescue her.
These were her thoughts "too deep for tears," but it was fortunate
that she had slept soundly and well in the boat, for now, though
wearied in bone and faint at heart, she was as sleepless as the poor,
tireless creature beside her. She could not have endured to enter the
deck-house and rest there; she needed the companionship of the moon
and the stars, and the visible surface of the deep blackening out from
either hand the wake of the luminary to its limitless recesses. The
whisper of the wind in the rigging was companionship, but the movements
of the shadows upon the whitened planks were a perpetual fear, for who
had struck the bell? and was the vessel haunted? Her throat was parched
and she asked for water.
"Certainly; oh, yes. He is long in coming, but when he comes we'll
rejoin the ship," the captain said as he rose, and quite sanely he went
to the breaker, filled the tumbler, and returned with a glassful and a
biscuit.
There was the courtesy of good breeding in the poor fellow as he handed
her the glass, for the soul that is never mad will shine through
disease, and Captain Layard, who was born a gentleman, proved a
gentleman even when insane. She drank gratefully and ate the biscuit.
He took the glass from her and filled it for himself, but did not eat.
Then he returned to his chair, and that dreadful watch on deck again
began. Often he would say:
"Do you see him? Why should he keep in hiding?"
And sometimes he would quit his seat and go to the rail, and look into
the sea over the side.
The water swarmed with fire this night; the chilly sea-glow started in
fibres, in clouds like luminous smoke, in coils like revolving eels,
and it is conceivable that the crazed eye which was bent upon these
lights should fashion them into phantasms, into grotesque shapes, into
the crowd of brassy faces which the sealed but waking vision beholds
when the brain is drugged. He would spend twenty minutes in searching
the waters, and then cross to the other side and spend a quarter of
an hour in a like hunt. Always when he returned to his chair he would
mutter to himself, "Why doesn't he come?" And once he started up with
a frantic cry which was frightful with inarticulateness; he dashed his
hand to his forehead and held it there, with his left arm stiffened out
and the fingers curled with the agony of his mind.
At that moment the bell was again struck, and now it was Julia who
shrieked. She started up and bent her head forward, thinking to see the
figure that had struck the bell. The captain broke into a wild laugh.
"I see him! I see him!" he cried. "O Johnny, I'm your father!" and
he started into a run with his arms outstretched, as if to seize the
phantom he beheld.
He ran past the bell, and crying, "I am coming, Johnny, I am coming!"
climbed on to the top of the deck load, and in a strange croaking
voice, as though it proceeded from some huge sea-bird sailing overhead,
he exclaimed:
"There you are at last, my Johnny! Father is coming to you!" and sprang
overboard.
Julia fell upon the deck and lay lifeless in a swoon.