“I am the captain.”
I heard a “By Jove!” whispered at the level of the water. The
phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs,
his other hand seized the ladder.
“My name’s Leggatt.”
The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice. The self-possession of
that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself. It was
very quietly that I remarked:
“You must be a good swimmer.”
“Yes. I’ve been in the water practically since nine o’clock. The
question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on
swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or--to come on board here.”
I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real
alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from
this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever
confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition
on my part. A mysterious communication was established already between
us two--in the face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. I was
young, too; young enough to make no comment. The man in the water began
suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to
fetch some clothes.
Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at the
foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door of the
chief mate’s room. The second mate’s door was on the hook, but the
darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too, was young and could
sleep like a stone. Remained the steward, but he was not likely to
wake up before he was called. I got a sleeping suit out of my room and,
coming back on deck, saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the main
hatch, glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and
his head in his hands. In a moment he had concealed his damp body in a
sleeping suit of the same gray-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing
and followed me like my double on the poop. Together we moved right aft,
barefooted, silent.
“What is it?” I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out
of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.
“An ugly business.”
He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat
heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his
cheeks; a small, brown mustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His
expression was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of
the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude
might wear. My sleeping suit was just right for his size. A well-knit
young fellow of twenty-five at most. He caught his lower lip with the
edge of white, even teeth.
“Yes,” I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle. The warm, heavy
tropical night closed upon his head again.
“There’s a ship over there,” he murmured.
“Yes, I know. The Sephora. Did you know of us?”
“Hadn’t the slightest idea. I am the mate of her--” He paused and
corrected himself. “I should say I _was_.”
“Aha! Something wrong?”
“Yes. Very wrong indeed. I’ve killed a man.”
“What do you mean? Just now?”
“No, on the passage. Weeks ago. Thirty-nine south. When I say a man--”
“Fit of temper,” I suggested, confidently.
The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the
ghostly gray of my sleeping suit. It was, in the night, as though I had
been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense
mirror.
“A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy,” murmured my
double, distinctly.
“You’re a Conway boy?”
“I am,” he said, as if startled. Then, slowly... “Perhaps you too--”
It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he
joined. After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I thought
suddenly of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and the “Bless my
soul--you don’t say so” type of intellect. My double gave me an inkling
of his thoughts by saying: “My father’s a parson in Norfolk. Do you see
me before a judge and jury on that charge? For myself I can’t see the
necessity. There are fellows that an angel from heaven--And I am not
that. He was one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time
with a silly sort of wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business
to live at all. He wouldn’t do his duty and wouldn’t let anybody else do
theirs. But what’s the good of talking! You know well enough the sort of
ill-conditioned snarling cur--”
He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as
our clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a
character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well
enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not
think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in
brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going on
as though I were myself inside that other sleeping suit.
“It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk. Reefed
foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only sail we had left
to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it had been like for
days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me some of his cursed insolence
at the sheet. I tell you I was overdone with this terrific weather that
seemed to have no end to it. Terrific, I tell you--and a deep ship. I
believe the fellow himself was half crazed with funk. It was no time for
gentlemanly reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up
and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands
saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat, and
went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, ‘Look out!
look out!’ Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head. They
say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen of the
ship--just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head and of the
poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It was a miracle that
they found us, jammed together behind the forebitts. It’s clear that I
meant business, because I was holding him by the throat still when they
picked us up. He was black in the face. It was too much for them.
It seems they rushed us aft together, gripped as we were, screaming
‘Murder!’ like a lot of lunatics, and broke into the cuddy. And the ship
running for her life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in
a sea fit to turn your hair gray only a-looking at it. I understand that
the skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. The man had been
deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this sprung on him
at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out of his mind. I
wonder they didn’t fling me overboard after getting the carcass of their
precious shipmate out of my fingers. They had rather a job to separate
us, I’ve been told. A sufficiently fierce story to make an old judge and
a respectable jury sit up a bit. The first thing I heard when I came to
myself was the maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the
voice of the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face
out of his sou’wester.
“‘Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as chief
mate of this ship.’”
His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a hand
on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all that time did
not stir a limb, so far as I could see. “Nice little tale for a quiet
tea party,” he concluded in the same tone.
One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither did
I stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot from each
other. It occurred to me that if old “Bless my soul--you don’t say so”
were to put his head up the companion and catch sight of us, he would
think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come upon a scene of
weird witchcraft; the strange captain having a quiet confabulation
by the wheel with his own gray ghost. I became very much concerned to
prevent anything of the sort. I heard the other’s soothing undertone.
“My father’s a parson in Norfolk,” it said. Evidently he had forgotten
he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice little tale.
“You had better slip down into my stateroom now,” I said, moving off
stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet made no
sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after giving a call
to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.
“Not much sign of any wind yet,” I remarked when he approached.
“No, sir. Not much,” he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with
just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.
“Well, that’s all you have to look out for. You have got your orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face
forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen rigging before I
went below. The mate’s faint snoring was still going on peacefully.
The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with
flowers, a polite attention from the ship’s provision merchant--the
last flowers we should see for the next three months at the very least.
Two bunches of bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each
side of the rudder casing. Everything was as before in the ship--except
that two of her captain’s sleeping suits were simultaneously in use, one
motionless in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain’s
stateroom.
It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital
letter L, the door being within the angle and opening into the short
part of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed place to the right;
my writing desk and the chronometers’ table faced the door. But anyone
opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call
the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It contained some lockers
surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two,
caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks. There was at the
bottom of that part a door opening into my bathroom, which could be
entered also directly from the saloon. But that way was never used.
The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular
shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung
on gimbals above my writing desk, I did not see him anywhere till he
stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part.
“I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once,” he
whispered.
I, too, spoke under my breath.
“Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission.”
He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had
been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept under
arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was nothing sickly
in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet,
as we stood leaning over my bed place, whispering side by side, with our
dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to
open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a
double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self.
“But all this doesn’t tell me how you came to hang on to our side
ladder,” I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he had
told me something more of the proceedings on board the Sephora once the
bad weather was over.
“When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those matters out
several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing else, and with only
an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the quarter-deck.”
He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed place, staring
through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of this
thinking out--a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of
which I should have been perfectly incapable.
“I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land,” he
continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing near as we were to
each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. “So I asked to speak to
the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to see me--as if he
could not look me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.
She was too deep to have run long under bare poles. And it was I
that managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came. When I had him in my
cabin--he stood by the door looking at me as if I had the halter round
my neck already--I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked
at night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits. There would
be the Java coast within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted
nothing more. I’ve had a prize for swimming my second year in the
Conway.”
“I can believe it,” I breathed out.
“God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of
their faces you’d have thought they were afraid I’d go about at night
strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it? By Jove! If I
had been he wouldn’t have trusted himself like that into my room. You’ll
say I might have chucked him aside and bolted out, there and then--it
was dark already. Well, no. And for the same reason I wouldn’t think of
trying to smash the door. There would have been a rush to stop me at the
noise, and I did not mean to get into a confounded scrimmage. Somebody
else might have got killed--for I would not have broken out only to
get chucked back, and I did not want any more of that work. He refused,
looking more sick than ever. He was afraid of the men, and also of
that old second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years--a
gray-headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil
knows how long--seventeen years or more--a dogmatic sort of loafer who
hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No chief mate
ever made more than one voyage in the Sephora, you know. Those two old
chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the skipper wasn’t afraid of
(all his nerve went to pieces altogether in that hellish spell of bad
weather we had)--of what the law would do to him--of his wife, perhaps.
Oh, yes! she’s on board. Though I don’t think she would have meddled.
She would have been only too glad to have me out of the ship in any way.
The ‘brand of Cain’ business, don’t you see. That’s all right. I was
ready enough to go off wandering on the face of the earth--and that was
price enough to pay for an Abel of that sort. Anyhow, he wouldn’t listen
to me. ‘This thing must take its course. I represent the law here.’ He
was shaking like a leaf. ‘So you won’t?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then I hope you will
be able to sleep on that,’ I said, and turned my back on him. ‘I wonder
that you can,’ cries he, and locks the door.
“Well after that, I couldn’t. Not very well. That was three weeks ago.
We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea; drifted about Carimata
for ten days. When we anchored here they thought, I suppose, it was
all right. The nearest land (and that’s five miles) is the ship’s
destination; the consul would soon set about catching me; and there
would have been no object in holding to these islets there. I don’t
suppose there’s a drop of water on them. I don’t know how it was, but
tonight that steward, after bringing me my supper, went out to let me
eat it, and left the door unlocked. And I ate it--all there was, too.
After I had finished I strolled out on the quarter-deck. I don’t know
that I meant to do anything. A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I
believe. Then a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers
and was in the water before I had made up my mind fairly. Somebody heard
the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo. ‘He’s gone! Lower the
boats! He’s committed suicide! No, he’s swimming.’ Certainly I was
swimming. It’s not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by
drowning. I landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship’s
side. I heard them pulling about in the dark, hailing, and so on, but
after a bit they gave up. Everything quieted down and the anchorage
became still as death. I sat down on a stone and began to think. I felt
certain they would start searching for me at daylight. There was no
place to hide on those stony things--and if there had been, what would
have been the good? But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going
back. So after a while I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a
bundle with a stone inside, and dropped them in the deep water on the
outer side of that islet. That was suicide enough for me. Let them think
what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till
I sank--but that’s not the same thing. I struck out for another of these
little islands, and it was from that one that I first saw your riding
light. Something to swim for. I went on easily, and on the way I came
upon a flat rock a foot or two above water. In the daytime, I dare say,
you might make it out with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it
and rested myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last spell
must have been over a mile.”
His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he stared
straight out through the porthole, in which there was not even a star
to be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was something that made
comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps in himself; a sort of
feeling, a quality, which I can’t find a name for. And when he ceased,
all I found was a futile whisper: “So you swam for our light?”
“Yes--straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn’t see any
stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I couldn’t see the
land, either. The water was like glass. One might have been swimming in
a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern with no place for scrambling out
anywhere; but what I didn’t like was the notion of swimming round and
round like a crazed bullock before I gave out; and as I didn’t mean to
go back... No. Do you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one
of these little islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a
wild beast? Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not
want any of that. So I went on. Then your ladder--”
“Why didn’t you hail the ship?” I asked, a little louder.
He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our heads
and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side of the poop
and might have been hanging over the rail for all we knew.
“He couldn’t hear us talking--could he?” My double breathed into my very
ear, anxiously.
His anxiety was in answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I had
put to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that situation. I
closed the porthole quietly, to make sure. A louder word might have been
overheard.
“Who’s that?” he whispered then.
“My second mate. But I don’t know much more of the fellow than you do.”
And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take
charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a
fortnight ago. I didn’t know either the ship or the people. Hadn’t had
the time in port to look about me or size anybody up. And as to the
crew, all they knew was that I was appointed to take the ship home.
For the rest, I was almost as much of a stranger on board as himself,
I said. And at the moment I felt it most acutely. I felt that it would
take very little to make me a suspect person in the eyes of the ship’s
company.
He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the ship,
faced each other in identical attitudes.
“Your ladder--” he murmured, after a silence. “Who’d have thought of
finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out here! I
felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the life I’ve been
leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out of condition. I
wasn’t capable of swimming round as far as your rudder chains. And, lo
and behold! there was a ladder to get hold of. After I gripped it I said
to myself, ‘What’s the good?’ When I saw a man’s head looking over I
thought I would swim away presently and leave him shouting--in whatever
language it was. I didn’t mind being looked at. I--I liked it. And then
you speaking to me so quietly--as if you had expected me--made me hold
on a little longer. It had been a confounded lonely time--I don’t mean
while swimming. I was glad to talk a little to somebody that didn’t
belong to the Sephora. As to asking for the captain, that was a mere
impulse. It could have been no use, with all the ship knowing about me
and the other people pretty certain to be round here in the morning. I
don’t know--I wanted to be seen, to talk with somebody, before I went
on. I don’t know what I would have said.... ‘Fine night, isn’t it?’
or something of the sort.”
“Do you think they will be round here presently?” I asked with some
incredulity.
“Quite likely,” he said, faintly.
“He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden. His head rolled on his
shoulders.
“H’m. We shall see then. Meantime get into that bed,” I whispered. “Want
help? There.”
It was a rather high bed place with a set of drawers underneath. This
amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing his leg. He
tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm across his eyes.
And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must have looked exactly as I
used to look in that bed. I gazed upon my other self for a while before
drawing across carefully the two green serge curtains which ran on a
brass rod. I thought for a moment of pinning them together for greater
safety, but I sat down on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling
to rise and hunt for a pin. I would do it in a moment. I was extremely
tired, in a peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by
the effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement. It
was three o’clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine, but I
was not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep. I sat there, fagged
out, looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the confused
sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly bothered by an
exasperating knocking in my head. It was a relief to discover suddenly
that it was not in my head at all, but on the outside of the door.
Before I could collect myself the words “Come in” were out of my mouth,
and the steward entered with a tray, bringing in my morning coffee. I
had slept, after all, and I was so frightened that I shouted, “This way!
I am here, steward,” as though he had been miles away. He put down the
tray on the table next the couch and only then said, very quietly, “I
can see you are here, sir.” I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared
not meet his eyes just then. He must have wondered why I had drawn the
curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch. He went out,
hooking the door open as usual.
I heard the crew washing decks above me. I knew I would have been told
at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought, and I was doubly
vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever. The steward reappeared
suddenly in the doorway. I jumped up from the couch so quickly that he
gave a start.
“What do you want here?”
“Close your port, sir--they are washing decks.”
“It is closed,” I said, reddening.
“Very well, sir.” But he did not move from the doorway and returned my
stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time. Then his eyes
wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice unusually gentle,
almost coaxingly:
“May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?”
“Of course!” I turned my back on him while he popped in and out. Then
I unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt. This sort of
thing could not go on very long. The cabin was as hot as an oven, too. I
took a peep at my double, and discovered that he had not moved, his arm
was still over his eyes; but his chest heaved; his hair was wet; his
chin glistened with perspiration. I reached over him and opened the
port.
“I must show myself on deck,” I reflected.
Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no one to say
nay to me within the whole circle of the horizon; but to lock my cabin
door and take the key away I did not dare. Directly I put my head out
of the companion I saw the group of my two officers, the second mate
barefooted, the chief mate in long India-rubber boots, near the break of
the poop, and the steward halfway down the poop ladder talking to them
eagerly. He happened to catch sight of me and dived, the second ran down
on the main-deck shouting some order or other, and the chief mate came
to meet me, touching his cap.
There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like. I don’t
know whether the steward had told them that I was “queer” only, or
downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good look at me. I
watched him coming with a smile which, as he got into point-blank range,
took effect and froze his very whiskers. I did not give him time to open
his lips.
“Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast.”
It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship; and I
stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need of asserting
myself without loss of time. That sneering young cub got taken down a
peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the opportunity of having
a good look at the face of every foremast man as they filed past me
to go to the after braces. At breakfast time, eating nothing myself, I
presided with such frigid dignity that the two mates were only too glad
to escape from the cabin as soon as decency permitted; and all the
time the dual working of my mind distracted me almost to the point of
insanity. I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent
on my actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that
door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table. It was very much
like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.
I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened his
eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an inquiring
look.
“All’s well so far,” I whispered. “Now you must vanish into the
bathroom.”
He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and then I rang for the steward,
and facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my stateroom while I
was having my bath--“and be quick about it.” As my tone admitted of
no excuses, he said, “Yes, sir,” and ran off to fetch his dustpan and
brushes. I took a bath and did most of my dressing, splashing, and
whistling softly for the steward’s edification, while the secret sharer
of my life stood drawn up bolt upright in that little space, his face
looking very sunken in daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern,
dark line of his eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.
When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing
dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant
conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character
of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a
good look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear
conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the
recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a
small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there.
We listened to the steward going into the bathroom out of the saloon,
filling the water bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things
to rights, whisk, bang, clatter--out again into the saloon--turn the
key--click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible.
Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there
we sat; I at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he
behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to
talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer
sense of whispering to myself. Now and then, glancing over my shoulder,
I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his
bare feet close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his
breast--and perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me.
I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance over my
shoulder. I was looking at him when a voice outside the door said:
“Beg pardon, sir.”
“Well!...” I kept my eyes on him, and so when the voice outside the
door announced, “There’s a ship’s boat coming our way, sir,” I saw him
give a start--the first movement he had made for hours. But he did not
raise his bowed head.
“All right. Get the ladder over.”
I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what? His immobility
seemed to have been never disturbed. What could I tell him he did not
know already?... Finally I went on deck.