by Whit Burnett
as they remained hollow. A wave of happiness heaved Charlie's
heart; after a while he laughed in the dark.
"My sisters," he thought, "I should have come to you long
ago. You beautiful, superficial wanderers, gallant, swimming
conquerors of the deep ! You heavy, hollow angels, I shall
thank you all my life. God keep you afloat, big sisters, you and
me. God preserve our superficiality." He was very wet by now,
his hair and his havelock were shining softly, like the sides of
the ships in the rain. "And now," he thought, "I shall hold my
mouth. My life has had altogether too many words; I cannot
remember now why I have talked so much. Only when I came
down here and was silent in the rain was I shown the truth of
things. From now on I shall speak no more, but I shall listen to
what the sailors will tell me, the people who are familiar with
the floating ships, and keep off the bottom of things. I shall go to
the end of the world, and hold my mouth."
He had hardly made this resolution before a man on the
wharf came up and spoke to him. "Are you looking for a
Tile Young Man wltll tile Carnation • as
ship?" he asked. He looked like a sailor, Charlie thought, and
like a friendly monkey as well. He was a short man with a
weather-bi tten face and a neck-beard. "Yes, I am," said
Charlie. "For which ship?" asked the sailor. Charlie was about
to answer: "For the ark of Noah, from the flood." But in time
he realized that it would sound foolish. "You see," he said, "I
want to get aboard a ship, and go for a journey." The sailor
spat, and laughed. "A journey?" he said. "All right. You were
staring down into the water, so that in the end I believed that
you were going to jump in." "Ah, yes, to jump in!" said Charlie.
"And so you would have saved me? But there it is, you are too
late to save me. You should have come last night, that would
have been the right moment. The only reason why I did not
drown myself last night," he went on, "was that I was short of
water. If the water had come to me then ! Here lies the watergood; here stands the man-good. If the water comes to him he drowns himself. It all goes to prove that the greatest of poets
make mistakes, and that one should never become a poet." The
sailor by this time had made up his mind that the young stranger was drunk. "All right, my boy," he said, "if you have thought better about drowning yourself, you may go your own
way, and· good night to you." This was a great disappointment
to Charlie, who thought that the conversation was going extraordinarily well. "Nay, but can I not come with you?" he asked the sailor. "I am going into the inn of La Croix du Midi," the
sailor answered, "to have a glass of rum." "That," Charlie exclaimed, "is an excellent idea, and I am in luck to meet a man who has such ideas."
They went together into the inn of La Croix du Midi close
by, and there met two more sailors, whom the first sailor knew,
and introduced them to Charlie as a mate and a supercargo. He
himself was captain of a small ship riding at anchor outside the
harbour. Charlie put his hand in his pocket and found it full of
the money which he had taken with him for his journey. "Let
me have a bottle of your best rum for these gentlemen," he said
to the waiter, "and a pot of coffee for myself." He did not
want any spirits in his present mood. He was actually scared of
his companions, but he found it difficult to explain his case to
them. "I drink coffee," he said, "because I have taken"-he was
going to say : a vow, but thought better of it-"a bet. There
was an old man on a ship-he is, by the way, an uncle of mine
-and he bet me that I could not keep from drink for a year,
but if I won, the ship would be mine." "And have you "kept
from it?'' the captain asked. "Yes, as God lives," said Charlie.
"I declined a glass of brandy not twelve hours ago, and what,
from my talk, you may take to be drunkenness, is nothing but
the effect of the smell of the sea." The mate asked : "Was the
B& • Nineteen Tales of Terror
man who bet you a small man with a big belly and only one
eye?" "Yes, that is Uncle! " cried Charlie. "Then I have met
him myself, on my way to Rio," said the mate, "and he offered
me the same terms, but I would not take them."
Here the drinks were brought and Charlie filled the glasses.
He rolled himself a cigarette, and joyously inhaled the aroma
of the rum and of the warm room. In. the light of a dim hanginglamp the three faces of his new acquaintances glowed fresh and genial. He felt honoured and happy in their company and
thought : "How much more they know than I do." He himself
was very pale, as always when be was agitated. "May your
coffee do you good," said the captain. "You look as if you had
got the fever." "Nay, but I have had a great sorrow," said
Charlie. The others put on condolent faces, and asked him
what sorrow it was. "I will tell you," said Charlie. "It is better
to speak of it, although a little while ago I thought the opposite.
I had a tame monkey I was very fond of; his name was Charlie.
I bad bought him from an old woman who kept a house in
Hongkong, and she and I had to smuggle him out in the dead of
midday, otherwise the girls would never have let him go, for be
was like a brother to them. He was like a brother to me, too.
He knew all my thoughts, and was always on my side. He bad
been taught many tricks already when I got him, and be
learned more while be was with me. But when I came home the
English food did not agree with him, nor did the English Sunday. So he grew sick, and he grew worse, and one Sabbath evening be died on me." "That was a pity," said the captain compassionately. "Yes," said Charlie. "When there is only one person in the world whom you care for, and that is a monkey, and he is dead, then that is a pity."
The supercargo, before the others came in, had been telling
the mate a story. Now for the benefit of the others he told it
all over. It was a cruel tale of bow be bad sailed from Buenos
Aires with wool. When five days out in the doldrums the ship
had caught fire, and the crew, after fighting the fire all night,
had got into the boats in the morning and left her. The supercargo himself had had his hands burnt; all the same he had rowed for three days and nights, so that when they were picked
up by a steamer from Rotterdam his hand bad grown round his
oar, and he could never again stretch out the two fingers.
"Then," he said, "I looked at my hand, and I swore an oath
that if I ever came back on dry land, the Devil take me and the
Devil hold me if ever I went to sea again." . The other two
nodded their heads gravely at his tale, and asked him where he
was off to now. "Me?'' said the supercargo. "I have shipped for
Sydney."
The mate described a storm in the Bay, and the captain gave
The Young Man wltll tile Carnation • 11
them a story of a blizzard in the North Sea, which he had experienced when he was but a sailor-boy. He had been set to the pumps, he narrated, and had been forgotten there, and as he
dared not leave, he had pumped for eleven hours. "At that
time," he said,
"I too, swore to stay on land, and never to set
foot on the sea again."
Charlie listened, and thought: "These are wise men. They
know what they are talking about. For the people who travel
for their pleasure when the sea is smooth, and smiles at them,
and who declare that they love her, they do not know what
love means. It is the sailors, who have been beaten and battered
by the sea, and who have cursed and damned her, who are her
true lovers. Very likely the same law applies to husbands and
wives. I shall learn more from the seamen. I am a child and a
fool, compared to them."
The three sailors were conscious, from his silent, attentive
attitude, of the young man's reverence and wonder. They took
him for a student, and were content to divulge their experiences
to him. They also thought him a good host, for he steadily
filled their glasses, and ordered a fresh bottle when the first was
empty. Charlie, in return for their stories, gave them a couple
of songs. He had a sweet voice and tonight was pleased with it
himself; it was a long time since he had sung a song. They all
became friendly. The captain slapped him on the back and told
him that he was a bright boy and might still be turned into a
sailor.
But as, a little later, the captain began to talk tenderly of his
wife and family, whom he had just left, and the supercargo,
with pride and emotion, informed the party that within the last
three months two barmaids of Antwerp had had twins, girls
with red hair like her father's, Charlie remembered his own wife
and became ill at ease. These sailors, he thought, seemed to
know how to deal with their women. Probably there was not
one of them so afraid of his wife as to run away from her in
the middle of night. If they knew that he had done so, he reflected, they would think Jess well of him.
The sailors had believed him to be much younger than he
was; so in their company he had come to feel himself like a very
young man, and his wife now looked to him more like a mother
than a mate. His real mother, although she had been a respectable tradeswoman, had had a drop of gypsy blood in her, and none of his quick resolutions had ever taken her by surprise.
Indeed, he reflected, she keot upon the surface through everything, and swam there, majestically, like a proud, dark, ponderous goose. If tonight he had gone to her and told her of his decision to go to sea, the idea might very well have excited and
pleased her. The pride and gratitude which he had always felt
88
Nineteen Tales of Terror
•
towards the old woman, now, as he drank his last cup of coffee,
were transferred to the young. Laura would understand him,
and side with him.
He sat for some time, weighing the matter. For experience
had taught him to be careful here. He had, before now, been
trapped as by a strange optical delusion. When he was away
from her, his wife took on all the appearance of a guardian
angel, unfailing in sympathy and support. But when again he
met her face to face, she was a stranger, and he found his road
paved with difficulties.
Still tonight all this seemed to belong to the past. For he was
in power now; he had the sea and the ships with him, and before
him the young man with the carnation. Great images surrounded him. Here, in the inn of La Croix du Midi he had already lived through much. He had seen a ship burn down, a snowstorm in the North Sea, and the sailor's homecoming to
his wife and children. So potent did he feel that the figure of his
wife looked pathetic. He remembered her as he had last seen
her, asleep, passive and peaceful, and her whiteness, and her
ignorance of the world, went to his heart. He suddenly blushed
deeply at the thought of the letter he had written to her. He
might go away, he now felt, with a lighter heart, if he had first
explained everything to her. "Home," he thought, "where is
thy sting? Married life, where is thy victory?"
He sat and looked down at the table, where a little coffee
had been spilled. The while the sailors' talk ebbed out, because
they saw that he was no longer listening; in.the end it stopped.
The consciousness of silence round him woke up Charlie. He
smiled at them. "I shall tell you a story before we go home. A
blue story," he said.
"There was once," he began, "an immensely rich old Englishman who had been a courtier and a councillor to the Queen and who now, in his old age, cared for nothing but collecting
ancient blue china. To that end he travelled to Persia, Japan
and China, and he was everywhere accompanied by his daughter, the Lady Helena. It happened, as they sailed in the Chinese Sea, that the ship caught fire on a still night, and everybody
went into the lifeboats and left her. In the dark and the confusion the old peer was separated from his daughter. Lady Helena got up on deck late, and found the ship quite deserted. In the
last moment a young English sailor carried her down into a
lifeboat that had been forgotten. To the two fugitives it seemed
as if fire was following them from all sides, for the phosphorescence played in the dark sea, and, as they looked up, a falling star ran across the sky, as if it was going to drop into the boat.
They sailed for nine days, till they were picked up by a Dutch
merchantman, and came home to England.
The Young Man with the Carnation • 89
"The old lord had believed his daughter to be dead. He now
wept with joy, and at once took her off to a fashionable watering-place so that she might recover from the hardships she had gone through. And as he thought it must be unpleasant to her
that a young sailor, who made his bread in the merchant service, should tell the world that he had sailed for nine days alone with a peer's daughter, he paid the boy a fine sum, and made
him promise to go shipping in the other hemisphere and never
come back. 'For what,' said the old nobleman, 'would M the
good of that?"
"When Lady Helena· recovered, and they gave her the news
of the Court and of her family, and in the end also told her how
the young sailor had been sent away never to come back, they
found that her mind had suffered from her trials, and that she
cared for nothing in all the world. She would not go back to
her father's castle in its park, nor go to 8ourt, nor travel to
any gay town of the continent. The only thing which she now
wanted to do was to go, like her father before her, to collect
rare blue china: So she began to sail, from one country to the
other, and her father went with her.
"In her search she told the people, with whom she dealt, that
she was looking for a particular blue colour, and would pay any
price for it. But although she bought many hundred blue jars
and bowls, she would always after a time put them aside and
say: 'Alas, alas, it is not the right blue.' Her father, when they
had sailed for many years, suggested to her that perhaps the
colour which she sought did not exist. '0 God, Papa,' said she,
'how can you speak so wickedly? Surely there must .be some of
it left from the time when all the world was blue.'
"Her two old aunts in England implored
her to come back,
still to make a great match. But she answered them: 'Nay, I
have got to sail. For you must know, dear aunts, that it is all
nonsense when learned people tell you that the seas have got
a bottom to them. On the contrary, the water, which is the
noblest of the elements, does, of course, go all through the
earth, so that our planet really floats in the ether, like a soapbubble. And there, on the other hemisphere, a ship sails, with which I have got to keep pace. We two are like the reflection
of one another, in the deep sea, and the ship of which I speak is
always exactly beneath my own ship, upon the opposite side of
the globe. You have never seen a big fish swimming underneath
a boat, following it like a dark-blue shade in the water. But in
that way this ship goes, like the shadow of my ship, and I draw
it to and fro wherever I go, as the moon draws the tides, all
through the bulk of the earth. If I stopped sailing, what would
those poor sailors who make their bread in the merchant service do? But I shall tell you a secret,' she said. 'In the end my
80 • llnatean Tales of Terror
ship will go down, to the centre of the globe, and at the very
same hour the other ship will sink as well-for people call it
sinking, although I can assure you that there is no up and down
in the sea-and there, in the midst of the world, we two shall
meet.'
"Many years passed, the old lord died and Lady Helena became old and deaf, but she still sailed. Then it happened, after the. plunder of the summer palace of the Emperor of China,
that a merchant brought her a very old blue jar. The moment
she set eyes on it she gave · a terrible shriek. 'There it is !' she
cried. 'I have found it at last. This is the true blue. Oh, how
light it makes one. Oh, it is as fresh as a breeze, as deep as a
deep secret, as full as I say not what.' With trembling hands
she held the jar to her bosom, and sat for six hours sunk in contemplation of it. Then she said to her doctor and her lady-companion : 'Now I can die. And when I am dead you will cut out my heart and lay it in the blue jar. For then everything will be
as it was then. All shall be blue around me, and in the midst of
the blue world my heart will be innocent and free, and will beat
