Green Dolphin Street

by Elizabeth Goudge

  The mate was bellowing through the speaking trumpet, “Up! Damn you!” And the shadows were in the rigging. “Lay out!” And they were lying out on the yards, shadows upon shadows, shadows wrestling with shadows; all of them, even the Green Dolphin herself, dwarfed to nothingness by the mighty seeking and commotion of sea and sky. A sail, blown away and torn to rags, went by on the wind like a wounded bird. The great ship that a short while ago had sailed so securely within the crystalline walls of a balmy day was now a lacerated, hunted creature tottering on the edge of chaos. Nothing would save her now, so it seemed to Captain O’Hara, but the exertions of shadows fighting with shadows, the commands of an old man who was only the ghost of what he had been, who was silent like a ghost, bewildered like a ghost, lost in an alien world upon an alien sea. . . .

  Suddenly he wrenched the speaking trumpet from the hands of the arrogant young man from Aberdeen and his orders rang out crisp and clear. He was once again the man he had been in his dreams not ten minutes ago, the vigorous man of mature age who had seen the two cities reflected in the water and the two fairy-tale children rocking in their rowing boat upon the silver ripples. That was who he was—not this old dodderer who had overslept himself when his ship was in danger. Well, it was in danger no more. The sea had never beaten him yet. It was his god, but he had never yet failed to match himself strength for strength and cunning for cunning against his god, and win.

  “Better heave to, Sir.” said the young man from Aberdeen unwisely. “Better heave to, with this wind behind and the reefs of the coast ahead.”

  Captain O’Hara’s jaw set savagely. “I’m behind on time,” he snapped “I’ll give her a double-reefed foretops’l and on we go. Nothing of a blow. Soon have spent itself.” And he stumped away to his poop, pausing to swear at Nat, busy stretching life lines across the deck. He, Captain O’Hara, had not given the order for the life lines. Sheer jitters on the part of the young man from Aberdeen, and Nat should not have obeyed the order. Nat, sworn at, grinned cheerfully, and then crawled suddenly sideways and ducked in a futile attempt to avoid the sea that swept over the bulwarks. The movement was somehow a reproach to Captain O’Hara. Poor old Nat. He’d not have crawled like that, ducked like, that, ten years ago. He’d kept him at sea too long, just that he might have the pleasure of his familiar company. Damned if he wouldn’t suggest to him, when they made the port of Wellington, that he spend the rest of his life at the settlement with William and Marianne, squinting at the lizards and smoking his pipe in the sun. The Green Dolphin would not seem the Green Dolphin without Nat aboard, but the old chap would enjoy a good long smoke in the sun. He had no dignity to maintain, no prestige to bother about. The ignominy of such an ending would not hurt him, because he would be unaware of it.

  All that day he kept the Green Dolphin upon her course, speeding along with the wind booming in her sails and her decks awash. Her captain could feel in her body a desperate desire to twist and lay to, but the two vigorous young men at the wheel checked it and kept her upon her way. But her desire was a reproach to her captain, just as that sideways crawl of Nut’s had been. . . . If he’d not, back in Canton, been too arrogant to come on board his ship on two sticks, they’d both of them have been spared this buffeting.

  “All right, my girl,” he said to his ship. “It’s a divil of a blow, surely, but I’ve never failed to get ye safe to harbor an’ I’ll not fail ye now.”

  The sky cleared a little at evening, but the wind increased and the ship plunged madly. It would not have been possible to heave to now even had Captain O’Hara desired to do so. He reckoned that with luck the wind would moderate during the night and that next day they would make Wellington. . . . During the night the wind would moderate. . . . He clung with increasing obstinacy to this conviction because it was his only justification for the bold decision he had taken in the morning. The sun sank in an angry red mist, and the night closed down upon them. His world narrowed to the patch of streaming deck beneath his feet, the shadowy figures of the men at the wheel, a dim tracery of wet rigging lit by a swaying lantern to the brightness of a bediamonded spider’s web, the roar and tumult of the storm, and the misshapen figure of old Nat beside him. “Get below,” he growled, but Nat did not obey the order and he did not repeat it, for he liked the companionship of Nat in this hour that he knew to be a peak hour of experience. The men at the wheel seemed only dream figures. The only reality was himself and Nat and the Green Dolphin speeding alone through the night. As the hours went on the distress of his ship was very apparent to him. She was an old ship now, and she was being pressed beyond her strength. But there was no more that he could do.

  A grey dawn of pouring rain and howling wind found them, as far as they could calculate, not far from the coast of New Zealand and in deadly danger. Yet the normal life of the ship went on as far as possible. The bells were struck and the watch was changed. Orders rang out. Nat went along to the galley and came back with two mugs of hot sugared whiskey and water. As the returning light showed him the shadowy figures of his men, Captain O’Hara lost the illusion that he and Nat and the Green Dolphin were alone in the turmoil of the waters, and in its place came, an agony of self-loathing and remorse. But for that delay at Canton, but for that refusal to take the mate’s suggestion and heave to, the lives of this gallant company of seamen would not have been in danger. His misery was increased by the cheery grins his men gave him, by the quiet deference of the mate, the almost pitying gentleness of his old friend Nat. Their Skipper had got them into the hell of a mess, but it was no good crying over spilt milk. Better stand together now and meet what came as one man. And the Green Dolphin herself was in agreement with them. Helpless as she was, she yet sped through the storm with her rigging singing triumphantly, tearing through the crests and racing down into the hollows as though she were not the pursued but the pursuer. What was she after, the old Green Dolphin? Death with honor? Did she dread that final humiliation of old ships, that slow disintegration in the shipwreckers’ yard? Any ship would dread that, especially his arrogant Green Dolphin. It was death with honor that she wanted and was pursuing with such fierce questing, death with her timbers still curving to the proud curve of the prow’s line, her raking masts still pointing to the sky, her flags flying.

  He jerked his head up quickly, and the mate, who was beside him, understood his glance. “Wind would rip ’em to pieces, Sir,” he said. “But if our luck don’t hold I’ll run up the flags straight away.” He grinned at the old man; the old chap had aged twenty years during the night; almost impossible to recognize him now, so broken was he, so lost and drowned in humiliation. “Finest ship I’ve ever sailed on, Sir,” he said. “Finest Skipper I’ve ever sailed under. I’d not have missed this voyage for anything you could have offered me.” Then he blushed scarlet and went away.

  So you thought seamanship was deteriorating, did you? said Captain O’Hara to himself. Damned old fool.

  An hour later there came to him quite suddenly the realization that the peak of the storm had been reached and passed. Very soon now the wind would drop. He remembered trying to describe to Marianne this instinctive knowledge of the seaman. “Granted there’s no perceptible difference in the ragin’ o’ wind an’ water,” he had said to her, “yet somethin’ tells ye ye’ve won.” And he had inflated his chest and grinned at her.

  But he had not won this time, and he knew it. The blows of the adversary were slackening, but too late. For the first time in his life Captain O’Hara began to pray; not with words, but with the agonized prostration of his soul. Struck down at the feet of God, accepting his humiliation as his due, he gave himself up. Cast me away, me and my ship, but save these men.

  Their first sight of land, a tall headland shaped like the gigantic figure of a man towering between sea and sky and glimpsed for a moment only through a torn sheet of rain, was followed almost at once by a splintering shock, the agonized shuddering of the ship, a sudden awful moment of st
illness, and then the leaping upon them of the hungry waves. The mate shouted an order and looking up, Captain O’Hara saw the Red Ensign and the green house flag fluttering triumphantly in the wind.

  And he, too, was suddenly triumphant. His offering was accepted. He had known it as the splintering spear of rock entered the Green Dolphin’s side, seeming to pierce through his own heart too. That gigantic figure of a man, seen for that one moment through the mist, had the spear of death in one hand, but in the other he held the gift of life.

  “You’re saved, boys!” yelled Captain O’Hara. “We’re close in to the shore, begorra. Did ye see that fellow over there? Fire the gun, boys. Ring the ship’s bell. Make a row like Hades and you’re saved.”

  Was the old man lightheaded? wondered the mate. He didn’t look it. He looked himself again; red-faced, jolly, confident. Yet the sudden glimpse of the shore that the mate had seen had shown him no signs of human life or habitation, only a landscape like that of the earth new risen from chaos, indescribably desolate and savage; the mate had no smallest hope of salvation from the shore that he had seen. Yet he obeyed, as was his duty. He sent the Bosun to fire the gun and Nat to clang the ship’s bell. It was their only chance. The one boat that had not been swept away during the night had been stove in by the collision, and for a swimmer to live in that boiling sea was clearly next to impossible. And the Green Dolphin was settling fast. Her decks already had an ugly list. It would not be long.

  “Here he comes, boys!” yelled Captain O’Hara. “Here he comes!”

  Even Nat wondered, this time, if the Skipper was crazy. His one eye, peering out from under his dripping nightcap, could see nothing through the driving rain. Then he peered again, and bared his rotting old teeth in a broad grin. He had caught a brief glimpse of a huge man swimming outward from the shore. He clanged the bell once more, not in supplication but in triumph.

  They had all seen it, but they did not all share the triumph of Nat and the Skipper.

  “He’ll not survive once he gets among the rocks,” murmured the mate.

  “Not survive?” shouted Captain O’Hara. “That fellow’d survive in hell itself.”

  Naturally. Captain O’Hara had not yet seen the face of the man who swam toward them, but he identified the fellow with the gigantic figure standing with death in one hand and life in the other that had been his first sight of the shore. He was the Savior, saving sometimes by life and sometimes by death, but never failing to redeem. Failure and that fellow were not, like life and death, synonymous.

  A huge wave seemed to submerge the swimming figure, but no groan went up from the watching men. They just waited breathlessly.

  Then they saw him standing on the summit of a rock. Probably a wave had swept him there by a lucky accident, yet to the watchers it seemed as though he had risen up from the sea by the power of his own enormous strength. His figure seemed to tower to the sky as he stood upright and cupped his hands round his mouth. “Rope, you fools!” he roared at them across the waste of water. “Throw a rope!”

  Even at that distance the voice, like the roaring of a genial lion, was vaguely familiar to Captain O’Hara. He seized his glass and clapped it to his eye. It gave him a shock, a shock that he greeted with a bellow of laughter, to find that his supernatural savior was merely young William.

  Yet why not? He had not been a sailor all these years without discovering that supernatural power works by natural means.

  The mate flung a rope. Again and again it fell short, and again and again he flung it, until at last William caught it and made it fast to the end of the one he held. The rain was lessening all the while now, the wind moderating and the light growing. They could see the land quite clearly and a group of gesticulating Maoris on the clifftop, with two white men on the shore below who had dared the dangerous climb down to pay out the rope to William.

  The crew went ashore under Captain O’Hara’s orders, the youngest first. Only two men, who had been slightly injured during the night, were swept away from the support of the rope, but William swam to their rescue and got them ashore. And all the while the Green Dolphin was slowly settling, and the mate was in an agony lest she should sink before the men were all got off her. Captain O’Hara had no such misgivings. He knew they would all be saved.

  And presently only he and Nat and the mate were left on board. Leeward the Green Dolphin’s bulwarks were under water, the sea was washing over her, and the slant of her deck was so steep that the three men had to cling to the wheel.

  “Now you, boy,” said Captain O’Hara to the arrogant young man from Aberdeen.

  The mate gave him an agonized glance, like that of a dog commanded to go home against his will.

  “Get on with you, begorra. Go to hell,” roared Captain O’Hara genially and the mate saluted and went overboard along the rope.

  Nat watched anxiously, hissing in a bothered sort of way, moving his head from side to side like a distracted old hen shepherding the last of the chickens to safety, but Captain O’Hara remained as imperturbable as ever.

  “Rope’s broken,” said Nat suddenly. It was what he had feared would happen, for the rope had been fretted backward and forward over the sharp summits of rocks for a good half hour or more. Then, just for a moment, Captain O’Hara was also slightly perturbed, for the breaking of the rope was not according to plan. But the mate was beyond the dangerous strip of water between the ship and the rock from which William had shouted to them, and a few moments’ anxious scrutiny showed him that the fellow was a strong swimmer, and safe.

  But there was still Nat, and the old blackguard had never learned to swim. Captain O’Hara looked at him in consternation, for he had set his heart on the old fellow ending his days in peace with Marianne. Nat’s answering grin was that of an impish child who has just circumvented the plans of its elders and got its own way in spite of them. . . . He and Captain O’Hara and the Green Dolphin were going down together.

  But they had reckoned without William, who was battling his way toward them through that dangerous tract of seething water. “Go back, you fool!” Captain O’Hara roared at him.

  But it was unlikely that William heard him above the noise of the waves. Anyway he came on. He was flung this way and that like a straw, and he was in danger of having his brains dashed out against a rock at any moment, but still he came on, every bit of progress an achievement of skill and daring, helped on by that touch of miraculous luck that is always generated like a bright spark of flame struck from flint and tinder when skill and daring meet. And presently the two old men could see his round, red face triumphantly surmounting the crest of a wave quite near them, and hear his voice.

  “Come on, Nat,” he yelled.

  “Get on, Nat,” roared Captain O’Hara.

  Nat’s face puckered like that of a distressful monkey, and he shook his head slowly.

  “Get on with you for the love of Mike,” cried Captain O’Hara. “I’m followin’ close behind ye. I’ll be with ye in a moment.” His great hand shot out, detached Nat from the wheel and sent him slithering overboard.

  Once, in William’s boyhood, when he had been struggling to climb aboard the Green Dolphin, Nat’s hairy hand had gripped him in the small of the back and dragged him to safety, and in that moment they had liked each other. Now it was the other way round. It was William’s hand that gripped Nat as he struggled and choked in the water, William’s power and strength that was dragging him to safety. “Come on, Nat,” he encouraged. “You first and the Captain next.” There was triumph in his tone. . . . Very rarely in this life one does manage to pay one’s debts.

  Captain O’Hara and the Green Dolphin were alone together. It seemed that both of them held their breath while they watched that epic struggle of the two men toward the land. William had had only himself to bring out to the Green Dolphin, but on the return journey he had the dead weight of Nat, and there were times when it look
ed as though he would not succeed in his task of salvation. The minutes that it took seemed hours. Then he was in calmer water. Then a sudden gleam of sunlight showed him struggling through the shallows, bowed down by the weight of Nat upon his shoulders, like some old picture of Saint Christopher bent beneath the weight of the child who carried the sorrow of the world.

  The Green Dolphin gave a great sigh and settled so low in the water that the sea was washing round her captain’s waist. It never even occurred to Captain O’Hara to plunge overboard and take his chance. He and the Green Dolphin together made up the one sacrifice.

  He thought for a moment with satisfaction of the treasure in the hold. Chests of tea and spices, bales of silk and fine muslin, and cedarwood boxes full of trinkets and adornments of jade and ivory. That was a fine cargo with which to sail into Davy Jones’ locker. He’d always liked sailing with a fine cargo.

  Suddenly the sun came right out and the colors of dawn bathed the whole world in the same pristine loveliness in which he had first seen the town of St. Pierre. The towering, rocky cliffs were no longer grey and forbidding, they were walls of pearl, turrets of amethyst and jade, star-hung towers of a fairy-tale city. And above them great storm clouds, riven by shed rain, piled one upon the other by the wind, lit by the fires of dawn, climbed up and up into the sky in the semblance of a second city. Below the cliffs a stretch of smooth sand, its wet surface shining as glass, reflected the two cities one within the other, making of the two of them a circle of light as perfect, complete, and unbroken as the aura of God’s love. Captain O’Hara knew then, as the vision that had accompanied him through so many years of his life flamed up before him as eternal reality, what were the fairy tale and the truth that had hitherto eluded him. This was the fairy tale: that man is a citizen of two worlds. This was the truth: that neither in the height of Heaven nor the depth of Sheol, neither in the farthest places of the earth nor in the uttermost parts of the sea, can a man be separated from the love of God, because like a fish in the sea or a bird in the air it is in that element alone that he lives and moves and has his being. Withdrawn from it, arrogant man has no more existence than an unborn thought. High and wonderful knowledge, so high that only those beaten to their knees in childlike humility can attain to its height.