_The Overman_
This is the story of Edward ——, as he told it to me only a few days
before he died; he told it as he lay half paralysed, and knowing that
the hand of death was upon him.
I am by profession a scientist. My story goes back some fifty years,
when I was a student. I had one brother, Daniel, five years younger than
myself, a musician of extraordinary promise. We lived abroad together
for a number of years, each pursuing his own work. About my brother,
suffice it to say that music to him was everything—love and friendship,
ambition and life. He was a man without a stain, whose lower nature had
been burned out by the flame of art. I think the one tie that bound him
to the world was myself.
When Daniel was about twenty-three years of age, his health weakened,
and a long sea voyage was decided upon. I could not go with him, so for
the first time we parted; and it was twenty years after that before I
ever heard of him again.
It was believed that the ship had been wrecked in the South Seas; and I
had given him up for dead many years, when it chanced that, as a man
advanced in life, I was travelling as a naturalist in Ceylon, and met an
old sailor who had been with my brother, and who told me a strange
story—how one boat containing five men, including Daniel, had outlived
the storm and landed upon an uninhabited island; how, after remaining
there for several months, they had made up their minds to risk a voyage
in their frail craft; and how my brother alone had refused, declaring
his intention to remain by himself, with his violin and the few effects
that he had saved.
How this affected me anyone can imagine. The tale was obviously a true
one, and I chanced to have means; and so, getting the best idea I could
of the island’s location, I purchased a yacht outright and prepared to
make a search.
The events immediately following bear only indirectly upon my story, and
so I pass over them swiftly. We had been at sea for some three weeks,
and were in the locality we sought, and watching day and night for some
sign of the island, when late one evening the native captain of the
vessel came to my cabin, trembling and pale with fright, to tell me that
the crew had mutinied and were about to murder me. I rushed to my chest
for my revolvers, only to find that every cartridge was gone; and the
other’s weapon proved to be in the same plight. In this desperate
situation the latter suggested what seemed to be the only possible
expedient—that we should make our escape from the vessel in the
darkness, and trust to gaining the land. While he crept out to provision
and lower a boat, I barricaded the cabin-door and waited; and upon
hearing the whistle agreed on, I ran to a port-hole, and seeing the
boat, slid into it. An instant later the rope was cut, and I got one
glance at the leering countenance of my betrayer, before the ship sped
on and all was darkness. I was alone!
The emotions of that night I do not like to recall. Life was still dear
to me. It was only when morning came that I lifted my head again and
recovered my self-possession.
There was no land in sight—I was tossing upon a waste of water, and
already beginning to feel the first cravings of the fearful thirst that
I knew must come. But by a strange instinct I still clung to my life;
and soon a storm arose, and as the waves began to speed my frail boat
along, it rose upon one of them, and I suddenly caught sight of a faint
streak of land. I seized the oars and set to work to race for my life. I
was not used to the effort, and it took all my strength to keep the
craft headed aright, while the sea bore it on to its goal; I fought
desperately through the whole day, coming nearer and nearer to my hope,
but expecting every instant to be my last, and almost fainting with
exhaustion. Finally I came to the very edge of the breakers—and then, in
spite of all that I could do, the boat was seized by a wave and whirled
around.
I saw before me a long line of bright green forest; and, standing upon
the beach in front of me, a single figure—a man—motionless and watching.
That moment a breaker smote my little craft, and I was flung into the
boiling sea.
I did not know how to swim. I clutched at the boat and missed it, and
after that I recall only an instant or two of frantic struggling and
choking. When next I opened my eyes, I lay upon the shore, with a man
bending over me; and upon my dazed faculties was borne in the startling
truth that the man was my brother.
It would have been long before I recognised him but that he was calling
me by name. A creature more changed no man could imagine. Gaunt,
hollow-eyed, and wild in appearance, he was scarcely the shadow of his
former self; he was clad in a rough garment of fur, barefooted and
barearmed, and with long, tangled hair. But what most struck me—what
struck me the instant I opened my eyes, and what never ceased to strike
me after that—was the strange, haunted look of his whole countenance;
his eyes, swift and restless, shone from beneath the shadow of his brows
like those of some forest animal.
For the first few dazed minutes I thought of what I had read of men who
had gone mad, or had reverted to the beast, under such circumstances as
these. Yet nothing could exceed the tenderness of my brother’s voice and
manner to me; he bent over me with a gourd full of milk, which he helped
me to drink, and he dried my face and brushed back the hair from my
forehead, whispering to me as one might to a sick child.
I can remember the very words of our conversation at that strange
moment, so keenly did every circumstance impress me. I answered him
faintly when he asked me how I did, and he pressed my hand. “You were
seeking for me, brother?” he asked.
“I was,” I said.
“I sometimes thought that you might,” he exclaimed. “Alas! Alas!”
I had been overwhelmed with joy as the truth dawned upon me—the truth
that I had found him. I had forgotten our mutual plight. “Never mind,” I
whispered. “We may get away somehow; and at least we can be together.”
He answered nothing, but helped me lift my head.
“How came you alone in that boat?” he asked.
“It is a long story,” I replied, shuddering as I gazed at the waves that
were thundering on the beach before us. “I will tell it later.”
“You have been long upon the water?”
“Only since last night,” I said; and then gazing about me suddenly, I
cried: “And you—you have been here all these years!”
“All these years,” he answered.
“And alone?”
“Alone.”