undoubtedly culpable, had just this excuse, that the ship was far out
of the track of other vessels, and lying lapped in a profound calm,
still as a ship can ever be upon the ocean’s never-resting bosom. It
was my trick at the wheel, and although I had certainly been asleep
like the rest of my shipmates, I presently found myself wide awake, as
if an unfelt breath had in an instant swept my brain clear of those
bewildering mist-wreaths that usually hinder the mind on its return
to tangible things from its wanderings in the realms of the unknown.
Instinctively I glanced aloft, where the sails hung flatly motionless,
except for an occasional rippling flap, soft-sounding as the wing of a
mousing owl, as the vessel swayed dreamily over the caressing swell.
Overhead, the bright eye of Aldebaran looked down with a friendly gaze,
but not an air even of the faintest was there to stir the slumbering
keel. On the companion, a few feet away, the shapeless form of the
mate was dimly discernible, as in some incomprehensible tangle of limbs
he lay oblivious of his surroundings. Through the open after-leaf of
the cabin skylight came the close, greasy-smelling reek of the little
den below. The useless compass answered my inquiring peep with a vacant
stolidity, as if it were glued to the bottom of its bowl. Only the
clock seemed alive and watchful, telling me that for still another hour
I must remain at my post, although my presence there was the merest
formality.
So I turned my thoughts listlessly in the direction of the sailor’s
usual solace during long spells of lonely watch--the building of airy
visions of shore delights, when, the long voyage over, I should be free
once more for a short time with a little handful of fast-disappearing
gold wherewith to buy such pleasures as I could compass. As I thus
dreamed, the heavy minutes crawled away on leaden-shod feet, while
the palpable silence enwrapped me, almost making audible the regular
rhythm of my heart. But gradually out of this serene outward and inward
quiet there stole over me a nameless sense of fear, why or of what I
had no idea. Nay, I hardly recognised this benumbing stealthy change
in the calm normal flow of my being _as_ fear. It was an indefinite
alteration of all my faculties from healthy restful regularity to a
creeping stagnation, as of some subtle poison disintegrating my blood
and turning it into chilly dust. All the moisture of my body seemed
evaporating, my skin grew tighter, and my breath came in burning gasps
that scorched my nostrils and throat. Yet, while this disabling of
all my physical constituents was progressing, my mind was actively
rebelling against the mysterious paralysis of its usually willing
co-operators. Eagerly, fiercely, it demanded a reason, urged to instant
action of some kind. Then, still in the same fateful, hasteless manner,
my terror took a more definite shape. It, whatever was thus sapping my
most vital forces, was behind me, I felt it; I realised it; but what or
who or how it was I could not or dared not imagine. Dimly I dwelt upon
what I felt ought to be certain, that only about six feet of clear deck
separated me from the vacant plane of the sea, but that certainty would
not appear sure, as it ought to have done.
At last, by what seemed to me a superhuman effort of will, I summoned
all my resources and turned my body round. There lay the sleeping sea,
besprinkled all over with reflections of innumerable stars that shone
scarcely less brilliant on the smooth face of the deep than they did
in the inscrutable dome above. But among those simulated coruscations
lay what looked like the long straight folds of a shroud. Broadening
as it neared me, it faded away before its skirts reached the ship. My
dry, aching eyeballs followed its pallid outlines horizonwards until
at that indefinable limit where sea and sky seem to meet my fear took
shape. There in the blue-black heaven, its chin resting on the sea
margin, glared a gigantic skull, perfect in all its ghastly details,
and glowing with that unearthly light that only emanates from things
dead. Yet the cavernous openings of that awful visage, deep within
their darkness, showed a lurid suggestion of red that burned and faded
as if fed from some hidden furnace beyond. This horrible apparition,
so utterly at variance with the placid loveliness of its setting,
completed my undoing. I actually felt thankful for its appalling
hideousness as the sense that my endurance limit was reached came upon
me. With a feeling of unspeakable gratitude and relief, I felt my
parched-up bones melt, my whole framework collapsed, and I sank slowly
to the deck, all knowledge fading like the last flicker of an exhausted
lamp. But with the last gleam of sight I saw the Thing, elongated out
of all proportion, suddenly snap the unseen ligament that bound it to
the horizon. And immediately, some distance above, the sweet cool face
of the lovely moon shone full-orbed, to commence her triumphal march
across the sky. Then for an age I died.
By slow, painful stages life returned to me, as if the bewildered
spirit must creep and grovel through obscene tunnels and tortuous
grooves of interminable length before it could again reanimate the
helpless tabernacle awaiting it. But so great had been the shock, so
complete the disorganisation of all my powers, that for what seemed
hours after I became fully conscious again, I was unable to raise an
eyelash. The same profound peace still reigned, not a sound, hardly
a movement of the vessel. Slowly my eyes unclosed. I lay in a lake
of moonlight streaming from the radiant globe sailing up the blue,
now well advanced in her stately progress among the paling stars. As
I looked up at the splendid satellite I wondered vaguely how I could
ever have connected such a well-beloved object with the brain-withering
terror of the immediate past. The problem was beyond me, never an acute
reasoner at the best of times, but now mentally palsied by what I had
undergone. While I still lay in sentient inability to move I heard the
mate rise to his feet with a resounding yawn. The familiar noise broke
the spell that held me. I rose to my feet involuntarily and peered in
at the clock, which was on the stroke of four. “Eight bells, sir,” I
said, but in a voice so harsh and strange that the officer could not
believe his ears. “What’s that?” he queried wonderingly. I repeated
the words. He rose and struck the bell, but came aft immediately he
had done so and peered into my face as if to see who it was. “Ain’t ye
well?” he asked. “Y’ look like a cawpse.” I made some incoherent reply,
upon which he said quickly, “Here, go for’ard ’n turn in, ’relse I’m
damned if ye won’t be sick.” Listlessly I answered “Ay, ay, sir,” and
shambled forward to my stuffy bunk. My shipmates, heavy with sleep,
took no notice of me, and I turned in, to lie tossing feverishly,
every sinew in my body vibrating with pain so as to be almost
unbearable. A long spell of what I suppose was brain fever followed,
during which the terrible vision of that middle watch was re-enacted a
thousand times with innumerable fantastic additions. Out of that weary
waste of life I emerged transformed from a ruddy, full-faced youth into
a haggard, prematurely old man, while nothing but my stalwart physique
enabled me to survive. For the rest of the voyage my shipmates looked
upon me with awe, as upon one who had made a fearsome voyage into the
unseen world lying all around us, and been permitted to return wise
beyond the power of mortal speech to express. But my silence upon the
subject was only because I really had nothing to tell. Whence came
that marrow-freezing fear I shall never know, or why. What I _saw_
was simply such a grotesque distortion of the moon’s disc as is often
witnessed in low latitudes, when either sun or moon rising appears
to have the lower limb glued to the horizon for quite an appreciable
time, while fragments of mist or cloud passing over the luminous and
elongated face cause strange patterns to appear upon it. And when
suddenly the connection seems to break, the luminary apparently springs
several degrees at a bound into the clear sky above. Just an effect of
refraction--nothing more.
XII
A WAKING NIGHTMARE
Curious indeed was the freak of fortune which, before I was thirteen
years old, threw me like a frond of drifting seaweed upon one of the
scattered cays of the Mexican Gulf. About the manner of my arrival I
propose to say nothing here; sufficient for present purposes to note
that I was entirely alone upon that desolate patch of sand, hardly
worthy of the name of islet, its very existence as a fragment of dry
land dependent upon a bristling barrier of black boulders that bared
their ravening fangs at every ebb. When the tide was up their position
was solely marked by long lines of snowy breakers whose magnitude,
accumulated by a protracted struggle shorewards over the vast outlying
coral banks, was enormous,--so huge, in fact, that it was seldom
possible, even when standing upon the apex of the islet, to see the
horizon line, which stretched its perfect circle all around.
The defending fringe of jagged rocks formed by no means a continuous
barrier. In fact it was more properly a series of parallels
sufficiently separated to have admitted small vessels between them,
should the turbulent swell ever be quiet enough to permit such daring
navigation. At one point a sort of causeway ran seaward some hundreds
of feet at right angles to the beach. The crags of which this was
composed were bared at half ebb, but from their tops one could in
places look down into blue hollows where no bottom could be seen.
Except when the wind was high, this ridge, though exceedingly difficult
to traverse, from its broken character, was protected from battering
seas. Lying, as it did, so much nearer the land, and in a different
direction to the other barriers, it was sheltered by them to such an
extent that only upon rare occasions was it swept from end to end by a
lingering, lolloping swell that did not break.
Driven by that same pitiless necessity that had compelled me to ferret
out the means of existence somehow since I reached my tenth year, it
was no long time before I discovered that this rugged spur was the
best place for fishing, especially with regard to Crustacea, because a
multitude of fish inhabited the irregular cavities of the reef beneath.
And since I had water in abundance, a 400-gallon tank full having
washed ashore from the wreck, while of biscuit and fishing-tackle there
was also some store, I spent a good deal of my time upon the uneven
pathway formed by this natural pier. Contenting myself with small bait
cut from some luckless baby octopus I always waylaid at starting. I
was untroubled by fish too large for my immature strength, though on
several occasions I only just succeeded in tearing half the palpitating
body of my catch out of the eager jaws of some monster that rushed at
him as he made his involuntary journey upwards.
Although so young, I was fairly seasoned to alarms and not at all
nervous, which was as well, for if I had been I should probably have
died of fright during the first night of my stay on the islet. But
there was one inexplicable noise that always made me feel as if I had
swallowed a lump of ice accidentally when I heard it. Even while on
board the ship I never felt easy about it, the less so because I could
never find an explanation of its origin. It sounded as if some giant
had smitten the sea flatly with a huge paddle, or, still more, as if
an extra large whale were “lob-tailing”--_i.e._ poised in the water
head downwards, and striking deliberate blows upon its surface with
his mighty flukes. This is a favourite habit with the larger cetacea,
but only in the daytime, although I did not then know of it. The noise
which scared me, however, was only heard at night, when, with a calm
sea and not a breath of wind stirring, it assailed my ears like a
summons from the unseen world. For this cause alone I was always glad
to see the blessed daylight flooding the sky again.
Several days wore away uneventfully enough, and I was getting quite
inured to silence and solitude, when it befell that the ebb came
late in the afternoon. By the slant of the sun I judged it must be
somewhere about five o’clock when I climbed out along the slippery
causeway to my favourite spot--a smooth hollow in the crest of a great
boulder, from which comfortable perch I could look down on either
side into deep, blue water. Here I seated myself cosily, and soon
hauled up a dozen or so of sizable fish. Then, having ample provision,
I rolled up my line, and lounged at ease, sleepily surveying the
unspeakable glories of the sunset. Whether in the body or out of the
body I cannot tell, but the time slipped away unnoticed by me, till
suddenly I started up, every nerve tingling with fear at the sound I
so much dreaded somewhere very close at hand. I trembled so violently
that I could not go back just yet; indeed, I could not stand, but sank
into my stony seat. At that moment I turned my head to the right, and
saw rising out of the water apparently quite slowly a hideous shape,
if shape it could be said to possess any. In the gathering gloom it
appeared almost like a gigantic bat as far as its general outline could
be seen, but I never heard of a water-bat. For quite an appreciable
space it hung in the quiet air, changing all the placid beauty of the
evening into brain-benumbing horror for me; then with an unfolding
movement it fell upon the glassy surface, producing the awe-inspiring
sound I had so often shuddered at, its volume augmented tenfold by its
nearness. Like some fascinated bird, I remained motionless, staring
at the rapidly smoothing spot where the awful thing had disappeared.
Then suddenly the sea at my feet became all black, and out of its
depths there arose close at my side a monster that was the embodied
realisation of my most terrified imaginings. Its total area must have
been about 200 square feet. It was somewhat of a diamond shape, with a
tapering, sinewy tail about as long again as its body. Where I judged
its head to be was a convex hollow, which opened widely as it rose,
disclosing rows of shining teeth, set like those of a human being. At
each side of this gulf rose a spiral horn about two feet long, looking
like twisted whalebone, and guarding the eyes which lay between them.
Oh, those eyes! Though not much more than twice as large as a horse’s,
as they glared through the wide slits within which they festered the
ruddy sheen of the sunset caught them, making them glow bloodily with
a plenitude of ghastly ferocity that haunts me yet. And on either side
of the thing undulated gigantic triangular wings, raising its mass into
the air with noiseless ease.
All this and more I saw in the breathless space of its ascent; then it
hung between me and heaven, the livid corrupt-looking corrugations of
its underside all awork, as it seemed, to enfold my shrinking flesh.
Those fractions of a second, stretched into hours, during which my
starting pupils photographed every detail of the loathsome beast,
passed away at last, and it descended slantingly over me. Then amidst a
roar of water in my ears the darkness swallowed me up, and I knew no
more. I am inclined to think that I owe my life to the trancelike state
into which I had fallen, for although it appeared a frightfully long
time before I saw the sweet evening light again, I was not nearly so
exhausted as I have been on other occasions, when compelled to take a
long dive. But after I had scrambled up on to the rock again, wondering
to find myself still alive, such a recurrence of overmastering fear
seized me that it was all I could do to crawl crab-wise over the stony
pinnacles back to the sand again. My strength only held out until I had
reached a spot above high-water mark. There I subsided into blissful
unconsciousness of all things, and knew no more until a new day was
far advanced, and the terror of the previous night only a distressing
memory apparently of some previous stage of existence. Years afterwards
I learned that the hideous thing which had thus scared me almost to
death was one of the _raiidæ_, or skate tribe. Locally it is known
as the alligator guard, or devil fish, and, truly, its appearance
justifies such an epithet. It is apparently harmless to man, but why,
alone among the Cephalopteridæ, it should have the curious habit of
taking these nocturnal leaps out of water is a mystery.
XIII
THE DERELICT
She had been a staunch, well-found wooden barque of about 800 tons,
English built, but, like so many more of our sturdy old sailing
ships, in the evening of her days she had been bought by the thrifty
Norwegians. She bore on her ample stern the faded legend, _Olaf
Trygvasson, Trondhjem_. Backwards and forwards across the North
Atlantic to Quebec in summer, and to the Gulf Ports in winter, she had
been faithfully drogueing timber for them for several seasons, her
windmill-pump steadily going and the owners’ profits accumulating.
This last voyage, however, had been unfortunate from its commencement.
To the serious annoyance of Trygvasson and Company, no outward freight
was obtainable, while the passage was half as long again as it should
have been. A cargo was secured at last in Pensacola, with which not
only was her capacious hold crammed, but the whole deck fore and aft
as high as the shearpoles was piled with the balks, so that from the
forecastle-head to the taffrail she was flush--a windswept stretch
of slippery uneven planks with just a hole left here and there for
the hard-bitten mariners to creep down to their darksome dens below.
They were hardly clear of the harbour when one of those hurricane-like
squalls so common to the Florida Gulf burst upon her, tearing a whole
suit of sails from the yards and stays and sending them fleeting
to leeward like fluttering clouds of spindrift. Then gale after
gale buffeted her with unrelenting severity, treating the stolid,
long-suffering crew with persistent cruelty as they crept wearily
about the bitter eminence of the deck-load or clung half-frozen to
the yards wrestling with the crackling ice-laden canvas. There were
no complaints, for Scandinavian seamen endure the bitterest hardships
with wonderful patience, growling--that well-used privilege of British
seamen--being almost unknown among them.
At last there came a day when the wind grew more savage than they had
yet borne,--wind with a wrathful tearing edge to it, as well as a force
against which none of their canvas would stand for a moment. As a last
resource they hove her to under a tarpaulin cut from the lazarette
hatch, only two feet square, which they lashed in the mizen rigging.
This steadied her for some hours, keeping her head to the wind fairly
well, until a sea came howling down out of the grey hopelessness to
windward and caught her on the weather quarter. It twisted her up into
the wind, wrenching off the rudder-head as you would behead a shrimp.
Helpless, she fell off on the other tack just in time for a black
mountain of solid water to hurl itself upon the bluff of her bow and
sweep aft, tearing away with it boats, men, and all else that stood or
lay in its way. When that great flood had subsided she was a silent
ship. The only member of the crew left on deck was he who had been the
helmsman, but was now only a heap of broken bones lying in a confused
tangle just in the little space behind the wheel.
And then, being entirely at the mercy of the howling wind and scourging
sea, the doomed ship was gradually stripped of her various furniture.
Yards, released from position by the carrying away of the braces,
battered and banged about until they and their supporting spars fell
in ruin on the deckload and thundered alongside at the sturdy hull.
While this dismantling was in progress, a small boy of about thirteen
cowered in the murky cabin as far out of reach of the invading flood of
salt water as he could get, wondering wearily when the clamour overhead
would subside and somebody come below again. He was a London waif,
who, unwanted and forlorn, had been for several years drifting about
the world, the sport of every cross current of mischance until he had
landed at Pensacola, where Captain Neilsen, of the _Olaf Trygvasson_,
had in pity for his youthful loneliness given him a passage to London
in exchange for his services as cabin-boy. Although fairly well versed
in seafaring--for he had been nearly two years at the poor business--he
marvelled mightily at the uproar above and how it was he heard no
voices. The noise of falling spars, the dull crashing blows of the sea,
and the melancholy wailing of the wind were still so deafening that he
was able as yet to console himself with the thought that puny human
cries would be inaudible. But at last his suspense grew unbearable, and
dropping into the water, which was well above his waist, he struggled
on deck, to find himself sole representative of the crew, and the
vessel derelict.
A horror of great loneliness fell upon him. Long experience of hardness
had made him dry-eyed upon most occasions where tears would seem to be
indicated in one so young, but something clutched his throat now that
made him burst into a passionate fit of crying. In the full tide of
it he suddenly stopped and screamed frantically, “Larsen! Petersen!
Jansen!” but there was no voice nor any that answered.
The wind died away and the sea went down. There was a break in the
pall of gloomy clouds, through which the afternoon sun gleamed warmly,
even hopefully. But the brave and much-enduring old vessel was now
water-logged, kept afloat solely by her buoyant cargo. She lay over at
an angle of about 45°, the waves lap-lapping the edge of the deckload
on the lee-side. Without motive-power or guidance, the sport of the
elements, she drifted helplessly, hopelessly anywhither, a danger to
all navigation during the hours of darkness because almost invisible.
And since she moved not except with the natural oscillation of the
ocean, the rank parasitic life with which the sea teems fastened upon
her hungrily wherever the water reached, so that in a short time she
began to smell ancient and fish-like as Caliban.
Amidst that rapidly increasing growth of weed and shell, the lonely
lad moved ghost-like, his sanity preserved as yet by the natural
hopefulness of youth. But a fixed melancholy settled and strengthened
upon him. He ate barely sufficient to support his frail life, although
there was a sufficiency of coarse food and water for many days. At
intervals he held long rambling conversations with himself aloud,
peopling the solemn silence around him with a multitude of the
creatures of his fancy. But mostly he crouched close down to the lee
edge of the deckload, gazing for hours at a stretch into the fathomless
blue depths beneath him; for the weather had completely changed, the
drift of the derelict having been southward into a region of well-nigh
perpetual calm, apparently unvisited by storms or tenanted ships.