LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
It was a sail.
He stood with his eyes still shaded, motionless but for the movement of
the boat.
From away out there a hand seemed to have reached clutching at his
heart. The star so steadfast and so still held him by its very
stillness and steadfastness. There, where the sunlight showed that
motionless point of light were crowded decks, bending spars, snoring
sails, life, motion; a ship breasting her way through the blue sea,
heeling to the breeze.
All that was there. Here, nothing but a star marking poignantly the
vacancy of illimitable distance. The wind had freshened, it was as
though the ship had sent the joyous breath of life before her, the
breezed-up water smacked the boat merrily, and even as he looked the
star grew, lifting steadily as the mainsails joined the topsails above
the sea line.
As Gaspard watched, his confidence and assurance left him. The blind
trust in chance that had possessed him all day vanished now that chance
had shewn her hand.
At once and vividly his true position stood before him, and the
horrible chances of death that lay in it, and, so strange a thing is
mind, now and for the first time did the sense of his own wealth in the
possession of these twenty-one big pieces of gold take possession of
him. Side by side with the fear of not being rescued stood the vision
of the possibilities that lay in them. Each one weighed as much as
three twenty-franc pieces. Six hundred and three francs; with that what
might he not do! It was the only big bit of luck that had ever fallen
in his way, and it would be doubly bitter to die with his luck in his
hands.
And, still, as he watched, the sail grew. The vessel was not nearly
so far off as she appeared; for the boat gave a low horizon. For this
reason, too, she seemed bigger than she really was. That she was
heading straight for the boat he could not doubt, yet he stood torn by
the fear that she would miss him, pass him by, not sight him.
His imaginative mind saw her passing, saw her fading away, saw himself
standing and calling after her and cursing her; so vivid was the
obsession that for a moment, as he drew the picture, blazing wrath shot
up in his heart towards her captain, curses rose to his lips, and sweat
started on his brow.
Then he wiped his face with his coat sleeve, and unable to remain in
idleness a moment longer, took the sculls and headed the boat for the
point from which the vessel was approaching.
Useless, the moment his back was turned on the sail it was gone from
his mind as from his sight. He had to keep it in view and shifting his
position with the sculls half drawn in, he sat watching.
He had not so good an horizon sitting as standing, yet the sail had
sensibly increased in size even allowing for the altered elevation.
With a dip of the sculls he kept the boat so that he was always
facing the approaching vision, and sitting thus the picture before
him resolved itself into three components: the after part of the
boat, white, clean-scoured by spray, and burning in the sun with the
exception of the space covered by his shadow; the blue of sea and sky;
the ship.
Seated, with the sculls ready to correct the boat when she twisted to
the wind and the current, his eyes passed from the boat to the far-off
ship, from the ship to the sea and sky.
And still she grew, as a child grows in the womb, as an idea in the
mind, adding member to member, significance to significance. He could
see now the fore topsail distinct from the fore course. She was a
square rigged vessel as to the fore part, but coming as she was, the
spread of fore and topsails screened her rig.
She had altered, too, in colour; the frost white star was now a
truncated pyramid of pale but brilliant rose, around which the deep
blue heart of the sky paled to emerald by contrast.
And still she grew, motionless, or seeming not to move, yet becoming
more definite, expanding as a bud expands, voiceless, and like a vision
developing in a dream.
Moment joined itself to moment, minute to minute. She might now be ten
miles away, or maybe more, her course would bring her directly to the
boat and she would sight it to a certainty _if she had light_.
It was his own shadow cast by the oblique rays of the sun on seat and
bottom board and thwart that suggested the chilling clause.
The sun was little more than an hour from his setting; would he cut the
sea line before the vessel sighted the boat?
It was a race between the sun and the ship. He knew quite well that
though she was coming apparently dead on to him, the chances were that
she might pass him by a considerable distance, and, as though the
thought had cast a blight on her, for a long time she hung, not seeming
to alter in size. Then magically, she took distinctness, mystery and
beauty left her; in a short half hour she became clearly defined, a
small vessel of perhaps two hundred tons, at a distance of perhaps five
miles. She would not be doing more than eight or nine knots.
Gaspard looked behind him at the sun. It had outraced the ship, there
were still diameters between it and the horizon, but the western blue
was just beginning to turn, to tinge with vague orange, as though an
impalpable mist of gold dust were rising from the sea.
But now the ship, as a runner strains when near the goal, seemed
straining to reach him. Moment by moment she leapt nearer, and the old
stained sails that had lost the vague rose of distance caught now the
first touch of gold from the sunset.
The eastern sky still held its blue, and against it the ship burned
like a ship of gold, and before her prow the water divided like
glittering silk cut by a golden sword.
Scarcely a mile away she leapt more triumphantly into life, she seemed
within hail; standing up and stripping off his coat Gaspard waved it,
shouting against the wind, delirious, forgetful of distance, forgetful
of the sun and then—just as though a bad wizard had touched her she
began to lose her brilliancy; she had seemed springing towards him with
golden arms outspread, triumphant, and seeking to save him and then,
just as though indifference had suddenly seized her, she seemed to lose
her speed.
He turned his head. God! the sun was gone, just a trace of fire
lingered beneath the gold of the sunset, through which, like a dark
blue wind, was stealing the night.
* * * * *
The vessel from a ship had turned to a phantom lost in a world of
violent shadow. With the passing of the sun the breeze fell away
to a gentle breathing of air. Then, in that moment of darkness and
indecision, before the stars have taken full possession of the sky,
standing up and straining his eyes he could not see the ship at all.
Ah! here she came at last, stealing along in the starlight with sails
just filling and, then, more clearly to view as ten million stars lit
the sea, turning it to frosted silver.
At four knots without a light showing, softly and seeming the very
embodiment of treachery and evasion she came. She would pass by some
five cable lengths to starboard and Gaspard, seizing the sculls turned
the boat’s head to cut her off.
As he rowed he shouted, and had anyone on board heard him they might
have fancied it, so thin and hard was his voice, the crying of a sea
gull, but from all appearances no one heard him, for not a light shewed.
Now she bulked up enormous, a great trapezium of ebony cutting the
silver sky; he ceased rowing, shouted again, and paused to listen. So
close was she that he could hear the wash of the water at her fore
foot, the creaking of blocks and the slatting of the scarcely filled
sails.
Scarcely a cable length away and making to pass him by half that
distance she came, black as ebony, a barquentine, silent as a phantom,
stealthy as a thief. Then, as he hailed her again with a last
despairing cry, she burst into voice.