“Keep her full. Don’t check her way. That won’t do now,” I said
warningly.
“I can’t see the sails very well,” the helmsman answered me, in strange,
quavering tones.
Was she close enough? Already she was, I won’t say in the shadow of the
land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were,
gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.
“Give the mate a call,” I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as
still as death. “And turn all hands up.”
My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the
land. Several voices cried out together: “We are all on deck, sir.”
Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer, towering
higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had fallen on
the ship that she might have been a bark of the dead floating in slowly
under the very gate of Erebus.
“My God! Where are we?”
It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it
were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands
and absolutely cried out, “Lost!”
“Be quiet,” I said, sternly.
He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair. “What
are we doing here?”
“Looking for the land wind.”
He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.
“She will never get out. You have done it, sir. I knew it’d end in
something like this. She will never weather, and you are too close now
to stay. She’ll drift ashore before she’s round. Oh my God!”
I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head,
and shook it violently.
“She’s ashore already,” he wailed, trying to tear himself away.
“Is she?... Keep good full there!”
“Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, childlike
voice.
I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shaking it. “Ready about,
do you hear? You go forward”--shake--“and stop there”--shake--“and hold
your noise”--shake--“and see these head-sheets properly
overhauled”--shake, shake--shake.
And all the time I dared not look towards the land lest my heart should
fail me. I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for
dear life.
I wondered what my double there in the sail locker thought of this
commotion. He was able to hear everything--and perhaps he was able to
understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close--no less. My
first order “Hard alee!” re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow
of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched
the land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible
to feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self
was making now ready to ship out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he
was gone already...?
The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot
away from the ship’s side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger
ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the
ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?
I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and
her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like
the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would
she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and
on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent
flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was
impossible to tell--and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was
she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper,
which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run
down for it I didn’t dare. There was no time. All at once my strained,
yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of
the ship’s side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed
under it. What was that thing?... I recognized my own floppy hat. It
must have fallen off his head... and he didn’t bother. Now I had what
I wanted--the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other
self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever from all friendly
faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of
the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand... too proud to
explain.
And I watched the hat--the expression of my sudden pity for his mere
flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of
the sun. And now--behold--it was saving the ship, by serving me for a
mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting
forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternaway.
“Shift the helm,” I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still
like a statue.
The man’s eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round
to the other side and spun round the wheel.
I walked to the break of the poop. On the over-shadowed deck all hands
stood by the forebraces waiting for my order. The stars ahead seemed to
be gliding from right to left. And all was so still in the world that
I heard the quiet remark, “She’s round,” passed in a tone of intense
relief between two seamen.
“Let go and haul.”
The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And
now the frightful whiskers made themselves heard giving various orders.
Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing!
no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on
the way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of
a seaman with his first command.
Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge
of a darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of
Erebus--yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white
hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and
of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself
into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer
striking out for a new destiny.