The sun declined; my shadow broadened on die waters; and now I felt that if my cockle-shell could live a little longer, why, so could I.
I had got at the fowls without further hurt. Some of the bars took out, I discovered how. And now very carefully I got my legs in, and knelt; but the change of posture was not worth the risk one ran for it; there was too much danger of capsizing, and failing to free oneself before she filled and sank.
With much caution I began breaking the bars, one by one; it was hard enough, weak as I was; my thighs were of more service than my hands.
But at last I could sit, the grating only covering me from the knees downwards. And the relief of that outweighed all the danger, which, as I discovered to my untold joy, was now much less than it had been before. I was better ballast than the fowls.
These I had attached to the lashings which had been blown asunder by the explosion; at one end of the coop the ring-bolt had been torn clean out, but at the other it was the cordage that had parted. To the frayed ends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride in my own cunning. Do you not see? It would keep them fresh for my use, and it was a trick I had read of in no book; it was all my own.
So evening fell and found me hopeful and even puffed up; but yet, no sail.
Now, however, I could lie back, and use had given me a strange sense of safety; besides, I think I knew, I hope I felt, that the hen-coop was in other Hands than mine.
All is reaction in the heart of man; light follows darkness nowhere more surely than in that hidden self, and now at sunset it was my heart’s high-noon. Deep peace pervaded me as I lay outstretched in my narrow rocking bed, as it might be in my coffin; a trust in my Maker’s will to save me if that were for the best, a trust in His final wisdom and loving-kindness, even though this night should be my last on earth. For myself I was resigned, and for others I must trust Him no less. Who was I to constitute myself the protector of the helpless, when He was in His Heaven? Such was my sunset mood; it lasted a few minutes, and then, without radically changing, it became more objective.
The west was a broadening blaze of yellow and purple and red. I cannot describe it to you. If you have seen the sun set in the tropics, you would despise my description; and, if not, I for one could never make you see it. Suffice it that a petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthy tangent. I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatross that I had caught going out. Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see them still, could feel them shrewdly in my mind’s flesh; and so to the old superstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with my special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatest poem ever penned.
But I did not know it then as I do now — and how the lines eluded me! I seemed to see them in the book, yet I could not read the words!
“Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”
That, of course, came first (incorrectly); and it reminded me of my thirst, which the blood of the fowls had so very partially appeased. I see now that it is lucky I could recall but little more. Experience is less terrible than realization, and that poem makes me realize what I went through as memory cannot. It has verses which would have driven me mad. On the other hand, the exhaustive mental search for them distracted my thoughts until the stars were back in the sky; and now I had a new occupation, saying to myself all the poetry I could remember, especially that of the sea; for I was a bookish fellow even then. But I never was anything of a scholar. It is odd therefore, that the one apposite passage which recurred to me in its entirety was in hexameters and pentameters:
Me miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum!
Jam jam tacturos sidera summa putes.
Quantae diducto subsidunt aequore valles!
Jam jam tacturas Tartara nigra putes.
Quocunque adspicio, nihil est nisi pontus et aether;
Fluctibus hic tumidis, nubibus ille minax....
More there was of it in my head; but this much was an accurate statement of my case; and yet less so now (I was thankful to reflect) than in the morning, when every wave was indeed a mountain, and its trough a Tartarus. I had learnt the lines at school; nay, they had formed my very earliest piece of Latin repetition. And how sharply I saw the room I said them in, the man I said them to, ever since my friend! I figured him even now hearing Ovid rep., the same passage in the same room. And I lay saying it on a hen-coop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!
At last I fell into a deep sleep, a long unconscious holiday of the soul, undefiled by any dream.
They say that our dreaming is done as we slowly wake; then was I out of the way of it that night, for a sudden violent rocking awoke me in one horrid instant. I made it worse by the way I started to a sitting posture. I had shipped some water. I was shipping more. Yet all around the sea was glassy; whence then the commotion? As my ship came trim again, and I saw that my hour was not yet, the cause occurred to me; and my heart turned so sick that it was minutes before I had the courage to test my theory.
It was the true one.
A shark had been at my trailing fowls; had taken the bunch of them together, dragging the legs from my loose fastenings. Lucky they had been no stronger! Else had I been dragged down to perdition too.
Lucky, did I say? The refinement of cruelty rather; for now I had neither meat nor drink; my throat was a kiln; my tongue a flame; and another day at hand.
The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up!
. . . . .
Hours passed.
I was waiting now for my delirium.
It came in bits.
I was a child. I was playing on the lawn at home. I was back on the blazing sea.
I was a schoolboy saying my Ovid; then back once more.
The hen-coop was the Lady Jermyn. I was at Eva Denison’s side. They were marrying us on board. The ship’s bell was ringing for us; a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny fingers; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship; smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame filled the universe; the sea dried up, and I was left lying in its bed, lying in my coffin, with red-hot teeth, because the sun blazed right above them, and my withered lips were drawn back from them for ever.
So once more I came back to my living death; too weak now to carry a finger to the salt water and back to my mouth; too weak to think of Eva; too weak to pray any longer for the end, to trouble or to care any more.
Only so tired.
. . . . .
Death has no more terrors for me. I have supped the last horror of the worst death a man can die. You shall hear now for what I was delivered; you shall read of my reward.
My floating coffin was many things in turn; a railway carriage, a pleasure boat on the Thames, a hammock under the trees; last of all it was the upper berth in a not very sweet-smelling cabin, with a clatter of knives and forks near at hand, and a very strong odor of onions in the Irish stew.
My hand crawled to my head; both felt a wondrous weight; and my head was covered with bristles no longer than those on my chin, only less stubborn.
“Where am I?” I feebly asked.
The knives and forks clattered on, and presently I burst out crying because they had not heard me, and I knew that I could never make them hear. Well, they heard my sobs, and a huge fellow came with his mouth full, and smelling like a pickle bottle.
“Where am I?”
“Aboard the brig Eliza, Liverpool, homeward bound; glad to see them eyes open.”
“Have I been here long?”
“Matter o’ ten days.”
“Where did you find me?”
“Floating in a hen-coop; thought you was a dead ‘un.”
“Do y
ou know what ship?”
“Do we know? No, that’s what you’ve got to tell us!”
“I can’t,” I sighed, too weak to wag my head upon the pillow.
The man went to my cabin door.
“Here’s a go,” said he; “forgotten the name of his blessed ship, he has. Where’s that there paper, Mr. Bowles? There’s just a chance it may be the same.”
“I’ve got it, sir.”
“Well, fetch it along, and come you in, Mr. Bowles; likely you may think o’ somethin’.”
A reddish, hook-nosed man, with a jaunty, wicked look, came and smiled upon me in the friendliest fashion; the smell of onions became more than I knew how to endure.
“Ever hear of the ship Lady Jermyn?” asked the first corner, winking at the other.
I thought very hard, the name did sound familiar; but no, I could not honestly say that I had beard it before.
The captain looked at his mate.
“It was a thousand to one,” said he; “still we may as well try him with the other names. Ever heard of Cap’n Harris, mister?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Of Saunderson-stooard?”
“No.”
“Or Crookes-quartermaster.”
“Never.”
“Nor yet of Ready — a passenger?”
“No.”
“It’s no use goin’ on,” said the captain folding up the paper.
“None whatever, sir,” said the mate
“Ready! Ready!” I repeated. “I do seem to have heard that name before. Won’t you give me another chance?”
The paper was unfolded with a shrug.
“There was another passenger of the name of San-Santos. Dutchman, seemin’ly. Ever heard o’ him?”
My disappointment was keen. I could not say that I had. Yet I would not swear that I had not.
“Oh, won’t you? Well, there’s only one more chance. Ever heard of Miss Eva Denison—”
“By God, yes! Have you?”
I was sitting bolt upright in my bunk. The skipper’s beard dropped upon his chest.
“Bless my soul! The last name o’ the lot, too!”
“Have you heard of her?” I reiterated.
“Wait a bit, my lad! Not so fast. Lie down again and tell me who she was.”
“Who she was?” I screamed. “I want to know where she is!”
“I can’t hardly say,” said the captain awkwardly. “We found the gig o’ the Lady Jermyn the week arter we found you, bein’ becalmed like; there wasn’t no lady aboard her, though.”
“Was there anybody?”
“Two dead ‘uns — an’ this here paper.”
“Let me see it!”
The skipper hesitated.
“Hadn’t you better wait a bit?”
“No, no; for Christ’s sake let me see the worst; do you think I can’t read it in your face?”
I could — I did. I made that plain to them, and at last I had the paper smoothed out upon my knees. It was a short statement of the last sufferings of those who had escaped in the gig, and there was nothing in it that I did not now expect. They had buried Ready first — then my darling — then her step-father. The rest expected to follow fast enough. It was all written plainly, on a sheet of the log-book, in different trembling hands. Captain Harris had gone next; and two had been discovered dead.
How long I studied that bit of crumpled paper, with the salt spray still sparkling on it faintly, God alone knows. All at once a peal of nightmare laughter rattled through the cabin. My deliverers started back. The laugh was mine.
CHAPTER VI. THE SOLE SURVIVOR
A few weeks later I landed in England, I, who no longer desired to set foot on any land again.
At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and gray; my nerves were shattered, my heart was broken; and my face showed it without let or hindrance from the spirit that was broken too. Pride, will, courage, and endurance, all these had expired in my long and lonely battle with the sea. They had kept me alive-for this. And now they left me naked to mine enemies.
For every hand seemed raised against me, though in reality it was the hand of fellowship that the world stretched out, and the other was the reading of a jaundiced eye. I could not help it: there was a poison in my veins that made me all ingratitude and perversity. The world welcomed me back, and I returned the compliment by sulking like the recaptured runaway I was at heart. The world showed a sudden interest in me; so I took no further interest in the world, but, on the contrary, resented its attentions with unreasonable warmth and obduracy; and my would-be friends I regarded as my very worst enemies. The majority, I feel sure, meant but well and kindly by the poor survivor. But the survivor could not forget that his name was still in the newspapers, nor blink the fact that he was an unworthy hero of the passing hour. And he suffered enough from brazenly meddlesome and self-seeking folk, from impudent and inquisitive intruders, to justify some suspicion of old acquaintances suddenly styling themselves old friends, and of distant connections newly and unduly eager to claim relationship. Many I misjudged, and have long known it. On the whole, however, I wonder at that attitude of mine as little as I approve of it.
If I had distinguished myself in any other way, it would have been a different thing. It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderate interest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily painful prominence — the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy — that my soul abhorred. I confess that I regarded it from my own unique and selfish point of view. What was a thrilling matter to the world was a torturing memory to me. The quintessence of the torture was, moreover, my own secret. It was not the loss of the Lady Jermyn that I could not bear to speak about; it was my own loss; but the one involved the other. My loss apart, however, it was plain enough to dwell upon experiences so terrible and yet so recent as those which I had lived to tell. I did what I considered my duty to the public, but I certainly did no more. My reticence was rebuked in the papers that made the most of me, but would fain have made more. And yet I do not think that I was anything but docile with those who had a manifest right to question me; to the owners, and to other interested persons, with whom I was confronted on one pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and as freely as I have told it here, though each telling hurt more than the last. That was necessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions which I resented with all the spleen the sea had left me in exchange for the qualities it had taken away.
Relatives I had as few as misanthropist could desire; but from self-congratulation on the fact, on first landing, I soon came to keen regret. They at least would have sheltered me from spies and busybodies; they at least would have secured the peace and privacy of one who was no hero in fact or spirit, whose noblest deed was a piece of self preservation which he wished undone with all his heart.
Self-consciousness no doubt multiplied my flattering assailants. I have said that my nerves were shattered. I may have imagined much and exaggerated the rest. Yet what truth there was in my suspicions you shall duly see. I felt sure that I was followed in the street, and my every movement dogged by those to whom I would not condescend to turn and look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage to go near my club, and the Temple was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusively congratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life, and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well, perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in my memory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all these matters with those which I entertain as I write. I have grown older, and, I hope, something kindlier and wiser since then. Yet to this day I cannot blame myself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding my club.
For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a small, quiet, empty, private hotel which I knew of in Charterhouse Square. Instantly the room next mine became occupied.
All the first night I imagined I heard voices talking about me in that room next door. It was becoming a disease with me. Either I was being dogged, watc
hed, followed, day and night, indoors and out, or I was the victim of a very ominous hallucination. That night I never closed an eye nor lowered my light. In the morning I took a four-wheel cab and drove straight to Harley Street; and, upon my soul, as I stood on the specialist’s door-step, I could have sworn I saw the occupant of the room next mine dash by me in a hansom!
“Ah!” said the specialist; “so you cannot sleep; you hear voices; you fancy you are being followed in the street. You don’t think these fancies spring entirely from the imagination? Not entirely — just so. And you keep looking behind you, as though somebody were at your elbow; and you prefer to sit with your back close to the wall. Just so — just so. Distressing symptoms, to be sure, but — but hardly to be wondered at in a man who has come through your nervous strain.” A keen professional light glittered in his eyes. “And almost commonplace,” he added, smiling, “compared with the hallucinations you must have suffered from on that hen-coop! Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of your case is very great!”
“It may be,” said I, brusquely. “But I come to you to get that hen-coop out of my head, not to be reminded of it. Everybody asks me about the damned thing, and you follow everybody else. I wish it and I were at the bottom of the sea together!”
This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in my present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest despair. Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive inquisition ever elicited from a medical man. His panacea was somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it had the merits of simplicity and of common sense. A change of air — perfect quiet — say a cottage in the country — not too near the sea. And he shook my hand kindly when I left.
“Keep up your heart, my dear sir,” said he. “Keep up your courage and your heart.”
“My heart!” I cried. “It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
He was the first to whom I had said as much. He was a stranger. What did it matter? And, oh, it was so true — so true.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 156
