In Search of the Unknown

by Robert W. Chambers

  V

  It took me a week to perfect my arrangements for transporting thegreat auks, by water, to Port-of-Waves, where a lumber schooner was tobe sent from Petite Sainte Isole, chartered by me for a voyage to NewYork.

  I had constructed a cage made of osiers, in which my auks were tosquat until they arrived at Bronx Park. My telegrams to ProfessorFarrago were brief. One merely said "Victory!" Another explained thatI wanted no assistance; and a third read: "Schooner chartered. ArriveNew York July 1st. Send furniture-van to foot of Bluff Street."

  My week as a guest of Mr. Halyard proved interesting. I wrangled withthat invalid to his heart's content, I worked all day on my osiercage, I hunted the thimble in the moonlight with the pretty nurse. Wesometimes found it.

  As for the thing they called the harbor-master, I saw it a dozentimes, but always either at night or so far away and so close to thesea that of course no trace of it remained when I reached the spot,rifle in hand.

  I had quite made up my mind that the so-called harbor-master was ademented darky--wandered from, Heaven knows where--perhaps shipwreckedand gone mad from his sufferings. Still, it was far from pleasant toknow that the creature was strongly attracted by the pretty nurse.

  She, however, persisted in regarding the harbor-master as asea-creature; she earnestly affirmed that it had gills, like a fish'sgills, that it had a soft, fleshy hole for a mouth, and its eyes wereluminous and lidless and fixed.

  "Besides," she said, with a shudder, "it's all slate color, like aporpoise, and it looks as wet as a sheet of india-rubber in adissecting-room."

  The day before I was to set sail with my auks in a cat-boat bound forPort-of-Waves, Halyard trundled up to me in his chair and announcedhis intention of going with me.

  "Going where?" I asked.

  "To Port-of-Waves and then to New York," he replied, tranquilly.

  I was doubtful, and my lack of cordiality hurt his feelings.

  "Oh, of course, if you need the sea-voyage--" I began.

  "I don't; I need you," he said, savagely; "I need the stimulus of ourdaily quarrel. I never disagreed so pleasantly with anybody in mylife; it agrees with me; I am a hundred per cent. better than I waslast week."

  I was inclined to resent this, but something in the deep-lined face ofthe invalid softened me. Besides, I had taken a hearty liking to theold pig.

  "I don't want any mawkish sentiment about it," he said, observing meclosely; "I won't permit anybody to feel sorry for me--do youunderstand?"

  "I'll trouble you to use a different tone in addressing me," Ireplied, hotly; "I'll feel sorry for you if I choose to!" And ourusual quarrel proceeded, to his deep satisfaction.

  By six o'clock next evening I had Halyard's luggage stowed away in thecat-boat, and the pretty nurse's effects corded down, with the newlyhatched auk-chicks in a hat-box on top. She and I placed the osiercage aboard, securing it firmly, and then, throwing tablecloths overthe auks' heads, we led those simple and dignified birds down the pathand across the plank at the little wooden pier. Together we locked upthe house, while Halyard stormed at us both and wheeled himselffuriously up and down the beach below. At the last moment she forgother thimble. But we found it, I forget where.

  "Come on!" shouted Halyard, waving his shawls furiously; "what thedevil are you about up there?"

  He received our explanation with a sniff, and we trundled him aboardwithout further ceremony.

  "Don't run me across the plank like a steamer trunk!" he shouted, as Ishot him dexterously into the cock-pit. But the wind was dying away,and I had no time to dispute with him then.

  The sun was setting above the pine-clad ridge as our sail flapped andpartly filled, and I cast off, and began a long tack, east by south,to avoid the spouting rocks on our starboard bow.

  The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the blacksurf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tippedwings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth.

  Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in theocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in theAtlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen orunseen, always impresses the human mind--perhaps oppresses it. We werevery silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened tocrimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long afterthe rose-tint died out in the zenith.

  Our progress was slow; at times, although the sail filled with therising land breeze, we scarcely seemed to move at all.

  "Of course," said the pretty nurse, "we couldn't be aground in thedeepest hole in the Atlantic."

  "Scarcely," said Halyard, sarcastically, "unless we're grounded on awhale."

  "What's that soft thumping?" I asked. "Have we run afoul of a barrelor log?"

  It was almost too dark to see, but I leaned over the rail and sweptthe water with my hand.

  Instantly something smooth glided under it, like the back of a greatfish, and I jerked my hand back to the tiller. At the same moment thewhole surface of the water seemed to begin to purr, with a sound likethe breaking of froth in a champagne-glass.

  "What's the matter with you?" asked Halyard, sharply.

  "A fish came up under my hand," I said; "a porpoise or something--"

  With a low cry, the pretty nurse clasped my arm in both her hands.

  "Listen!" she whispered. "It's purring around the boat."

  "What the devil's purring?" shouted Halyard. "I won't have anythingpurring around me!"

  At that moment, to my amazement, I saw that the boat had stoppedentirely, although the sail was full and the small pennant flutteredfrom the mast-head. Something, too, was tugging at the rudder,twisting and jerking it until the tiller strained and creaked in myhand. All at once it snapped; the tiller swung useless and the boatwhirled around, heeling in the stiffening wind, and drove shoreward.

  It was then that I, ducking to escape the boom, caught a glimpse ofsomething ahead--something that a sudden wave seemed to toss on deckand leave there, wet and flapping--a man with round, fixed, fishyeyes, and soft, slaty skin.

  But the horror of the thing were the two gills that swelled andrelaxed spasmodically, emitting a rasping, purring sound--two gasping,blood-red gills, all fluted and scolloped and distended.

  Frozen with amazement and repugnance, I stared at the creature; I feltthe hair stirring on my head and the icy sweat on my forehead.

  "It's the harbor-master!" screamed Halyard.

  The harbor-master had gathered himself into a wet lump, squattingmotionless in the bows under the mast; his lidless eyes werephosphorescent, like the eyes of living codfish. After a while I feltthat either fright or disgust was going to strangle me where I sat,but it was only the arms of the pretty nurse clasped around me in afrenzy of terror.

  There was not a fire-arm aboard that we could get at. Halyard's handcrept backward where a steel-shod boat-hook lay, and I also made aclutch at it. The next moment I had it in my hand, and staggeredforward, but the boat was already tumbling shoreward among thebreakers, and the next I knew the harbor-master ran at me like acolossal rat, just as the boat rolled over and over through the surf,spilling freight and passengers among the sea-weed-covered rocks.

  When I came to myself I was thrashing about knee-deep in a rocky pool,blinded by the water and half suffocated, while under my feet, like astranded porpoise, the harbor-master made the water boil in hisefforts to upset me. But his limbs seemed soft and boneless; he had nonails, no teeth, and he bounced and thumped and flapped and splashedlike a fish, while I rained blows on him with the boat-hook thatsounded like blows on a football. And all the while his gills wereblowing out and frothing, and purring, and his lidless eyes lookedinto mine, until, nauseated and trembling, I dragged myself back tothe beach, where already the pretty nurse alternately wrung her handsand her petticoats in ornamental despair.

  Beyond the cove, Halyard was bobbing up and down, afloat in hisinvalid's chair, trying to steer shoreward. He was the maddest man Iever saw.


  "Have you killed that rubber-headed thing yet?" he roared.

  "I can't kill it," I shouted, breathlessly. "I might as well try tokill a football!"

  "Can't you punch a hole in it?" he bawled. "If I can only get athim--"

  His words were drowned in a thunderous splashing, a roar of great,broad flippers beating the sea, and I saw the gigantic forms of my twogreat auks, followed by their chicks, blundering past in a shower ofspray, driving headlong out into the ocean.

  "Oh, Lord!" I said. "I can't stand that," and, for the first time inmy life, I fainted peacefully--and appropriately--at the feet of thepretty nurse.

  * * * * *

  It is within the range of possibility that this story may be doubted.It doesn't matter; nothing can add to the despair of a man who haslost two great auks.

  As for Halyard, nothing affects him--except his involuntary sea-bath,and that did him so much good that he writes me from the South thathe's going on a walking-tour through Switzerland--if I'll join him. Imight have joined him if he had not married the pretty nurse. I wonderwhether--But, of course, this is no place for speculation.

  In regard to the harbor-master, you may believe it or not, as youchoose. But if you hear of any great auks being found, kindly throw atable-cloth over their heads and notify the authorities at the newZoological Gardens in Bronx Park, New York. The reward is ten thousanddollars.