“I suppose the only thing now is to take care of them as you are doing
till I can get the ship to sea?”
He inclined his head, shutting his eyes under the large spectacles, and
murmured:
“The sea . . . undoubtedly.”
The first member of the crew fairly knocked over was the steward--the
first man to whom I had spoken on board. He was taken ashore (with
choleric symptoms) and died there at the end of a week. Then, while I
was still under the startling impression of this first home-thrust of
the climate, Mr. Burns gave up and went to bed in a raging fever without
saying a word to anybody.
I believe he had partly fretted himself into that illness; the climate
did the rest with the swiftness of an invisible monster ambushed in
the air, in the water, in the mud of the river-bank. Mr. Burns was a
predestined victim.
I discovered him lying on his back, glaring sullenly and radiating heat
on one like a small furnace. He would hardly answer my questions, and
only grumbled. Couldn’t a man take an afternoon off duty with a bad
headache--for once?
That evening, as I sat in the saloon after dinner, I could hear him
muttering continuously in his room. Ransome, who was clearing the table,
said to me:
“I am afraid, sir, I won’t be able to give the mate all the attention
he’s likely to need. I will have to be forward in the galley a great
part of my time.”
Ransome was the cook. The mate had pointed him out to me the first day,
standing on the deck, his arms crossed on his broad chest, gazing on the
river.
Even at a distance his well-proportioned figure, something thoroughly
sailor-like in his poise, made him noticeable. On nearer view the
intelligent, quiet eyes, a well-bred face, the disciplined independence
of his manner made up an attractive personality. When, in addition, Mr.
Burns told me that he was the best seaman in the ship, I expressed my
surprise that in his earliest prime and of such appearance he should
sign on as cook on board a ship.
“It’s his heart,” Mr. Burns had said. “There’s something wrong with it.
He mustn’t exert himself too much or he may drop dead suddenly.”
And he was the only one the climate had not touched--perhaps because,
carrying a deadly enemy in his breast, he had schooled himself into a
systematic control of feelings and movements. When one was in the secret
this was apparent in his manner. After the poor steward died, and as he
could not be replaced by a white man in this Oriental port, Ransome had
volunteered to do the double work.
“I can do it all right, sir, as long as I go about it quietly,” he had
assured me.
But obviously he couldn’t be expected to take up sick-nursing in
addition. Moreover, the doctor peremptorily ordered Mr. Burns ashore.
With a seaman on each side holding him up under the arms, the mate went
over the gangway more sullen than ever. We built him up with pillows in
the gharry, and he made an effort to say brokenly:
“Now--you’ve got--what you wanted--got me out of--the ship.”
“You were never more mistaken in your life, Mr. Burns,” I said quietly,
duly smiling at him; and the trap drove off to a sort of sanatorium, a
pavilion of bricks which the doctor had in the grounds of his residence.
I visited Mr. Burns regularly. After the first few days, when he didn’t
know anybody, he received me as if I had come either to gloat over
an enemy or else to curry favour with a deeply wronged person. It was
either one or the other, just as it happened according to his fantastic
sickroom moods. Whichever it was, he managed to convey it to me even
during the period when he appeared almost too weak to talk. I treated
him to my invariable kindliness.
Then one day, suddenly, a surge of downright panic burst through all
this craziness.
If I left him behind in this deadly place he would die. He felt it, he
was certain of it. But I wouldn’t have the heart to leave him ashore. He
had a wife and child in Sydney.
He produced his wasted forearms from under the sheet which covered him
and clasped his fleshless claws. He would die! He would die here. . . .
He absolutely managed to sit up, but only for a moment, and when he fell
back I really thought that he would die there and then. I called to the
Bengali dispenser, and hastened away from the room.
Next day he upset me thoroughly by renewing his entreaties. I returned
an evasive answer, and left him the picture of ghastly despair. The day
after I went in with reluctance, and he attacked me at once in a
much stronger voice and with an abundance of argument which was quite
startling. He presented his case with a sort of crazy vigour, and asked
me finally how would I like to have a man’s death on my conscience? He
wanted me to promise that I would not sail without him.
I said that I really must consult the doctor first. He cried out at
that. The doctor! Never! That would be a death sentence.
The effort had exhausted him. He closed his eyes, but went on rambling
in a low voice. I had hated him from the start. The late captain had
hated him, too. Had wished him dead. Had wished all hands dead. . . .
“What do you want to stand in with that wicked corpse for, sir? He’ll
have you, too,” he ended, blinking his glazed eyes vacantly.
“Mr. Burns,” I cried, very much discomposed, “what on earth are you
talking about?”
He seemed to come to himself, though he was too weak to start.
“I don’t know,” he said languidly. “But don’t ask that doctor, sir. You
and I are sailors. Don’t ask him, sir. Some day perhaps you will have a
wife and child yourself.”
And again he pleaded for the promise that I would not leave him behind.
I had the firmness of mind not to give it to him. Afterward this
sternness seemed criminal; for my mind was made up. That prostrated man,
with hardly strength enough to breathe and ravaged by a passion of fear,
was irresistible. And, besides, he had happened to hit on the right
words. He and I were sailors. That was a claim, for I had no other
family. As to the wife and child (some day) argument, it had no force.
It sounded merely bizarre.
I could imagine no claim that would be stronger and more absorbing
than the claim of that ship, of these men snared in the river by silly
commercial complications, as if in some poisonous trap.
However, I had nearly fought my way out. Out to sea. The sea--which was
pure, safe, and friendly. Three days more.
That thought sustained and carried me on my way back to the ship. In the
saloon the doctor’s voice greeted me, and his large form followed
his voice, issuing out of the starboard spare cabin where the ship’s
medicine chest was kept securely lashed in the bed-place.
Finding that I was not on board he had gone in there, he said, to
inspect the supply of drugs, bandages, and so on. Everything was
completed and in order.
I thanked him; I had just been thinking of asking him to do that very
thing, as in a couple of days, as he knew, we were going to sea, where
all our troubles of every sort would be over at last.
He listened gravely and made no answer. But when I opened to him my mind
as to Mr. Burns he sat down by my side, and, laying his hand on my knee
amicably, begged me to think what it was I was exposing myself to.
The man was just strong enough to bear being moved and no more. But he
couldn’t stand a return of the fever. I had before me a passage of sixty
days perhaps, beginning with intricate navigation and ending probably
with a lot of bad weather. Could I run the risk of having to go through
it single-handed, with no chief officer and with a second quite a youth?
. . .
He might have added that it was my first command, too. He did probably
think of that fact, for he checked himself. It was very present to my
mind.
He advised me earnestly to cable to Singapore for a chief officer, even
if I had to delay my sailing for a week.
“Never,” I said. The very thought gave me the shivers. The hands seemed
fairly fit, all of them, and this was the time to get them away. Once at
sea I was not afraid of facing anything. The sea was now the only remedy
for all my troubles.
The doctor’s glasses were directed at me like two lamps searching the
genuineness of my resolution. He opened his lips as if to argue further,
but shut them again without saying anything. I had a vision so vivid of
poor Burns in his exhaustion, helplessness, and anguish, that it moved
me more than the reality I had come away from only an hour before. It
was purged from the drawbacks of his personality, and I could not resist
it.
“Look here,” I said. “Unless you tell me officially that the man
must not be moved I’ll make arrangements to have him brought on board
tomorrow, and shall take the ship out of the river next morning, even if
I have to anchor outside the bar for a couple of days to get her ready
for sea.”
“Oh! I’ll make all the arrangements myself,” said the doctor at once.
“I spoke as I did only as a friend--as a well-wisher, and that sort of
thing.”
He rose in his dignified simplicity and gave me a warm handshake, rather
solemnly, I thought. But he was as good as his word. When Mr. Burns
appeared at the gangway carried on a stretcher, the doctor himself
walked by its side. The programme had been altered in so far that this
transportation had been left to the last moment, on the very morning of
our departure.
It was barely an hour after sunrise. The doctor waved his big arm to me
from the shore and walked back at once to his trap, which had followed
him empty to the river-side. Mr. Burns, carried across the quarter-deck,
had the appearance of being absolutely lifeless. Ransome went down to
settle him in his cabin. I had to remain on deck to look after the ship,
for the tug had got hold of our towrope already.
The splash of our shore-fasts falling in the water produced a complete
change of feeling in me. It was like the imperfect relief of awakening
from a nightmare. But when the ship’s head swung down the river away
from that town, Oriental and squalid, I missed the expected elation of
that striven-for moment. What there was, undoubtedly, was a relaxation
of tension which translated itself into a sense of weariness after an
inglorious fight.
About midday we anchored a mile outside the bar. The afternoon was busy
for all hands. Watching the work from the poop, where I remained all the
time, I detected in it some of the languor of the six weeks spent in the
steaming heat of the river. The first breeze would blow that away. Now
the calm was complete. I judged that the second officer--a callow youth
with an unpromising face--was not, to put it mildly, of that invaluable
stuff from which a commander’s right hand is made. But I was glad to
catch along the main deck a few smiles on those seamen’s faces at which
I had hardly had time to have a good look as yet. Having thrown off the
mortal coil of shore affairs, I felt myself familiar with them and yet a
little strange, like a long-lost wanderer among his kin.
Ransome flitted continually to and fro between the galley and the cabin.
It was a pleasure to look at him. The man positively had grace. He
alone of all the crew had not had a day’s illness in port. But with
the knowledge of that uneasy heart within his breast I could detect the
restraint he put on the natural sailor-like agility of his movements. It
was as though he had something very fragile or very explosive to carry
about his person and was all the time aware of it.
I had occasion to address him once or twice. He answered me in his
pleasant, quiet voice and with a faint, slightly wistful smile. Mr.
Burns appeared to be resting. He seemed fairly comfortable.
After sunset I came out on deck again to meet only a still void. The
thin, featureless crust of the coast could not be distinguished. The
darkness had risen around the ship like a mysterious emanation from the
dumb and lonely waters. I leaned on the rail and turned my ear to the
shadows of the night. Not a sound. My command might have been a planet
flying vertiginously on its appointed path in a space of infinite
silence. I clung to the rail as if my sense of balance were leaving me
for good. How absurd. I failed nervously.
“On deck there!”
The immediate answer, “Yes, sir,” broke the spell. The anchor-watch
man ran up the poop ladder smartly. I told him to report at once the
slightest sign of a breeze coming.
Going below I looked in on Mr. Burns. In fact, I could not avoid seeing
him, for his door stood open. The man was so wasted that, in this white
cabin, under a white sheet, and with his diminished head sunk in the
white pillow, his red moustaches captured their eyes exclusively, like
something artificial--a pair of moustaches from a shop exhibited there
in the harsh light of the bulkhead-lamp without a shade.
While I stared with a sort of wonder he asserted himself by opening his
eyes and even moving them in my direction. A minute stir.
“Dead calm, Mr. Burns,” I said resignedly.
In an unexpectedly distinct voice Mr. Burns began a rambling speech. Its
tone was very strange, not as if affected by his illness, but as if of
a different nature. It sounded unearthly. As to the matter, I seemed
to make out that it was the fault of the “old man”--the late
captain--ambushed down there under the sea with some evil intention. It
was a weird story.
I listened to the end; then stepping into the cabin I laid my hand on
the mate’s forehead. It was cool. He was light-headed only from extreme
weakness. Suddenly he seemed to become aware of me, and in his own
voice--of course, very feeble--he asked regretfully:
“Is there no chance at all to get under way, sir?”
“What’s the good of letting go our hold of the ground only to drift, Mr.
Burns?” I answered.
He sighed and I left him to his immobility. His hold on life was
as slender as his hold on sanity. I was oppressed by my lonely
responsibilities. I went into my cabin to seek relief in a few hours’
sleep, but almost before I closed my eyes the man on deck came down
reporting a light breeze. Enough to get under way with, he said.
And it was no more than just enough. I ordered the windlass manned, the
sails loosed, and the topsails set. But by the time I had cast the ship
I could hardly feel any breath of wind. Nevertheless, I trimmed the
yards and put everything on her. I was not going to give up the attempt.