MY TURN
I had known for some time that Sir Gilbert Carstairs had a small yacht
lying at one of the boathouses on the riverside; indeed, I had seen her
before ever I saw him. She was a trim, graceful thing, with all the
appearance of an excellent sea-boat, and though she looked like a craft
that could stand a lot of heavy weather, she had the advantage of being
so light in draught--something under three feet--that it was possible for
her to enter the shallowest harbour. I had heard that Sir Gilbert was
constantly sailing her up and down the coast, and sometimes going well
out to sea in her. On these occasions he was usually accompanied by a
fisherlad whom he had picked up somehow or other: this lad, Wattie Mason,
was down by the yacht when I reached her, and he gave me a glowering look
when he found that I was to put his nose out for this time at any rate.
He hung around us until we got off, as a hungry dog hangs around a table
on the chance of a bone being thrown to him; but he got no recognition
from Sir Gilbert, who, though the lad had been useful enough to him
before, took no more notice of him that day than of one of the pebbles on
the beach. And if I had been more of a student of human nature, I should
have gained some idea of my future employer's character from that small
circumstance, and have seen that he had no feeling or consideration for
anybody unless it happened to be serving and suiting his purpose.
But at that moment I was thinking of nothing but the pleasure of taking a
cruise in the yacht, in the company of a man in whom I was naturally
interested. I was passionately fond of the sea, and had already learned
from the Berwick sea-going folk how to handle small craft, and the
management of a three-oar vessel like this was an easy matter to me, as I
soon let Sir Gilbert know. Once outside the river mouth, with a nice
light breeze blowing off the land, we set squaresail, mainsail, and
foresail and stood directly out to sea on as grand a day and under as
fair conditions as a yachtsman could desire; and when we were gaily
bowling along Sir Gilbert bade me unpack the basket which had been put
aboard from the hotel--it was a long time, he said, since his breakfast,
and we would eat and drink at the outset of things. If I had not been
hungry myself, the sight of the provisions in that basket would have made
me so--there was everything in there that a man could desire, from cold
salmon and cold chicken to solid roast beef, and there was plenty of
claret and whisky to wash it down with. And, considering how readily and
healthily Sir Gilbert Carstairs ate and drank, and how he talked and
laughed while we lunched side by side under that glorious sky, gliding
away over a smooth, innocent-looking sea, I have often wondered since if
what was to come before nightfall came of deliberate intention on his
part, or from a sudden yielding to temptation when the chance of it
arose--and for the life of me I cannot decide! But if the man had murder
in his heart, while he sat there at my side, eating his good food and
drinking his fine liquor, and sharing both with me and pressing me to
help myself to his generous provision--if it was so, I say, then he was
of an indescribable cruelty which it makes me cringe to think of, and I
would prefer to believe that the impulse to bring about my death came
from a sudden temptation springing from a sudden chance. And yet--God
knows it is a difficult problem to settle!
For this was what it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western
skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out--far beyond the
thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters
know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we
were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the affair
happened--perhaps still further. We had been tacking about all the
afternoon, first south, then north, not with any particular purpose, but
aimlessly. We scarcely set eyes on another sail, and at a little after
seven o'clock in the evening, when there was some talk of going about and
catching the wind, which had changed a good deal since noon and was now
coming more from the southeast, we were in the midst of a great waste of
sea in which I could not make out a sign of any craft but ours--not even
a trail of smoke on the horizon. The flat of the land had long since
disappeared: the upper slopes of the Cheviots on one side of Tweed and
of the Lammermoor Hills on the other, only just showed above the line of
the sea. There was, I say, nothing visible on all that level of scarcely
stirred water but our own sails, set to catch whatever breeze there was,
when that happened which not only brought me to the very gates of death,
but, in the mere doing of it, gave me the greatest horror of any that I
have ever known.
I was standing up at the moment, one foot on the gunwale, the other on
the planking behind me, carelessly balancing myself while I stared across
the sea in search of some object which he--this man that I trusted so
thoroughly and in whose company I had spent so many pleasant hours that
afternoon, and who was standing behind me at the moment--professed to see
in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had
slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling
moment--but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was
confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!--but he
remained where he was. And my weight--I was weighing a good thirteen
stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster--carried me down and
down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with
considerable impetus. And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from
the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could
scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he was
doing nothing of the sort; instead, working at it as hard as he could
go, he was letting out a couple of reefs which he had taken up in the
mainsail an hour before--in another minute they were out, the yacht moved
more swiftly, and, springing to the tiller, he deliberately steered her
clear away from me.
I suppose I saw his purpose all at once. Perhaps it drove me wild, mad,
frenzied. The yacht was going away from me fast--faster; good swimmer
though I was, it was impossible for me to catch up to her--she was making
her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he stood
there, one hand on the tiller, the other in his pocket (I have often
wondered if it was fingering a revolver in there!), his eyes turned
steadily on me. And I began first to beg and entreat him to save me, and
then to shout out and curse him--and at that, and seeing that we were
becoming further and further separated, he deliberately put the yacht
still more before the freshening wind, and went swiftly away, and looked
at me no more.
So he left me to drown.
We had been talking a lot about swimming during the afternoon, and I had
told him that though I had been a swimmer ever since boyhood, I had never
done more than a mile at a stretch, and then only in the river. He knew,
therefore, that he was leaving me a good fourteen miles from land with
not a sail in sight, not a chance of being picked up. Was it likely that
I could make land?--was there ever a probability of anything coming along
that would sight me? There was small likelihood, anyway; the likelihood
was that long before the darkness had come on I should be exhausted,
give up, and go down.
You may conceive with what anger, and with what fierce resentment, I
watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me--and with what
despair too. But even in that moment I was conscious of two facts--I now
knew that yonder was the probable murderer of both Phillips and Crone,
and that he was leaving me to die because I was the one person living who
could throw some light on those matters, and, though I had kept silence
up to then, might be tempted, or induced, or obliged to do so--he would
silence me while he had so good a chance. And the other was, that
although there seemed about as much likelihood of my ever seeing Berwick
again as of being made King of England, I must do my utmost to save my
strength and my life. I had a wealth of incentives--Maisie, my mother,
Mr. Lindsey, youth, the desire to live; and now there was another added
to them--the desire to circumvent that cold-hearted, cruel devil, who, I
was now sure, had all along been up to some desperate game, and to have
my revenge and see justice done on him. I was not going to give in
without making a fight for it.
But it was a poor chance that I had--and I was well aware of it. There
was small prospect of fishing boats or the like coming out that evening;
small likelihood of any coasting steamer sighting a bit of a speck like
me. All the same, I was going to keep my chin up as long as possible, and
the first thing to do was to take care of my strength. I made shift to
divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the
unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, of my boots. And after
resting a bit on my back and considering matters, I decided to make a try
for land--I might perhaps meet some boat coming out. I lifted my head
well up and took a glance at what I could see--and my heart sank at what
I did see! The yacht was a speck in the distance by that time, and far
beyond it the Cheviots and the Lammermoors were mere bits of grey outline
against the gold and crimson of the sky. One thought instantly filled and
depressed me--I was further from land than I had believed.
At this distance from it I have but confused and vague recollections of
that night. Sometimes I dream of it--even now--and wake sweating with
fear. In those dreams I am toiling and toiling through a smooth sea--it
is always a smooth, oily, slippery sea--towards something to which I make
no great headway. Sometimes I give up toiling through sheer and desperate
aching of body and limbs, and let myself lie drifting into helplessness
and a growing sleep. And then--in my dream--I start to find myself going
down into strange cavernous depths of shining green, and I wake--in my
dream--to begin fighting and toiling again against my compelling desire
to give up.
I do not know how long I made a fight of it in reality; it must have been
for hours--alternately swimming, alternately resting myself by floating.
I had queer thoughts. It was then about the time that some men were
attempting to swim the Channel. I remember laughing grimly, wishing them
joy of their job--they were welcome to mine! I remember, too, that at
last in the darkness I felt that I must give up, and said my prayers; and
it was about that time, when I was beginning to feel a certain numbness
of mind as well as weariness of body, that as I struck out in the
mechanical and weakening fashion which I kept up from what little
determination I had left, I came across my salvation--in the shape of a
piece of wreckage that shoved itself against me in the blackness, as if
it had been some faithful dog, pushing its nose into my hand to let me
know it was there. It was no more than a square of grating, but it was
heavy and substantial; and as I clung to and climbed on to it, I knew
that it made all the difference to me between life and death.