"Oh, of course, if you need the sea-voyage--" I began.
"I don't; I need you," he said, savagely; "I need the stimulus of our
daily quarrel. I never disagreed so pleasantly with anybody in my
life; it agrees with me; I am a hundred per cent. better than I was
last week."
I was inclined to resent this, but something in the deep-lined face of
the invalid softened me. Besides, I had taken a hearty liking to the
old pig.
"I don't want any mawkish sentiment about it," he said, observing me
closely; "I won't permit anybody to feel sorry for me--do you
understand?"
"I'll trouble you to use a different tone in addressing me," I
replied, hotly; "I'll feel sorry for you if I choose to!" And our
usual quarrel proceeded, to his deep satisfaction.
By six o'clock next evening I had Halyard's luggage stowed away in the
cat-boat, and the pretty nurse's effects corded down, with the newly
hatched auk-chicks in a hat-box on top. She and I placed the osier
cage aboard, securing it firmly, and then, throwing tablecloths over
the auks' heads, we led those simple and dignified birds down the path
and across the plank at the little wooden pier. Together we locked up
the house, while Halyard stormed at us both and wheeled himself
furiously up and down the beach below. At the last moment she forgot
her thimble. But we found it, I forget where.
"Come on!" shouted Halyard, waving his shawls furiously; "what the
devil are you about up there?"
He received our explanation with a sniff, and we trundled him aboard
without further ceremony.
"Don't run me across the plank like a steamer trunk!" he shouted, as I
shot him dexterously into the cock-pit. But the wind was dying away,
and I had no time to dispute with him then.
The sun was setting above the pine-clad ridge as our sail flapped and
partly filled, and I cast off, and began a long tack, east by south,
to avoid the spouting rocks on our starboard bow.
The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the black
surf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tipped
wings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth.
Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in the
ocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in the
Atlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen or
unseen, always impresses the human mind--perhaps oppresses it. We were
very silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened to
crimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long after
the rose-tint died out in the zenith.
Our progress was slow; at times, although the sail filled with the
rising land breeze, we scarcely seemed to move at all.
"Of course," said the pretty nurse, "we couldn't be aground in the
deepest hole in the Atlantic."
"Scarcely," said Halyard, sarcastically, "unless we're grounded on a
whale."
"What's that soft thumping?" I asked. "Have we run afoul of a barrel
or log?"
It was almost too dark to see, but I leaned over the rail and swept
the water with my hand.
Instantly something smooth glided under it, like the back of a great
fish, and I jerked my hand back to the tiller. At the same moment the
whole surface of the water seemed to begin to purr, with a sound like
the breaking of froth in a champagne-glass.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Halyard, sharply.
"A fish came up under my hand," I said; "a porpoise or something--"
With a low cry, the pretty nurse clasped my arm in both her hands.
"Listen!" she whispered. "It's purring around the boat."
"What the devil's purring?" shouted Halyard. "I won't have anything
purring around me!"
At that moment, to my amazement, I saw that the boat had stopped
entirely, although the sail was full and the small pennant fluttered
from the mast-head. Something, too, was tugging at the rudder,
twisting and jerking it until the tiller strained and creaked in my
hand. All at once it snapped; the tiller swung useless and the boat
whirled around, heeling in the stiffening wind, and drove shoreward.
It was then that I, ducking to escape the boom, caught a glimpse of
something ahead--something that a sudden wave seemed to toss on deck
and leave there, wet and flapping--a man with round, fixed, fishy
eyes, and soft, slaty skin.
But the horror of the thing were the two gills that swelled and
relaxed spasmodically, emitting a rasping, purring sound--two gasping,
blood-red gills, all fluted and scolloped and distended.
Frozen with amazement and repugnance, I stared at the creature; I felt
the hair stirring on my head and the icy sweat on my forehead.
"It's the harbor-master!" screamed Halyard.
The harbor-master had gathered himself into a wet lump, squatting
motionless in the bows under the mast; his lidless eyes were
phosphorescent, like the eyes of living codfish. After a while I felt
that either fright or disgust was going to strangle me where I sat,
but it was only the arms of the pretty nurse clasped around me in a
frenzy of terror.
There was not a fire-arm aboard that we could get at. Halyard's hand
crept backward where a steel-shod boat-hook lay, and I also made a
clutch at it. The next moment I had it in my hand, and staggered
forward, but the boat was already tumbling shoreward among the
breakers, and the next I knew the harbor-master ran at me like a
colossal rat, just as the boat rolled over and over through the surf,
spilling freight and passengers among the sea-weed-covered rocks.
When I came to myself I was thrashing about knee-deep in a rocky pool,
blinded by the water and half suffocated, while under my feet, like a
stranded porpoise, the harbor-master made the water boil in his
efforts to upset me. But his limbs seemed soft and boneless; he had no
nails, no teeth, and he bounced and thumped and flapped and splashed
like a fish, while I rained blows on him with the boat-hook that
sounded like blows on a football. And all the while his gills were
blowing out and frothing, and purring, and his lidless eyes looked
into mine, until, nauseated and trembling, I dragged myself back to
the beach, where already the pretty nurse alternately wrung her hands
and her petticoats in ornamental despair.
Beyond the cove, Halyard was bobbing up and down, afloat in his
invalid's chair, trying to steer shoreward. He was the maddest man I
ever saw.
"Have you killed that rubber-headed thing yet?" he roared.
"I can't kill it," I shouted, breathlessly. "I might as well try to
kill a football!"
"Can't you punch a hole in it?" he bawled. "If I can only get at
him--"
His words were drowned in a thunderous splashing, a roar of great,
broad flippers beating the sea, and I saw the gigantic forms of my two
great auks, followed by their chicks, blundering past in a shower of
spray, driving headlong out into the ocean.
"Oh, Lord!" I said. "I can't stand that," and, for the first time in
my life, I fainted peacefully--and appropriately--at the feet of the
pretty nurse.
* * * * *
It is within the range of possibility that this story may be doubted.
It doesn't matter; nothing can add to the despair of a man who has
lost two great auks.
As for Halyard, nothing affects him--except his involuntary sea-bath,
and that did him so much good that he writes me from the South that
he's going on a walking-tour through Switzerland--if I'll join him. I
might have joined him if he had not married the pretty nurse. I wonder
whether--But, of course, this is no place for speculation.
In regard to the harbor-master, you may believe it or not, as you
choose. But if you hear of any great auks being found, kindly throw a
table-cloth over their heads and notify the authorities at the new
Zoological Gardens in Bronx Park, New York. The reward is ten thousand
dollars.