Gods, Men and Ghosts

by Lord Dunsany

  Away we go,

  Oho, Oho, Oho,

  A drop of rum for you and me,

  And the world’s as round as the letter O,

  And round it runs the sea.

  A melancholy settled down on Shard.

  About sunset Lieutenant Smerdrak came up for orders. Shard ordered a trench to be dug along the port side of the ship. The men wanted to sing and grumbled at having to dig, especially as Shard never mentioned his fear of guns, but he fingered his pistols and in the end Shard had his way. No one on board could shoot like Captain Shard. That is often the way with captains of pirate ships, it is a difficult position to hold. Discipline is essential to those that have the right to fly the skull-and-cross-bones, and Shard was the man to enforce it. It was starlight by the time the trench was dug to the captain’s satisfaction, and the men that it was to protect when the worst came to the worst swore all the time as they dug. And when it was finished they clamoured to make a feast on some of the killed oxen, and this Shard let them do. And they lit a huge fire for the first time, burning abundant scrub, they thinking that the Arabs daren’t return, Shard knowing that concealment was now useless. All that night they feasted and sang, and Shard sat up in his chart-room making his plans.

  When morning came they rigged up the cutter, as they called the captured horse, and told off her crew. As there were only two men that could ride at all these became the crew of the cutter. Spanish Dick and Bill the Boatswain were the two.

  Shard’s orders were that turn and turn about they should take command of the cutter and cruise about five miles off to the north-east all the day, but at night they were to come in. And they fitted the horse up with a flagstaff in front of the saddle so that they could signal from her, and carried an anchor behind for fear she should run away.

  And as soon as Spanish Dick had ridden off Shard sent some men to roll all the barrels back from the depot, where they were buried in the sand, with orders to watch the cutter all the time, and, if she signalled, to return as fast as they could.

  They buried the Arabs that day, removing their water-bottles and any provisions they had, and that night they got all the water-barrels in, and for days nothing happened. One event of extraordinary importance did indeed occur: the wind got up one day, but it was due south, and as the oasis lay to the north of them, and beyond that they might pick up the camel track, Shard decided to stay where he was. If it had looked to him like lasting Shard might have hoisted sail, but it dropped at evening as he knew it would, and in any case it was not the wind he wanted. And more days went by, two weeks without a breeze. The dead oxen would not keep and they had had to kill three more; there were only seven left now.

  Never before had the men been so long without rum. And Captain Shard had doubled the watch, besides making two more men sleep at the guns. They had tired of their simple games, and most of their songs; and their tales that were never true were no longer new. And then one day the monotony of the desert came down upon them.

  There is a fascination in the Sahara: a day there is delightful, a week is pleasant, a fortnight is a matter of opinion, but it was running into months. The men were perfectly polite, but the boatswain wanted to know when Shard thought of moving on. It was an unreasonable question to ask of the captain of any ship in a dead calm in a desert, but Shard said he would set a course and let him know in a day or two. And a day or two went by over the monotony of the Sahara, who for monotony is unequalled by all the parts of the earth. Great marshes cannot equal it, nor plains of grass nor the sea; the Sahara alone lies unaltered by the seasons, she has no altering surface, no flowers to fade or grow, year in year out she is changeless for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And the boatswain came again and took off his cap and asked Captain Shard to be so kind as to tell them about his new course. Shard said he meant to stay until they had eaten three more of the oxen as they could only take three of them in the hold, there were only six left now. But what if there was no wind? the boatswain said. And at that moment the faintest breeze from the north ruffled the boatswain’s forelock as he stood with his cap in his hand.

  “Don’t talk about the wind to me, ”said Captain Shard: and Bill was a little frightened for Shard’s mother had been a gipsy.

  But it was only a breeze astray, a trick of the Sahara. And another week went by and they ate two more oxen.

  They obeyed Captain Shard ostentatiously now, but they wore ominous looks. Bill came again and Shard answered him in Romany.

  Things were like this one hot Sahara morning when the cutter signalled. The look-out man told Shard and Shard read the message. “Cavalry astern” it read, and then a little later she signalled “With guns.”

  “Ah,” said Captain Shard.

  One ray of hope Shard had; the flags on the cutter fluttered. For the first time for five weeks a light breeze blew from the north, very light, you hardly felt it. Spanish Dick rode in and anchored his horse to starboard and the cavalry came on slowly from the port.

  Not till the afternoon did they come in sight, and all the while that little breeze was blowing.

  “One knot,” said Shard at noon. “Two knots,” he said at six bells, and still it grew and the Arabs trotted nearer. By five o’clock the merry men of the bad ship Desperate Lark could make out twelve long old-fashioned guns on low-wheeled carts dragged by horses, and what looked like lighter guns carried on camels. The wind was blowing a little stronger now.

  “Shall we hoist sail, sir?” said Bill.

  “Not yet,” said Shard.

  By six o’clock the Arabs were just outside the range of cannon and there they halted. Then followed an anxious hour or so, but the Arabs came no nearer. They evidently meant to wait till dark to bring their guns up. Probably they intended to dig a gun epaulement from which they could safely pound away at the ship.

  “We could do three knots,” said Shard half to himself, he was walking up and down his quarter-deck with very fast short paces. And then the sun set and they heard the Arabs praying, and Shard’s merry men cursed at the top of their voices to show that they were as good men as they.

  The Arabs had come no nearer, waiting for night. They did not know how Shard was longing for it too, he was gritting his teeth and sighing for it, he even would have prayed, but that he feared that it might remind Heaven of him and his merry men.

  Night came and the stars. “Hoist sail,” said Shard. The men sprang to their places, they had had enough of that silent lonely spot. They took the oxen on board and let the great sails down; and like a lover coming from over sea, long dreamed of, long expected, like a lost friend seen again after many years, the north wind came into the pirates’ sails. And before Shard could stop it a ringing English cheer went away to the wondering Arabs.

  They started off at three knots, and soon they might have done four, but Shard would not risk it at night. All night the wind held good, and doing three knots from ten to four they were far out of sight of the Arabs when daylight came. And then Shard hoisted more sail and they did four knots, and by eight bells they were doing four and a half. The spirits of those volatile men rose high, and discipline became perfect. So long as there was wind in the sails and water in the tanks Captain Shard felt safe at least from mutiny. Great men can only be overthrown while their fortunes are at their lowest. Having failed to depose Shard when his plans were open to criticism and he himself scarce knew what to do next, it was hardly likely they could do it now; and whatever we think of his past and his way of living we cannot deny that Shard was among the great men of the world.

  Of defeat by the Arabs he did not feel so sure. It was useless to try to cover his tracks even if he had had time, the Arab cavalry could have picked them up anywhere. And he was afraid of their camels with those light guns on board, he had heard they could do seven knots and keep it up most of the day, and if as much as one shot struck the mainmast... and Shard taking his mind off useless fears worked out on his chart when the Arabs were likely to overtake them. He told his men t
hat the wind would hold good for a week, and, gipsy or no, he certainly knew as much about the wind as is good for a sailor to know.

  Alone in his chart-room he worked it out like this: mark two hours to the good for surprise and finding the tracks and delay in starting, say three hours if the guns were mounted in their epaulements, then the Arabs should start at seven. Supposing the camels go twelve hours a day at seven knots they would do eighty-four knots a day, while Shard doing three knots from ten to four, and four knots the rest of the time, was doing ninety and actually gaining. But when it came to it he wouldn’t risk more than two knots at night while the enemy were out of sight, for he rightly regarded anything more than that as dangerous when sailing on land at night, so he too did eighty-four knots a day. It was a pretty race. I have not troubled to see if Shard added up his figures wrongly or if he underrated the pace of camels, but whatever it was the Arabs gained slightly, for on the fourth day Spanish Jack, five knots astern on what they called the cutter, sighted the camels a very long way off and signaled the fact to Shard. They had left their cavalry behind as Shard supposed they would. The wind held good, they had still two oxen left, and could always eat their “cutter,” and they had a fair, though not ample, supply of water; but the appearance of the Arabs was a blow to Shard, for it showed him that there was no getting away from them, and of all things he dreaded guns. He made light of it to the men: said they would sink the lot before they had been in action half an hour: yet he feared that once the guns came up it was only a question of time before his rigging was cut or his steering gear disabled.

  One point the Desperate Lark scored over the Arabs and a very good one too, darkness fell just before they could have sighted her, and now Shard used the lantern ahead as he dared not do on the first night when the Arabs were close, and with the help of it managed to do three knots. The Arabs encamped in the evening and the Desperate Lark gained twenty knots. But the next evening they appeared again, and this time they saw the sails of the Desperate Lark.

  On the sixth day they were close. On the seventh they were closer. And then, a line of verdure across their bows, Shard saw the Niger River.

  Whether he knew that for a thousand miles it rolled its course through forest, whether he even knew that it was there at all; what his plans were, or whether he lived from day to day like a man whose days are numbered, he never told his men. Nor can I get an indication on this point from the talk that I hear from sailors in their cups in a certain tavern I know of. His face was expressionless, his mouth shut, and he held his ship to her course. That evening they were up to the edge of the tree-trunks and the Arabs camped and waited ten knots astern, and the wind had sunk a little.

  There Shard anchored a little before sunset and landed at once. At first he explored the forest a little on foot. Then he sent for Spanish Dick. They had slung the cutter on board some days ago when they found she could not keep up. Shard could not ride, but he sent for Spanish Dick and told him he must take him as a passenger. So Spanish Dick slung him in front of the saddle “before the mast,” as Shard called it, for they still carried a mast on the front of the saddle, and away they galloped together. “Rough weather,” said Shard, but he surveyed the forest as he went, and the long and short of it was he found a place where the forest was less than half a mile thick and the Desperate Lark might get through: but twenty trees must be cut. Shard marked the trees himself, sent Spanish Dick right back to watch the Arabs and turned the whole of his crew on to those twenty trees. It was a frightful risk, the Desperate Lark was empty, with an enemy no more than ten knots astern, but it was a moment for bold measures and Shard took the chance of being left without his ship in the heart of Africa in the hope of being repaid by escaping altogether.

  The men worked all night on those twenty trees, those that had no axes bored with bradawls and blasted, and then relieved those that had.

  Shard was indefatigable, he went from tree to tree, showing exactly what way every one was to fall, and what was to be done with them when they were down. Some had to be cut down because their branches would get in the way of the masts, others because their trunks would be in the way of the wheels; in the case of the last the stumps had to be made smooth and low with saws and perhaps a bit of the trunk sawn off and rolled away. This was the hardest work they had. And they were all large trees; on the other hand, had they been small, there would have been many more of them and they could not have sailed in and out, sometimes for hundreds of yards, without cutting any at all: and all this Shard calculated on doing if only there was time.

  The light before dawn came and it looked as if they would never do it at all. And then dawn came and it was all done but one tree, the hard part of the work had all been done in the night and a sort of final rush cleared everything up except that one huge tree. And then the cutter signalled the Arabs were moving. At dawn they had prayed, and now they had struck their camp. Shard at once ordered all his men to the ship except ten whom he left at the tree; they had some way to go and the Arabs had been moving some ten minutes before they got there. Shard took in the cutter, which wasted five minutes, hoisted sail short-handed and that took five minutes more, and slowly got under way.

  The wind was dropping still, and by the time the Desperate Lark had come to the edge of that part of the forest through which Shard had laid his course the Arabs were no more than five knots away. He had sailed east half a mile, which he ought to have done overnight so as to be ready, but he could not spare time or thought or men away from those twenty trees. Then Shard turned into the forest and the Arabs were dead astern. They hurried when they saw the Desperate Lark enter the forest.

  “Doing ten knots,” said Shard as he watched them from the deck. The Desperate Lark was doing no more than a knot and a half, for the wind was weak under the lee of the trees. Yet all went well for a while. The big tree had just come down some way ahead, and the ten men were sawing bits off the trunk.

  And then Shard saw a branch that he had not marked on the chart, it would just catch the top of the mainmast. He anchored at once and sent a man aloft who sawed it half-way through and did the rest with a pistol, and now the Arabs were only three knots astern. For a quarter of a mile Shard steered them through the forest till they came to the ten men and that bad big tree; another foot had yet to come off one corner of the stump, for the wheels had to pass over it. Shard turned all hands on to the stump, and it was then that the Arabs came within shot. But they had to unpack their gun. And before they had it mounted Shard was away. If they had charged things might have been different. When they saw the Desperate Lark under way again the Arabs came on to within three hundred yards and there they mounted two guns. Shard watched them along his stern gun but would not fire. They were six hundred yards away before the Arabs could fire, and then they fired too soon and both guns missed. And Shard and his merry men saw clear water only ten fathoms ahead. Then Shard loaded his stern gun with canister instead of shot and at the same moment the Arabs charged on their camels; they came galloping down through the forest waving long lances. Shard left the steering to Smerdrak and stood by the stern gun; the Arabs were within fifty yards and still Shard did not fire; he had most of his men in the stern with muskets beside him. Those lances carried on camels were altogether different from swords in the hands of horsemen, they could reach the men on deck. The men could see the horrible barbs oil the lance-heads, they were almost at their faces when Shard fired; and at the same moment the Desperate Lark with her dry and sun-cracked keel in air on the high bank of the Niger fell forward like a diver. The gun went off through the tree-tops, a wave came over the bows and swept the stern, the Desperate Lark wriggled and righted herself, she was back in her element.

  The merry men looked at the wet decks and at their dripping clothes. “Water,” they said almost wonderingly.

  The Arabs followed a little way through the forest, but when they saw that they had to face a broadside instead of one stern gun and perceived that a ship afloat is less vulnerab
le to cavalry even than when on shore, they abandoned ideas of revenge, and comforted themselves with a text out of their sacred book which tells how in other days and other places our enemies shall suffer even as we desire.

  For a thousand miles with the flow of the Niger and the help of occasional winds, the Desperate Lark moved seawards. At first he sweeps east a little and then southwards, till you come to Akassa and the open sea.

  I will not tell you how they caught fish and ducks, raided a village here and there and at last came to Akassa, for I have said much already of Captain Shard. Imagine them drawing nearer and nearer the sea, bad men all, and yet with a feeling for something where we feel for our king, our country or our home, a feeling for something that burned in them not less ardently than our feelings in us, and that something the sea. Imagine them nearing it till sea birds appeared and they fancied they felt sea breezes and all sang songs again that they had not sung for weeks. Imagine them heaving at last on the salt Atlantic again.