:HAD™LINE mmmmmm'mmmmmmKimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimmtmmmamm JO SEPH CO NRAD 4 THE SHADOW LINE Books by the Same Author ALIIAYER S FOLLY FALK, AND OTHER STORIES LORD JIM : A ROM,VNCE THE MIRROR OF THE SEA THE >aGGER OF THE NARCISSUS NOSTROMO : A TALE OF THE SEABOABD AN OUTCAST OF THE ISULNDS A PERSONAL RECORD THE SECRET AGENT A SET OF SIX TALES OF UNREST 'tWTXT land and SEA TYPHOON UNDER WESTERN EYES VICTORY WITHIN THE TIDES youth: a NARRATIVE WITH FORD M. HUEFFER THE inheritors: an EXTRAVAGANT STOBY romance: a novel THE SHADOW LINE A CONFESSION BY JOSEPH CONRAD "Worthy of my undying regard " GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922 COPYRIGHT, I917, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, I916, BY METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. To BORYS AND ALL OTHERS WHO, LIKE HIMSELF, HAVE CROSSED IN EARLY YOUTH THE SHADOW LINE OF THEIR GENERATION WITH LOVE PART ONE THE SHADOW LINE — D' autre fois, calme plat, grand miroir De mon desespoir. — Baudelaike Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privi- lege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness — and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the path has its seduction. And it isn't because it is an undiscovered country. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation — a bit of one's own. One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the 4 THE SHADOW LINE predecessors, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together — the kicks and the halfpence, as the saying is — the picturesque common lot that holds so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on — till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left be- hind. This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have spoken are likely to come. What moments? Why, the moments of boredom, of weariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean moments when the still young are inclined to commit rash actions, such as getting married suddenly or else throwing up a job for no rea- son. This is not a marriage story. It wasn't so bad as that with me. My action, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce — almost of deser* tion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I threw up my job — chucked my berth — left the ship of which the worst that could be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not entitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use try- THE SHADOW LINE S ing to put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be a caprice. It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as then she belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a blue reef- scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at her masthead a house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with a white crescent in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hence the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his own people. It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men in the shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed had never set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw him but once, quite accidentally on a wharf — an old, dark little man blind in one eye, in a snowy robe and yellow slippers. He was having his hand severely Idssed by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had done some favour, in the way of food and money. His alms-giving, I have heard, was most exten- 6 THE SHADOW UNE sive, covering almost the whole Archipelago. For isn't it said that "The charitable man is the friend of Allah"? Excellent (and picturesque) Arab owner, about whom one needed not to trouble one's head, a most excellent Scottish ship — for she was that from the keel up — excellent sea-boat, easy to keep clean, most handy in every way, and if it had not been for her internal propulsion, worthy of any man's love, I cherish to this day a profound respect for her memory. As to the kind of trade she was engaged in and the character of my ship- mates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and the men made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter. And suddenly I left all this. I left it in that, to us, inconsequential manner in which a bird flies away from a comfortable branch. It was as though all unknowing I had heard a whisper or seen something. Well — perhaps! One day I was perfectly right and the next everything was gone — glamour, flavour, interest, contentment — every- thing. It was one of these moments, you know. The green sickness of late youth descended on me and carried me off. Carried me off that ship, I mean. THE SHADOW LINE 7 We were only four white men on board, with a large crew of Kalashes and two Malay petty officers. The Captain stared hard as if wondering what ailed me. But he was a sailor, and he, too, had been yomig at one time. Presently a smile came to lurk under his thick iron-gray moustache, and he observed that, of course, if I felt I must go he couldn't keep me by main force. And it was arranged that I should be paid off the next morn- ing. As I was going out of his cabin he added suddenly, in a peculiar wistful tone, that he hoped I would find what I was so anxious to go and look for. A soft, cryptic utterance which seemed to reach deeper than any diamond-hard tool could have done. I do beHeve he understood my case. But the second engineer attacked me differently. He was a sturdy young Scot, with a smooth face and light eyes. His honest red countenance emerged out of the engine-room companion and then the whole robust man, with shirt sleeves turned up, wiping slowly the massive fore-arms with a lump of cotton-waste. And his light eyes expressed bitter distaste, as though our friendship had turned to ashes. He said weightily: '*0h! Aye! I've been thinking it was about time for you to run away home and get married to some silly girl." 8 THE SHADOW LINE It was tacitly understood in the port that John Nieven was a fierce misogynist; and the absurd character of the sally convinced me that he meant to be nasty — very nasty — had meant to say the most crushing thing he could think of. My laugh sounded deprecatory. Nobody but a friend could be so angry as that. I became a little crestfallen. Our chief engineer also took a characteristic view of my action, but in a kindlier spirit. He was young, too, but very thin, and w^th a mist of fluffy brown beard all round his haggard face. All day long, at sea or in harbour, he could be seen walking hastily up and down the after- deck, wearing an intense, spiritually rapt ex- pression, which was caused by a perpetual con- sciousness of unpleasant physical sensations in his internal economy. For he was a confirmed dyspeptic. His view of my case was very simple. He said it was nothing but deranged liver. Of course! He suggested I should stay for another trip and meantime dose myself with a certain patent medicine in which his own belief was ab- solute. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy you two bottles, out of mj'^ own pocket. There. I can't say fairer than that, can I?" I believe he would have perpetrated the atrocity THE SHADOW LINE 9 (or generosity) at the merest sign of weakening on my part. By that time, however, I was more discontented, disgusted, and dogged than ever. The past eighteen months, so full of new and varied experience, appeared a dreary, prosaic waste of days. I felt — how shall I express it.'' — that there was no truth to be got out of them. What truth ? I should have been hard put to it to explain. Probably, if pressed, I would have burst into tears simply. I was young enough for that. Next day the Captain and I transacted our busi- ness in the Harbour Office. It was a lofty, big, cool, white room, where the screened light of day glowed serenely. Everybody in it — the officials, the public — were in white. Only the heavy polished desks gleamed darkly in a central avenue, and some papers lying on them were blue. Enor- mous punkahs sent from on high a gentle draught through that immaculate interior and upon our perspiring heads. The official behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept it up till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?" my Captain answered, " No ! Signing off for good." And then his grin vanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till he handed me my 10 THE SHADOW LINE papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they ha( been my passports for Hades. \Miile I was putting them away he murmure( some question to the Captain, and I heard th latter answer good-humouredly : "No. He leaves us to go home." "Oh!" the other exclaimed, nodding mournful]; over my sad condition. I didn't know him outside the official building but he leaned forward over the desk to shake hand with me, compassionately, as one would T\ath som poor devil going out to be hanged ; and I am af raii I performed my part ungraciously, in the hardenei manner of an impenitent criminal. No homeward-bound mail-boat was due fo three or four days. Being now a man without j ship, and having for a time broken my connectio: with the sea — ^become, in fact, a mere potentia passenger — it would have been more appropriat perhaps if I had gone to stay at an hotel. Ther it was, too, within a stone's throw of the Harbou Office, low, but somehow palatial, displaying it white, piUared paviKons surrounded by trim gras plots. I would have felt a passenger indeed ii there! I gave it a hostile glance and directed m; steps toward the Officers" Sailors' Home, THE SHADOW LINE 11 I walked in the sunshine, disregarding it, and in the shade of the big trees on the esplanade without enjoying it. The heat of the tropical East de- scended through the leafy boughs, enveloping my thinly-clad body, clinging to my rebelHous dis- content, as if to rob it of its freedom. The Officers' Home was a large bungalow with a wide verandah and a curiously suburban-looking little garden of bushes and a few trees between it and the street. That institution partook some- what of the character of a residential club, but with a slightly Governmental flavour about it, because it was administered by the Harbour Office. Its manager was officially styled Chief Steward. He was an unhappy, wizened little man, who if put into a jockey's rig would have looked the part to perfection. But it was obvious that at some time or other in his Ufe, in some capacity or other, he had been connected with the sea. Possibly in the comprehensive capacity of a failure. I should have thought his employment a very easy one, but he used to affirm for some reason or other that his job would be the death of him some day. Itwas rather mysterious. Perhaps everything naturally was too much trouble for him. He cer- tainly seemed to hate having people in the house. 1? THE SHADOW LINE On entering it I thought he must be feeling pleased. It was as still as a tomb. I could see no one in the living rooms; and the verandah, too, was empty, except for a man at the far end dozing prone in a long chair. At the noise of my footsteps he opened one horribly fish-like eye. He was a stranger to me. I retreated from there, and cross- ing the dining room — a very bare apartment with a motionless punkah hanging over the centre table — I knocked at a door labelled in black letters: "Chief Steward." The answer to my knock being a vexed and dole- ful plaint: "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What is it now? " I went in at once. It was a strange room to find in the tropics. Twihght and stufl&ness reigned in there. The fellow had hung enormously ample, dusty, cheap lace curtains over his wdndows, which were shut. Piles of cardboard boxes, such as milliners and dressmakers use in Europe, cumbered the comers; and by some means he had procured for himself the sort of furniture that might have come out of a respectable parlour in the East End of London — a horsehair sofa, arm-chairs of the same. I glimpsed grimy antimacassars scattered over that horrid upholstery, which was awe-inspiring, in- THE SHADOW LINE 13 somuch that one could not guess what mysterious accident, need, or fancy had collected it there. Its owner had taken off his tunic, and in white trousers and a thin, short-sleeved singlet prowled behind the chair-backs nursing his meagre el- bows. An exclamation of dismay escaped him when he heard that I had come for a stay ; but he could not deny that there were plenty of vacant rooms. "Very well. Can you give me the one I had before.''" He emitted a faint moan from behind a pile of cardboard boxes on the table, which might have contained gloves or handkerchies or neckties. I wonder what the fellow did keep in them.'' There was a smell of decaying coral, or Oriental dust of zoological specimens in that den of his. I could only see the top of his head and his un- happy eyes levelled at me over the barrier. "It's only for a couple of days," I said, intending to cheer him up. "Perhaps you would like to pay in advance.'*" he suggested eagerly. "Certainly not!" I burst out directly I could speak. "Never heard of such a thing! This is the most infernal cheek. . . ," 14 THE SHADOW LINE Ho had seized his head in both hands — a gesture of despair which checked my indignation. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Don't fly out like this. I am asking everybody." "I don't beheve it," I said bluntly. "Well, I am going to. And if you gentlemen all agreed to pay in advance I could make Hamil- ton pay up, too. He's always turning up ashore dead broke, and even when he has some money he won't settle his bills. I don't know what to do with him. He swears at me and tells me I can't chuck a white man out into the street here. So if you only would. . . ." I was amazed. Incredulous, too. I suspected the fellow of gratuitous impertinence. I told him with marked emphasis that I would see him and Hamilton hanged first, and requested him to con- duct me to my room with no more of his nonsense. He produced then a key from somewhere and led the way out of his lair, giving me a vicious sidelong look in passing. "Any one I know staying here?" I asked him before he left my room. He had recovered his usual pained impatient tone, and said that Captain Giles was there, back from a Solo Sea trip. Two other guests were stay- THE SHADOW LINE 15 ing also. He paused. And, of course, Hamilton, he added. ^ "Oh, yes! Hamilton," I said, and the miserable creature took himself off with a final groan. His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffin time. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The tiffin was laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was stirring the hot air lazily — mostly above a barren waste of polished wood. We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair was one. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to see anything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short side whiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I have never seen any one so full of dignity for the station in fife Providence had been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he regarded me as a rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his eyebrows as well, at the sound I made pulling back my chair. Captain Giles was at the head of the table. I exchanged a few words of greeting with him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a great shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent IG THE SHADOW LINE brown eyes, he might have been anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised to learn that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me he looked like a church- warden. He had the appearance of a man from whom you would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude or two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle, but from honest conviction. ^ Though very well known and appreciated in the shipping world, he had no regular employment. He did not want it. He had his own peculiar position. He was an expert. An expert in — how shall I say it .'^ — in intricate navigation. He was supposed to know more about remote and im- perfectly charted parts of the Archipelago than any man living. His brain must have been a perfect warehouse of reefs, positions, bearings, images of headlands, shapes of obscure coasts, aspects of innumerable islands, desert and otherwise. Any ship, for instance, bound on a trip to Palawan or somewhere that way would have Captain Giles on board, either in temporary command or "to assist the master." It was said that he had a retaining fee from a wealthy firm of Chinese steamship owners, in view of such services. Besides, he was THE SHADOW LINE 17 always ready to relieve any man who wished to take a spell ashore for a time. No owner was ever known to object to an arrangement of that sort. For it seemed to be the established opinion at the port that Captain Giles was as good as the best, if not a little better. But in Hamilton's view he was an "outsider." I believe that for Hamilton the generahsation "outsider" covered the whole lot of us; though I suppose that he made some dis- tinctions in his mind. I didn't try to make conversation with Captain Giles, whom I had not seen more than twice in my hfe. But, of course, he knew who I was. After a while, inclining his big shiny head my way, he addressed me first in his friendly fashion. He presumed from seeing me there, he said, that I had come ashore for a couple of days' leave. He was a low- voiced man. I spoke a little louder, saying that: No — I had left the ship for good. "A free man for a bit," was his comment. "I suppose I may call myself that — since eleven o'clock," I said. Hamilton had stopped eating at the sound of our voices. He laid down his knife and fork gently, got up, and muttering something about "this 18 THE SHADOW LINE infernal heat cutting one's appetite," went out of the room. Almost immediately we heard hinr» leave the house down the verandah steps. On this Captain Giles remarked easily that the fellow had no doubt gone off to look after my old job. The Chief Steward, who had been leaning against the wall, brought his face of an unhappy goat nearer to the table and addressed us dole- fully. His object was to unburden himself of his eternal grievance against Hamilton. The man kept him in hot water \s'ith the Harbour Office as to the state of his accounts. He wished to good- ness he would get my job, though in truth what would it be.'* Temporary relief at best. I said: "You needn't worry. He won't get my job. My successor is on board already." He was surprised, and I believe his face fell a httle at the news. Captain Giles gave a soft laugh. We got up and went out on the verandah, leaving the supine stranger to be dealt with by the Chinamen. The last thing I saw they had put a plate with a slice of pine-apple on it before him and stood back to watch what would happen. But the experiment seemed a failure. He sat in- sensible. It was imparted to me in a low voice by Captain THE SHADOW LINE 19 Giles that this was an officer of some Rajah's yacht which had come into our port to be dry-docked. Must have been "seeing life" last night, he added, wrinkling liis nose in an intimate, confidential way which pleased me vastly. For Captain Giles had prestige. He was credited with wonderful ad- ventures and with some mysterious tragedy in his life. And no man had a word to say against him. He continued : "I remember him first coming ashore here some years ago. Seems only the other day. He was a nice boy. Oh ! these nice boys ! " I could not help laughing aloud. He looked startled, then joined in the laugh. "No! No! I didn't mean that," he cried. "What I meant is that some of them do go soft mighty quick out here." Jocularly I suggested the beastly heat as the first cause. But Captain Giles disclosed himself possessed of a deeper philosophy. Things out East were made easy for white men. That was all right. The difficulty was to go on keeping white, and some of these nice boys did not know how. He gave me a searching look, and in a benevolent, heavy-uncle mannc asked point blank; 20 THE SHADOW LINE "AMiy did you throw up your berth?" I became angry all of a sudden; for you can understand how exasperating such a question was to a man who didn't know. I said to myself that I ought to shut up that morahst; and to him aloud I said with challenging pohteness : "WTiy . . . ? Do you disapprove? " He was too disconcerted to do more than mutter confusedly: "I! . . . In a general way. . . ." and then gave me up. But he retired in good order, under the cover of a heavily humorous remark that he, too, was getting soft, and that this was his time for taking his Kttle siesta — when he was on shore. "Very bad habit. Yery bad habit." There was a simplicity in the man which would have disarmed a touchiness even more youthful than mine. So when next day at tiffin he bent his head toward me and said that he had met my late Captain last evening, adding in an undertone: "He's very sorry you left. He had never had a mate that suited him so well," I answered him earnestly, without any affectation, that I certainly hadn't been so comfortable in any ship or with any commander in all my sea-going days. "Well — then," he murmured. THE SHADOW LINE 21 "Haven't you heard, Captain Giles, that I in- tend to go home? " "Yes," he said benevolently. "I have heard that sort of thing so often before." "What of that.? " I cried. I thought he was the most dull, unimaginative man I had ever met. I don't know what more I would have said, but the much-belated Hamilton came in just then and took his usual seat. So I dropped into a mum- ble. "Anyhow, you shall see it done this time." Hamilton, beautifully shaved, gave Captain Giles a curt nod, but didn't even condescend to raise his eyebrows at me; and when he spoke it was only to tell the Chief Steward that the food on his plate wasn't fit to be set before a gentleman. The individual addressed seemed much too unhappy to groan. He cast his eyes up to the punkah and that was all. Captain Giles and I got up from the table, and the stranger next to Hamilton followed our ex- ample, manoeuvring himself to his feet with difficulty. He, poor fellow, not because he was hungry but I verily believe only to recover his self-respect, had tried to put some of that un- worthy food into his mouth. But after dropping 22 THE SHADOW LINE Ill's fork twice and generally making a failure of it, he had sat still with an air of intense mortifica- tion combined with a ghastly glazed stare. Both Giles and I had avoided looking his way at table. On the verandah he stopped short on purpose to address to us anxiously a long remark which I failed to understand completely. It sounded like some horrible unknown language. But when Captain Giles, after only an instant for reflection, assured him with homely friendliness, "Aye, to be sure. You are right there," he appeared very much gratified indeed, and went away (pretty straight, too) to seek a distant long chair. "What was he trying to say?" I asked with disgust. "I don't know. Mustn't be down too much on a fellow. He's feehng pretty wretched, you may be sure; and to-morrow he'll feel worse yet." Judging by the man's appearance it seemed im- possible. I wondered what sort of compHcated de- bauch had reduced him to that unspeakable con- dition. Captain Giles' benevolence was spoiled by a curious air of complacency which I disliked. I said with a httle laugh: "Well, he will have you to look after him." THE SHADOW LINE 2S He made a deprecatory gesture, sat down, and took up a paper. I did the same. The papers were old and uninteresting, filled up mostly with dreary stereotyped descriptions of Queen Victoria's first jubilee celebrations. Probably we should have quickly fallen into a tropical afternoon doze if it had not been for Hamilton's voice raised in the dining room. He was finishing his tiffin there. The big double doors stood wide open permanently, and he could not have had any idea how near to the doorway our chairs were placed. He was heard in a loud, supercilious tone answering some state- ment ventured by the Chief Steward. "I am not going to be rushed into anything. They will be glad enough to get a gentleman I imagine. There is no hurry." A loud whispering from the Steward succeeded and then again Hamilton was heard with even intenser scorn. "What? That young ass who fancies himself for having been chief mate with Kent so long.'' . . . Preposterous." Giles and I looked at each other. Kent being the name of my late commander. Captain Giles' whisper, "He's talking of you," seemed to me sheer waste of breath. The Chief Steward must have 24 THE SIL\DOW LINE stuck to his point, whatever it was, because Hamil- ton was heard again more supercilious if possible, and also very emphatic: "Rubbish, my good man! One doesn't compete with a rank outsider like that. There's plenty of time." Then there were pushing of chairs, footsteps in the next room, and plaintive expostulations from the Steward, who was pursuing Hamilton, even out of doors through the main entrance. "That's a very insulting sort of man," remarked Captain Giles— superfluously, I thought. "Very insulting. You haven't offended him in some way, have you.''" "Never sjxjke to him in my life," I said grumpily. " Can't imagine what he means by competing. He has been trying for my job after I left — and didn't get it. But that isn't exactly competition." Captain Giles balanced his big benevolent head thoughtfully. "He didn't get it," he repeated very slowly. "No, not likely either, with Kent. Kent is no end sorry you left him. He gives you the name of a good seaman, too." I flung away the paper I was still holding. I sat up, I slapped the table with my open palm. I wanted to know why he would keep harping on THE SHADOW LINE 25 that, my absolutely private affair. It was exas- perating, really. Captain Giles silenced me by the perfect equanimity of his gaze. "Nothing to be annoyed about," he murmured reasonably, with an evident desire to soothe the childish irritation he had aroused. And he was really a man of an appear- ance so inoffensive that I tried to explain myself as much as I could. I told him that I did not want to hear any more about what was past and gone. It had been very nice while it lasted, but now it was done with I preferred not to talk about it or even think about it. I had made up my mind to go home. He listened to the whole tirade in a particular lending-the-ear attitude, as if trying to detect a false note in it somewhere; then straightened him- self up and appeared to ponder sagaciously over the matter. "Yes. You told me you meant to go home. Anything in view there?" Instead of telling him that it was none of his business I said sullenly : "Nothing that I know of." I had indeed considered that rather blank side of the situation I had created for myself by leaving «6 THE SHADOW LINE suddenly my very satisfactory employment. And I was not very pleased with it. I had it on the tip of my tongue to say that common sense had noth- ing to do with my action, and that therefore it didn't deserve the interest Captain Giles seemed to be taking in it. But he was puffing at a short wooden pipe now, and looked so guileless, dense, and commonplace, that it seemed hardly worth while to puzzle him either with truth or sarcasm. He blew a cloud of smoke, then surprised me by a very abrupt: "Paid your passage money yet.?" Overcome by the shameless pertinacity of a man to whom it was rather difficult to be rude, I replied with exaggerated meekness that I had not done so yet. I thought there would be plenty of time to do that to-morrow. And I was about to turn away, withdrawing my privacy from his fatuous, objectless attempts to test what sort of stuff it was made of, when he laid down his pipe in an extremely significant manner, you know, as if a critical moment had come, and leaned sideways over the table be- tween us. "Oh! You haven't yet!" He dropped his voice mysteriously. "Well, then I think you THE SHADOW LINE 27 ought to know that there's something going on here." I had never in my life felt more detached from all earthly goings on. Freed from the sea for a time, I preserved the sailor's consciousness of complete independence from all land affairs. How could they concern me.'^ I gazed at Captain Giles' animation with scorn rather than with curiosity. To his obviously preparatory question whether our Steward had spoken to me that day I said he hadn't. And what's more he would have had precious little encouragement if he had tried to. I didn't want the fellow to speak to me at all. Unrebuked by my petulance, Captain Giles, with an air of immense sagacity, began to tell me a minute tale about a Harbour Office peon. It was absolutely pointless. A peon was seen walk- ing that morning on the verandah with a letter in his hand. It was in an official envelope. As the habit of these fellov/s is, he had shown it to the first white man he came across. That man was our friend in the arm-chair. He, as I knew, was not in a state to interest himself in any sub- lunary matters. He could only wave the peon away. The peon then wandered on along the 28 THE SHADOW LINE verandah and came upon Captain Giles, who was there by an extraordinary chance. . . . At this point he stopped with a profound look. The letter, he continued, was addressed to the Chief Steward. Now what could Captain Ellis, the Master Attendant, want to write to the Steward for? The fellow went every morning, anyhow, to the Harbour OflBce with his report, for orders or what not. He hadn't been back more than an hour before there was an office peon chasing him with a note. Now what was that for.? And he began to speculate. It was not for this — and it could not be for that. As to that other thing it was unthinkable. The fatuousness of all this made me stare. If the man had not been somehow a sympathetic personality I would have resented it like an in- sult. As it was, I felt only sorry for him. Some- thing remarkably earnest in his gaze prevented me from laughing in his face. Neither did I yawn at him. I just stared. His tone became a shade more mysterious. Directly the fellow (meaning the Steward) got that note he rushed for his hat and bolted out of the house. But it wasn't because the note called THE SHADOW LINE 29 him to the Harbour Office. He didn't go there. He was not absent long enough for that. He came darting back in no time, jflung his hat away, and raced about the dining room moaning and slapping his forehead. All these exciting facts and mani- festations had been observed by Captain Giles. He had, it seems, been meditating upon them ever since. I began to pity him profoundly. And in a tone which I tried to make as httle sarcastic as possible I said that I was glad he had found something to occupy his morning hours. With his disarming simplicity he made me ob- serve, as if it were a matter of some consequence, how strange it was that he should have spent the morning indoors at all. He generally was out before tiffin, visiting various offices, seeing his friends in the harbour, and so on. He had felt out of sorts somewhat on rising. Nothing much. Just enough to make him feel lazy. All this with a sustained, holding stare which, in conjunction with the general inanity of the discourse, conveyed the impression of mild, dreary lunacy. And when he hitched his chair a little and dropped his voice to the low note of mystery, it flashed upon me that high professional reputa- 30 THE SHADOW LINE tion was not necessarily a guarantee of sound mind. It never occurred to me then that I didn't know in what soundness of mind exactly con- sisted and what a delicate and, upon the whole, unimportant matter it was. With some idea of not hurting his feehngs I bhnked at him in an interested manner. But when he proceeded to ask me mysteriously whether I remembered what had pass<3d just now between that Steward of ours and "that man Hamilton," I only grunted sourly assent and turned away my head. "Aye. But do you remember every word.'^" he insisted tactfully. "I don't know. It's none of my business," I snapped out, consigning, moreover, the Steward and Hamilton aloud to eternal perdition. I meant to be very energetic and final, but Captain Giles continued to gaze at me thought- fully. Nothing could stop him. He went on to point out that my personality was involved in that conversation. \Mien I tried to preserve the semblance of unconcern he became positively cruel. I heard what the man had said.^ Yes.^ What did I think of it then.'^ — he wanted to know. Captain Giles' appearance excluding the sus- THE SHADOW LINE 31 picion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understand- ing. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is," interjected Captain Giles . . . thought or said was below any decent man's contempt, and I did not propose to take the slightest notice of it. This attitude seemed to me so simple and ob- vious that I was really astonished at Giles giving no sign of assent. Such perfect stupidity was almost interesting. "What would you like me to do.?" I asked, laughing. "I can't start a row with him because of the opinion he has formed of me. Of course, I've heard of the contemptuous way he alludes to me. But he doesn't intrude his contempt on my notice. He has never expressed it in my hearing. For even just now he didn't know we could hear him. I should only make myself ridiculous." That hopeless Giles went on puffing at his pipe moodily. All at once his face cleared, and he spoke. S« THE SHADOW LINE " Vou niissed my point." "Have I? I am very glad to hear it," I said. With increasing animation he stated again that I had missed his point. Entirely. And in a tone of growing self-conscious complacency he told me that few thmgs escaped his attention, and he was rather used to think them out, and generally from his experience of life and men ar- rived at the right conclusion. This bit of self-praise, of course, fitted excel- lently the laborious inanity of the whole conversa- tion. The whole thing strengthened in me that obscure feeling of Hfe being but a waste of days, which, half-unconsciously, had driven me out of a comfortable berth, away from men I liked, to flee from the menace of emptiness . . . and to find inanity at the first turn. Here was a man of recognized character and achievement disclosed as an absurd and dreary chatterer. And it was probably like this everywhere — from east to west, from the bottom to the top of the social scale. A great discouragement fell on me. A spiritual drowsiness. Giles' voice was going on compla- cently; the very voice of the universal hollow conceit. And I was no longer angry with it. There was nothing original, nothing new, star- THE SHADOW LINE 33 tling, informing, to expect from the world; no op- portunities to find out something about oneself, no wisdom to acquire, no fun to enjoy. Every- thing was stupid and overrated, even as Captain Giles was. So be it. The name of Hamilton suddenly caught my ear and roused me up. "I thought we had done with him," I said, with the greatest possible distaste. "Yes. But considering what we happened to hear just now I think you ought to do it." "Ought to do it?" I sat up bewildered. "Do what.?" Captain Giles confronted me very much sur- prised. "Why! Do what I have been advising you to try. You go and ask the Steward what was there in that letter from the Harbour Office. Ask him straight out." I remained speechless for a time. Here was something unexpected and original enough to be altogether incomprehensible. I murmured, as- tounded : "But I thought it was Hamilton that you . . ." "Exactly. Don't you let him. You do what I tell you. You tackle that Steward. You'll makDurse is south." "South, sir," echoed the man. I sent below the second mate and his watch and remained in charge, walking the deck through the chiU, somnolent hours that precede the dawn. Slight puffs came and went, and whenever they were strong enough to wake up the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of dehght and died away swiftly. I was bitterly tired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost gray, \Nith a strange reminder of high latitudes. The voice of the look-out man hailed from for- ward: "Land on the port bow, sir." "All right." Leaning on the rail I never even raised my eyes. The motion of the ship was imperceptible. Pres- ently Ransome brought me the cup of morning coffee. After I had drunk it I looked ahead, and in THE SHADOW LINE 114 the still streak of very bright pale orange light I saw the land profiled flatly as if cut out of black paper and seeming to float on the water as light as cork. But the rising sun turned it into mere dark vapour, a doubtful, massive shadow trembling in the hot glare. The watch finished washing decks. I went be- low and stopped at Mr. Burns' door (he could not bear to have it shut), but hesitated to speak to him till he moved his eyes. I gave him the news. " Sighted Cape Liant at daylight. About fifteen miles." He moved his lips then, but I heard no sound till I put my ear down, and caught the peevish comment: " This is crawling. . . . No luck." "Better luck than standing still, anyhow," I pointed out resignedly, and left him to whatever thoughts or fancies haunted his awful immobility. Later that morning, when relieved by my second ofiicer, I threw myself on my couch and for some three hours or so I really found oblivion. It was so perfect that on waking up I wondered where I was. Then came the immense relief of the thought: on board my ship! At sea! At sea! Through the port-holes I beheld an unruflBed, sun-smitten horizon. The horizon of a windless 116 THE SHADOW LINE day. But its spaciousness alone was enough to give me a sense of a fortunate escape, a momentary exultation of freedom. I stepped out into the saloon with my heart lighter than it had been for days, Ransome was at the sideboard preparing to lay the table for the first sea dinner of the passage. He turned his head, and something in his eyes checked my modest elation. Instinctively I asked : " What is it now? " not ex- pecting in the least the answer I got. It was given with that sort of contained serenity which was characteristic of the man. *'I am afraid we haven't left all sickness behind us, sir." " We haven't ! WTiat's the matter.? " He told me then that two of our men had been taken bad with fever in the night. One of them was burning and the other was shivering, but he thought that it was pretty much the same thing. I thought so, too. I felt shocked by the news. "One burning, the other shivering, you say.'* No. We haven't left the sickness behind. Do they look very ill?" "IVIiddling bad, sir." Ransome's eyes gazed steadily into mine. We exchanged smiles. Ran- some's a little wistful, as usual, mine no doubt grim THE SHADOW LINE 117 enough, to correspond with my secret exaspera- tion. I asked: "Was there any wind at all this morning?" " Can hardly say that, sir. We've moved all the time though. The land ahead seems a little nearer." That was it. A little nearer. Whereas if we had only had a little more wind, only a very little more, we might, we should, have been abreast of Liant by this time and increasing our distance from that contaminated shore. And it was not only the distance. It seemed to me that a stronger breeze would have blown away the contamination which clung to the ship. It obviously did cling to the ship. Two men. One burning, one shivering. I felt a distinct reluctance to go and look at them. What was the good.'* Poison is poison. Tropical fever is tropical fever. But that it should have stretched its claw after us over the sea seemed to me an extraordinary and unfair license. I could hardly believe that it could be anything worse than the last desperate pluck of the evil from which we were escaping into the clean breath of the sea. If only that breath had been a little stronger. How- ever, there was the quinine against the fever. I went into the spare cabin where the medicine chest 118 THE SHADOW LINE was kept to prepare two doses. I opened it full of faith as a man opens a miraculous shrine. The upper part was inhabited by a collection of bottles, all square-shouldered and as like each other as peas. Under that orderly array there were two drawers, stuffed as full of things as one could im- agine — paper packages, bandages, cardboard boxes officially labelled. The lower of the two, in one of its compartments, contained our provision of quinine. There were five bottles, all round and all of a size. One was about a third full. The other four remained still wrapped up in paper and sealed. But I did not expect to see an envelope lying on top of them. A square envelope, belonging, in fact, to the ship's stationery. It lay so that I could see it was not closed down, and on picking it up and turning it over I perceived that it was addressed te myself. It contained a half-sheet of notepaper, which I unfolded with a queer sense of dealing with the uncanny, but with- out any excitement as people meet and do ex- traordinary things in a dream. "My dear Captain," it began, but I ran to the signature. The writer was the doctor. The date was that of the day on which, returning from my THE SHADOW LINE 110 visit to Mr. Burns in the hospital, I had found the excellent doctor waiting for me in the cabin; and when he told me that he had been putting in time inspecting the medicine chest for me. How bizarre! While expecting me to come in at any moment he had been amusing himself by writing me a letter, and then as I came in had hastened to stuflF it into the medicine-chest drawer. A rather incredible proceeding. I turned to the text in wonder. In a large, hurried, but legible hand the good, sympathetic man for some reason, either of kind- ness or more likely impelled by the irresistible de- sire to express his opinion, with which he didn't want to damp my hopes before, was warning me not to put my trust in the beneiScial effects of a change from land to sea. "I didn't want to add to your worries by discouraging your hopes," he wrote. " I am afraid that, medically speaking, the end of your troubles is not yet." In short, he ex- pected me to have to fight a probable return of tropical illness. Fortunately I had a good pro- vision of quinine, I should put my trust in that, and administer jt steadily, when the ship's health would certainly improve. I crumpled up the letter and rammed it into my 1«0 THE SHADOW LINE pocket. Ransome carried off two big doses to the men forward. As to myself, I did not go on deck as yet. I went instead to the door of Mr. Burns' room, and gave him that news, too. It was impossible to say the effect it had on him. At first I thought that he was speechless. His head lay sunk in the pillow. He moved his hps enough, however, to assure me that he was getting much stronger; a statement shockingly untrue on the face of it. That afternoon I took my watch as a matter of course. A great over-heated stillness enveloped the ship and seemed to hold her motionless in a flaming ambience composed in two shades of blue. Faint, hot puffs eddied nervelessly from her sails. And yet she moved. She must have. For, as the sun was setting, we had drawn abreast of Cape Liant and dropped it behind us: an ominous re- treating shadow in the last gleams of twilight. In the evening, under the crude glare of his lamp, Mr. Burns seemed to have come more to the surface of his bedding. It was as if a depressing hand had been lifted off him. He answered my few words by a comparatively long, connected speech. He asserted himself strongly. If he escaped being smothered by this stagnant heat, he said, he was THE SHADOW LINE 121 confident that in a very few days he would be able to come up on deck and help me. While he was speaking I trembled lest this effort of energy should leave him lifeless before my eyes. But I cannot deny that there was something com- forting in his willingness. I made a suitable reply, but pointed out to him that the only thing that could really help us was wind -a fair wind. He rolled his head impatiently on the pillow. And it was not comforting in the least to hear him begin to mutter crazily about the late captain, that old man buried in latitude 8° 20', right in our way — ambushed at the entrance of the Gulf. "Are you still tliinking of your late captain, Mr. Burns ?" 1 said . "I imagine the dead feel no animos- ity against the living. They care nothing for them . ' ' "You don't know that one," he breathed out feebly. "No. I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. And so he can't have any grievance against me, anyway." "Yes. But there's all the rest of us on board," he insisted. I felt the inexpugnable strength of common sense being insidiously menaced by this gruesome, by this insane, delusion. And I said: 1^2 THE SHADOW LINE "You mustn't talk so much. You will tire your- self." "And there is the ship herself," he persisted in a whisper. "Now, not a word more," I said, stepping in and laying my hand on his cool forehead. It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rooted in the man himself and not in the disease, which, ap- parently, had emptied him of every power, mental and physical, except that one fixed idea. I avoided gi^dng Mr. Burns any opening for con- versation for the next few days. I merely used to throw him a hasty, cheery word when passing his door. I believe that if he had had the strength he would have called out' after me more than once. But he hadn't the strength. Ransome, however, observed to me one afternoon that the mate "seemed to be picking up wonderfully." "Did he talk any nonsense to you of late.^" I asked casually. "No, sir." Ransome was startled by the direct question; but, after a pause, he added equably: " He told me this morning, sir, that he was sorry he had to bury our late, captain right in the ship's, way, as one may say, out of the Gulf." "Isn't this nonsense enough for you?" I asked. THE SHADOW LINE 12S looking confidently at the intelligent, quiet face on which the secret uneasiness in the man's breast had thrown a transparent veil of care. Ransome didn't know. He had not given a thought to the matter. And with a faint smile he flitted away from me on his never-ending duties, with his usual guarded activity. Two more days passed. We had advanced a little way — a very little way — into the larger space of the Gulf of Siam. Seizing eagerly upon the elation of the first command thrown into my lap, by the agency of Captain Giles, I had yet an uneasy feeling that such luck as this has got perhaps to be paid for in some way. I had held, professionally, a review of my chances. I was competent enough for that. At least, I thought so. I had a general sense of my preparedness which only a man pur- suing a calling he loves can know. That feeling seemed to me the most natural thing in the world. As natural as breathing. I imagined I could not have lived without it. I don't know what I expected. Perhaps nothing else than that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations. What- ever I expected I did not expect to be beset by hurricanes. I knew better than that. In the Gulf 124 THE SHADOW LINE of Siam there are no hurricanes. But neither did I expect to find myself bound hand and foot to the hopeless extent which was revealed to me as the days went on. Not that the evil spell held us always motionless. Mysterious currents drifted us here and there, with a stealthy power made manifest only by the chang- ing vistas of the islands fringing the east shore of the Gulf. And there were winds, too, fitful and deceitful. They raised hopes only to dash them into the bitterest disappointment, promises of advance ending in lost ground, expiring in sighs, dying into dumb stillness in which the currents had it all their own way — their own inimical way. The island of Koh-ring, a great, black, up- heaved ridge amongst a lot of tiny islets, lying upon the glassy water like a triton amongst min- nows, seemed to be the centre of the fatal circle. It seemed impossible to get away from it. Day after day it remained in sight. More than once, in a favourable breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbing twilight, thinking that it was for the last time. Vain hope. A night of fitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the rising sun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ring, THE SHADOW LINE 125 looking more barren, inhospitable, and grim than ever. "It's like being bewitched, upon my word," I said once to Mr. Burns, from my usual position in the doorway. He was sitting up in his bed-place. He was progressing toward the world of living men; if he could hardly have been said to have rejoined it yet. He nodded to me his frail and bony head in a wisely mysterious assent. "Oh, yes, I know what you mean," I said. "But you cannot expect me to believe that a dead man has the power to put out of joint the meteor- ology of this part of the world. Though indeed it seems to have gone utterly wrong. The land and sea breezes have got broken up into small pieces. We cannot depend upon them for five minutes to- gether." "It won't be very long now before I can come up on deck," muttered Mr. Burns, "and then we shall see. Whether he meant this for a promise to grapple with supernatural evil I couldn't tell. At any rate, it wasn't the kind of assistance I needed. On the other hand, I had been living on deck practically jiight and day so ^3 to take advantage of every 126 TIIE SHADOW LINE chance to get my ship a little more to the south* ward. The mate, I could see, was extremely weak yet, and not quite rid of his delusion, which to me appeared but a symptom of his disease. At all events, the hopefulness of an invalid was not to be discouraged. I said: " You will be most welcome there, I am sure, Mr. Burns. If you go on improving at this rate you'll be presently one of the healthiest men in the ship." This pleased him, but his extreme emaciation converted his self-satisfied smile into a ghastly exhibition of long teeth under the red moustache. "Aren't the fellows improving, sir.''" he asked soberly, with an extremely sensible expression of anxiety on his face. I answered him only with a vague gesture and went away from the door. The fact was that disease played with us capriciously very much as the winds did. It would go from one man to an- other with a lighter or heavier touch, which always left its mark behind, staggering some, knocking others over for a time, leaving this one, returning to another, so that all of them had now an invalid- ish aspect and a hunted, apprehensive look in their eyes; while Ransome and I, the only two com- pletely untouched, went amongst them assiduously THE SHADOW LINE 127 distributing quinine. It was a double fight. The adverse weather held us in front and the disease pressed on our rear. I must say that the men were very good. The constant toil of trimming yards they faced willingly. But all spring was out of their limbs, and as I looked at them from the poop I could not keep from my mind the dreadful im- pression that they were moving in poisoned air. Down below, in his cabin, Mr. Burns had ad- vanced so far as not only to be able to sit up, but even to draw up his legs. Clasping them with bony arms, like an animated skeleton, he emitted deep, impatient sighs. "The great thing to do, sir," he would tell me on every occasion, when I gave him the chance, "the great thing is to get the ship past 8° 20' of latitude. Once she's past that we're all right." At first I used only to smile at him, though, God knows, I had not much heart left for smiles. But at last I lost my patience. "Oh, yes. The latitude 8° 20'. That's where you buried your late captain, isn't it.'^ " Then with severity: "Don't you think, Mr. Burns, it's about time you dropped all that nonsense?" He rolled at me his deep-sunken eyes in a glance of invincible obstinacy. But for the rest he only 128 THE SHADOW LINE muttered, just loud enough for me to hear, some- thmg about "Not surprised . . . find . . , play us some beastly trick yet. . . ." Such passages as this were not exactly whole- some for my resolution. The stress of adversity was beginning to tell on me. At the same time, I felt a contempt for that obscure w^eakness of my tsoul. I said to myself disdainfully that it should take much more than that to affect in the smallest degree my fortitude. I didn't know then how soon and from what un- expected direction it would be attacked. It was the very next day. The sun had risen clear of the southern shoulder of Koh-ring, which still hung, like an evil attendant, on our port quarter. It was intensely hateful to my sight. During the night we had been heading all round the compass, trimming the yards again and again, to what I fear must have been for the most part im- aginary puffs of air. Then just about sunrise we got for an hour an inexplicable, steady breeze, right in our teeth. There was no sense in it. It fitted neither with the season of the year nor with the secular experience of seamen as recorded in books, nor with the aspect of the sky. Only purposeful malevolence could account for it. It sent us THE SHADOW LINE 129 travelling at a great pace away from our proper course; and if we had been out on pleasure sailing bent it would have been a delightful breeze, with the awakened sparkle of the sea, with the sense of motion and a feeling of unwonted freshness. Then, all at once, as if disdaining to carry farther the sorry jest, it dropped and died out completely in less than five minutes. The ship's head swung where it listed ; the stilled sea took on the polish of a steel plate in the calm. I went below, not because I meant to take some rest, but simply because I couldn't bear to look at it just then. The indefatigable Ransome was busy in the saloon. It had become a regular practice with him to give me an informal health report in the morning. He turned away from the sideboard with his usual pleasant, quiet gaze. No shadow rested on his intelligent forehead. "There are a good many of them middling bad this morning, sir," he said in a calm tone. " What? All knocked out.? " "Only two actually in their bunks, sir, but " "It's the last night that has done for them. We have had to pull and haul all the blessed time." "I heard, sir. I had a mind to come out and help only, you know. . . ." 130 THE SHADOW LINE "Certainly not. You mustn't. . . . The fellows lie at night about the decks, too. It isn't good for them." Ransome assented. But men couldn't be looked after like children. Moreover, one could hardly blame them for trying for such coolness and such air as there was to be found on deck. He himself, of course, knew better. He was, indeed, a reasonable man. Yet it would have been hard to say that the others were not. The last few days had been for us like the ordeal of the fiery furnace. One really couldn't quarrel with their common, imprudent humanity making the best of the moments of relief, when the night brought in the illusion of coolness and the starlight twinkled through the heavy, dew-laden air. Moreover, most of them were so weakened that hardly anything could be done without every- body that could totter mustering on the braces. No, it was no use remonstrating with them. But I fully beheved that quinine was of very great use indeed. I believed in it. I pinned my faith to it. It would save the men, the ship, break the spell by its medicinal virtue, make time of no account, the weather but a passing worry and, like a magic THE SHADOW LINE 131 powder working against mysterious malefices, se- cure the first passage of my first command against the ev^il powers of calms and pestilence. I looked upon it as more precious than gold, and unlike gold, of which there ever hardly seems to be enough any- where, the ship had a sufficient store of it. I went in to get it with the purpose of weighing out doses. I stretched my hand with the feeling of a man reaching for an unfailing panacea, took up a fresh bottle and imrolled the wrapper, noticing as I did so that the ends, both top and bottom, had come imsealed. . . . But why record all the swift steps of the appal- ling discovery? You have guessed the truth al- ready. There was the wrapper, the bottle, and the white powder inside, some sort of powder ! But it wasn't quinine. One look at it was quite enough. I remember that at the very moment of picking up the bottle, before I even dealt with the wrapper, the weight of the object I had in my hand gave me an instant premonition. Quinine is as light as feath- ers; and my nerves must have been exasperated into an extraordinary sensibility. I let the bottle smash itself on the floor. The stuff, whatever it was, felt gritty under the sole of my shoe. I snatched up the next bottle and then the next. 132 THE SHADOW LINE The weight alone told the tale. One after another they fell, breaking at my feet, not because I threw them down in my dismay, but slipping through my fingers as if this disclosure were too much for my . strength. It is a fact that the very greatness of a mental shock helps one to bear up against it by producing a sort of temporary insensibility. I came out of the state-room stunned, as if something heavy had dropped on my head. From the other side of the saloon, across the table, Ransome, with a duster in his hand, stared open-mouthed. I don't think that I looked wild. It is quite possible that I appeared to be in a hurry because I was instinctively hasten- ing up on deck. An example this of training be- come instinct. The difficulties, the dangers, the problems of a ship at sea must be met on deck. To this fact, as it were of nature, I responded instinctively; which may be taken as a proof that for a moment I must have been robbed of my reason. I was certainly off my balance, a prey to im- pulse, for at the bottom of the stairs I turned and flung myself at the doorway of Mr. Burns' cabin. The wildness of his aspect checked my mental dis- order. He was sitting up in his bunk, his body THE SHADOW LINE 13S looking immensely long, h'S head drooping a little sideways, with affected complacency. He flour- ished, in his trembling hand, on the end of a fore- arm no thicker than a stout walking-stick, a shining pair of scissors which he tried before my very eyes to jab at his throat. I was to a certain extent horrified; but it was rather a secondary sort of effect, not really strong enough to make m^e yell at him in some such man- ner as: "Stop!" . . . "Heavens!". . . "What are you doing.?" In reality he was simply overtaxing his returning strength in a shaky attempt to clip off the thick growth of his red beard; A large towel was spread over his lap, and a shower of stiff hairs, like bits of copper wire, was descending on it at every snip of the scissors. He turned to me his face grotesque beyond the fantasies of mad dreams, one cheek all bushy as if with a swollen flame, the other denuded and sunken, with the untouched long moustache on that side asserting itself, lonely and fierce. And while he stared thunderstruck, with the gaping scissors on his fingers, I shouted my discovery at him fiendishly, in six words, without comment. I HEARD the clatter of the scissors escaping from his hand, noted the perilous heave of his whole person over the edge of the bunk after them, and then, returning to my first purpose, pursued my course on the deck. The sparkle of the sea filled my eyes. It was gorgeous and barren, monotonous and without hope under the empty curve of the sky. The sails hung motionless and slack, the very folds of their sagging surfaces moved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my ad- vent made the man at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth could have made it do so? It was a whistling note like a bird's. For a long, long time I faced an empty world, steeped in an infinity of silence, through which the sunshine poured and flowed for some mysterious purpose. Then I heard Ransome's voice at my elbow. "I have put IVIr. Burns back to bed, sir/* "You have." " Well, sir, he got out, all of a sudden, but when 134 THE SHADOW LINE 135 he let go the edge of his bunk he fell down. He isn't light-headed, though, it seems to me." "No," I said dully, without looking at Ransome. He waited for a moment, then cautiously, as if not to give offence: "I don't think we need lose much of that stuff, sir," he said, "I can sweep it up, every bit of it almost, and then we could sift the glass out. I will go about it at once. It will not make the breakfast late, not ten minutes.'* "Oh, yes," I said bitterly. "Let the breakfast wait, sweep up every bit of it, and then throw the damned lot overboard!" The profound silence returned, and when I looked over my shoulder, Ransome — the intelli- gent, serene Ransome — had vanished from my side. The intense loneliness of the sea acted like poison on my brain. When I turned my eyes to the ship, I had a morbid vision of her as a floating grave. Who hasn't heard of ships found floating, haphazard, with their crews all dead? I looked at the seaman at the helm, I had an impulse to speak to him, and, indeed, his face took on an expectant cast as if he had guessed my intention. But in the end I went below, thinking I would be alone with the greatness of my trouble for a little while. But through his open door Mr. Burns saw me 136 THE SHADOW LINE come down, and addressed me grumpily: "Well, sirr I went in. "It isn't well at all," I said. Mr Burns, reestablished in his bed-place, was concealing his hirsute cheek in the palm of his hand. "That confounded fellow has taken away the scissors from me," were the next words he said. The tension I was suflPering from was so great that it was perhaps just as well that Mr. Burns had started on his grievance. He seemed very sore about it and grumbled, "Does he think I am mad, or what? " "I don't think so, Mr. Burns," I said. I looked upon him at that moment as a model of self- possession. I even conceived on that account a sort of admiration for that man, who had (apart from the intense materiality of what was left of his beard) come as near to being a disembodied spirit as any man can do and hve. I noticed the pre- ternatural sharpness of the ridge of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very soon. Enviable man! So near extinction — while I had to bear within me a tumult of suffering vitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an in- THE SHADOW LINE 137 definite reluctance to meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering: "I feel as if I were going mad myself." IMr. Burns glared spectrally, but otherwise wonderfully composed. "I always thought he would play us some deadly trick," he said, with a peculiar emphasis on the he. It gave me a mental shock, but I had neither the mind, nor the heart, nor the spirit to argue with him. My form of sickness was indifference. The creeping paralysis of a hopeless outlook. So I only gazed at him. Mr. Burns broke into further speech. "Eh! What! No! You won't believe it.? Well, how do you account for this.'' How do you think it could have happened.''" "Happened.''" I repeated dully. "Why, yes, how in the name of the infernal powers did this thing happen.''" Indeed, on thinking it out, it seemed incompre- hensible that it should just be like this : the bottles emptied, refilled, re wrapped, and replaced. A sort of plot, a sinister attempt to deceive, a thing re- sembling sly vengeance, but for what.'' Or else a fiendish joke. But Mr. Burns was in possession of 138 THE SHADOW LINE a theory. It was simple, and he uttered it solemnly in a hollow voice. "I suppose they have given him about fifteen pounds in Haiphong for that little lot." "Mr. Bums!" I cried. He nodded grotesquely over his raised legs, like two broomsticks in the pyjamas, with enormous bare feet at the end. "Why not.'* The stuff is pretty expensive in this part of the world, and they were very short of it in Tonkin. And what did he care.'^ You have not known him. I have, and I have defied him. He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I beheve I am the only man who ever stood up to him. I faced him in that cabin where you five now, when he was sick, and I cowed him then. He thought I was going to twist his neck for him. If he had had his way w^e would have been beating up against the Nord-East mon- soon, as long as he lived and afterward, too, for ages and ages. Acting the Flying Dutchman in the China Sea! Ha! Ha!" "But why should he replace the bottles like this?" . . . I began. THE SHADOW LINE 139 "Why shouldn't he? Why should he want to throw the bottles away? They fit the drawer. They belong to the medicine chest." "And they were wrapped up," I cried. "Well, the wrappers were there. Did it from habit, I suppose, and as to refilling, there is always a lot of stuff they send in paper parcels that burst after a time. And then, who can tell? I suppose you didn't taste it, sir? But, of course, you are sure. ..." "No," I said. "I didn't taste it. It is all over- board now." Behind me, a soft, cultivated voice said : "I have tasted it. It seemed a mixture of all sorts, sweet- ish, saltish, very horrible." Ransome, stepping out of the pantry, had been listening for some time, as it was very excusable in him to do. "A dirty trick," said Mr. Burns. "I always ssiid he would." The magnitude of my indignation was un- bounded. And the kind, sympathetic doctor, too. The only sympathetic man I ever knew . . . instead of writing that warning letter, the very re- finement of sympathy, why didn't the man make a proper inspection? But, as a matter of fact, it was 140 THE SHADOW LINE hardly fair to blame the doctor. The fittings were in order and the medicine chest is an officially ar- ranged affair. There was nothing really to arouse the slightest suspicion. The person I could never forgive was myself. Nothing should ever be taken for granted. The seed of everlasting remorse was sown in my breast. "I feel it's all my fault," I exclaimed, "mine and nobody else's. That's how I feel. I shall never forgive myself." " That's very foolish, sir," said jVIt. Burns fiercely. And after this effort he fell back exhausted on his bed. He closed his eyes, he panted; this affair, this abominable surprise had shaken him up, too. As I turned away I perceived Ransome looking at me blankly. He appreciated what it meant, but managed to produce his pleasant, wistful smile. Then he stepped back into his pantry, and I rushed up on deck again to see whether there was any wind, any breath under the sky, any stir of the air, any sign of hope. The deadly stillness met me again. Nothing was changed except that there was a different man at the wheel. He looked ill. His whole figure drooped, and he seemed rather to cling to the spokes than hold them with a controll- ing grip. I said to him: THE SHADOW LINE 141 "You are not fit to be here." "I can manage, sir," he said feebly. As a matter of fact, there was nothing for him to do . The ship had no steerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlasting Koh-ring visible over the stern, with a few small islets, black spots in the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for those bits of land there was no speck on the sky, no speck on the water, no shape of vapour, no wisp of smoke, no sail, no boat, no stir of humanity, no sign of life, nothing! The first question was, what to do.f^ What could one do.^ The first thing to do obviously was to tell the men. I did it that very day. I wasn't going to let the knowledge simply get about. I would face them. They were assembled on the quarter- deck for the purpose. Just before I stepped out to speak to them I discovered that life could hold terrible moments. No confessed criminal had ever been so oppressed by his sense of guilt. This is why, perhaps, my face was set hard and my voice curt and unemotional while I made my declaration that I could do nothing more for the sick in the way of drugs. As to such care as could be given them they knew they had had it. I would have held them justified in tearing me 142 THE SHADOW LINE limb from limb. The silence which followed upon my words was almost harder to bear than the angriest uproar. I was crushed by the infinite depth of its reproach. But, as a matter of fact, I was mistaken. In a voice which I had great diffi- culty in keeping firm, I went on: "I suppose, men, you have understood what I said, and you know what it means." A voice or two were heard : " Yes, sir. . . . We understand." They had kept silent simply because they thought that they were not called to say anything; and when I told them that I intended to run into Singapore and that the best chance for the ship and the men was in the efforts all of us, sick and well, must make to get her along out of this, I re- ceived the encouragement of a low assenting mur- mm* and of a louder voice exclaiming: "Surely there is a way out of this blamed hole." Here is an extract from the notes I wrote at the time. " We have lost Koh-ring at last. For many days now I don't think I have been two hours below al- together. I remain on deck, of course, night and THE SHADOW LINE 143 day, and the nights and the days wheel over us in succession, whether long or short, who can say? All sense of time is lost in the monotony of ex- pectation, of hope, and of desire — which is only one : Get the ship to the southward ! Get the ship to the southward! The effect is curiously me- chanical; the sun chmbs and descends, the night swings over our heads as if somebody below the horizon were turning a crank. It is the prettiest, the most aimless! . . . and all through that miserable performance I go on, tramping, tramp- ing the deck. How many miles have I walked on the poop of that ghip! A stubborn pilgrimage of sheer restlessness, diversified by short excursions below to look upon Mr. Burns. I don't know whether it is an illusion, but he seems to become more substantial from day to day. He doesn't say much, for, indeed, the situation doesn't lend itself to idle remarks. I notice this even with the men as I watch them moving or sitting about the decks. They don't talk to each other. It strikes me that if there exists an invisible ear catching the whispers of the earth, it will find this ship the most silent spot on it. . . . "No, Mr. Burns has not much to say to me. He sits in his bunk with his beard gone, his moustaches 144 THE SHADOW LINE flaming, and with an air of silent determination on his chalky physiognomy. Ransome tells me he devours all the food that is given him to the last scrap, but that, apparently, he sleeps very little. Even at night, when I go below to fill my pipe, I notice that, though dozing flat on his back, he still looks very determined. From the side glance he gives me when awake it seems as though he were annoyed at being interrupted in some arduous mental operation; and as I emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, un- clouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are; stars, sun, sea, fight, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed. Even as I have been decoyed into this awful, this death-haunted command. . . ." The only spot of light in the ship at night was that of the compass-lamps, lighting up the faces of the succeeding helmsmen ; for the rest we were lost in the darkness, I walking the poop and the men lying about the decks. They were all so reduced by sickness that no watches could be kept. Those who were able to walk remained all the time on THE SHADOW LINE 145 duty, lying about in the shadows of the main deck, till my voice raised for an order would bring them to their enfeebled feet, a tottering little group, mov- ing patently about the ship, with hardly a mur- mur, a whisper amongst them all. And every time I had to raise my voice it was with a pang of remorse and pity. Then about four o'clock in the morning a light would gleam forward in the galley. The unfailing Ransome with the uneasy heart, immune, serene, and active, was getting ready for the early cofiFee for the men. Presently he would bring me a cup up on the poop, and it was then that I allowed myself to drop into my deck chair for a couple of hours of real sleep. No doubt I must have been snatching short dozes when leaning against the rail for a mo- ment in sheer exhaustion; but, honestly, I was not aware of them, except in the painful form of con- vulsive starts that seemed to come on me even while I walked. From about five, however, until after seven I would sleep openly under the fading stars. I would say to the helmsman: "Call me at need," and drop into that chair and close my eyes, feehng that there was no more sleep for me on earth. And then I would know nothing till, some 146 THE SHADOW LINE time between seven and eight, I would feel a touch on my shoulder and look up at Ransome's face, with its faint, wistful smile and friendly, gray eyes, as though he were tenderly amused at my slumbers. Occasionally the second mate would come up and relieve me at early coffee time. But it didn't really matter. Generally it was a dead calm, or else faint airs so changing and fugitive that it really wasn't worth while to touch a brace for them. If the air steadied at all the seaman at the helm could be trusted for a warning shout: "Ship's all aback, sir!" which like a trumpet- call would make me spring a foot above the deck. Those were the words which it seemed to me would have made me spring up from eternal sleep. But this was not often. I have never met since such breathless sunrises. And if the second mate hap- pened to be there (he had generally one day in three free of fever) I would find him sitting on the skylight half senseless, as it were, and with an idiotic gaze fastened on some object near by — a rope, a cleat, a belaying pin, a ringbolt. That young man was rather troublesome. He remained cubbish in his sufferings. He seemed to have become completely imbecile; and when the re- turn of fever drove him to his cabin below, the next THE SHADOW LINE 147 thing would be that we would miss him from there. The first time it happened Ransome and I were very much alarmed. We started a quiet search and ultimately Ransome discovered him curled up in the sail-locker, which opened into the lobby by a shding door. When remonstrated with, he mut- tered sulkily, "It's cool in there." That wasn't true. It was only dark there. The fundamental defects of his face were not im- proved by its uniform Kvid hue. The disease dis- closed its low type in a startling way. It was not so with many of the men. The wastage of ill- health seemed to idealise the general character of the features, bringing out the unsuspected nobility of some, the strength of others, and in one case re- vealing an essentially comic aspect. He was a short, gingery, active man with a nose and chin of the Punch type, and whom his shipmates called "Frenchy." I don't know why. He may have been a Frenchman, but I have never heard him utter a single word in French. To see him coming aft to the wheel comforted one. The blue dungaree trousers turned up the calf, one leg a little higher than the other, the clean check shirt, the white canvas cap, evidently made by himself, made up a whole of peculiar smartness, 148 THE SHADOW LINE and the persistent jauntiness of his gait, even, poor fellow, when he couldn't help tottering, told of his invincible spirit. There was also a man called Gambril. He was the only grizzled person in the ship. His face was of an austere type. But if I re- member all their faces, wasting tragically before my eyes, most of their names have vanished from my memory. The words that passed between us were few and puerile in regard of the situation. I had to force myself to look them in the face. I expected to meet reproachful glances. There were none. The expression of suffering in their eyes was indeed hard enough to bear. But that they couldn't help. For the rest, I ask myself whether it was the temper of their souls or the s\Txipathy of their imagination that made them so wonderful, so worthy of my un- dying regard. For myself, neither my soul was highly tempered, nor my imagination properly under control. There were moments when I felt, not only that I would go mad, but that I had gone mad already; so that I dared not open my lips for fear of betraying myself by some insane shriek. Luckily I had only orders to give, and an order has a steadying influence upon him who has to give it. ^loreover, the seaman, THE SHADOW LINE 149 the officer of the watch, in me was sufficiently sane. I was Uke a mad carpenter maldng a box. Were he ever so convinced that he was King of Jerusalem, the box he would make would be a sane box. What I feared was a shrill note escaping me involuntarily and upsetting my balance. Luckily, again, there was no necessity to raise one's voice. The brooding stillness of the world seemed sensitive to the slightest sound, like a whispering gallery. The conversational tone would almost carry a word from one end of the ship to the other. The terrible thing was that the only voice that I ever heard was my own. .At night especially it reverber- ated very lonely amongst the planes of the un- stirring sails. Mr. Bums, still keeping to his bed with that air of secret determination, was moved to grumble at many things. Our interviews were short five- minute affairs, but fairly frequent. I was everlast- ingly diving down below to get a light, though I did not consume much tobacco at that time. The pipe was always going out; for in truth my mind was not composed enough to enable me to get a decent smoke. Likewise, for most of the time during the twenty -four hours I could have struck matches on deck and held them aloft till the flame burnt my 150 THE SHADOW LINE fingers. But I always used to run below. It was a change. It was the only break in the incessant strain; and, of course, Mr. Burns through the open door could see nie come in and go out every time. With his knees gathered up under his chin and staring with his greenish eyes over them, he was a weird figure, and with my knowledge of the crazy notion in his head, not a very attractive one for me. Still, I had to speak to him now and then, and one day he complained that the ship was very silent. For hours and hours, he said, he was lying there, not hearing a sound, till he did not know what to do with himself. "\Mien Ransome happens to be forward in his galley everything's so still that one might think everybody in the ship was dead," he grumbled. " The only voice I do hear sometimes is yours, sir, and that isn't enough to cheer me up. TMiat's the matter with the men? Isn't there one left that can sing out at the ropes?" "Not one, Mr. Burns," I said. "There is no breath to spare on board this ship for that. Are you aware that there are times when I can't muster more than three hands to do anything?" He asked swiftly but fearfully : "Nobody dead yet, sir?" THE SHADOW LINE 151 "No." "It wouldn't do," Mr, Burns declared forcibly. "Mustn't let liini. If he gets hold of one he will get them all." I cried out angrily at this. I believe I even swore at the disturbing effect of these words. They attacked all the self-possession that was left to me. In my endless vigil in the face of the enemy I had been haunted by gruesome images enough. I had had visions of a ship drifting in calms and swinging in light airs, with all her crew dying slowly about her decks. Such things had been known to happen. Mr. Burns met my outburst by a mysterious silence. "Look here," I said. "You don't beheve your- self what you say. You can't. It's impossible. It isn't the sort of thing I have a right to expect from you. My position's bad enough without being worried with your silly fancies," He remained unmoved. On account of the way in which the light fell on his head I could not be sure whether he had smiled faintly or not. I changed my tone. "Listen," I said. "It's getting so desperate that I had thought for a moment, since we can't 152 THE SHADOW LINE make our way south, whether I wouldn't try to steer west and make an attempt to reach the mail- boat track. We could always get some quinine from her, at least. What do you think.^^" He cried out: "No, no, no. Don't do that, sir. You mustn't for a moment give up facing that old ruffian. If you do he will get the upper hand of us." I left him. He was impossible. It was like a case of possession. His protest, however, was essentially quite sound. As a matter of fact, my notion of heading out west on the chance of sight- ing a problematical steamer could not bear calm examination. On the side where we were we had enough wind, at least from time to time, to struggle on toward the south. Enough, at least, to keep hope alive. But suppose that I had used those capricious gusts of wind to sail away to the west- ward, into some region where there was not a breath of air for days on end, what then.'* Perhaps my appalling vision of a ship floating with a dead crew would become a reality for the discovery weeks afterward by some horror-stricken mariners. That afternoon Ransome brought me up a cup of tea, and while waiting there, tray in hand, he re- marked in the exactly r'ght tone of sympathy: THE SHADOW LINE 153 "You are holding out well, sir." "Yes," I said. "You and I seem to have been forgotten." "Forgotten, sir.?" "Yes, by the fever-devil who has got on board this ship," I said. Ransome gave me one of his attractive, intelli- gent, quick glances and went away with the tray. It occurred to me that I had been talking some- what in Mr. Burns' manner. It annoyed me. Yet often in darker moments I forgot myself into an attitude toward our troubles more fit for a contest against a living enemy. Yes. The fever-devil had not laid his hand yet either on Ransome or on me. But he might at any time. It was one of those thoughts one had to fight down, keep at arm's length at any cost. It was unbearable to contemplate the possibility of Ransome, the housekeeper of the ship, being laid low. And what would happen to my command if I got knocked over, with Mr. Burns too weak to stand without holding on to his bed-place and the second mate reduced to a state of permanent im- becility? It was impossible to imagine, or rather, it was only too easy to imagine. I was alone on the poop. The ship having no 154 THE SHADOW LINE steerage way, I had sent the helmsman away to sit down or he down somewhere in the shade. The men's strength was so reduced that all unnecessary calls on it had to be avoided. It was the austere Gambril with the grizzly beard. He went away readily enough, but he was so weakened by re- peated bouts of fever, poor fellow, that in order to get down the poop ladder he had to turn sideways and hang on vnth. both hands to the brass rail. It was just simply heart-breaking to watch. Yet he was neither very much worse nor much better than most of the haK-dozen miserable victims I could muster up on deck. It was a terribly lifeless afternoon. For several days in succession low clouds had appeared in the distance, white masses with dark convolutions rest- ing on the water, motionless, almost solid, and yet all the time changing their aspects subtly. To- ward evening they vanished as a rule. But this day they awaited the setting sun, which glowed and smouldered sulkily amongst them before it sank down. The punctual and wearisome stars re- appeared over our mastheads, but the air remained stagnant and oppressive. The unfaihng Ransome lighted the binnacle-, lamps and glided, all shadowy, up to me. THE SHADOW LINE 155 "Will you go down and try to eat something, sir?" he suggested. His low voice startled me. I had been standing looking out over the rail, saying nothing, feeUng nothing, not even the weariness of my Hmbs, over- come by the evil spell. "kansome," I asked abruptly, "how long have I been on deck.'' I am losing the notion of time." "Twelve days, sir,'* he said, "and it's just a fortnight since we left the anchorage." His equable voice sounded mournful somehow. He waited a bit, then added: "It's the first time that it looks as if we were to have some rain." I noticed then the broad shadow on the horizon, extinguishing the low stars completely, while those overhead, when I looked up, seemed to shine down on us through a veil of smoke. How it got there, how it had crept up so high, I couldn't say. It had an ominous appearance. The air did not stir. At a renewed invitation from Ransome I did go down into the cabin to — in his own words — "try and eat something." I don't know that the trial was very successful. I sup- pose at that period I did exist on food in the usual way; but the memory is now that in those days life was sustained on invincible anguish, as a sort of 156 THE SHADOW LINE infernal stimulant exciting and consuming at the same time. It's the only period of my life in which I at- tempted to keep a diary. No, not the only one. Years later, in conditions of moral isolation, I did put down on paper the thoughts and events of a score of days. But this was the first time. I don't remember hovv it came about or how the pocket- book and the pencil came into my hands. It's in- conceivable that I should have looked for them on purpose. I suppose they saved me from the crazy trick of talking to myself. Strangely enough, in both cases I took to that sort of thing in circumstances in which I did not ex- pect, in colloquial phrase, "to come out of it." Neither could I expect the record to outlast me. This shows that it vras purely a personal need for intimate relief and not a call of egotism. Here I must give another sample of it, a few de- tached lines, now looking very ghostly to my own eyes, out of the part scribbled that very evening: "There is something going on in the sky like a decomposition; like a corruption of the air, which remains as still as ever. After all, mere THE SHADOW LINE 157 clouds, which may or may not hold wind or rain. Strange that it should trouble me so. I feel as if all my sins had found me out. But I suppose the trouble is that the ship is still lying motionless, not under command; and that I have nothing to do to keep my imagination from running wild amongst the disastrous images of the worst that may befall us. What's going to happen.'^ Probably nothing. Or anything. It may be a furious squall coming, butt end foremost. And on deck there are five men with the vitality and the strength, of say, two. We may have all our sails blown away. Every stitch of canvas has been on her since we broke ground at the mouth of the Mei-nam, fifteen days ago ... or fifteen centuries. It seems to me that all my life before that momentous day is in- finitely remote, a fading memory of light-hearted youth, something on the other side of a shadow. Yes, sails may very well be blown away. And that would be like a death sentence on the men. We haven't strength enough on board to bend another suit; incredible thought, but it is true. Or we may even get dismasted. Ships have been dismasted in squalls simply because they weren't handled quick enough, and we have no power to whirl the yards around. It's like being bound hand and foot pre- 158 THE SHADOW LINE paratory to having one's throat cut. And what appals me most of all is that I shrink from going on deck to face it. It's due to the ship, it's due to the men who are there on deck — some of them, ready to put out the last remnant of their strength at a word from me. And I am shrinking from it. From the mere vision. My first command. Now I understand that strange sense of insecurity in my past. I always suspected that I might be no good. And here is proof positive. I am shirking it. I am no good." At that moment, or, perhaps, the moment after, I became aware of Ransome standing in the cabin. Something in his expression startled me. It had a meaning which I could not make out. I exclaimed : "Somebody's dead." It was his turn then to look startled. "Dead.^ Not that I know of, sir. I have been in the forecastle only ten minutes ago and there was no dead man there then." "You did give me a scare," I said. His voice was extremely pleasant to listen to. He explained that he had come down below to close Mr. Burns' port in case it should come on to rain. THE SHADOW LINE 159 He did not know that I was in the cabin, he added. "How does it look outside?" I asked him. "Very black, indeed, sir. There is something in it for certain." "In what quarter.?" "All round, sir." I repeated idly: "All round. For certain," with my elbows on the table. Ransome lingered in the cabin as if he had some- thing to do there, but hesitated about doing it. I said suddenly: "You think I ought to be on deck.'*" He answered at once but without any particular emphasis or accent: "I do, sir." I got to my feet briskly, and he made way for me to go out. As I passed through the lobby I heard Mr. Burns' voice saying: "Shut the door of my room, will you, steward.''" And Ransome's rather surprised: "Certainly, sir." I thought that all my feelings had been dulled into complete indifference. But I found it as try- ing as ever to be on deck. The impenetrable black- ness beset the ship so close that it seemed that by thrusting one's hand over the side one could touch some unearthly substance. There was in it an 160 THE SHADOW LINE effect of inconceivable terror and of inexpressible mystery. The few stars overhead shed a dim light upon the ship alone, with no gleams of any kind upon the water, in detached shafts piercing an at- mosphere which had turned to soot. It was some- thing I had never seen before, giving no hint of the direction from which any change would come, the closing in of a menace from all sides. There was still no man at the helm. The im- mobility of all things was perfect. If the air had turned black, the sea, for all I knew, might have turned solid. It was no good looking in any di- rection, watching for any sign, speculating upon the nearness of the moment. When the time came the blackness would overwhelm silently the bit of starlight falling upon the ship, and the end of all things would come without a sigh, stir, or murmur of any kind, and all our hearts would cease to beat like run-down clocks. It was impossible to shake off that sense of finality. The quietness that came over me was like a foretaste of annihilation. It gave me a sort of comfort, as though my soul had become suddenly reconciled to an eternity of blind stillness. The seaman's instinct alone survived whole in my moral dissolution. I descended the ladder to THE SHADOW LINE 161 the quarter-deck. The starlight seemed to die out before reaching that spot, but when I asked quietly: "Are you there, men? " my eyes made out shadow forms starting up around me, very few, very indistinct; and a voice spoke: "All here, sir." Another amended anxiously : "All that are any good for anything, sir." Both voices were very quiet and unringing; with- out any special character of readiness or discour- agement. Very matter-of-fact voices. "We must try to haul this mainsail close up," I said. The shadows swayed away from me without a word. Those men were the ghosts of themselves, and their weight on a rope could be no more than the weight of a bunch of ghosts. Indeed, if ever a sail was hauled up by sheer spiritual strength it must have been that sail, for, properly speaking, there was not muscle enough for the task in the whole ship let alone the miserable lot of us on deck. Of course, I took the lead in the work myself. They wandered feebly after me from rope to rope, stumbling and panting. They toiled like Titans. We were half-an-hour at it at least, and all the time the black universe made no sound. When the last leech-line was made fast, my eyes, accustomed to 162 THE SHADOW LINE the darkness, made out the shapes of exhausted men drooping over the rails, collapsed on hatches. One hung over the after-capstan, sobbing for breath, and I stood amongst them like a tower of strength, impervious to disease and feeling only the sickness of my soul. I waited for some time fight- ing against the weight of my sins, against my sense of un worthiness, and then I said: "Now, men, we'll go aft and square the mainyard- That's about all we can do for the ship ; and for tb' rest she must take her chance." VI As WE all went up it occurred to me that there ought to be a man at the helm. I raised my voice not much above a whisper, and, noiselessly, an un- complaining spirit in a fever- wasted body appeared in the light aft, the head with hollow eyes illumi- nated against the blackness which had swallowed up our world — and the universe. The bared fore- arm extended over the upper spokes seemed to shine with a light of its own. I murmured to that luminous appearance: "Keep the helm right amidships." It answered in a tone of patient suffering: "Right amidships, sir." Then I descended to the quarter-deck. It was impossible to tell whence the blow would come. To look round the ship was to look into a bottomless, black pit. The eye lost itself in inconceivable depths. I wanted to ascertain whether the ropes had been picked up off the deck. One could only do that by feeling with one's feet. In my cautious progress I J63 164 THE SHADOW LINE came against a man in whom I recognized Ransome. He possessed an unimpaired physical solidity which was manifest to me at the contact. He was leaning against the quarter-deck capstan and kept silent. It was hke a revelation. He was the collapsed figure sobbing for breath I had no- ticed before we went on the poop. "You have been helping with the mainsail!" I exclaimed in a low tone. "Yes, sir," sounded his quiet voice. "Man! WTiat were you thinking of.' You mustn't do that sort of thing." After a pause he assented: "I suppose I mustn't." Then after another short silence he added: "I am all right now," quickly, between the tell-tale gasps. I could neither hear nor see anybody else; but when I spoke up, answering sad murmurs filled the quarter-deck, and its shadows seemed to shift here and there. I ordered all the halyards laid down on deck clear for running. "I'll see to that, sir," volunteered Ransome in his natural, pleasant tone, which comforted one and aroused one's compassion, too, somehow. That man ought to have been in his bed, resting, and my plain duty was to send him there. But THE SHADOW LINE 165 perhaps he would not have obeyed me; I had not the strength of mind to try. All 1 said was: "Go about it quietly, Ransome." Returning on the poop I approached Gambril. His face, set with hollow shadows in the hght, looked awful, finally silenced. I asked him how he felt, but hardly expected an answer. There- fore, I was astonished at his comparative loquac- ity. "Them shakes leaves me as weak as a kitten, sir," he said, preserving finely that air of uncon- sciousness as to anything but his business a helms- man should never lose. "And before I can pick up my strength that there hot fit comes along and knocks me over again." He sighed. There was no reproach in his tone, but the bare words were enough to give me a hor- rible pang of self-reproach. It held me dumb for a time. When the tormenting sensation had passed off I asked : "Do you feel strong enough to prevent the rud- der taking charge if she gets stern way on her.'' It wouldn't do to get something smashed about the steering-gear now. We've enough difficulties to cope with as it is." He answered with just a shade of weariness that 166 THE SHADOW LINE he was strong enough to hang on. He could promise me that she shouldn't take the wheel out of his hands. More he couldn't say. At that moment Ransome appeared quite close to me, stepping out of the darkness into visibility suddenly, as if just created with his composed face and pleasant voice. Every rope on deck, he said, was laid down clear for running, as far as one could make certain by feeling. It was impossible to see anything. Frenchy had stationed himself forward. He said he had a jump or two left in him yet. Here a faint smile altered for an instant the clear, firm design of Ransome's hps. With his serious clear, gray eyes, his serene temperament — he was a priceless man altogether. Soul as firm as the muscles of his body. He was the only man on board (except me, but I had to preserve my liberty of movement) who had a sufficiency of muscular strength to trust to. For a moment I thought I had better ask him to take the wheel. But the dreadful knowledge of the enemy he had to carry about him made me hesi- tate. In my ignorance of physiology it occurred to me that he might die suddenly, from excitement, at a critical moment. THE SHADOW LINE 167 While this gruesome fear restrained the ready words on the tip of my tongue, Ransome stepped back two paces and vanished from my sight. At once an uneasiness possessed me, as if some support had been withdrawn, I moved forward, too, outside the circle of light, into the darkness that stood in front of me like a wall. In one stride I penetrated it. Such must have been the dark- ness before creation. It had closed behind me. I knew I was invisible to the man at the helm. Neither could I see anything. He was alone, I was alone, every man was alone where he stood. And every form was gone, too, spar, sail, fittings, rails; everything was blotted out in the dreadful smooth- ness of that absolute night. A flash of lightning would have been a relief — I mean physically. I would have prayed for it if it hadn't been for my shrinking apprehension of the thunder. In the tension of silence I was suffering from it seemed to me that the first crash must turn me into dust. And thunder was, most likely, what would hap- pen next. Stiff all over and hardly breathing, I waited with a horribly strained expectation. Nothing happened. It was maddening, but a dull, growing ache in the lower part of my face made me 168 THE SHADOW LINE aware that I had been grinding my teeth madly enough, for God knows how long. It's extraordinary I should not have heard my- self doing it; but I hadn't. By an effort which absorbed all my faculties I managed to keep my jaw still. It required much attention, and while thus engaged I became bothered by curious, ir- regidar sounds of faint tapping on the deck. They could be heard single, in pairs, in groups. While I wondered at this mysterious devilry, I received a slight blow under the left eye and felt an enor- mous tear run down my cheek. Raindrops. Enormous. Forerunners of something. Tap. Tap. Tap. . . . I turned about, and, addressing Gambrel earnestly, entreated him to "hang on to the wheel." But I could hardly speak from emotion. The fatal moment had come. I held my breath. The tap- ping had stopped as unexpectedly as it had begim, and there was a renewed moment of intolerable sus- pense; something like an additional turn of the racldng screw. I don't suppose I would have ever screamed, but I remember my conviction that there was nothing else for it but to scream. Suddenly — how am I to convey it? Well, sud- denlv the darkness turned into water. This is the THE SHADOW LINE I6d only suitable figure. A heavy shower, a down- pour, comes along, making a noise. You hear its approach on the sea, in the air, too, I verily believe. But this was different. With no preliminary whisper or rustle, without a splash, and even with- out the ghost of impact, I became instantaneously soaked to the skin. Not a very difficult matter, since I was wearing only my sleeping suit. My hair got full of water in an instant, water streamed on my skin, it filled my nose, my ears, my eyes. In a fraction of a second I swallowed quite a lot of it. As to Gambril, he was fairly choked. He coughed pitifully, the broken cough of a sick man; and I beheld him as one sees a fish in an aquarium by the light of an electric bulb, an elusive, phos- phorescent shape. Only he did not glide away. But something else happened. Both binnacle- lamps went out. I suppose the water forced itself into them, though I wouldn't have thought that possible, for they fitted into the cowl perfectly. The last gleam of light in the universe had gone, pursued by a low exclamation of dismay from Gambril. I groped for him and seized his arm> How startlingly wasted it was. "Never mind," I said. "You don't want the 170 THE SHADOW LINE light. All you need to do is to keep the wind, when it comes, at the back of your head. You understand.''" "Aye, aye, sir. . . . But I should like to have a light," he added nervously. All that time the ship lay as steady as a rock. The noise of the water pouring off the sails and spars, flowing over the break of the poop, had stopped short. The poop scuppers gurgled and sobbed for a Httle while longer, and then perfect silence, joined to perfect immobility, proclaimed the yet unbroken spell of our helplessness, poised on the edge of some violent issue, lurking in the dark. I started forward restlessly. I did not need my sight to pace the poop of my ill-starred first com- mand wath perfect assurance. Every square foot of her decks was impressed indelibly on my brain, to the very grain and knots of the planks. Yet, all of a sudden, I fell clean over something, landing full length on my hands and face. It was something big and alive. Not a dog — more Uke a sheep, rather. But there were no animals in the ship. How could an animal. . . . It was an added and fantastic horror which I could not resist. The hair of my head stirred even as I THE SHADOW LINE 171 picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a man is scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, but completely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared — like a little child. I could see It — that Thing! The darkness, of which so much had just turned into water, had thinned down a little. There It was ! But I did not hit upon the notion of Mr. Burns issuing out of the companion on all fours till he attempted to stand up, and even then the idea of a bear crossed my mind first. He growled like one when I seized him round the body. He had buttoned himself up into an enor- mous winter overcoat of some woolly material, the weight of which was too much for his reduced state. 1 could hardly feel the incredibly thin lath of his body, lost within the thick stuff, but his growl had depth and substance : Confounded dump ship with a craven, tiptoeing crowd. Why couldn't they stamp and go wdth a brace .^^ Wasn't there one God- forsaken lubber in the lot fit to raise a yell on a rope? "Skulking's no good, sir," he attacked me directly. "You can't slink past the old murderous ruffian. It isn't the way. You must go for him boldly — as I did. Boldness is what you want. 172 THE SHADOW LINE Show him that you don't care for any of his damned tricks. Kick up a jollj^ old row." "Good God, Mr. Burns," I said angrily. "What on earth are you up to? What do you mean by coming up on deck in this state?" "Just that! Boldness. The only way to scare the old bullying rascal." I pushed him, still growhng, against the rail. "Hold on to it," I said roughly. I did not know what to do with him. I left him in a hurry, to go to Gambril, who had called faintly that he beheved there was some wind aloft. Indeed, my own ears had caught a feeble flutter of wet canvas, high up overhead, the jingle of a slack chain sheet. . . . These were eerie, disturbing, alarming sounds in the dead stillness of the air around me. All the instances I had heard of topmasts being whipped out of a ship while there was not wind enough on her deck to blow out a match rushed into my memory. "I can't see the upper sails, sir," declared Gambril shakily. "Don't move the helm. You'll be all right," I said confidently. The poor man's nerves were gone. IVIine were not in much better case. It was the moment o| THE SHADOW LINE 173 breaking strain and was relieved by the abrupt sensation of the ship moving forward as if of her- self under my feet. I heard plainly the soughing of the wind aloft, the low cracks of the upper spars taking the strain, long before I could feel the least draught on my face turned aft, anxious and sight- less hke the face of a blind man. Suddenly a louder-sounding note filled our ears, the darkness started streaming against our bodies, chilling them exceedingly. Both of us, Gambril and I, shivered violently in our clinging, soaked garments of thin cotton. I said to him : "You are all right now, my man. All you've got to do is to keep the wind at the back of your head. Surely you are up to that. A child could steer this ship in smooth water." He muttered: "Aye! A healthy child." And I felt ashamed of having been passed over by the fever which had been preying on every man's strength but mine, in order that my remorse might be the more bitter, the feeling of unworthiness more poignant, and the sense of responsibility heavier to bear. The ship had gathered great way on her almost at once on the calm water. I felt her slipping through it with no other noise but a mysterious 174 THE SHADOW LINE rustle alongside. Otherwise, she had no motion at all, neither lift nor roll. It was a disheartening steadiness which had lasted for eighteen days now; for never, never had we had wind enough in that time to raise the slightest run of the sea. The breeze freshened suddenly. I thought it was high time to get Mr. Burns off the deck. He worried me. I looked upon him as a lunatic who would be very likely to start roaming over the ship and break a limb or fall overboard. I was truly glad to find he had remained holding on where I had left him, sensibly enough. He was, however, muttering to himself ominously. This was discouraging. I remarked in a matter- of-fact tone : " We have never had so much wind as this since we left the roads." "There's some heart in it, too," he growled judiciously. It was a remark of a perfectly sane seaman. But he added immediately: "It was about time I should come on deck. I've been nursing my strength for this — ^just for this. Do you see it, sir.?^" I said I did, and proceeded to hint that it would be advisable for him to go below now and take a rest. THE SHADOW LINE 175 His answer was an indignant " Go below ! Not if I know it, sir." Very cheerful ! He was a horrible nuisance. And all at once he started to argue. I could feel his crazy excitement in the dark. " You don't know how to go about it, sir. How could you? All this whispering and tiptoeing is no good. You can't hope to shnk past a cunning, wide-awake, evil brute like he was. You never heard him talk. Enough to make yom* hair stand on end. No! No! He wasn't mad. He was no more mad than I am. He was just downright wicked. Wicked so as to frighten most people. I will tell you what he was. He was nothing less than a thief and a murderer at heart. And do you think he's any different now because he's dead.f^ Not he ! His carcass lies a hundred fathom under, but he's just the same ... in latitude 8° 20' north." He snorted defiantly. I noted with weary resig- nation that the breeze had got lighter while he raved. He was at it again. "I ought to have thrown the beggar out of the ship over the rail like a dog. It was only on ac- count of the men. . . . Fancy having to read the Burial Service over a brute like that! . . . *Our 176 THE SHADOW LINE departed brother' ... I could have laughed. That was what he couldn't bear. I suppose I am the only man that ever stood up to laugh at him. When he got sick it used to scare that brother. . . . Brother. . . . Departed. . . . Sooner call a shark brother." The breeze had let go so suddenly that the way of the ship brought the wet sails heavily against the mast. The spell of deadly stillness had caught us up again. There seemed to be no escape. "Hallo!" exclaimed ]\Ir. Burns in a startled voice. "Calm again!" I addressed him as though he had been sane. "This is the sort of thing we've been having for seventeen days, Mr. Burns," I said with intense bitterness. "A puff, then a calm, and in a mo- ment, you'll see, she'll be swinging on her heel with her head away from her course to the devil some- where." He caught at the word. "The old dodging Devil," he screamed piercingly and burst into such a loud laugh as I had never heard before. It was a provoking, mocking peal, with a hair-raising, screeching over-note of defiance. I stepped back, utterly confounded. Instantly there was a stir on the quarter-deck', THE SHADOW LINE 177 murmurs of dismay, A distressed voice cried out m the dark below us: "Who's that gone crazy, now?" Perhaps they thought it was their captain? Rush is not the word that could be applied to the utmost speed the poor fellows were up to; but in an amazing short time every man in the ship able to walk upright had found his way on to that poop. I shouted to them : " It's the mate. Lay hold of him a couple of you. . . ." I expected this performance to end in a ghastly sort of fight. But Mr. Burns cut his derisive screeching dead short and turned upon them fiercely, yelling: "Aha! Dog-gone ye! You've found your tongues — have ye? I thought you were dumb. WeD, then — laugh ! Laugh— I tell you. Now then — all together. One, two, three — laugh!" A moment of silence ensued, of silence so pro- found that you could have heard a pin drop on the deck. Then Ransome's unperturbed voice uttered pleasantly the words: "I think he has fainted, sir " The little motionless knot of men stirred, with low murmurs of relief. "I've got him under the arms. Get hold of his legs, some one." 178 THE SHADOW LINE Yes. It was a relief. He was silenced for a time — for a time. I could not have stood another peal of that insane screeching. I was sure of it; and just then Gambril, the austere Gambril, treated us to another vocal performance. He began to sing out for relief. His voice wailed pitifully in the darkness: "Come aft somebody! I can't stand this. Here she'll be off again directly and I can't. . . ." I dashed aft myself meeting on my way a hard gust of wdnd whose approach Gambril's ear had detected from afar and which filled the sails on the main in a series of muffled reports mingled with the low plaint of the spars. I was just in time to seize the wheel while Frenchy who had followed me caught up the collapsing Gambril. He hauled him out of the way, admonished him to lie still where he was, and then stepped up to reheve me, asking calmly : "How am I to steer her, sir.''" " Dead before it for the present. I'U get you a light in a moment." But going forward I met Ransome bringing up the spare binnacle lamp. That man noticed everything, attended to everything, shed comfort around him as he moved. As he passed me he re- THE SHADOW LINE 179 marked in a soothing tone that the stars were com- ing out. They were. The breeze was sweeping clear the sooty sky, breaking through the indolent silence of the sea. The barrier of awful stillness which had encom- passed us for so many days as though we had been accursed, was broken. I felt that. I let myself fall on to the skylight seat. A faint white ridge of foam, thin, very thin, broke alongside. The first for ages — for ages. I could have cheered, if it hadn't been for the sense of guilt which clung to all my thoughts secretly. Ransome stood before me. "What about the mate," I asked anxiously. "Still miconscious?" "Well, sir — it's funny," Ransome was evidently puzzled. "He hasn't spoken a word^ and his eyes are shut. But it looks to me more like sound sleep than anything else." I accepted this view as the least troublesome of any, or at any rate, least disturbing. Dead faint or deep slumber, Mr. Burns had to be left to him- self for the present, Ransome remarked sud- denly. "I believe you want a coat, sir." "I believe I do," I sighed out. But I did not move. What I felt I wanted were 180 THE SHADOW LINE new limbs. My arms and legs seemed utterly use- less, fairly worn out. They didn't even ache. But I stood up all the same to put on the coat when Ransome brought it up. And when he suggested that he had better now "take Gambril forward," I said: "All right. I'll help you to get him down on the main deck." I found that I was quite able to help, too. We raised Gambril up between us. He tried to help himself along like a man but all the time he was in- quiring piteously: " You won't let me go wfc 3n we come to the lad- der? You won't let me go when we come to the ladder .f* " The breeze kept on freshening and blew true, true to a hair. At daylight by careful manipula- tion of the helm we got the foreyards to run square by themselves (the water keeping smooth) and then went about hauling the ropes tight. Of the four men I had with me at night, I could see now only two. I didn't inquire as to the others. They, had given in. For a time only I hoped. Our various tasks forward occupied us for hours, the two men with me moved so slow and had to THE SHADOW LINE 181 rest so often. One of them remarked that '* every blamed thing in the ship felt about a hundred times heavier than its proper weight." This was the only complaint uttered. I don't know what we should have done without Ransome. He worked with us, silent, too, with a little smile frozen on his lips. From time to time I murmured to him: "Go steady" — "Take it easy, Ransome" — and re- ceived a quick glance in reply. Wlien we had done all we could do to make things safe, he disappeared into his galley. Some time afterward, going forward for a look round, I caught sight of him through the open door. He sat upright on the locker in front of the stove, with his head leaning back against the bulkhead. His eyes were closed; his capable hands held open the front of his thin cotton shirt baring tragically his powerful chest, which heaved in painful and laboured gasps. He didn't hear me. I retreated quietly and went straight on to the poop to relieve Frenchy, who by that time was be- ginning to look very sick. He gave me the course with great formality and tried to go off with a jaimty step, but reeled widely twice before getting out of my sight. And then I remained all alone aft, steering my 182 THE SHADOW LINE ship, which ran before the wind with a buoyant lift now and then, and even rolhng a Httle. Presently Ransome appeared before me with a tray. The sight of food made me ravenous all at once. He took the wheel while I sat down on the after grating to eat my breakfast. "This breeze seems to have done for our crowd," he murmured. " It just laid them low — all hands." "Yes," I said. "I suppose you and I are the only two fit men in the ship." " Frenchy says there's still a jump left in him. I don't know. It can't be much," continued Ran- some with his wistful smile. Good httle man that. But suppose, sir, that this wind flies round when we are close to the land — what are we going to do with her.?" "If the wind shifts round heavily after we close in with the land she will either run ashore or get dismasted or both. We won't be able to do any- thing with her. She's running away wath us now. All we can do is to steer her. She's a ship without a crew." " Yes. All laid low," repeated Ransome quietly. "I do give them a look-in forward every now and then, but it's precious little I can do for them." "I, and the ship, and every one on board of her, THE SHADOW LINE 183 are very much indebted to you, Ransome," I said warmly. He made as though he had not heard me, and steered in silence till I was ready to reheve him. He surrendered the wheel, picked up the tray, and for a parting shot informed me that Mr. Burns was awake and seemed to have a mind to come up on deck. "I don't know how to prevent him, sir. I can't very well stop down below all the time." It was clear that he couldn't. And sure enough Mr. Burns came on deck dragging himself painfully aft in his enormous overcoat. I beheld him with a natural dread. To have him around and raving about the wiles of a dead man while I had to steer a wildly rushing ship full of dying men was a rather dreadful prospect. But his first remarks were quite sensible in mean- ing and tone. Apparently he had no recollection of the night scene. And if he had he didn't betray himself once. Neither did he talk very much. He sat on the skylight looking desperately ill at first, but that strong breeze, before which the last rem- nant of my crew had wilted down, seemed to blow a fresh stock of vigour into his frame with every gust. One could almost see the process. By way of sanity test I alluded on purpose to the 184 THE SHADOW LINE late captain. I was delighted to find that Mr. Bums did not display undue interest in the sub- ject. He ran over the old tale of that savage ruffian's iniquities with a certain vindictive gusto and then concluded unexpectedly: "I do believe, sir, that his brain began to go a year or more before he died." A wonderful recovery. I could hardly spare it as much admiration as it deserved, for I had to give all my mind to the steering. In comparison with the hopeless languour of the preceding days this was dizzy speed. Two ridges of foam streamed from the ship's bows; the wind sang in a strenuous note which under other cir- cumstances would have expressed to me all the joy of life. WTienever the hauled-up mainsail started trying to slat and bang itself to pieces in its gear, Mr. Bums would look at me apprehensively. "What would you have me to do, Mr. Burns .'^ We can neither furl it nor set it. I only wish the old thing would thrash itself to pieces and be done with it. That beastly racket confuses me." Mr. Burns wrung his hands, and cried out sud- denly : "How will you get the ship into harbour, sir, without men to handle her.''" THE SHADOW LINE 185 And I couldn't tell him. Well — it did get done about forty hours after- ward. By the exorcising virtue of Mr. Bums' awful laugh, the majicious spectre had been laid, the evil spell broken, the curse removed. We were now in the hands of a land and energetic Provi- dence. It was rushing us on. . . . I shall never forget the last night, dark, windy, and starry. I steered. Mr. Burns, after having obtained from me a solemn promise to give him a kick if anything happened, went frankly to sleep ou the deck close to the binnacle. Convalescents need sleep. Ransome, his back propped against the mizzen-mast and a blanket over his legs, re- mained perfectly still, but I don't suppose he closed his eyes for a moment. That embodiment of jauntiness, Frenchy, still under the delusion that there was a "jump" left in him, had insisted on joining us; but mindful of discipline, had laid him- self dov/n as far on the forepart of the poop as he could get, alongside the bucket-rack. And I steered, too tired for anxiety, too tired for connected thought. I had moments of grim ex- ultation and then my heart would sinli awfully at the thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark deck, full of fever-stricken men — some 180 THE SHADOW LINE of tliem dying. By my fault. But never mind. Remorse must wait. I had to steer. In the small hours the breeze weakened, then failed altogether. About five it returned, gentle enough, enabhng us to head for the roadstead. Daybreak found Mr. Bums sitting wedged up with coils of rope on the stern-grating, and from the depths of his overcoat steering the ship with very wliite bony hands; while Ransome and I rushed along the decks letting go all the sheets and hal- liards by the rim. We dashed next up on to the forecastle head. The perspiration of labour and sheer nervousness simply poured ofiP our heads as we toiled to get the anchors cock-billed. I dared not look at Ransome as we worked side by side. We exchanged curt words ; I could hear him panting close to me and I avoided turning my eyes his way for fear of seeing him fall down and expire in the act of putting forth his strength — for what.^* In- deed for some distinct ideal. The consummate seaman in him was aroused. He needed no directions. He knew what to do. Every efiFort, every movement was an act of con- sistent heroism. It was not for me to look at a man thus inspired. At last all was ready and I heard him say: THE SHADOW LINE 187 "Hadn't I better go down and open the compres- sors now, sir?" "Yes. Do," I said. And even then I did not glance his way. After a time his voice came up from the main deck. "When you like, sir. All clear on the windlass here." I made a sign to Mr. Burns to put the helm down and let both anchors go one after another, leaving the ship to take as much cable as she wanted. She took the best part of them both be- fore she brought up. The loose sails coming aback ceased their maddening racket above my head. A perfect stillness reigned in the ship. And while I stood forward feeling a little giddy in that sudden peace, I caught faintly a moan or two and the in- coherent mutterings of the sick in the forecastle. As we had a signal for medical assistance flying on the mizzen it is a fact that before the ship was fairly at rest three steam launches from various men-of-war were alongside; and at least five naval surgeons had clambered on board. They stood in a knot gazing up and down the empty main deck, then looked aloft — where not a man could be seen, either. I went toward them — a solitary figure, in a blue 188 THE SHADOW LINE and gray striped sleeping suit and a pipe -clayed cork helmet on its head. Their disgust was extreme. They had expected surgical cases. Each one had brought his carving tools with him. But they soon got over their little disappointment. In less than five minutes one of the steam launches was rushing shoreward to order a big boat and some hospital people for the removal of the crew. The big steam pinnace went off to her ship to bring over a few bluejackets to furl my sails for me. One of the surgeons had remained on board. He came out of the forecastle looking impenetrable, and noticed my inquiring gaze. "There's nobody dead in there, if that's what you want to know," he said dehberately. Then added in a tone of wonder: "The whole crew!" "And very bad?" "And very bad," he repeated. His eyes were roaming all over the ship. "Heavens! What's that.?" "That," I said, glancing aft, "is Mr. Bums, my chief oflScer." Mr. Burns with his moribund head nodding on the stalk of his lean neck was a sight for any one to exclaim at. The surgeon asked : "Is he going to the hospital, too.'* THE SHADOW LINE 189 "Oh, no," I said jocosely. "Mr. Burns can't go on shore till the mainmast goes. I am very proud of him. He's my only convalescent." "You look " began the doctor staring at nae. But I interrupted him angrily : "I am not ill." "No. . . . You look queer." "Well, you see, I have been seventeen days on deck." "Seventeen! . . . But you must have slept." "I suppose I must have. I don't know. But I'm certain that I didn't sleep for the last forty hours." "Phew! . . . You will be going ashore pres' enlly I suppose?" "As soon as ever I can. There's no end of business waiting for me there." The surgeon released my hand, which he had taken while we talked, pulled out his pocket-book, wrote in it rapidly, tore out the page and offered it to me. "I strongly advise you to get this prescription made up for yourself ashore. Unless I am much mistaken you will need it this evening." "What is it, then?" I asked with suspicion. "Sleeping draught," answered the surgeon 190 THE SHADOW LINE curtly; and moving with an air of interest toward IVIr. Burns he engaged him in conversation. As I went below to dress to go ashore, Ransome followed me. He begged my pardon; he wished, too, to be sent ashore and paid oflF. I looked at him in surprise. He was waiting for my answer with an air of anxiety. "You don't mean to leave the ship!" I cried out. " I do really, sir. I want to go and be quiet some- where. Anywhere. The hospital will do." "But, Ransome," I said. "I hate the idea of parting with you." "I must go," he broke in. "I have a right!" . . . He gasped and a look of almost savage de- termination passed over his face. For an instant he was another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness of the man the humble reality of things. Life was a boon to him — this precarious hard life, and he was thoroughly alarmed about himself. "Of course I shall pay you off if you wish it," I hastened to say. "Only I must ask you to remain on board till this afternoon. I can't leave Mr. BiuTis absolutely by himself in the ship for hours.'* He softened at once and assured me with a smile THE SHADOW LINE 191 and in his natural pleasant voice that he under- stood that very well. When I returned on deck everything was ready for the removal of the men. It was the last ordeal of that episode which had been maturing and tem- pering my character — though I did not know it. It was awful. They passed under my eyes one after another — each of them an embodied reproach of the bitterest kind, till I felt a sort of revolt wake up in me. Poor Frenchy had gone suddenly under. He was carried past me insensible, his comic face horribly flushed and as if swollen, breathing stertorously. He looked more like Mr. Punch than ever; a disgracefully intoxicated Mr. Punch. The austere Gambril, on the contrary, had im- proved temporarily. He insisted on walking on his own feet to the rail — of course with assistance on each side of him. But he gave way to a sudden panic at the moment of being swung over the side and began to wail pitifully: "Don't let them drop me, sir. Don't let them drop me, sir ! " While I kept on shouting to him in most soothing accents: "All right, Gambril. They won't ! They won't ! " It was no doubt very ridiculous. The blue- jackets on our deck were grinning quietly, while m THE SHADOW LINE even Ransome himself (much to the fore in lending a hand) had to enlarge his wistful smile for a fleet- ing moment. I left for the shore in the steam pinnace, and on looking back beheld Mr. Burns actually standing up by the taffrail, still in his enormous woolly over- coat. The bright sunlight brought out his weird- ness amazingly. He looked like a frightful and elaborate scarecrow set up on the poop of a death- stricken ship, set up to keep the seabirds from the corpses. Our story had got about already in town and everybody on shore was most kind. The Marine Office let me off the port dues, and as there hap- pened to be a shipwrecked crew staying in the Home I had no difficulty in obtaining as many men as I wanted. But when I inquired if I could see Captain Elhs for a moment I was told in accents of pity for my ignorance that our deputy-Neptune had retired and gone home on a pension about three weeks after I left the port. So I suppose that my appointment was the last act, outside the daily routine, of his official life. It is strange how on coming ashore I was struck by the springy step, the lively eyes, the strong vitality of every one I met. It impressed me THE SHADOW LINE 193 enormously. And amongst those I met there was Captain Giles, of course. It would have been very extraordinary if I had not met him. A prolonged stroll in the business part of the town was the regular employment of all his mornings when he was ashore. I caught the glitter of the gold watch-chain across his chest ever so far away. He radiated benevolence. "What is it I hear.''" he queried with a "kind uncle" smile, after shaking hands. "Twenty -one days from Bangkok?" "Is this all you've heard.'*" I said. "You must come to tiffin with me. I want you to know ex- actly what you have let me in for." He hesitated for almost a minute. "Well — I will," he said condescendingly at last. We turned into the hotel. I found to my sur- prise that I could eat quite a lot. Then over the cleared table-cloth I unfolded to Captain Giles the history of these twenty days in all its professional and emotional aspects, while he smoked patiently the big cigar I had given him. Then he observed sagely: "You must feel jolly well tired by this time." "No," I said. "Not tired. But I'll tell you. 194 THE SHADOW LINE Captain Giles, how I feel. I feel old. And I must be. All of YOU on shore look to me just a lot of skittish youngsters that have never kno^sTi a care in the world." He didn't smile. He looked insufferably ex- emplary. He declared : "That will pass. But you do look older — it's a fact." "Aha!" I said. " No ! No ! The truth is that one must not make too much of anything in life, good or bad." "Live at half -speed," I murmured perversely. "Not everybody can do that." "You'll be glad enough presently if you can keep going even at that rate," he retorted with his air of conscious virtue. "And there's another thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mis- takes, to his conscience and all that sort of thing. "VMiy — what else would you have to fight against. " I kept sUent. I don't know what he saw in my face but he asked abruptly : "Why — you aren't faint-hearted .''" "God only knows. Captain GUes," was my sin- cere answer. "That's all right," he said calmly. "You will learn soon how not to be faint-hearted. A man has THE SHADOW LINE 195 got to learn everything — and that's what so many of them youngsters don't understand." "Well, I am no longer a youngster." "No," he conceded. "Are you leaving soon?" "I am going on board directly," I said. "I shall pick up one of my anchors and heave in to half- cable on the other directly my new crew comes on board and I shall be off at daylight to-morrow!" "You will," grunted Captain Giles approvingly. "That's the way. You'll do." "What did you think? That I would want to take a week ashore for a rest?" I said, irritated by his tone. "There's no rest for me till she's out in the Indian Ocean and not much of it even then." He puffed at his cigar moodily, as if transformed. "Yes. That's what it amounts to," he said in a musing tone. It was as if a ponderous curtain had rolled up disclosing an unexpected Captain Giles. But it was only for a moment, just the time to let him add, "Precious little rest in life for anybody. Better not think of it." We rose, left the hotel, and parted from each other in the street with a warm handshake, just as he began to interest me for the first time in our intercourse. 196 THE SHADOW LINE The first thing I saw when I got back to the ship was Ransome on the quarter-deck sitting quietly on his neatly lashed sea-chest. I beckoned him to follow me into the saloon where I sat down to write a letter of recommenda- tion for him to a man I knew on shore. When finished I pushed it across the table. "It may be of some good to you when you leave the hospital." He took it, put it in his pocket. His eyes were looking away from me — nowhere. His face was anxiously set. "How are you feeling now?" I asked. "I don't feel bad now, sir," he answered stiffly. " But I am afraid of its coming on. . . ." The wistful smile came back on his lips for a mo- ment. "I — I am in a blue fimk about my heart, sir." I approached him with extended hand. His eyes not looking at me had a strained expres- sion. He was like a man listening for a warning call. "Won't you shake hands, Ransome?" I said gently. He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench — and next moment, left alone THE SHADOW LINE 197 in the cabin, I listened to him going up the com- panion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate to carry consciously within his faithful breast. THS END THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. ^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAC A A 001 424 481 A ,'■■•■1 jl!!' yJi-i:t m Ml l;it:ti!-