"Still you seem to me too old for a lighthouse keeper."
"Sir," exclaimed the candidate suddenly in a voice of emotion, "I am
greatly wearied, knocked about. I have passed through much as you
see. This place is one of those which I have wished for most
ardently. I am old, I need rest. I need to say to myself, 'Here you
will remain; this is your port.' Ah, sir, this depends now on you
alone. Another time perhaps such a place will not offer itself.
What luck that I was in Panama! I entreat you--as God is dear to me,
I am like a ship which if it misses the harbour will be lost. If you
wish to make an old man happy--I swear to you that I am honest,
but--I have enough of wandering."
The blue eyes of the old man expressed such earnest entreaty that
Falconbridge, who had a good, simple heart, was touched.
"Well," said he, "I'll take you. You are a lighthouse keeper."
The old man's face gleamed with inexpressible joy.
"I thank you."
"Can you go to the tower to-day?"
"I can."
"Then good-bye. Another word,--for any failure in service you will
be dismissed."
"All right."
That same evening, when the sun had descended on the other side of
the isthmus, and a day of sunshine was followed by a night without
twilight, the new keeper was in his place evidently, for the
lighthouse was casting its bright rays on the water as usual. The
night was perfectly calm, silent, genuinely tropical, filled with a
transparent haze, forming around the moon a great coloured rainbow
with soft, unbroken edges; the sea was moving only because the tide
raised it. Skavinski on the balcony seemed from below like a small
black point. He tried to collect his thoughts and take in his new
position; but his mind was too much under pressure to move with
regularity. He felt somewhat as a hunted beast feels when at last it
has found refuge from pursuit on some inaccessible rock or in a cave.
There had come to him, finally, an hour of quiet; the feeling of
safety filled his soul with a certain unspeakable bliss. Now on that
rock he can simply laugh at his previous wanderings, his misfortunes,
and failures. He was in truth like a ship whose masts, ropes, and
sails had been broken and rent by a tempest, and cast from the clouds
to the bottom of the sea,--a ship on which the tempest had hurled
waves and spat foam, but which still wound its way to the harbour.
The pictures of that storm passed quickly through his mind as he
compared it with the calm future now beginning. A part of his
wonderful adventures he had related to Falconbridge; he had not
mentioned, however, thousands of other incidents. It had been his
misfortune that as often as he pitched his tent and fixed his
fireplace to settle down permanently, some wind tore out the stakes
of his tent, whirled away the fire, and bore him on toward
destruction. Looking now from the balcony of the tower at the
illuminated waves, he remembered everything through which he had
passed. He had campaigned in the four parts of the world, and in
wandering had tried almost every occupation. Labour-loving and
honest, more than once had he earned money, and had always lost it in
spite of every prevision and the utmost caution. He had been a
gold-miner in Australia, a diamond-digger in Africa, a rifleman in
public service in the East Indies. He established a ranch in
California,--the drought ruined him; he tried trading with wild
tribes in the interior of Brazil,--his raft was wrecked on the
Amazon; he himself alone, weaponless, and nearly naked, wandered in
the forest for many weeks living on wild fruits, exposed every moment
to death from the jaws of wild beasts. He established a forge in
Helena, Arkansas, and that was burned in a great fire which consumed
the whole town. Next he fell into the hands of the Indians in the
Rocky Mountains, and only through a miracle was he saved by Canadian
trappers. Then he served as a sailor on a vessel running between
Bahia and Bordeaux, and as a harpooner on a whaling-ship; both
vessels were wrecked. He had a cigar factory in Havana, and was
robbed by his partner while he himself was lying sick with the
vomito. At last he came to Aspinwall, and there was to be the end of
his failures,--for what could reach him on that rocky island?
Neither water nor fire nor men. But from men Skavinski had not
suffered much; he had met good men oftener than bad ones.
But it seemed to him that all the four elements were persecuting him.
Those who knew him said that he had no luck, and with that they
explained everything. He himself became somewhat of a monomaniac.
He believed that some mighty and vengeful hand was pursuing him
everywhere, on all lands and waters. He did not like, however, to
speak of this; only at times, when someone asked him whose hand that
could be, he pointed mysteriously to the Polar Star, and said, "It
comes from that place." In reality his failures were so continuous
that they were wonderful, and might easily drive a nail into the
head, especially of the man who had experienced them. But Skavinski
had the patience of an Indian, and that great calm power of
resistance which comes from the truth of heart. In his time he had
received in Hungary a number of bayonet-thrusts because he would not
grasp at a stirrup which was shown as means of salvation to him, and
cry for quarter. In like manner he did not bend to misfortune. He
crept up against the mountain as industriously as an ant. Pushed
down a hundred times, he began his journey calmly for the hundred and
first time. He was in his way a most peculiar original. This old
soldier, tempered, God knows in how many fires, hardened in
suffering, hammered and forged, had the heart of a child. In the
time of the epidemic in Cuba, the vomito attacked him because he had
given to the sick all his quinine, of which he had a considerable
supply, and left not a grain to himself.
There had been in him also this wonderful quality,--that after so
many disappointments he was ever full of confidence, and did not lose
hope that all would be well yet. In winter he grew lively, and
predicted great events. He waited for these events with impatience,
and lived with the thought of them whole summers. But the winters
passed one after another, and Skavinski lived only to this,--that
they whitened his head. At last he grew old, began to lose energy;
his endurance was becoming more and more like resignation, his former
calmness was tending toward supersensitiveness, and that tempered
soldier was degenerating into a man ready to shed tears for any
cause. Besides this, from time to time he was weighed down by a
terrible homesickness which was roused by any circumstance,--the
sight of swallows, gray birds like sparrows, snow on the mountains or
melancholy music like that heard on a time. Finally there was one
idea which mastered him,--the idea of rest. It mastered the old man
thoroughly and swallowed all other desires and hopes. This ceaseless
wanderer could not imagine anything more to be longed for, anything
more precious than a quiet corner in which to rest and wait in
silence for the end. Perhaps specially because some whim of fate had
so hurried him over all seas and lands that he could hardly catch his
breath did he imagine that the highest human happiness was simply not
to wander. It is true that such modest happiness was his due; but he
was so accustomed to disappointments that he thought of rest as
people in general think of something which is beyond reach. He did
not dare to hope for it. Meanwhile unexpectedly in the course of
twelve hours he had gained a position which was as if chosen for him
out of all the world. We are not to wonder, then, that when he
lighted his lantern in the evening he became as it were dazed,--that
he asked himself if that was reality, and he did not dare to answer
that it was. But at the same time reality convinced him with
incontrovertible proofs; hence, hours one after another passed while
he was on the balcony. He gazed, and convinced himself. It might
seem that he was looking at the sea for the first time in his life.
The lens of the lantern cast into the darkness an enormous triangle
of light, beyond which the eye of the old man was lost in the black
distance completely, in the distance mysterious and awful. But that
distance seemed to run toward the light. The long waves following
one another rolled out from the darkness, and went bellowing toward
the base of the island; and then their foaming backs were visible,
shining rose-coloured in the light of the lantern. The incoming tide
swelled more and more and covered the sandy bars. The mysterious
speech of the ocean came with a fulness more powerful and louder, at
one time like the thunder of cannon, at another like the roar of
great forests, at another like the distant dull sound of the voices
of people. At the moments it was quiet; then to the ears of the old
man came some great sigh, then a kind of sobbing and again
threatening outbursts. At last the wind bore away the haze, but
brought black broken clouds, which hid the moon. From the west it
began to blow more and more; the waves sprang with rage against the
rock of the lighthouse licking with foam the foundation walls. In
the distance a storm was beginning to bellow. On the dark, disturbed
expanse certain green lanterns gleamed from the masts of ships.
These green points rose high and then sank; now they swayed to the
right, and now to the left. Skavinski descended to his room. The
storm began to howl. Outside, people on those ships were struggling
with night, with darkness, with waves; but inside the tower it was
calm and still. Even the sounds of the storm hardly came through the
thick walls, and only the measured tick-tack of the clock lulled the
wearied old man to his slumber.