"In scientific terms one can say: Consciousness is everywhere; it is
awake when and wherever the bodily energy underlying the spiritual
exceeds that degree of strength which we call the threshold. According to
this, consciousness can be localized in time and space."
--FECHNER, _Buchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode_
The offer of the cabin, meanwhile, remained open. In the solitude that
O'Malley found necessary that evening he toyed with it, though knowing
that he would never really accept.
Like a true Celt his imagination took the main body of Stahl's words and
ensouled them with his own vivid temperament. There stirred in him this
nameless and disquieting joy that wrought for itself a Body from material
just beyond his thoughts--that region of enormous experience that ever
fringes the consciousness of imaginative men. He took the picture at its
face value, took it inside with his own thoughts, delighted in it, raised
it, of course, very soon to a still higher scale. If he criticized at all
it was with phrases like "The man's a poet after all! Why, he's got
creative imagination!" To find his own intuitions endorsed, even half
explained, by a mind of opposite type was a new experience. It emphasized
amazingly the reality of that inner world he lived in.
This explanation of the big Russian's effect upon himself was terrific,
and that a "doctor" should have conceived it, glorious. That some
portion of a man's spirit might assume the shape of his thoughts and
project itself visibly seemed likely enough. Indeed, to him, it seemed
already a "fact," and his temperament did not linger over it. But that
other suggestion fairly savaged him with its strange grandeur. He played
lovingly with it.
That the Earth was a living being was a conception divine in size as in
simplicity, and that the Gods and mythological figures had been
projections of her consciousness--this thought ran with a magnificent
new thunder about his mind. It was overwhelming, beautiful as Heaven
and as gracious. He saw the ancient shapes of myth and legend still alive
in some gorgeous garden of the primal world, a corner too remote for
humanity to have yet stained it with their trail of uglier life. He
understood in quite a new way, at last, those deep primitive longings
that hitherto had vainly craved their full acknowledgment. It meant that
he lay so close to the Earth that he felt her pulses as his own. The idea
stormed his belief.
It was the Soul of the Earth herself that all these years had been
calling to him.
And while he let his imagination play with the soaring beauty of the
idea, he remembered certain odd little facts. He marshaled them before
him in a row and questioned them: The picture he had seen with the
Captain's glasses--those speeding shapes of beauty; the new aspect of
a living Nature that the Russian's presence stirred in him; the man's
broken words as they had leaned above the sea in the dusk; the curious
passion that leaped to his eyes when certain chance words had touched
him at the dinner-table. And, lastly, the singular impression of giant
bulk he produced sometimes upon the mind, almost as though a portion of
him--this detachable portion molded by the quality of his spirit as he
felt himself to be--emerged visibly to cause it.
Vaguely, in this way, O'Malley divined how inevitable was the apparent
isolation of these two, and why others instinctively avoided them. They
seemed by themselves in an enclosure where the parent lumberingly, and
the boy defiantly, disported themselves with a kind of lonely majesty
that forbade approach.
And it was later that same night, as the steamer approached the Lipari
Islands, that the drive forward he had received from the doctor's words
was increased by a succession of singular occurrences. At the same time,
Stahl's deliberate and as he deemed it unjustifiable interference, helped
him to make up his mind decisively on certain other points.
The first "occurrence" was of the same order as the "bigness"--
extraordinarily difficult, that is, to confirm by actual measurement.
It was ten o'clock, Stahl still apparently in his cabin by himself, and
most of the passengers below at an impromptu concert, when the Irishman,
coming down from his long solitude, caught sight of the Russian and his
boy moving about the dark after-deck with a speed and vigor that
instantly arrested his attention. The suggestion of size, and of rapidity
of movement, had never been more marked. It was as though a cloud of the
summer darkness moved beside them.
Then, going cautiously nearer, he saw that they were neither walking
quickly, nor running, as he had first supposed, but--to his
amazement--were standing side by side upon the deck--stock still. The
appearance of motion, however, was not entirely a delusion, for he next
saw that, while standing there steady as the mast and life-boats behind
them, something emanated shadow-like from both their persons and seemed
to hover and play about them--something that was only approximately
of their own outer shapes, and very considerably larger. Now it veiled
them, now left them clear. He thought of smoke-clouds moving to and
fro about dark statues.
So far as he could focus his sight upon them, these "shadows," without
any light to cast them, moved in distorted guise there on the deck with a
motion that was somehow rhythmical--a great movement as of dance or
gambol.
As with the appearance of "bigness," he perceived it first out of the
corner of his eye. When he looked again he saw only two dark figures,
motionless.
He experienced the sensation a man sometimes knows on entering a deserted
chamber in the nighttime, and is aware that the things in it have just
that instant--stopped. His arrival puts abrupt end to some busy activity
they were engaged in, which begins again the moment he goes. Chairs,
tables, cupboards, the very spots and patterns of the wall have just
flown back to their usual places whence they watch impatiently for his
departure--with the candle.
This time, on a deck instead of in a room, O'Malley with his candle had
surprised them in the act: people, moreover, not furniture. And this
shadowy gambol, this silent Dance of the Emanations, immense yet
graceful, made him think of Winds flying, visible and uncloaked,
somewhere across long hills, or of Clouds passing to a stately, elemental
measure over the blue dancing-halls of an open sky. His imagery was
confused and gigantic, yet very splendid. Again he recalled the pictured
shapes seen with his mind's eye through the Captain's glasses. And as
he watched, he felt in himself what he called "the wild, tearing instinct
to run and join them," more even--that by rights he ought to have
been there from the beginning--dancing with them--indulging a natural and
instinctive and rhythmical movement that he had somehow forgotten.
The passion in him was very strong, very urgent, it seems, for he took
a step forward, a call of some kind rose in his throat, and in another
second he would have been similarly cavorting upon the deck, when he
felt his arm clutched suddenly with vigor from behind. Some one seized
him and held him back. A German voice spoke with a guttural whisper
in his ear.
Dr. Stahl, crouching and visibly excited, drew him forward a little.
"Hold up!" he heard whispered--for their India rubber soles slithered
on the wet decks. "We shall see from here, eh? See something at last?"
He still whispered. O'Malley's sudden anger died down. He could not
give vent to it without making noise, for one thing, and above all else
he wished to--see. He merely felt a vague wonder how long Stahl had
been watching.
They crouched behind the lee of a boat. The outline of the ship rose,
distinctly visible against the starry sky, masts, spars, and cordage. A
faint gleam came through the glass below the compass-box. The wheel and
the heaps of coiled rope beyond rose and fell with the motion of the
vessel, now against the stars, now black against the phosphorescent foam
that trailed along the sea like shining lace. But the human figures, he
next saw, were now doing nothing, not even pacing the deck; they were
no longer of unusual size either. Quietly leaning over the rail, father
and son side by side, they were guiltless of anything more uncommon
than gazing into the sea. Like the furniture, they had just--stopped!
Dr. Stahl and his companion waited motionless for several minutes in
silence. There was no sound but the dull thunder of the screws, and
a faint windy whistle the ship's speed made in the rigging. The
passengers were all below. Then, suddenly, a burst of music came up as
some one opened a saloon port-hole and as quickly closed it again--a
tenor voice singing to the piano some trivial modern song with a trashy
sentimental lilt. It was--in this setting of sea and sky--painful;
O'Malley caught himself thinking of a barrel-organ in a Greek temple.
The same instant father and son, as though startled, moved slowly away
down the deck into the further darkness, and Dr. Stahl tightened his grip
of the Irishman's arm with a force that almost made him cry out. A gleam
of light from the opened port-hole had fallen about them before they
moved. Quite clearly it revealed them bending busily over, heads close
together, necks and shoulders thrust forward and down a little.
"Look, by God!" whispered Stahl hoarsely as they moved off. "There's
a third!"
He pointed. Where the two had been standing something, indeed, still
remained. Concealed hitherto by their bulk, this other figure had been
left. They saw its large, dim outline. It moved. Apparently it began
to climb over the rails, or to move in some way just outside them,
hanging half above the sea. There was a free, swaying movement about
it, not ungainly so much as big--very big.
"Now, quick!" whispered the doctor excited, in English; "this time I find
out, sure!"
He made a violent movement forward, a pocket electric lamp in his hand,
then turned angrily, furiously, to find that O'Malley held him fast.
There was a most unseemly struggle--for a minute, and it was caused by
the younger man's sudden passionate instinct to protect his own from
discovery, if not from actual capture and destruction.
Stahl fought in vain, being easily overmatched; he swore vehement German
oaths under his breath; and the pocket-lamp, of course unlighted, fell
and rattled over the deck, sliding with the gentle roll of the steamer to
leeward. But O'Malley's eyes, even while he struggled, never for one
instant left the spot where the figure and the "movement" had been; and
it seemed to him that when the bulwarks dipped against the dark of the
sea, the moving thing completed its efforts and passed into the waves
with a swift leap. When the vessel righted herself again the outline of
the rail was clear.
Dr. Stahl, he then saw, had picked up the lamp and was bending over
some mark upon the deck, examining a wide splash of wet upon which
he directed the electric flash. The sense of revived antagonism between
the men for the moment was strong, too strong for speech. O'Malley
feeling half ashamed, yet realized that his action had been instinctive,
and that another time he would do just the same. He would fight to the
death any too close inspection, since such inspection included also
now--himself.
The doctor presently looked up. His eyes shone keenly in the gleam
of the lamp, but he was no longer agitated.
"There is too much water," he said calmly, as though diagnosing a case;
"too much to permit of definite traces." He glanced round, flashing the
beam about the decks. The other two had disappeared. They were alone. "It
was outside the rail all the time, you see," he added, "and never quite
reached the decks." He stooped down and examined the splash once more. It
looked as though a wave had topped the scuppers and left a running line
of foam and water. "Nothing to indicate its exact nature," he said in a
whisper that conveyed something between uneasiness and awe, again turning
the light sharply in every direction and peering about him. "It came to
them--er--from the sea, though; it came from the sea right enough. That,
at least, is positive." And in his manner was perhaps just a touch to
indicate relief.
"And it returned into the sea," exclaimed O'Malley triumphantly. It
was as though he related his own escape.
The two men were now standing upright, facing one another. Dr. Stahl,
betraying no sign of resentment, looked him steadily in the eye. He put
the lamp back into his pocket. When he spoke at length in the darkness,
the words were not precisely what the Irishman had expected. Under them
his own vexation and excitement faded instantly. He felt almost sheepish
when he remembered his violence.
"I forgive your behavior, of course," Stahl said, "for it is
consistent--splendidly consistent--with my theory of you; and of value,
therefore. I only now urge you again"--he moved closer, speaking almost
solemnly--"to accept the offer of a berth in my cabin. Take it, my
friend, take it--tonight."
"Because you wish to watch me at close quarters."
"No," was the reply, and there was sympathy in the voice, "but because
you are in danger--especially in sleep."
There was a moment's pause before O'Malley said anything.
"It is kind of you, Dr. Stahl, very kind," he answered slowly, and this
time with grave politeness; "but I am not afraid, and I see no reason to
make the change. And as it's now late," he added somewhat abruptly,
almost as though he feared he might be persuaded to alter his mind, "I
will say good-night and turn in--if you will forgive me--at once."
Dr. Stahl said no further word. He watched him, the other was aware, as
he moved down the deck toward the saloon staircase, and then turned once
more with his lamp to stoop over the splashed portion of the boards. He
examined the place apparently for a long time.
But O'Malley, as he went slowly down the hot and stuffy stairs, realized
with a wild and rushing tumult of joy that the "third" he had seen was of
a splendor surpassing the little figures of men, and that something deep
within his own soul was most gloriously akin with it. A link with the
Universe had been subconsciously established, tightened up, adjusted.
From all this living Nature breathing about him in the night, a message
had reached the strangers and himself--a message shaped in beauty and in
power. Nature had become at last aware of his presence close against her
ancient face. Henceforth would every sight of Beauty take him direct to
the place where Beauty comes from. No middleman, no Art was necessary.
The gates were opening. Already he had caught a glimpse.