WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN
It was on the night when we had well-nigh finished our two rafts that a
very unexpected thing happened--a thing which I took at the time to be a
piece of good fortune, but which, as it happened, proved to be a
misfortune for some of us. The unexpected event was, namely, that we
lost Cornelys Jensen; and this was the way in which the thing came
about.
The nights during that spell of foul weather were very dark and
moonless, not because there was no moon, though she was now waning into
her last quarter, but because of the quantity of clouds that muffled up
the face of the heavens and hid the moon and the stars from us. But we
made shift as well as we could, working hard all the time that the
daylight lasted, and giving up the night to the rest we were all in such
sore need of. Of course, the usual discipline of the ship was preserved,
the usual watches set, and all observed exactly as if Captain Amber
himself had been aboard, for, though the Royal Christopher was sadly
shaken, she was still uninjured as to her inward parts, and we were all
able to sleep under cover and out of the way of wind or weather.
On the night before the weather mended, although it was not my watch and
I was below in my cabin, I found that I could not sleep. The air was
close and oppressive, full of a heat that heralded, though I did not
know it, the coming of a spell of fine weather. I was feverish and
distressed of body, and tossed for long enough in my hammock, trying
very hard to get to sleep; but, though I was tired as a dog, the grace
of sleep would not come to me. At last, in very desperation, I resolved
to continue the struggle no longer. If I could not sleep I could not,
and there was an end of it. I would go on deck and get there a little
air to cool my hot body.
So up on deck I went and looked about me. All was quiet, all was dark.
Here and there a ship's lanthorn made a star in the gloom; the ship
seemed like a black rock rising out of blackness. I could hear the tread
of the watch; I could hear the noisy lapping of the water. There was no
wind, there was no moon; the air seemed to be thick and choking. I felt
scarcely more refreshed than I had been in my cabin, but as I had come
up I thought that I might as well stay up for a bit and have the benefit
of whatever air there was. So I made my way cautiously in the darkness
to the side of the vessel, and, leaning upon the bulwark, looked out
over the sea, and fell to thinking of Marjorie and of my love for her
and all its hopelessness.
Presently I heard voices. Those who spoke drew nearer and nearer to me,
and I soon recognised the speakers as Lancelot and Cornelys Jensen. At
the spot where I was standing a great pile of boxes and water barrels
had been raised for transfer to the rafts, and I, being on the one side
of this pile, was invisible to them as they approached, and would have
been passed unnoticed had the night been brighter than it was. I could
almost hear what they were saying; I am certain that I heard Jensen
utter my name.
I came out of the shadow, or rather out of my corner--for it was all
shadow alike--and called out Lancelot's name. Lancelot called back to
me, and then I heard Jensen wish him good-night and turn and tramp
heavily down the stairs that led below. He seemed to tramp very heavily,
heavier than was his wont, for he was a light, alert man, even when his
biggest sea-boots were on him, as I make no doubt they now were.
Lancelot joined me, and I drew him with me into the place where I had
been standing, after first casting a glance around the deck to see that
no one was within hearing. All seemed deserted, save for the distant
walk of the watch. We leaned over the bulwark together and began to
talk.
I asked him what Jensen had been saying to him. He told me that Cornelys
had come to him and expressed great surprise and anger at the doubts
which he believed, from my manner and from some words that I had
uttered, I entertained of him. It seemed that he had said again to
Lancelot what he had said to me about the flag; that he insisted that
there was no mystery at all about the matter, but that he was proud of
its possession and superstitious as to its luck, and that he never was
willingly parted from it. At the same time he offered to give it
Lancelot, as he had already offered to give it me, if Lancelot was
minded or wishful to take possession of it; an offer which Lancelot had
refused.
I could see from Lancelot's manner that he was largely convinced of the
integrity of Jensen, and I must confess that Jensen's conduct had given
him grounds for confidence, and that I had very little in the way of
reasonable argument to shake that confidence. Still, I made bold to be
somewhat importunate with Lancelot. When he spoke of his uncle's trust
in Jensen's integrity, when he urged the value of Jensen's services to
us on the voyage, and the way in which he had kept the sailors under
control at the first symptom of mutiny, I had, it must be confessed,
little to say in reply that could seriously damage Jensen's character.
But I was so thoroughly convinced of the man's treachery that I argued
hotly, and it may be that as I grew hot I raised my voice a trifle,
which is a way of mine; and, indeed, my voice is never a good whispering
voice. I entreated Lancelot, at all events, to have a very watchful eye
upon Jensen, and I urged that on the first symptom of anything in the
least like double-dealing he should place Jensen under arrest.
Lancelot listened to me very patiently. He was impressed by my
earnestness, and at last promised that he would scrutinise Jensen's
actions very narrowly, and that if he saw anything that was at all
suspicious in his demeanour he would immediately take steps to render
him harmless. At this I pressed Lancelot's hand warmly, and was about
to leave him and go below when I fancied that I heard steps stealing
away from us very softly, from the other side of the pile of barrels and
boxes by which we stood. I whipped out of my corner and round the pile
in an instant, but there was no one there, and I could neither see nor
hear anything suspicious. Lancelot declared that I was as suspicious as
an old maid of her neighbour's hens. I echoed his laughter as well as I
could, but I went below again with a heavy heart, for I was oppressed
with a sense of danger which I dreaded the more because it seemed to
lurk in darkness. I had laid me down again with no very great hope of
sleep, but I had no sooner laid my head upon its pillow than I fell into
a most uneasy slumber, in which all my apprehensions and all our perils
seemed to be multiplied and magnified a hundredfold. A nightmare terror
brooded upon my breast. Suddenly I imagined, in the swift changes of my
dream, that we were sinking, and that the vessel was going to pieces
with great crashes. I awoke with a start, to find that the noises of my
dream were being continued into my waking life. The deck above was noisy
with trampling feet and confused cries. For a moment I sat up, dizzy
with surprise, and unable to realise whether I was awake or asleep.
Then I pulled my wits together, and was on deck in a trice.
I caught hold of a sailor who was hurrying rapidly by, and asked him
what was the matter. He answered me that there was a man overboard, and
that they were doing all they could to save him by casting over the side
spars and timbers that would float, in the hope that he might be able to
catch one of them. The deck was all confusion, men running hither and
thither, and some hanging over the bulwarks and peering into the
darkness, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of their drowning
comrade. We had not a boat to lower, save only the little dinghy, which
would not have lived a minute in such a sea.
When I found somebody who could tell me what had happened this was what
I learnt. A man had fallen overboard; the watch had heard the splash as
the body fell into the water, and a wild cry that followed upon the
splash; a sailor had shouted out his warning of 'Man overboard!' and the
cry had roused the whole ship. Up to this point nobody seemed to have
any idea who the missing man was, but when Lancelot, who was immediately
on deck, though he had but just gone to lie down, had commanded
silence, and the men were gathered about him on the deck, the sailor who
had first made the alarm was found and questioned. This sailor said that
he saw a man standing at the vessel's side at a place where, when the
mast fell, the bulwark had been torn away and had left a gaping wound in
the ship's railings; that as he, surprised at seeing a man there, came
nearer to try and ascertain what he was doing, the man staggered, flung
up his arms--here the man who was narrating these things to us flung up
his hands in imitation--and then went over the side with a great splash
and a great cry. He believed that the man was none other than Cornelys
Jensen.
When Lancelot and I heard the name of Cornelys Jensen upon the man's
lips we looked involuntarily at each other, and I make certain that we
both grew pale. That the man of whom we had been talking not an hour
before in such different terms should have thus suddenly been taken out
of our lives came like a shock to us both. Further investigation
confirmed the accuracy of the man's statement. The roll was called over,
and every man answered to his name except Cornelys Jensen. His cabin was
at once searched, but he was not in it, and it was evident that he had
made no attempt to sleep there that night, for his hammock was
undisturbed. On the table lay a folded sheet of paper, which Lancelot
took up and opened. It contained only these words: 'Your doubts have
driven me to despair.' These words had apparently been followed by some
other words, the beginning of a fresh sentence, but, whatever they were,
they were so scrawled over with the pen that their meaning was as
effectually blotted out as if they had never been written.
Of course, all efforts to rescue the unhappy man were unavailing. There
was really nothing that we could do save to cast pieces of spar and
plank overboard in the faint hope that some one of them might come in
the drowning man's way and enable him to keep afloat till daylight, if
by any chance his purpose of self-slaughter--for so it seemed to me--had
changed with his souse into the water. The night was pitchy black, and
the waves were running a tremendous pace, so that there really seemed to
be little likelihood of the strongest swimmer keeping himself long
afloat; but we did our best and hoped our hardest, even those of us who,
like myself, disliked and distrusted Cornelys Jensen profoundly.
Though Lancelot said little to Marjorie beyond the bare news of what
had happened I could see that he took the disappearance of Jensen and
that little scrawl we found in his cabin badly to heart. He was
convinced at once that Jensen had committed suicide, driven thereto by
the suspicions that we had formed of him; and, indeed, though I tried to
console Lancelot as well as I could, it did look very like it, and I
must confess that I felt a little guilty. For though I still thought
that the grounds upon which I had formed my suspicions of the man were
reasonable grounds, and justified all my apprehensions, still I could
not resist an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps, after all, I might
have misjudged the man, and that in any case I was the instrument--the
unwitting instrument, but still the instrument none the less--of sending
a fellow-creature before his Maker with the stigma of self-slaughter
upon his soul. So certainly Lancelot and I passed a very unhappy night,
what there was left of it; and when the dawn came we scanned the sea
anxiously in the faint hope that we might see something of the missing
man. But, though the sea was far quieter than it had been for many
hours, there was no trace of any floating body upon it, and it became
only too clear to our minds that, for some cause or other, Cornelys
Jensen had indeed killed himself. I could only imagine that the man was
really crazed, although we did not dream of such a thing, and that the
perils and privations through which we had passed, and against which he
seemed to bear such a bold front, had in fact completed the unhinging of
his wits, and that my accusations, acting upon a weakened mind, had
driven him in his frenzy to destroy himself. To be quite candid, though
I was sufficiently sorry for the man, I was still dogged enough in my
own opinion of his character as to think that, if it was the will of
Providence that he should so perish, at all events the Royal Christopher
was no loser by his loss.