I
On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a
mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in
its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if
abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other
end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as
the eye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting
ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set
in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie
below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone
smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible
ripple. And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug
which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line
of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect
and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under
the enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to
the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of
the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river
Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward
journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass,
the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on
which the eye could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous
sweep of the horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces
of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of
them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became
lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive
earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor. My eye
followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the
plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter
and farther away, till I lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill
of the great pagoda. And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at
the head of the Gulf of Siam.
She floated at the starting point of a long journey, very still in an
immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by
the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not
a sound in her--and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe
on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this
breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be
measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed
task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes,
with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.
There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one’s
sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming
eyes made out beyond the highest ridges of the principal islet of the
group something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude.
The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a
swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet,
my hand resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a
trusted friend. But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring
down at one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good.
And there were also disturbing sounds by this time--voices, footsteps
forward; the steward flitted along the main-deck, a busily ministering
spirit; a hand bell tinkled urgently under the poop deck....
I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in the
lighted cuddy. We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I
said:
“Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I saw
her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down.”
He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of
whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: “Bless my soul, sir! You
don’t say so!”
My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his
years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight
quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my part to
encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too, that I knew
very little of my officers. In consequence of certain events of no
particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the
command only a fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands
forward. All these people had been together for eighteen months or so,
and my position was that of the only stranger on board. I mention this
because it has some bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most
was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be
told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The youngest man on board
(barring the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the
fullest responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others
for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered
how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own
personality every man sets up for himself secretly.
Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration
on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to
evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all
things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind.
As he used to say, he “liked to account to himself” for practically
everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had
found in his cabin a week before. The why and the wherefore of that
scorpion--how it got on board and came to select his room rather than
the pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be
partial to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell
of his writing desk--had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the
islands was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about
to rise from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted not, a
ship from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much water to cross
the bar except at the top of spring tides. Therefore she went into that
natural harbor to wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an
open roadstead.
“That’s so,” confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly hoarse
voice. “She draws over twenty feet. She’s the Liverpool ship Sephora
with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff.”
We looked at him in surprise.
“The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your letters,
sir,” explained the young man. “He expects to take her up the river the
day after tomorrow.”
After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he slipped
out of the cabin. The mate observed regretfully that he “could not
account for that young fellow’s whims.” What prevented him telling us
all about it at once, he wanted to know.
I detained him as he was making a move. For the last two days the crew
had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little
sleep. I felt painfully that I--a stranger--was doing something unusual
when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an
anchor watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o’clock or
thereabouts. I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour.
“He will turn out the cook and the steward at four,” I concluded, “and
then give you a call. Of course at the slightest sign of any sort of
wind we’ll have the hands up and make a start at once.”
He concealed his astonishment. “Very well, sir.” Outside the cuddy he
put his head in the second mate’s door to inform him of my unheard-of
caprice to take a five hours’ anchor watch on myself. I heard the other
raise his voice incredulously--“What? The Captain himself?” Then a few
more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A few moments later I went on
deck.
My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that
unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours
of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing,
manned by men of whom I knew very little more. Fast alongside a wharf,
littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things,
invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly.
Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her main-deck seemed to
me very fine under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size,
and very inviting. I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind
picturing to myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago,
down the Indian Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar
enough to me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were
likely to face me on the high seas--everything!... except the novel
responsibility of command. But I took heart from the reasonable thought
that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men, and that
the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises expressly for my
discomfiture.
Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and
went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the
after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on
the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping suit on that warm
breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going
forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.
Only as I passed the door of the forecastle, I heard a deep, quiet,
trustful sigh of some sleeper inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the
great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in
my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting
problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute
straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.
The riding light in the forerigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as
if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of
the night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I
observed that the rope side ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master
of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled
in as it should have been. I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in
some small matters is the very soul of discipline. Then I reflected that
I had myself peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my
own act had prevented the anchor watch being formally set and things
properly attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to
interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest
of motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only
knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would “account” for my conduct,
and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new
captain. I was vexed with myself.
Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I
proceeded to get the ladder in myself. Now a side ladder of that sort
is a light affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug, which should
have brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon my body in a
totally unexpected jerk. What the devil!... I was so astounded by
the immovableness of that ladder that I remained stock-still, trying to
account for it to myself like that imbecile mate of mine. In the end, of
course, I put my head over the rail.
The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling
glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and
pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a
faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly
from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the
elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I
saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid
back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One
hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete
but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping
mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute
stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his
face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then
I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired
head. However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation
which had gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain
exclamations was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned
over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery
floating alongside.
As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly,
silvery, fishlike. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no motion
to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he should
not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that
perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by just
that troubled incertitude.
“What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the
face upturned exactly under mine.
“Cramp,” it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, “I say, no need
to call anyone.”
“I was not going to,” I said.
“Are you alone on deck?”
“Yes.”
I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the
ladder to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came. But, for the
moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the
sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know
the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively:
“I suppose your captain’s turned in?”
“I am sure he isn’t,” I said.
He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low,
bitter murmur of doubt. “What’s the good?” His next words came out with
a hesitating effort.
“Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?”