In the Sargasso Sea
Page 26
XXVI
OF A STRANGE SIGHT THAT I SAW IN THE NIGHT-TIME
I was pretty much mooning mad for a while, I suppose: sometimeswalking about the cabin and thrusting with my feet contemptuously atthe gold ingots strewn over the floor of it, and sometimes standingstill in a sort of rapt wonder over my heap of jewels--and anythinglike sensible thinking was quite beyond the power of my unbalancedmind. But at last I was aroused, and so brought to myself a little, bythe daylight waning suddenly: as it did in that region when the sundropped down into the thick layer of mist lying close upon thewater--making at first a strange purplish dusk, and then a richcrimson after-glow that deepened into purple again, and so turningslowly into blackness as night came on.
When I had come aboard the galleon, about noon-time, and had found herso sodden with wet and so reeking with foul odors--as, indeed, wereall of the very ancient ships which made the mid-part of that seagraveyard--I had made my mind up to a forced march in the afternoonthat I hoped would carry me through the worst of all that rottenness,and so to a ship partly dry and less ill-smelling for the night. Butwhen I came out from the cabin and looked about me, and saw how thickand black were the shadows in the clefts between the wrecks, I knewthat I could not venture onward, but must pass the night where I was.And this was a prospect not at all to my mind.
The cabin, of course, was the only place for me, the soaked deck withthe soaked moss on top of it being quite out of the question; but eventhe cabin was not fit for a dog to lie in, so chill and damp was itand so foul with the stench rising and spreading from the slime ofrotted leather that I had emptied from the coffer and that made alittle vile pool upon the floor. And through the open hatch there cameup a dismal heavy odor of all the rotten stuff down there that almostturned my stomach, and that made the air laden with it hard tobreathe--though in my hot excitement I had not noticed it at all. Butthis last I got the better of in part by covering again the opening,though I had to move the hatch very gently and carefully to keep itfrom falling into rotten fragments in my hands. Yet because it was sodense with moisture, when I did get it set in place, it pretty wellkept the stench down. And then I kicked away some of the ingots into acorner, and so cleared a space on the floor where I could stretchmyself just within the cabin door.
These matters being attended to, I seated myself in the same placewhere I had eaten my dinner--just outside the door, under the littlesort of porch overhanging it--and ate the short ration that I allowedmyself for my supper, and found it very much less than my livelyhunger required. When I had finished I sat on there for a good whilelonger, being very loath to go into the cabin; but at last, by findingmyself nodding with weary drowsiness, I knew that sleep would comequickly, and so went inside and laid myself down upon the floor. Therestill was a faint glimmer of dying daylight outside, and this littleglow somehow comforted me as I lay there facing the doorway andblinking now and then before my eyes were tight closed; but I did notlie long that way half-waking, being so utterly fagged in both mindand body that I dropped off into deep slumber before thedarkness fell.
I suppose that even in my sleep I had an uneasy sense of my bleaksurroundings; and that this, in the course of three or four hours--bywhich time I was a good deal rested and so slept less soundly--got thebetter of my weariness and roused me awake again. But when I firstwoke I was sure that I had slept the night through and that earlymorning was come--for there was so much light in the cabin that Inever thought to account for it save by the return of day. Yet thelight was not like daylight, as I realized when I had a little moreshaken off my sleepiness, being curiously white and soft.
I turned over--for I had rolled in my uneasy sleep and got my backtoward the doorway--and raised myself a little on my elbow so that Imight see out clearly; and what I saw was so unearthly strange, and ina way so awe-compelling, that in another moment I was on my feet andstaring with all my eyes. Over the whole deck of the galleon a softlambent light was playing, and this went along her bulwarks and upover her high fore-castle so that all the lines of her structure weredefined sharply by it; and pale through the mist against theblackness, out over her low waist, I could catch glimpses of the othertall old ships lying near her all likewise shining everywhere with thesame soft flames--which yet were not flames exactly, but rather aflickering glow.
In a moment or so I realized that this luminous wonder, which at thefirst look had so strong a touch of the supernatural in it, was nomore than the manifestation of a natural phenomenon: being the shimmerof phosphorescent light upon the soaking rotten woodwork of thegalleon and of the ships about her, as rotten and as old. But makingthis explanation to myself did not lessen the frightening strangenessof the spectacle, nor do much to stop the cold creeps which ran overme as I looked at it: I being there solitary in that marvellousbrightness--that I knew was in a way a death-glow--the onething alive.
But presently my unreasoning shivering dread began to yield a little,as my curiosity bred in me an eager desire to see the whole of thiswondrous soft splendor; for I made sure from my glimpses over thegalleon's bulwarks that it was about me on every side. And so Istepped out from the cabin upon the deck, where my feet sank into theshort mossy growth that coated the rotten planks and I was fairlywalking in what seemed like a lake of wavering pale flame; and fromthere, that I might see the better, I climbed cautiously up the rottenstair leading to the roof of the cabin, and thence to the littleover-topping gallery where the stern-lantern was. And from that heightI could gaze about me as far as ever the mist would let me see.
Everywhere within the circle that my eyes covered--which was not avery big one, for in the night the mist was thick and low-lying--theold wrecks wedged together there were lighted with the same lambentflames: which came and went over their dead carcasses as though theyall suddenly were lighted and then as suddenly were put out again; andfarther away the glow of them in the mist was like a silveryshimmering haze. By this ebbing and flowing light--which seemed tome, for all that I knew the natural cause of it, so outside of naturethat I thrilled with a creeping fear as I looked at it--I could seeclearly the shapes of the strange ancient ships around me: their greatpoops and fore-castles rising high above their shallow waists, andhere and there among them the remnant of a mast making a line of lightrising higher still--like a huge corpse-candle shining against theblackness beyond. And the ruin of them--the breaks in their lines, andthe black gaps where bits of their frames had rotted awaycompletely--gave to them all a ghastly death-like look; while theirwild tangling together made strange ragged lines of brightnesswavering under the veil of mist, as though a desolate sea-city werelying there dead before me lit up with lanterns of despair.
Yet that which most keenly thrilled me with a cold dread was my strongconviction that I could see living men moving hither and thither overthose pale-lit decks, where my reason told me that only ancient deathcould be; for the play of the flickering light made such a commotionof fleeting flames and dancing shadows, going and coming in all mannerof fantastic shapes, that every shattered hulk around me seemed tohave her old crew alive and on board of her again--all hurrying inbustling crowds fore and aft, and up and down the heights of her, asthough under orderly command. And at times these shapes were so realand so distinct to me that I was for crying out to them--and wouldcheck myself suddenly, shivering with a fright which I knew was out ofall reason but which for the life of me I could not keep down.
And so the night wore away: while I stood there on the galleon's poopwith the soft pale flames flickering around me in the mist, and myfears rising and falling as I lost and regained control of myself; andI think that it is a wonder that I did not go mad.