Akshelah looked very handsome as she sat on a clean brown coil of rope,
with all the colours of the evening playing round her head. I had been
silent for so long that my maid at last sought to learn the cause. I
told her that I had been thinking of home, and I was sure that Antoine
would allow the thistles to take possession of my clearing. Then
Akshelah told me a secret.
“After you had gone away my father called the people together,” she
said, with startling gravity. “The new factor lent axes, and the men
were cutting the logs along Split Leaf Creek when I came away in my
canoe.”
The girl looked at me and laughed, and I had to ask what she meant.
“The chief promised that your new home should be ready before the
ending of Nepin; and when my father says a thing, it is done. But
Antoine said you would never come back.”
These were the people who had sworn to give me their friendship!
Akshelah went on regarding me with her fawn-like eyes.
“Ah, I know,” she said quickly, delighted at having caught the
impression. “You see no owls.”
She meant I was suffering from home-sickness. When a camp moves to new
ground there are no owl visitors at first, and the people think of
their late home where the birds came each night.
“I am glad,” said the girl; but when I asked why, she only said again,
“I am glad,” and laughed and sang until MacCaskill came up, large and
hot.
Now Akshelah was not overwhelmed with affection for MacCaskill, whom
she considered too serious a being for her world; so she went on
singing, by way of protest at his having added himself to our company,
and called down upon herself the rebuff, “Quit your noise, gal!” Then
she said petulantly:
“It is the song of the god of the green mantles.”
“Well, quit it,” said the factor. “I’ve no use for it. Gals are always
a-worryin’ ye,” he muttered morosely. “They’ll worry on the Day of
Judgment, an’ after that if they ain’t stopped. Don’t matter where ye
go, there they are, a-waitin’ to worry ye, first chance, or no chance
at all.”
The old fellow was upset. He had been scouting below, and had
encountered Olaffson, resting after a spell of stoking. The Icelander
had answered every question with astonishing readiness. He had owned
that he was following the fortunes of Father Lacombe, but having no
money, was working his passage. Men were not plentiful, and the great
majority preferred the well-paid labour of the lumber and fishing
stations to the poor pay and hard life upon the dangerous sea. The
unprincipled Olaffson had reiterated his willingness to devote himself,
body and soul, to our service, and finally had sworn entire ignorance
as to the whereabouts of Redpath.
“I thought the little skunk was a fool,” MacCaskill burst forth,
“guessin’ Redpath supplied the brains of the business. It ain’t so,
Rupe. Olaffson swore how Redpath had left him before they got to Gull,
promising to meet him there, but never came to time. Swore he hadn’t
set eyes on him since.”
“He’s lying,” I said.
“Course he’s lyin’. It’s the way he does it that worries me.”
A party came to join us, Lennie, the mate, Dave second engineer, and
the steward, old and greasy, with fish scales clinging to his bare
arms. Before the convivial plug of tobacco had finished its first
round, the mock priest himself appeared, holding the skirt of his
cassock in a long white hand. The officers of the ship obsequiously
made space.
“What a magnificent evening!” murmured the adventurer, as he took his
place among us.
What was his plan?
I was too well accustomed to the radiant atmosphere of my country to
give particular notice to the sunset. The warmth was perfect; the
ship slipped freely through the tinted water; there were scarcely any
insects; over the west blazed the red, the gold, and the blue.
Lennie extended awkwardly the ragged plug torn by many teeth, with the
invitation:
“Will ye chew, father?”
“I never chew,” came the answer. “But I am not prohibited from smoking.”
MacCaskill peered across, and grunted audibly.
Beside the starboard beam behind me some sailors were coiling ropes,
and I heard a hoarse voice exclaim, “Gimme a match!” so I knew that Jim
Morrison was near.
The presence of the supposed priest stopped conversation. Having
lighted his pipe, Redpath looked over the silent group in his gracious
manner, then, clasping his fingers together, leaning forward, looking
at the sunset, he said:
“Let me hear the experiences of some of you. The mind is necessarily
active at evening time. Having lived much in the solitude, each one
of you must have felt, at some time or another, the power exerted by
solitude upon the imagination.”
The men looked unhappy, because this kind of talk was far beyond them.
Dave slewed his head round, and whispered to me:
“If the father would curse a bit, I’d make him out, maybe.”
Then Lennie stirred, and spoke for the credit of his position and his
ship.
“I ain’t used to company wi’ priests, father,” he said apologetically,
“but I did run agin a reg’lar boss one time, and I guess it’s the sort
of experience you’re after. ’Twas away down Grande Marais, time they
struck that find of copper. One evening I walked around to take a look
at the place, an’ struck an oldish chap, a-settin’ on a heap of wash,
an’ a-rubbin’ his leg. He was in long leggings, an’ a soft hat, an’
a flannel shirt, an’ a strap ’bout his middle, an’ I made out he was
a miner, though I allow he didn’t talk like one. We give each other
the nod and the good weather, an’ I said to him, ‘What’s your line,
stranger?’ an’ he said, sort o’ bashful, ‘Well, I’m a bishop come
to visit the miners.’ I got a-laughin’ at that, an’ course I wasn’t
a-goin’ to be beat, so I spoke up. ‘Ye don’t want to talk about it,
ole boy, but I’m jest a crowned head come around to patronise the
circuses.’ Then he set a-laughin’ fit to choke. But I tell ye, anyone
could have folded me up small, an’ stuffed me away inter a hand-grip,
when the boys come to tell me that same night how the ole chap was a
bishop.”
A short laugh went up, but evidently the men belonging to the ship had
heard the story before.
“You have not altogether grasped my meaning,” went on the soft voice,
in mild reproof. “It was my idea to learn how solitude affects your
minds individually. Let me give you a personal illustration.”
He kept his eyes upon the ever-changing colours on the water, and the
men looked at one another in distress.
“Experience in a lonely mission, even with much to occupy my thoughts,
has shown me that solitude makes a man dream. They are strange things
these dreams, and harmful if allowed to dominate the mind, but the
unhappy part of it is that they pass rapidly, leaving merely a sense of
melancholy, which, I am ashamed to say, will sometimes interfere with
duty.”
The adventurer bent his head, coughed, then proceeded:
“One cannot hold and retain these fancies, any more than one can detain
and fasten down a shadow. The entire charm of a dream is for the
dreamer. He can think over it and enjoy it, but if he be rash enough
to undertake a description he will find he can neither begin, nor
continue, nor end. He has, in short, nothing to talk about. We have
this dream-like picture of Nature around us now.” He threw his two
hands away from him. “Let us suppose that the most graphic writer the
world knows should pen a description of this scene, and that the same
should be given us to read. We should find it wanting, and although we
may be comparatively illiterate, our imagination, quickened by living
long in the solitude, would be able to supply all the deficiencies in
this description, so long as we kept to our thoughts.”
“Say!” exclaimed Dave miserably; “what language is it, anyhow?”
Was there anything going on in another part of the ship?
The pleasant voice made me sleepy, despite my suspicions.
“I may say that my own temperament is artistically affected by,
firstly, such a coloured evening as this; secondly, by moonlight upon
the water; and thirdly, by music. How often have we watched the burning
pathway of the moon! How often have we longed to take our boat along
that road, which we have thought may lead to some unknown land of
happiness! You follow my meaning?”
MacCaskill was laughing behind his hand.
“Quite a priest!” muttered Dave admiringly.
“I kin understand a young feller a-settin’ out in the moon,” said the
steward ponderously. “Did it meself one time, when I was worryin’ ’bout
me little gal, though it only come to her marryin’ a feller wi’ a
tidier face than mine.”
The adventurer resumed his high-flown talk. What he said might be
nonsense, but it succeeded in producing the impression he desired, and
in bringing the majority of his listeners under his influence. Had
I not known the real identity of the speaker, his musical voice and
delightful manner would have captured me with the spell that held the
others.
I closed my ears and used my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that
Akshelah had gone fast asleep. My second discovery showed me that
the mate was standing behind me, his face perfectly vacant. Redpath
still talked, and his sentences became more elaborate. MacCaskill was
smoking heavily, his hat tilted over his eyes.
Suddenly an extraordinary impulse caused me to exclaim loudly:
“Who’s at the wheel?”
An ominous silence followed, during which I became conscious that my
voice had not been untouched with suspicion. Redpath stopped in the
middle of a parenthesis, and his head came round. I felt small and weak
when his eyes met mine.
Sandy woke up, and Lennie opened his mouth in indignation:
“You’re runnin’ this ship since when? What you want rattlin’ the father
when he’s preachin’? Ship’s all right, ain’t it?”
“The young man is excitable,” said Father Lacombe magnificently.
“The Icelander we took on at Gull’s at the wheel,” said Sandy,
addressing the captain. “I gave it up to him for a spell. He steers
good enough.”
MacCaskill shifted himself sharply, and I was sure the idea of
treachery entered his mind also.
I had not lived with Nature all my life without learning how to
interpret her moods. The silence had become unnatural; the throb of the
screw was intensely loud; the atmosphere was as motionless as a sheet
of glass; the water had become stagnant; a single mosquito hovered
overhead, and gave out a noise like a trumpet. My glance went to the
south, where trouble arises. A livid cloud, shaped like a snake,
ascended slowly from the water-line, its “tail” wriggling madly. It was
the time of my triumph, and I pointed with a warning cry.
The colours of the sunset settled into a uniform haze of a deep red so
intense as to be almost black.
Lennie was up in an instant.
“Dave!” he shouted, his voice pealing fearfully into the hollow
silence, “slow her down.” He turned to Sandy. “I’ll take the wheel.”
Only a minute back we had been in daylight, but already gloom had begun
to settle, and the air was full of insects.
“A bad night to follow,” said Redpath resignedly. It was the night he
had looked for. “There will be neither moon nor stars to cheer us on
our way.”
A crash sounded from the wheel-house, the smash of shivered glass,
the thud of a weighty body upon deck, an awful commotion in the
overwhelming silence, and the ship swerved off her course like a tired
horse.
Lennie ran forward, and almost collided with Olaffson, whose white
face looked horrid in the gloom. He carried a big stone, shapeless and
water-marked.
“Fell from heaven!” he gasped, “outer the clouds, an’ near fixed me.
Fell right inter the compass and smashed it up.”
The adventurer put out his long hands and took the stone.
“A meteorite,” he said slowly. “Such accidents have occurred before.”
He turned, and heaved the fragment overboard. I had seen plenty like it
upon the beach at Gull.
Lennie was shivering with superstition as he spun the wheel round.
“Stone from heaven above beats all,” he muttered. Then he called:
“Sandy, bring the spare compass outer my cabin! Get a move on.”
The mate went, and was soon back. The compass was not to be found.
Lennie swore desperately, resigned his charge of the wheel, and
searched himself, but with the same result.
“You must have mislaid it, captain,” suggested Sandy, while the great
silence before the wind was heavy upon us.
Then Father Lacombe stepped forward, and extended a small, toy-like
thing with his unfailing courtesy.
“I have here, captain, a little compass, which I carry to guide me in
my journeys through the forest,” he said, anxious for the safety of the
ship. “If it will be of any service to you in determining your course,
consider it entirely at your service.”