Men, Women, and Boats
by
Stephen Crane
Part 1 out of 4
Produced by John Bilderback, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
MEN, WOMEN, AND BOATS
By Stephen Crane
Edited With an Introduction by Vincent Starrett
NOTE
A Number of the tales and sketches here brought together appear now for
the first time between covers; others for the first time between covers
in this country. All have been gathered from out-of-print volumes and
old magazine files.
"The Open Boat," one of Stephen Crane's finest stories, is used with the
courteous permission of Doubleday, Page & Co., holders of the copyright.
Its companion masterpiece, "The Blue Hotel," because of copyright
complications, has had to be omitted, greatly to the regret of the
editor.
After the death of Stephen Crane, a haphazard and undiscriminating
gathering of his earlier tales and sketches appeared in London under the
misleading title, "Last Words." From this volume, now rarely met with, a
number of characteristic minor works have been selected, and these will
be new to Crane's American admirers; as follows: "The Reluctant
Voyagers," "The End of the Battle," "The Upturned Face," "An Episode of
War," "A Desertion," "Four Men in a Cave," "The Mesmeric Mountain,"
"London Impressions," "The Snake."
Three of our present collection, printed by arrangement, appeared in the
London (1898) edition of "The Open Boat and Other Stories," published by
William Heinemann, but did not occur in the American volume of that
title. They are "An Experiment in Misery," "The Duel that was not
Fought," and "The Pace of Youth."
For the rest, "A Dark Brown Dog," "A Tent in Agony," and "The Scotch
Express," are here printed for the first time in a book.
For the general title of the present collection, the editor alone is
responsible.
V. S.
MEN, WOMEN AND BOATS
CONTENTS
STEPHEN CRANE: _An Estimate_
THE OPEN BOAT
THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
THE END OF THE BATTLE
THE UPTURNED FACE
AN EPISODE OF WAR
AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY
THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT
A DESERTION
THE DARK-BROWN DOG
THE PACE OF YOUTH
SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES
A TENT IN AGONY
FOUR MEN IN A CAVE
THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN
THE SNAKE
LONDON IMPRESSIONS
THE SCOTCH EXPRESS
STEPHEN CRANE: _AN ESTIMATE_
It hardly profits us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might have written
about the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have been in it,
in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for war and
personal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writers of
recent times could so well describe the poetry of motion as manifested
in the surge and flow of battle, or so well depict the isolated deed of
heroism in its stark simplicity and terror.
To such an undertaking as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire," that powerful,
brutal book, Crane would have brought an analytical genius almost
clairvoyant. He possessed an uncanny vision; a descriptive ability
photographic in its clarity and its care for minutiae--yet
unphotographic in that the big central thing often is omitted, to be
felt rather than seen in the occult suggestion of detail. Crane would
have seen and depicted the grisly horror of it all, as did Barbusse, but
also he would have seen the glory and the ecstasy and the wonder of it,
and over that his poetry would have been spread.
While Stephen Crane was an excellent psychologist, he was also a true
poet. Frequently his prose was finer poetry than his deliberate essays
in poesy. His most famous book, "The Red Badge of Courage," is
essentially a psychological study, a delicate clinical dissection of the
soul of a recruit, but it is also a _tour de force_ of the
imagination. When he wrote the book he had never seen a battle: he had
to place himself in the situation of another. Years later, when he came
out of the Greco-Turkish _fracas_, he remarked to a friend: "'The
Red Badge' is all right."
Written by a youth who had scarcely passed his majority, this book has
been compared with Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" and Zola's "La Debacle," and
with some of the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. The comparison with
Bierce's work is legitimate; with the other books, I think, less so.
Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; they
apply themselves to a devoted--almost obscene--study of corpses and
carnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdy
commonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids his
realism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down
where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished with
studied awkwardness.
Crane was an obscure free-lance when he wrote this book. The effort, he
says, somewhere, "was born of pain--despair, almost." It was a better
piece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is far
from flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as many
grammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I am
certain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of polite
rhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to effect--effect which,
frequently, he gained.
Stephen Crane "arrived" with this book. There are, of course, many who
never have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he was
very much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, following
publication of "The Red Badge of Courage," although even before that he
had occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called
"The Black Riders and Other Lines." He was highly praised, and highly
abused and laughed at; but he seemed to be "made." We have largely
forgotten since. It is a way we have.
Personally, I prefer his short stories to his novels and his poems;
those, for instance, contained in "The Open Boat," in "Wounds in the
Rain," and in "The Monster." The title-story in that first collection is
perhaps his finest piece of work. Yet what is it? A truthful record of
an adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded our war
with Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat, manned
by a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of
_his_ small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by the
mutineers of the _Bounty_, seems tame in comparison, although of
the two the English sailor's voyage was the more perilous.
In "The Open Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down the
tone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and have
been lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadences
of his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the gray
water that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes in
cruel waves, "like little pointed rocks." It is a desolate picture, and
the tale is one of our greatest short stories. In the other tales that
go to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. I
doubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been better
rendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences.
"War Stories" is the laconic sub-title of "Wounds in the Rain." It was
not war on a grand scale that Crane saw in the Spanish-American
complication, in which he participated as a war correspondent; no such
war as the recent horror. But the occasions for personal heroism were no
fewer than always, and the opportunities for the exercise of such powers
of trained and appreciative understanding and sympathy as Crane
possessed, were abundant. For the most part, these tales are episodic,
reports of isolated instances--the profanely humorous experiences of
correspondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, the
forgotten adventure of a converted yacht--but all are instinct with the
red fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke of battle.
Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The Red Badge of
Courage." Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensity and painted
it with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when he was its
familiar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages for briefer but no
less careful delineation.
In this book, again, his sense of the poetry of motion is vividly
evident. We see men going into action, wave on wave, or in scattering
charges; we hear the clink of their accoutrements and their breath
whistling through their teeth. They are not men going into action at
all, but men going about their business, which at the moment happens to
be the capture of a trench. They are neither heroes nor cowards. Their
faces reflect no particular emotion save, perhaps, a desire to get
somewhere. They are a line of men running for a train, or following a
fire engine, or charging a trench. It is a relentless picture, ever
changing, ever the same. But it contains poetry, too, in rich, memorable
passages.
In "The Monster and Other Stories," there is a tale called "The Blue
Hotel". A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to get
himself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that.
The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice of
the whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness of
creation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,--a mad, crazy world. The
incident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all,
but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by the
gambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of a
condition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbed
him. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of the
characters:--
"We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even
a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is
the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually
there are from a dozen to forty women really involved
in every murder, but in this case it seems
to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, Old Scully,
and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came
merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement,
and gets all the punishment."
And then this typical and arresting piece of irony:--
"The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon,
had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that
dwelt atop of the cash-machine: 'This registers the
amount of your purchase.'"
In "The Monster," the ignorance, prejudice and cruelty of an entire
community are sharply focussed. The realism is painful; one blushes for
mankind. But while this story really belongs in the volume called
"Whilomville Stories," it is properly left out of that series. The
Whilomville stories are pure comedy, and "The Monster" is a hideous
tragedy.
Whilomville is any obscure little village one may happen to think of. To
write of it with such sympathy and understanding, Crane must have done
some remarkable listening in Boyville. The truth is, of course, he was a
boy himself--"a wonderful boy," somebody called him--and was possessed
of the boy mind. These tales are chiefly funny because they are so true
--boy stories written for adults; a child, I suppose, would find them
dull. In none of his tales is his curious understanding of human moods
and emotions better shown.
A stupid critic once pointed out that Crane, in his search for striking
effects, had been led into "frequent neglect of the time-hallowed rights
of certain words," and that in his pursuit of color he "falls
occasionally into almost ludicrous mishap." The smug pedantry of the
quoted lines is sufficient answer to the charges, but in support of
these assertions the critic quoted certain passages and phrases. He
objected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to
"terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that
largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus.
There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed
by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with
him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our
modern imagists were known.
This unconventional use of adjectives is marked in the Whilomville
tales. In one of them Crane refers to the "solemn odor of burning
turnips." It is the most nearly perfect characterization of burning
turnips conceivable: can anyone improve upon that "solemn odor"?
Stephen Crane's first venture was "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets." It
was, I believe, the first hint of naturalism in American letters. It was
not a best-seller; it offers no solution of life; it is an episodic bit
of slum fiction, ending with the tragic finality of a Greek drama. It
is a skeleton of a novel rather than a novel, but it is a powerful
outline, written about a life Crane had learned to know as a newspaper
reporter in New York. It is a singularly fine piece of analysis, or a
bit of extraordinarily faithful reporting, as one may prefer; but not a
few French and Russian writers have failed to accomplish in two volumes
what Crane achieved in two hundred pages. In the same category is
"George's Mother," a triumph of inconsequential detail piling up with a
cumulative effect quite overwhelming.
Crane published two volumes of poetry--"The Black Riders" and "War is
Kind." Their appearance in print was jeeringly hailed; yet Crane was
only pioneering in the free verse that is today, if not definitely
accepted, at least more than tolerated. I like the following love poem
as well as any rhymed and conventionally metrical ballad that I know:--
"Should the wide world roll away,
Leaving black terror,
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential,
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way."
"If war be kind," wrote a clever reviewer, when the second volume
appeared, "then Crane's verse may be poetry, Beardsley's black and white
creations may be art, and this may be called a book";--a smart summing
up that is cherished by cataloguers to this day, in describing the
volume for collectors. Beardsley needs no defenders, and it is fairly
certain that the clever reviewer had not read the book, for certainly
Crane had no illusions about the kindness of war. The title-poem of the
volume is an amazingly beautiful satire which answers all criticism.
"Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
"Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, and his kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
* * * * *
"Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind."
Poor Stephen Crane! Like most geniuses, he had his weaknesses and his
failings; like many, if not most, geniuses, he was ill. He died of
tuberculosis, tragically young. But what a comrade he must have been,
with his extraordinary vision, his keen, sardonic comment, his
fearlessness and his failings!
Just a glimpse of Crane's last days is afforded by a letter written from
England by Robert Barr, his friend--Robert Barr, who collaborated with
Crane in "The 0' Ruddy," a rollicking tale of old Ireland, or, rather,
who completed it at Crane's death, to satisfy his friend's earnest
request. The letter is dated from Hillhead, Woldingham, Surrey, June 8,
1900, and runs as follows:--
"My Dear ----
"I was delighted to hear from you, and was much
interested to see the article on Stephen Crane you
sent me. It seems to me the harsh judgment of an
unappreciative, commonplace person on a man of
genius. Stephen had many qualities which lent
themselves to misapprehension, but at the core he
was the finest of men, generous to a fault, with
something of the old-time recklessness which used
to gather in the ancient literary taverns of London.
I always fancied that Edgar Allan Poe revisited the
earth as Stephen Crane, trying again, succeeding
again, failing again, and dying ten years sooner
than he did on the other occasion of his stay on
earth.
"When your letter came I had just returned from
Dover, where I stayed four days to see Crane off
for the Black Forest. There was a thin thread of
hope that he might recover, but to me he looked like
a man already dead. When he spoke, or, rather,
whispered, there was all the accustomed humor in
his sayings. I said to him that I would go over to
the Schwarzwald in a few weeks, when he was getting
better, and that we would take some convalescent
rambles together. As his wife was listening
he said faintly: 'I'll look forward to that,' but he
smiled at me, and winked slowly, as much as to say:
'You damned humbug, you know I'll take no more
rambles in this world.' Then, as if the train of
thought suggested what was looked on before as the
crisis of his illness, he murmured: 'Robert, when
you come to the hedge--that we must all go over--
it isn't bad. You feel sleepy--and--you don't
care. Just a little dreamy curiosity--which world
you're really in--that's all.'
"To-morrow, Saturday, the 9th, I go again to
Dover to meet his body. He will rest for a little
while in England, a country that was always good
to him, then to America, and his journey will be
ended.
"I've got the unfinished manuscript of his last
novel here beside me, a rollicking Irish tale, different
from anything he ever wrote before. Stephen
thought I was the only person who could finish it,
and he was too ill for me to refuse. I don't know
what to do about the matter, for I never could work
up another man's ideas. Even your vivid imagination
could hardly conjecture anything more ghastly
than the dying man, lying by an open window overlooking
the English channel, relating in a sepulchral
whisper the comic situations of his humorous hero
so that I might take up the thread of his story.
"From the window beside which I write this I
can see down in the valley Ravensbrook House,
where Crane used to live and where Harold Frederic,
he and I spent many a merry night together. When
the Romans occupied Britain, some of their legions,
parched with thirst, were wandering about these dry
hills with the chance of finding water or perishing.
They watched the ravens, and so came to the stream
which rises under my place and flows past Stephen's
former home; hence the name, Ravensbrook.
"It seems a strange coincidence that the greatest
modern writer on war should set himself down
where the greatest ancient warrior, Caesar, probably
stopped to quench his thirst.
"Stephen died at three in the morning, the same
sinister hour which carried away our friend Frederic
nineteen months before. At midnight, in Crane's
fourteenth-century house in Sussex, we two tried
to lure back the ghost of Frederic into that house of
ghosts, and to our company, thinking that if reappearing
were ever possible so strenuous a man as
Harold would somehow shoulder his way past the
guards, but he made no sign. I wonder if the less
insistent Stephen will suggest some ingenious method
by which the two can pass the barrier. I can imagine
Harold cursing on the other side, and welcoming
the more subtle assistance of his finely fibred
friend.
"I feel like the last of the Three Musketeers, the
other two gone down in their duel with Death. I
am wondering if, within the next two years, I also
shall get the challenge. If so, I shall go to the competing
ground the more cheerfully that two such
good fellows await the outcome on the other side.
"Ever your friend,
"ROBERT BARR."
The last of the Three Musketeers is gone, now, although he outlived his
friends by some years. Robert Barr died in 1912. Perhaps they are still
debating a joint return.
There could be, perhaps, no better close for a paper on Stephen Crane
than the subjoined paragraph from a letter written by him to a Rochester
editor:--
"The one thing that deeply pleases me is the
fact that men of sense invariably believe me to be
sincere. I know that my work does not amount to
a string of dried beans--I always calmly admit it--but
I also know that I do the best that is in me
without regard to praise or blame. When I was
the mark for every humorist in the country, I went
ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty
per cent of the humorists of the country, I go
ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the
world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all
responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible
for his quality of personal honesty. To keep
close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition."
VINCENT STARRETT.
THE OPEN BOAT
A Tale intended to be after the fact. Being the experience of four men
from the sunk steamer "Commodore"
I
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and
were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of
the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and
all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and
widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with
waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to
have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These
waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each
froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.
The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six
inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were
rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest
dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was
a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the
broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes
raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the
stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and
wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that
profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,
to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails,
the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel
is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a
decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in
the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top-mast
with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low
and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his
voice. Although steady, it was, deep with mourning, and of a quality
beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and by
the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced and
reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for
it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The
manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and,
moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in white
water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave, requiring a
new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a
crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline, and
arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after
successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another
behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do
something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey
one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves
that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in
a dingey. As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else from
the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine
that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last
effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the
waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes
must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed
from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdly
picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they
had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun
swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the
color of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked with
amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the
breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect
upon the color of the waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the
difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook
had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet
Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat and
pick us up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I
understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored
for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm
thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-
saving station."
"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.
II
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the
hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again
the spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was a
hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad
tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It
was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights of
emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook; "If not, where
would we be? Wouldn't have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor,
contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think We've got much of a show
now, boys?" said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and
hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be
childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the
situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On
the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any
open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashore
all right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler
quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"
The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the
sea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a
movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in
groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the
sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a
thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the men
with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinister
in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them,
telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on
the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to the boat and
did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in chicken-
fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's head.
"Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were made
with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at the
creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the end of
the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anything
resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this freighted boat,
and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved the
gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain
breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier
because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow
grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they
rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the
oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the
oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining
one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of
truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change
seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the
thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sevres. Then the man in the
rowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with
most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the whole
party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried:
"Look out now! Steady there!"
The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like
islands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one way
nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the
men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a
great swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet.
Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was
at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the
lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were
important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn
his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others, and
when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that
direction."
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and
this time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of the
swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an
anxious eye to find a light house so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else,"
said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by
the crests, made progress that in the absence of seaweed was not
apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing,
miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great
spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.
"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.
III
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was
here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him.
They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they
were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be
common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke
always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more
ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It
was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety.
There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And
after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this
comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to
be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his
life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat
on the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest." So the
cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat.
The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking
into the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now
almost assumed color, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the sky.
The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head rather
often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could see
land. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this land
seemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was thinner than
paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the cook, who had
coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the way, I believe
they abandoned that life-saving station there about a year ago."
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now
obliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued
their old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft, no
longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are _a propos_ of nothing. If men could only train for
them and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, there
would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had slept
any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the
deck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the
correspondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondent
wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there be
people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it
was a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations
could never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the muscles
and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in general how
the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled in
full sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the way, the oiler had
worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.
"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves.
If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'll
sure have to swim for it. Take your time."
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line
of black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain said
that he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house of
refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out
after us."
The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to make
us out now, if he's looking through a glass," said the captain. "He'll
notify the life-saving people."
"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the
wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the lifeboat would be out
hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came
again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally, a
new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low thunder
of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the lighthouse
now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north, Billie,"
said he.
"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and
all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this
expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the
men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could
not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be
ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and
they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The
correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but
happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight
cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly
scathless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and
thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with
an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the
big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of
water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life
about your house of refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of
dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and
sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the
beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they
don't see us," said the men.
The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,
thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men
sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within
twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,
and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the
eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the
dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
"Funny they don't see us."
The lightheartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their
sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of
incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore
of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it
came no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a
try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have
strength left to swim after the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the
shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscle. There was some thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get
ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the
reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them.
Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drowned--
if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in the
name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus
far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my
nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It
is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than
this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is
an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me,
why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble? The
whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare
not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work." Afterward
the man might have had an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds: "Just
you drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!"
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed
always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil of
foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them. No
mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could ascend
these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler was a
wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three minutes
more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea again,
captain?"
"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady
oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her
safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed
sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they
must have seen us from the shore by now."
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate
east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like smoke
from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?'
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're
fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,
but the wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea,
and sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed
to indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler
rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of
more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite
anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the
theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and
other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler. "Hang it!"
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the
boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of
everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-
water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head,
pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest,
and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched
him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain
that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon
the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im? See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! He's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out
here for us in half-an-hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching
glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating
stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in the
boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsman
did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes
again. Toward the house.... Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now! he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you."
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both waving
at us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly it's a boat."
"No, it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along
shore on a wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."
"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big
hotel omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you
suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around
collecting the life-crew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.
He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two
fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's his
coat."
"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his
head. But would you look at him swing it."
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a
winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders
to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a
life-saving station up there."
"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,
there, Willie!"
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you
suppose he means?"
"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea and
wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some
reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat
revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It
don't mean anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be that
there's a life-saving station there somewhere."
"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever
since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men
to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come
out here all right. Why don't he do something?"
"Oh, it's all right, now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that
they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on
the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men
began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,
"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here all
night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've
seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after
us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of
people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the
voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking him
one, just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and
then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,
turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had
vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,
just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed
before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The
land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder
of the surf.
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going
to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea,
was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I
brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to
nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged
to speak to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and
listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable
of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister
silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the
water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.
"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"
V
"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk
about those things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and--"
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled
finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,
changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a
small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the
furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the
dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed by
thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended far
under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain
forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave
came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and
groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat
gurgled about them as the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he
lost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in
the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the
overpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he
touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will you
spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself
to a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler,
cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to sleep
instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without
snarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat
headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to
preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves
were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost
upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure
that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always
awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off
the port bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the
warmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed
almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly
as soon as he ceased his labor, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping
under-foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with
their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of the
sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a
growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the
boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his
life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking
his eyes and shaking with the new cold.
"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent contritely.
"That's all right, old boy," said the oiler, and lay down again and was
asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent
thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a
voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail
of phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters.
It might have been made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the
open mouth and looked at the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish light,
and this time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have been
reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin speed like a
shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and leaving the
long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was
hidden, and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea.
They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned a
little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or
astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the
long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of the dark
fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut
the water like a gigantic and keen projectile.
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same
horror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at the
sea dully and swore in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished one
of his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But
the captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and the
cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
VI
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going
to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea,
was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude
that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him,
despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an
abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The
man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at
sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still--
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important,
and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him,
he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply
the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expression
of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the
desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one
knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself."
A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says
to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no
doubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. There
was seldom any expression upon their faces save the general one of
complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.
To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the
correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this
verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land.'"
In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the
fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never
regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had
informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally
ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it
his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it
appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the
breaking of a pencil's point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was
no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet,
meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an
actuality--stern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his
feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chest
in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came between
his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms
was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The
correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower
movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and
perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the
Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grown
bored at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of the
cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long trail. The
light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to
the boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent's
ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder. Southward,
some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low
and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection
upon the bluff back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat.
The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like a
mountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a broken
crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty
long night," he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore.
"Those life-saving people take their time."
"Did you see that shark playing around?"
"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."
"Wish I had known you were awake."
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, will
you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in
the bottom of the boat, and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt he
was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth played all the
popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment
before he heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the
last stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"
"Sure, Billie."
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondent
took his course from the wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the
captain directed the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the boat
facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the thunder of the
surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respite
together. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape again," said
the captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary chatterings
and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew they had
bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the same
shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the
side and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break their
repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the water affected them as it
would have affected mummies.
"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice,
"she's drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take her
to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of the
toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this
steadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows
me even a photograph of an oar--"
At last there was a short conversation.
"Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
VII
When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky were
each of the grey hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was painted
upon the waters. The morning appeared finally, in its splendor, with a
sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of the waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall
white windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared
on the beach. The cottages might have formed a deserted village.
The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat.
"Well," said the captain, "if no help is coming we might better try a
run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much longer we will
be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others silently
acquiesced in this reasoning. The boat was headed for the beach. The
correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall wind-tower, and if
then they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant, standing with
its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the
correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the
individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did
not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise.
But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible
that a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the
universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life, and have them
taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. A distinction
between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in this new
ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands that if he were given
another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be
better and brighter during an introduction or at a tea.
"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we can
do is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile
out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until she
swamps sure."
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf.
"Captain," he said, "I think I'd better bring her about, and keep her
head-on to the seas and back her in."
"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung
the boat then and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent
were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and
indifferent shore.
The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were
again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted
beach. "We won't get in very close," said the captain. Each time a man
could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward
the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation
there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others,
knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances
was shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact.
He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind was
dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they did not
care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be a
shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men
simply looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the boat
when you jump," said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, and
the long white comber came roaring down upon the boat.
"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their
eyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the
incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the
long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed
it out.
But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling, boiling flood of white
water caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmed
in from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the gunwale at
this time, and when the water entered at that place he swiftly withdrew
his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled
deeper into the sea.
"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out," said the captain.
"All right, captain," said the cook.
"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure," said the oiler. "Mind to
jump clear of the boat."
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly
swallowed the dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the
sea. A piece of lifebelt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and as the
correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his left
hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was
colder than he had expected to find it on the coast of Florida. This
appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at the
time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact was
somehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation that
it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy
water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead
in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the
correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out
of the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good
hand to the keel of the overturned dingey.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent
wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was a
long journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver lay
under him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as if he
were on a handsled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset
with difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of
current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was set
before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it and
understood with his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling to
him, "Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use the
oar."
"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an
oar, went ahead as if he were a canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with the
captain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared like
a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were not for the
extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent marvelled that
the captain could still hold to it.
They passed on, nearer to shore--the oiler, the cook, the captain--and
following them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy--a
current. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff,
topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before
him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a
gallery looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland.
He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible Can it be possible?
Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his own death
to be the final phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small, deadly current,
for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the
shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging with one
hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore
and toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to the
boat!"
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that
when one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable
arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree of
relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for some
months had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to be
hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with
most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically
off him.
"Come to the boat," called the captain.
"All right, captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain
let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent
performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him
and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and
far beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and a
true miracle of the sea. An over-turned boat in the surf is not a
plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but
his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each
wave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing
and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook,
and then waded towards the captain, but the captain waved him away, and
sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in winter,
but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a
strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's
hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said: "Thanks,
old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swift
finger. The correspondent said: "Go."
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand
that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he
achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular
part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud
was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets,
clothes, and flasks, and women with coffeepots and all the remedies
sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the sea
was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried slowly
up the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the different
and sinister hospitality of the grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight,
and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on
shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.
THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS
CHAPTER I
Two men sat by the sea waves.
"Well, I know I'm not handsome," said one gloomily. He was poking holes
in the sand with a discontented cane.
The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with
perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.
Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line.
"To be sure you are not," he cried vehemently.
"You look like thunder. I do not desire to be unpleasant, but I must
assure you that your freckled skin continually reminds spectators of
white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of your head looks like
a little wooden plate. And your figure--heavens!"
For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near
their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.
Finally the first man spoke.
"Well," said he, defiantly, "what of it?"
"What of it?" exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look like
blazes in a bathing-suit."
They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tall
companion glowered at the scenery.
"I am decided," said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from the
sand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically and
glaring down at the round, resolute figure before him.
A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a hole
in a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his hands
over his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thought
profoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air of
having phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions.
The latter resumed his resolute stride.
"See here," said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got a
regular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell--"
"Yes, he could," interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correct
mathematics in his eyes."
"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'--"
"Tom," again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes and
we'll go in."
The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little wooden
boxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box.
At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he turned
round two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally into his
bathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a three-cornered
bench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form. There was
silence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without.
Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops. He
began to clamor at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door.
"Tom," called he, "Tom--"
A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'
blazes!"
The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire row
of coops into his confidence.
"Stop your noise," angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "You
rented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then--"
"It ain't a bathing-suit," shouted the freckled man at the boards. "It's
an auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It isn't a bathing-suit."
The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He
walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping
in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles.
"Come out of there, y' ol' fool," said he, in an enraged whisper. "It's
only your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it make?
I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"
As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. The
tall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door.
The freckled man regarded him sternly.
"You're an ass," he said.
His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. There
was pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall man
followed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead.
As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance. He
moved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk, down
some steps, and out upon the sand.
There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maid
with a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and a
distant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood a
girl being wooed by the breakers.
The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall man,
numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl.
Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and the
girl turned her head.
She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression of
wonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to a
pearly smile.
This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to swell
and fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon his
companion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuing
with mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. He
seemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last he
stopped and faced about.
"Tom Sharp," said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are an
unutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel."
The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the bathing-
dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good Lord! I never
saw such a suit!"
The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin.
"Tom Sharp, you--"
The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!
I never--"
The freckled man ran down into the sea.
CHAPTER II
The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became a
thing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the two
forgot and rollicked in the waves.
The freckled man, in endeavoring to escape from mankind, had left all
save a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in bathing-
dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars.
The two men swam softly over the ground swells.
The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly faces
shorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to move
seaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to the
water and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall man
followed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precision
of machinery.
The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The little
wooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like a
round, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly appeared
to be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a beacon.
At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He lay
down on his back and puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like a
dead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks and
lay down by the side of his companion.
They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raft
seemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vast
sky of summer.
"This is great," said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully.
Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace.
Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two men
issued contented groans.
"Tom," said the freckled man.
"What?" said the other.
"This is great."
They lay and thought.
A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly, turned and darted at the waves. The tall
man indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its claws
into the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish.
"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame," murmured the tall
man sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. He
should wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him, I'd--
Great Scott!"
He had partly arisen, and was looking at the shore.
He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"
"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of when
I put the bird-shot in your leg." He giggled softly.
The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His companion
up-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward.
"Lord!" he roared, as if stabbed.
The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which sparkled
the tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had pushed them
away. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of perturbation.
"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man, wriggling
fantastically in his dead balloon.
The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time he
did not speak.
Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and faced
the freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms.
"So," he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from your
accursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered your
best friend."
He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpected
arm.
He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom," wailed he, beseechingly, "don't
be such a fool."
The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer.
Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. The
whistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tooting
in heaven.
"Tom! Tom! My dear boy," quavered the freckled man, "don't speak that
way to me."
"Oh, no, of course not," said the other, still facing away and throwing
the words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all this
calmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest at
all, hey?"
"Well, I--I----" began the freckled man.
The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's the
whole amount of it! You've abducted me!"
"I ain't," protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool."
The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in the
water. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end of
the raft.
Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests.
Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. A
row of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The sky
became greyed save where over the land sunset colors were assembling.
The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft, quarrelled
at length.
"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in a
voice of indignation.
"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here,"
replied the tall man.
CHAPTER III
The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea.
Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagers
with a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together.
They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft.
"I feel like a molecule," said the freckled man in subdued tones.
"I'd give two dollars for a cigar," muttered the tall man.
A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagers
and a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanished
eastern horizon.
"I think I hear voices," said the freckled man.
"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl," said the tall man.
When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man found
he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in
his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As
night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot
the blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves.
"I see things comin'," murmured the freckled man.
"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrow
night," said the tall man reflectively.
The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, when
little forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. The
voyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon came
and looked at them.
"Somebody's here," whispered the freckled man.
"I wish I had an almanac," remarked the tall man, regarding the moon.
Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that twinkled
about them.
"Providence will not leave us," asserted the freckled man.
"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money," said the tall man.
He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo.
"I have heard," said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy ships
beneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on a
voyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for the
golden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confounded
devilment and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'll
do! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissed
maidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd--"
He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green eye
was contemplating the sea wanderers.
They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grew
larger.
Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About the
great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could
hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails.
There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrust its way.
The tall man delivered an oration.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here come our rescuers. The brave fellows! How I
long to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a white
boat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind sailors
in blue and white will help us into the boat and conduct our wasted
frames to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain, with
gold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak cabin,
while the wine gurgles and the Havanas glow, we'll tell our tale of
peril and privation."
The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw. The
two wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a wild
duet that rang over the wastes of sea.
The cries seemed to strike the ship.
Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavy
articles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakings
and flappings, the vessel stood still.
In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help. Out
in the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed.
A voice came to them.
"Hello," it said.
They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"
"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice.
The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on the
raft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars.
But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information. He
stamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly.
The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from a
hidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace.
A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the sea
as the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures.
Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamor like a mob. The
freckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak.
After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that was
tugging at the stem and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three giants
clambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water flashed
in the gloom as the oars dipped.
About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked a
voice.
The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, his
twirling fingers illustrating like live brushes.
"Oh," said the three giants.
The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in their
hearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled up
the side of the vessel and climbed over the railing.
On deck they met a man.
He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" he
inquired.
"No," said the tall man, "we ain't."
The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines about
his mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet were
bare, and clung handily to crevices.
Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up the
wrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back,
dividing him into triangles.
"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones,' of N'yack, N. Y.,
genelmen," he said.
"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure."
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