The Purple Cloud
Page 17
bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, Iknew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew,were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on thewandering sea with their dead.
And so fair was the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumnweather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach:yet not so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of anyfloating thing, the spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted mefaint puffs of the odour of mortality over-ripe for the grave.
So abominable and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and ahissing, vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seekthe ships, and also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be mycompanions all the way from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: fornow I had definitely passed into a zone of settled warmth.
I was convinced, however, that the poison, whatever it might be, hadsome embalming, or antiseptic, effect upon the bodies: at Aadheim,Bergen and Stavanger, for instance, where the temperature permitted meto go without a jacket, only the merest hints and whiffs of theprocesses of dissolution had troubled me.
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Very benign, I say, and pleasant to see, was sky and sea during all thatvoyage: but it was at sun-set that my sense of the wondrously beautifulwas roused and excited, in spite of that great burden which I carried.Certainly, I never saw sun-sets resembling those, nor could haveconceived of aught so flamboyant, extravagant, and bewitched: for thewhole heaven seemed turned into an arena for warring Hierarchies,warring for the universe, or it was like the wild countenance of Goddefeated, and flying marred and bloody from His enemies. But manyevenings I watched with unintelligent awe, believing it but a portent ofthe un-sheathed sword of the Almighty; till, one morning, a thoughtpricked me like a sword, for I suddenly remembered the great sun-sets ofthe later nineteenth century, witnessed in Europe, America, and, Ibelieve, over the world, after the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa.
And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deephas washed over this planetary ship of earth...,' I said now: 'Awave--but not from the Deep: a wave rather which she had reserved, andhas spouted, from her own un-motherly entrails...'
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I had some knowledge of Morse telegraphy, and of the manipulation oftape-machines, telegraphic typing-machines, and the ordinary wirelesstransmitter and coherer, as of most little things of that sort whichcame within the outskirts of the interest of a man of science; I hadcollaborated with Professor Stanistreet in the production of a text-bookcalled 'Applications of Science to the Arts,' which had brought us somenotoriety; and, on the whole, the _minutiae_ of modern things werestill pretty fresh in my memory. I could therefore have wired fromBergen or Stavanger, supposing the batteries not run down, to somewhere:but I would not: I was so afraid; afraid lest for ever from nowhereshould come one answering click, or flash, or stirring....
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I could have made short work, and landed at Hull: but I would not: I wasso afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used tothe silence of the sea: but I was afraid of the silence of England.
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I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August,somewhere about Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm toport, and went on further south, no longer bothering with theinstruments, but coasting at hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and nowin the centre of a circle of sea; not admitting to myself the motive ofthis loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, but ignoring thedeep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and instinctivelyhiding myself in to-day. I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth,Felixstowe. By now the things that floated motionless on the sea werebeyond numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and liftthem, without seeing yet another there: so that soon after dusk I, too,had to lie still among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and tomove at any pace would have been to drown the already dead.
Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flatsand Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppeyand the North Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor GirdlerLight: and all along the coast I had seen no light: but as to that Isaid not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart knowwhat my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; butwith a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darklingland, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon apoor man like me.
And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners werevery well aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongueship, for there they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor gonear them: for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever mighthave happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straightbefore, seeing nothing, and concerning one's-self with one's-self.
The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a littleto the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor anySandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coastswere strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowlymoving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay deadwithin a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wanderedup well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go andsee the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier thatnightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear inthe southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whoseCourt swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous,the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spottyfull-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it werekisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet shipsmysterious white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridorsin some fairy-land forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals,and runnings-to-and-fro, with leers, and agitated last embraces, andflight of the princess, and death-bed of the king; and on the N.E.horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with theworld; and yonder, not far, the white coast-cliffs, not so low as atCalais near, but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward, eachwith its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw.
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I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and bodyseemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; andwhen the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffsof Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the UnionJack hang motionless.
I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea.But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2ndSeptember, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the_Boreal's_ anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, andfourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboardhawse-hole.
Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for theeffect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in uponall that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed ayear, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated,with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not lessterrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged andraged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start,and rise, at alarum so excessive, and question me with their eyes....
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On the top of the Cross Wall near I saw a grey crab fearlessly crawl; atthe end where the street begins, I saw a single gas-light palely burnthat broad day, and at its foot a black man lay on his face, clad onlyin a shirt and one boot; the harbour was almost packed with every sortof craft, and on a Calais-Dover boat, eight yards from my stern, whichmust have left Calais crowded to suffocation, I saw the rotted dead liehea
ped, she being unmoored, and continually grinding against an anchoredgreen brig.
And when I saw that, I dropped down upon my knees at the capstan, and mypoor heart sobbed out the frail cry: 'Well, Lord God, Thou hastdestroyed the work of Thy hand...'
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After a time I got up, went below in a state of somnambulism, took apacket of pemmican cakes, leapt to land, and went following the railwaythat runs from the Admiralty Pier. In an enclosed passage ten yardslong, with railway masonry on one side, I saw five dead lie, and couldnot believe that I was in England, for all were dark-skinned people,three gaudily dressed, and two in flowing white robes. It was the samewhen I turned into a long street, leading northward, for here were ahundred, or more, and never saw I, except in Constantinople, where Ionce lived eighteen months, so variegated a mixture of races, black,brunette, brown, yellow, white, in all the shades, some emaciated likepeople dead from hunger, and,