Ransome lingered in the cabin as if he had something to do there, but
hesitated about doing it. I said suddenly:
“You think I ought to be on deck?”
He answered at once but without any particular emphasis or accent: “I
do, sir.”
I got to my feet briskly, and he made way for me to go out. As I passed
through the lobby I heard Mr. Burns’ voice saying:
“Shut the door of my room, will you, steward?” And Ransome’s rather
surprised: “Certainly, sir.”
I thought that all my feelings had been dulled into complete
indifference. But I found it as trying as ever to be on deck. The
impenetrable blackness beset the ship so close that it seemed that
by thrusting one’s hand over the side one could touch some unearthly
substance. There was in it an effect of inconceivable terror and of
inexpressible mystery. The few stars overhead shed a dim light upon
the ship alone, with no gleams of any kind upon the water, in detached
shafts piercing an atmosphere which had turned to soot. It was something
I had never seen before, giving no hint of the direction from which any
change would come, the closing in of a menace from all sides.
There was still no man at the helm. The immobility of all things was
perfect. If the air had turned black, the sea, for all I knew, might
have turned solid. It was no good looking in any direction, watching
for any sign, speculating upon the nearness of the moment. When the time
came the blackness would overwhelm silently the bit of starlight falling
upon the ship, and the end of all things would come without a sigh,
stir, or murmur of any kind, and all our hearts would cease to beat like
run-down clocks.
It was impossible to shake off that sense of finality. The quietness
that came over me was like a foretaste of annihilation. It gave me a
sort of comfort, as though my soul had become suddenly reconciled to an
eternity of blind stillness.
The seaman’s instinct alone survived whole in my moral dissolution. I
descended the ladder to the quarter-deck. The starlight seemed to die
out before reaching that spot, but when I asked quietly: “Are you there,
men?” my eyes made out shadow forms starting up around me, very few,
very indistinct; and a voice spoke: “All here, sir.” Another amended
anxiously:
“All that are any good for anything, sir.”
Both voices were very quiet and unringing; without any special character
of readiness or discouragement. Very matter-of-fact voices.
“We must try to haul this mainsail close up,” I said.
The shadows swayed away from me without a word. Those men were the
ghosts of themselves, and their weight on a rope could be no more than
the weight of a bunch of ghosts. Indeed, if ever a sail was hauled up
by sheer spiritual strength it must have been that sail, for, properly
speaking, there was not muscle enough for the task in the whole ship let
alone the miserable lot of us on deck. Of course, I took the lead in the
work myself. They wandered feebly after me from rope to rope, stumbling
and panting. They toiled like Titans. We were half-an-hour at it at
least, and all the time the black universe made no sound. When the last
leech-line was made fast, my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, made
out the shapes of exhausted men drooping over the rails, collapsed on
hatches. One hung over the after-capstan, sobbing for breath, and I
stood amongst them like a tower of strength, impervious to disease and
feeling only the sickness of my soul. I waited for some time fighting
against the weight of my sins, against my sense of unworthiness, and
then I said:
“Now, men, we’ll go aft and square the mainyard. That’s about all we can
do for the ship; and for the rest she must take her chance.”