In the stateroom he found, without surprise somehow, that his new
companions had already retired for the night. The curtain of the upper
berth was drawn, and on the sofa-bed below the opened port-hole the
boy already slept. Standing a moment in the little room with these two
close, he felt that he had come into a new existence almost. Deep within
him this sense of new life thrilled and glowed. He was shaking a little
all over, not with the mere tremor of excitement, however, but with the
tide of a vast and rising exultation he could scarce contain. For his
normal self was too small to hold it. It demanded expansion, and the
expansion it claimed had already begun. The boundaries of his personality
were enormously extending.
In words this change escaped him wholly. He only knew that something
in him of an old unrest lay down at length and slept. Less acute grew
those pangs of starvation his life had ever felt--the ache of that
inappeasable hunger for the beauty and innocence of some primal state
before thick human crowds had stained the world with all their strife
and clamor. The glory of it burned white within him.
And the way he described it to himself was significant of its true
nature. For it vans the analogy of childhood. The passion of a boy's
longing swept over him. He knew again the feelings of those early days
when--
A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,
--when all the world smells sweet and golden as a summer's day, and a
village street is endless as the sky....
This it was, raised to its highest power, that dropped a hint of
explanation into that queer heart of his wherein had ever burned the
strange desire for primitive existence. It was the Call, though, not of
his own youth alone, but of the youth of the world. A mood of the Earth's
consciousness--some giant expression of her cosmic emotion--caught
him. And it was the big Russian who acted as channel and interpreter.
Before getting into bed, he drew aside the little red curtain that
screened his companion, and peered cautiously through the narrow slit.
The big occupant of the bunk also slept, his mane-like hair spread about
him over the pillow, and on his great, placid face a look of peace that
seemed to deepen with every day the steamer neared her destination.
O'Malley gazed for a full minute and more. Then the sleeper felt the
gaze, for suddenly the eyelids quivered, moved, and lifted. The large
brown eyes peered straight into his own. The Irishman, unable to turn
away in time, stood fixed and staring in return. The gentleness and power
of the look passed straight down into his heart, filled him to the brim
with things their owner knew, and confirmed that appeasement of his
own hunger, already begun.
"I tried--to prevent the--interference," he stammered in a low voice.
"I held him back. You saw me?"
A huge hand stretched forth from the bunk to stop him. Impulsively he
seized it with both his own. At the first contact he started--a little
frightened. It felt so wonderful, so mighty. Thus might a gust of wind
or a billow of the sea have thrust against him.
"A messenger--came," said the man with that laborious slow utterance, and
deep as thunder, "from--the--sea."
"From--the--sea, yes," repeated O'Malley beneath his breath, yet
conscious rather that he wanted to shout and sing it. He saw the big
man smile. His own small hands were crushed in the grasp of power.
"I--understand," he added in a whisper. He found himself speaking with
a similar clogged utterance. Somehow, it seemed, the language they
ought to have used was either forgotten or unborn. Yet whereas his friend
was inarticulate perhaps, he himself was--dumb. These little modern
words were all wrong and inadequate. Modern speech could only deal
with modern smaller things.
The giant half rose in his bed, as though at first to leap forward and
away from it. He tightened an instant the grasp upon his companion's
hands, then suddenly released them and pointed across the cabin. That
smile of happiness spread upon his face. O'Malley turned. There the
boy lay, deeply slumbering, the clothes flung back so that the air from
the port-hole played over the bare neck and chest; upon his face, too,
shone the look of peace and rest his father wore, the hunted expression
all gone, as though the spirit had escaped in sleep. The parent pointed,
first to the boy, then to himself, then to this new friend standing
beside his bed. The gesture including the three of them was of singular
authority--invitation, welcome, and command lay in it. More--in some
incomprehensible way it was majestic. O'Malley's thought flashed upon
him the limb of some great oak tree, swaying in the wind.
Next, placing a finger on his lips, his eyes once more swept O'Malley
and the boy, and he turned again into the little bunk that so difficultly
held him, and lay back. The hair flowed down and mingled with the beard,
over pillow and neck, almost to the shoulders. And something that was
enormous and magnificent lay back with him, carrying with it again that
sudden atmosphere of greater bulk. With a deep sound in his throat that
was certainly no actual word and yet more expressive than any speech, he
turned hugely over among the little, scanty sheets, drew the curtain
again before his face, and returned into the world of--sleep.