The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE OPEN BOAT

  THAT day and night they in the open boat merely lived to die. With eachwave of a sea yet in storm Death overhung them, the foam atop gleamingdown like a white skull. The boat rode that wave, and then Death roseon another. There seemed naught to do in life but to meet Death—alittle candle left to go forth by. Death preoccupied them—it was sowide and massive, it came against them in such tourney shocks. “Now ...No!—Then now....” But still the boat lived and the candle burned. Whenthe dawn broke the waves were seen to be lessening in might.

  That day the sea went down and the sky cleared. Sea and sky turneda marvel of blue, Indian, wondrous. There was a wind, steadilyand quietly blowing, but it served them not who had no sail. Allaround—all around the intense sea spread to the horizon, and no sailshowed and no land. The sun mounted and for all the moving air theyfelt its heat which increased. Heat and light—light—light....

  The cask of water.... They found beside it a small drinking-cup ofhorn, and they agreed that each should drink this once filled eachday. It was little, but so they might keep Death at bay so many days.They also portioned out the ship’s bread. Likewise they watched for asail. They were now in seas where ships might be looked for; west andsouth must lie the islands held by Spain. Once two sea-birds flew pastthem, and that would mean that land was not inconceivably far away.But they saw no land, and no sail was etched against the sapphire sky.Loneliness profound, and heat and light....

  All was done that could be done to preserve life. It remained to liveit.... But poor Humphrey Lantern, whom the other two tried to comfort,would not be comforted. He sat and bit his nails, full of remorse andhorror, then passed through stages of anger to a melancholy, and thenceto a dull indifference, silence, and abstraction. They could not rousehim. Aderhold spoke in vain of the Low Countries and the wars, and ofall the good that they owed him, and of how they might yet live toremember these days not unkindly. Lantern, huddled in the bottom ofthe boat, looked at them blankly. His abused body sank more quicklythan did theirs.... He had a knife, and at last one night, when theyhad been drifting long days and nights, he struck it into his heart.The body, swaying against Aderhold, roused him from uneasy sleep.His exclamation waked Joan; she put out her hand and raised it wetwith blood. A moon so great and shining lit the night that they couldsee well enough what had been done. Lantern was dead. They laid himstraight in the bottom of the boat. Aderhold drew out and washed theknife, and then they sat beside the dead man until the moon paled inthe vast rose-flush of dawn. Then, while sea and sky were so beauteous,they lifted the body; then, while they looked to the brightening east,let it leave their hands for the great deep. Wind and current bore theboat slowly onward and away. The two were now so weak that they laystill as after great and prolonged exertion.

  The day burned to its height, flamed to its close. There came a sunsetof supernal beauty, and then the pitying, brief twilight and the gloryof the southern night. The coolness gave a little strength. Aderholdset the cup to the mouth of the cask and poured for each a shallowdraught of water. They should not have drunk till morning, for theirstore was nearly gone. But with one mind they took this, to give themvoice, to free them for a little from gross pain. When it was done theyturned each to the other, came each to the other’s arms.

  Another dawn—the furnace of the day—sunset—the night. The wheel wentround and they, bound to it, came again to dawn and then to stronglight and heat. When they had drunk this morning, there remained ofthe water but one cupful more. They lay, hand clasping hand, in thebottom of the boat that now drifted on a waveless sea. Sometimes theymurmured to each other, but for the most part they lay silent. Therewas now no outward beauty in the two. They lay withered, scorched,fleshless, half-naked, human life at last gasp between the ocean andthe sky. Within, all strength and beauty could summon only negatives.They did not complain, they did not curse, they did not despair, theydid not hate. Within was a stillness as of a desert, with a low windof life moving over it. The physical could not lift far into emotion,but what there was was love and pity. Emotion could hardly attainto thought, nor thought to intuition, but what there was knew stillthe splendour and terror and all things that we are. Day—eve—thenight—the dawn—day. They measured out the last water in the cask andshared it justly between them. They lay side by side, his hand upon herbreast, her hand upon his. The fierce heat, the fierce sunlight roseand reigned....

  A crazy, undecked sailboat came out of the haze. It was returning froma great island south to a group of small islands lying northerly inthese seas, and it held five or six Indians—not the fiercer, southernCaribs, but mild Lucayans. One spied a dot upon the waters and pointedit out. They drew slowly nearer in a light wind, and when they sawthat it was a boat adrift, tacked and came up with it. A man leanedoverboard, seized and drew it in, and with a rope fastened it to thestern of the larger craft. Uttering exclamations, they examined theirprize. In the bottom of the boat lay a man and a woman in man’s dress.They lay unconscious, wreathed in each other’s arms, two parched andgaunt creatures who had suffered the extremity of exposure, hunger,and thirst. The Indians thought that they were dead, and, indeed, theylooked like death and terrible death. But when they were lifted anddragged into the larger boat, and when water was put between theirblackened and shrivelled lips, there came a faint stir and a moaningbreath.... The Indians had good store of water in cask and calabash;they gave it again from time to time, and they crumbled cassava breadand fed that too.... Joan and Aderhold turned back to the land of theliving.

  At first the Indians thought that they were Spanish, for they hadno association with other white men. Association with the Spaniardhad been cruel enough for them; they belonged to the disappearingremnant of a people swept by the thousands from their islands to thelarger islands, enslaved, oppressed, extirpated. These in the boatwere runaways from a hard master, who had stolen this boat and putout, crazy as it was, on what might seem a hopeless voyage. Did theypass through days and nights, and leagues and leagues of sea and gouncaptured by some Spanish craft, did they come at last to their ownisland, what would they find there? A desert, with, perhaps, a tinycluster of palm-thatched huts, still clinging, looking for some landingparty, looking to be swept away as had been their kith and kin—aperishing group, dejection, languor of life.... But homesickness drovethem on; better a death-bed with freedom than the peopled great islandwhere they were slaves! They had felt the Spanish lash and the Spanishirons; they looked doubtfully enough upon the white man and woman, andit was perhaps a question whether now they would not pay back.... Butwhen at last Aderhold spoke, it was in English. They did not know thattongue and they answered in altered and distorted Spanish. He had alittle Spanish, and he made them understand briefly that the two hadbeen in an English ship and that there had been a storm and that theywere castaways. They were not Spanish, and they did not know the greatisland or any of the masters. They were English, whom the Spanishhated. That fact being weighed, the Indians turned friendly, laughedand stroked their hands in token of amity, then set apart for the two agreat calabash of water, and gave them more cassava bread.

  Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to live was strong, for lifehad turned a rainbow, and a wild and beautiful forest, and a song ofthe high and the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came swiftlyup from Death’s threshold. Before the boat came into sight of landthe light was back in their sunken eyes and some strength in theirframe.... The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited Indiansgesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. Aderhold, questioning them,learned that it was the outermost of their island group, but not theirown island to which they were bound. They saw pale sand and verduregreen as emerald; then the night came and covered all from sight. Nolight of torch or of cooking-fire pierced the darkness. The blankshores slipped past, the boat left them astern, and now again allaround was the sea.... But though it was night there was no sleeping.The returning exiles were excited, restless, garrulous. The two learnedtha
t there were many islands and now almost no people. The people—theIndians beat their breasts—were gone now, almost all gone. For themasters sent men from the great islands to burn the villages and takethe men and women and children and drive them aboard ships and carrythem off to make poor slaves of them. They had done so when the oldestmen were children, and when the oldest men’s fathers were children. Butnow the masters did not come, for the men and women and children wereall gone—all gone but a few, a few. The returned from long slavery didnot know if these few were yet there, yet clinging to their island.

  Night passed, dawn came, the wind blew them on. Now they saw islets andislands, but no craft upon the water, or sign of life. Then, in theafternoon, the Indians’ lode-star lifted upon the horizon. They puttheir helm for it, a freshening wind filled their sail. Presently theysaw it clear, a low island, here ivory white and here green as emerald.The Indians shouted and wept. They caressed one another in their owntongue, they gesticulated, they held out their arms to the nearingshore.

  The shore dilated. Reefs appeared to be warily avoided, and the watergrew unearthly blue and clear. Green plumes of palm seemed to waveand beckon. Back from the narrow ivory beach, inland out of a breakin the belt of green, rose a feather of smoke. The Indians when theysaw it were as mad people. They leaped to their feet, they embracedone another, they laughed, they strained their bodies toward the land,and broke into a savage chant of home-coming.... Now they were ina tortuous channel between _cays_ and the island. The island beachwidened, and now human forms appeared—not many, and at first with ahesitant and fearful air; then, as they became assured that here wasonly one small sailboat, with a bolder advance, until at last they camedown to the edge of the small bight to which the boat was heading. Theywere Indians like those in the boat, a mild and placable strain, dulledand weakened by the century-old huge wrong done them. They were but ahandful. In the whole island there was now but one small village.

  The boat glided past a fanged reef and came into a tiny crystalanchorage where the bright fish played below like coloured birds in theair. They lowered sail; they came as close as might be to the shelvingland; the Indians leaped into the water and made ashore with loud criesand incoherent words. The islanders swept about them, surrounded them;there rose a wild, emotional questioning and greeting, laughing andcrying.

  The infection spread to Joan and Aderhold. Behind them lay pain andhorror, and pain and horror might again claim them. But now Time hadspread for them a mighty reaction. It was so blessed to be alive!—theywere so prepared to embrace and love life—every material thing seemedso transfused and brightly lit from within—they laughed themselves andfelt in their eyes the happy dew.... They, too, must take to the waterto come ashore. It was naught to them, the shallow bright flood. Theycrossed it as had done the Indians, and stepped upon the land.