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_ ' "I was saying to myself, 'Sink--curse you! Sink!' " These were
the words with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was
severely left alone, and he formulated in his head this address to
the ship in a tone of imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed
the privilege of witnessing scenes--as far as I can judge--of low
comedy. They were still at that bolt. The skipper was ordering,
"Get under and try to lift"; and the others naturally shirked. You
understand that to be squeezed flat under the keel of a boat wasn't
a desirable position to be caught in if the ship went down suddenly.
"Why don't you--you the strongest?" whined the little engineer.
"Gott-for-dam! I am too thick," spluttered the skipper in despair.
It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood idle for a
moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.
' "Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance
away? Come and help, man! Man! Look there--look!"
'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with
maniacal insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten
up already one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come
up there about that time of the year. First you see a darkening of
the horizon--no more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A
straight edge of vapour lined with sickly whitish gleams flies up
from the southwest, swallowing the stars in whole constellations;
its shadow flies over the waters, and confounds sea and sky into one
abyss of obscurity. And all is still. No thunder, no wind, no sound;
not a flicker of lightning. Then in the tenebrous immensity a livid
arch appears; a swell or two like undulations of the very darkness
run past, and suddenly, wind and rain strike together with a
peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid. Such
a cloud had come up while they weren't looking. They had just
noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising that if in
absolute stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep afloat a few
minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make an end
of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the burst
of such a squall would be also her last, would become a plunge,
would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to
the bottom. Hence these new capers of their fright, these new antics
in which they displayed their extreme aversion to die.
' "It was black, black," pursued Jim with moody steadiness. "It
had sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose
there had been at the back of my head some hope yet. I don't know.
But that was all over anyhow. It maddened me to see myself caught
like this. I was angry, as though I had been trapped. I _was_ trapped!
The night was hot, too, I remember. Not a breath of air."
'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to
sweat and choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it
knocked him over afresh--in a manner of speaking--but it made
him also remember that important purpose which had sent him
rushing on that bridge only to slip clean out of his mind. He had
intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the ship. He whipped out his
knife and went to work slashing as though he had seen nothing,
had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They thought
him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest noisily
against this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned
to the very same spot from which he had started. The chief was
there, ready with a clutch at him to whisper close to his head,
scathingly, as though he wanted to bite his ear--
' "You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when
all that lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head
for you from these boats."
'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept
up a nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, "Hammer! hammer!
Mein Gott! Get a hammer."
'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and
all, he turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,
mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No
trifle, it must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted
desperate looks like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed
off. He was back instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without
a pause flung himself at the bolt. The others gave up Jim at
once and ran off to assist. He heard the tap, tap of the hammer, the
sound of the released chock falling over. The boat was clear. Only
then he turned to look--only then. But he kept his distance--he
kept his distance. He wanted me to know he had kept his distance;
that there was nothing in common between him and these men--who
had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than probable he
thought himself cut off from them by a space that could not be
traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm
without bottom. He was as far as he could get from them--the
whole breadth of the ship.
'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their
indistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common
torment of fear. A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little
table rigged up on the bridge--the Patna had no chart-room
amidships--threw a light on their labouring shoulders, on their
arched and bobbing backs. They pushed at the bow of the boat;
they pushed out into the night; they pushed, and would no more
look back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had been
too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an
appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look
back upon his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention.
The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare
for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered
their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their
desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for
knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with
their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the weight of their
bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls--only no
sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of the davit
than they would leave off like one man and start a wild scramble
into her. As a natural consequence the boat would swing in
abruptly, driving them back, helpless and jostling against each
other. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in
fierce whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and
go at it again. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with
morose thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that
comic business. "I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at
all that," he said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely
watchful glance. "Was ever there any one so shamefully tried?"
'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven
to distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he
could not explain to the court--and not even to me; but I would
have been little fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not
been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In
this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a
spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in
his ordeal--a degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of
death or dishonour.
'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance
of time I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he
managed wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind
into the bare recital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes
in the certitude that the end was upon him already, and twice he
had to open them again. Each time he noted the darkening of the
great stillness. The shadow of the silent cloud had fallen upon the
ship from the zenith, and seemed to have extinguished every sound
of her teeming life. He could no longer hear the voices under the
awnings. He told me that each time he closed his eyes a flash of
thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out for death, as
plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the dim
struggle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. "They
would fall back before it time after time, stand swearing at each
other, and suddenly make another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to
make you die laughing," he commented with downcast eyes; then
raising them for a moment to my face with a dismal smile, "I ought
to have a merry life of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a
good many times yet before I die." His eyes fell again. "See and
hear. . . . See and hear," he repeated twice, at long intervals, filled
by vacant staring.
'He roused himself.
' "I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut," he said, "and I
couldn't. I couldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go
through that kind of thing before they talk. Just let them--and do
better--that's all. The second time my eyelids flew open and my
mouth too. I had felt the ship move. She just dipped her bows--and
lifted them gently--and slow! everlastingly slow; and ever so
little. She hadn't done that much for days. The cloud had raced
ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel upon a sea of lead. There
was no life in that stir. It managed, though, to knock over something
in my head. What would you have done? You are sure of yourself--aren't
you? What would you do if you felt now--this minute--the house here
move, just move a little under your chair. Leap! By heavens! you
would take one spring from where you sit and land in that clump
of bushes yonder."
'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade.
I held my peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There
could be no mistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me
to make no sign lest by a gesture or a word I should be drawn into
a fatal admission about myself which would have had some bearing
on the case. I was not disposed to take any risk of that sort. Don't
forget I had him before me, and really he was too much like one of
us not to be dangerous. But if you want to know I don't mind telling
you that I did, with a rapid glance, estimate the distance to the
mass of denser blackness in the middle of the grass-plot before the
verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed short by several
feet--and that's the only thing of which I am fairly certain.
'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move.
His feet remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking
about loose in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one
of the men around the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the
air with raised arms, totter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he
only slid gently into a sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his
shoulders propped against the side of the engine-room skylight.
"That was the donkey-man. A haggard, white-faced chap with a
ragged moustache. Acted third engineer," he explained.
' "Dead," I said. We had heard something of that in court.
' "So they say," he pronounced with sombre indifference. "Of
course I never knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining
of being out of sorts for some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion.
Devil only knows. Ha! ha! ha! It was easy to see he did not
want to die either. Droll, isn't it? May I be shot if he hadn't been
fooled into killing himself! Fooled--neither more nor less. Fooled
into it, by heavens! just as I . . . Ah! If he had only kept still; if he
had only told them to go to the devil when they came to rush him
out of his bunk because the ship was sinking! If he had only stood
by with his hands in his pockets and called them names!"
'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.
' "A chance missed, eh?" I murmured.
' "Why don't you laugh?" he said. "A joke hatched in hell. Weak
heart! . . . I wish sometimes mine had been."
'This irritated me. "Do you?" I exclaimed with deep-rooted
irony. "Yes! Can't _you_ understand?" he cried. "I don't know what
more you could wish for," I said angrily. He gave me an utterly
uncomprehending glance. This shaft had also gone wide of the
mark, and he was not the man to bother about stray arrows. Upon
my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was not fair game. I was glad
that my missile had been thrown away,--that he had not even heard
the twang of the bow.
'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The
next minute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of
events and sensations which beat about him like the sea upon a
rock. I use the simile advisedly, because from his relation I am
forced to believe he had preserved through it all a strange illusion
of passiveness, as though he had not acted but had suffered himself
to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for the
victim of their practical joke. The first thing that came to him was
the grinding surge of the heavy davits swinging out at last--a jar
which seemed to enter his body from the deck through the soles of
his feet, and travel up his spine to the crown of his head. Then, the
squall being very near now, another and a heavier swell lifted the
passive hull in a threatening heave that checked his breath, while
his brain and his heart together were pierced as with daggers by
panic-stricken screams. "Let go! For God's sake, let go! Let go!
She's going." Following upon that the boat-falls ripped through
the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones under
the awnings. "When these beggars did break out, their yelps were
enough to wake the dead," he said. Next, after the splashing shock
of the boat literally dropped in the water, came the hollow noises
of stamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused shouts:
"Unhook! Unhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's
the squall down on us. . . ." He heard, high above his head, the
faint muttering of the wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain.
A lost voice alongside started cursing a swivel hook. The ship began
to buzz fore and aft like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was
telling me of all this--because just then he was very quiet in attitude,
in face, in voice--he went on to say without the slightest warning
as it were, "I stumbled over his legs."
'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not
restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last,
but of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his
immobility, he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the
wind that laid it low. All this had come to him: the sounds, the
sights, the legs of the dead man--by Jove! The infernal joke was
being crammed devilishly down his throat, but--look you--he was
not going to admit of any sort of swallowing motion in his gullet.
It's extraordinary how he could cast upon you the spirit of his
illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black magic at work upon a
corpse.
' "He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing
I remember seeing on board," he continued. "I did not care what
he did. It looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought
he was picking himself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past
me over the rail and drop into the boat after the others. I could hear
them knocking about down there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft
called out 'George!' Then three voices together raised a yell. They
came to me separately: one bleated, another screamed, one howled.
Ough!"
'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady
hand from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair.
Up, slowly--to his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff
the hand let him go, and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a
suggestion of awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his
very voice when he said "They shouted"--and involuntarily I
pricked up my ears for the ghost of that shout that would be heard
directly through the false effect of silence. "There were eight
hundred people in that ship," he said, impaling me to the back of my
seat with an awful blank stare. "Eight hundred living people, and
they were yelling after the one dead man to come down and be
saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood by with my hand
on the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch dark. You
could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go bump,
bump, and not another sound down there for a while, but the ship
under me was full of talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled
'Mein Gott! The squall! The squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss
of rain, and the first gust of wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George!
We'll catch you! Jump!' The ship began a slow plunge; the rain
swept over her like a broken sea; my cap flew off my head; my
breath was driven back into my throat. I heard as if I had been on
the top of a tower another wild screech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!'
She was going down, down, head first under me. . . ."
'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking
motions with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs,
and afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second
before he blurted out--
' "I had jumped . . ." He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . .
"It seems," he added.
'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking
at him standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed
by a sad sense of resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and
profound pity of an old man helpless before a childish disaster.
' "Looks like it," I muttered.
' "I knew nothing about it till I looked up," he explained hastily.
And that's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a
small boy in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow.
It would never happen again. He had landed partly on somebody
and fallen across a thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left
side must be broken; then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship
he had deserted uprising above him, with the red side-light glowing
large in the rain like a fire on the brow of a hill seen through a mist.
"She seemed higher than a wall; she loomed like a cliff over the
boat . . . I wished I could die," he cried. "There was no going
back. It was as if I had jumped into a well--into an everlasting deep
hole. . . ." ' _
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