THE SECRET SHARER--AN EPISODE FROM THE COAST
CHAPTER I
On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a
mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible
in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of
aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now
gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human
habitation as far as the eye could reach. To the left a group of
barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and
blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself
looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even
the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without
that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. And
when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had
just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of
the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a
perfect and unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown,
half blue under the enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in
their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of
trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first
preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the
inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the
great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest
from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the
horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of
silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest
of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land
became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the
impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a
tremor. My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here,
now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the
stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I lost it at last
behind the mitre-shaped hill of the great pagoda. And then I was
left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam.
She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in
an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the
eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her
decks. There was not a sound in her--and around us nothing moved,
nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not
a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the threshold of a
long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and
arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be
carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for
spectators and for judges.
There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one's
sight, because it was only just before the sun left us that my
roaming eyes made out beyond the highest ridge of the principal
islet of the group something which did away with the solemnity of
perfect solitude. The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with
tropical suddenness a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy
earth, while I lingered yet, my hand resting lightly on my ship's
rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted friend. But, with all that
multitude of celestial bodies staring down at one, the comfort of
quiet communion with her was gone for good. And there were also
disturbing sounds by this time--voices, footsteps forward; the
steward flitted along the maindeck, a busily ministering spirit; a
hand-bell tinkled urgently under the poop-deck. . . .
I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in
the lighted cuddy. We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief
mate, I said:
"Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I
saw her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down."
He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth
of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: "Bless my soul,
sir! You don't say so!"
My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond
his years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a
slight quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my
part to encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too,
that I knew very little of my officers. In consequence of certain
events of no particular significance, except to myself, I had been
appointed to the command only a fortnight before. Neither did I
know much of the hands forward. All these people had been together
for eighteen months or so, and my position was that of the only
stranger on board. I mention this because it has some bearing on
what is to follow. But what I felt most was my being a stranger to
the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a
stranger to myself. The youngest man on board (barring the second
mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest
responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others
for granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I
wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal
conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself
secretly.
Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of
collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers,
was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant
trait was to take all things into earnest consideration. He was of
a painstaking turn of mind. As he used to say, he "liked to
account to himself" for practically everything that came in his
way, down to a miserable scorpion he had found in his cabin a week
before. The why and the wherefore of that scorpion--how it got on
board and came to select his room rather than the pantry (which was
a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial to), and how
on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his writing-
desk--had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the islands
was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to
rise from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted
not, a ship from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much
water to cross the bar except at the top of spring tides.
Therefore she went into that natural harbour to wait for a few days
in preference to remaining in an open roadstead.
"That's so," confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly
hoarse voice. "She draws over twenty feet. She's the Liverpool
ship Sephora with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days
from Cardiff."
We looked at him in surprise.
"The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your
letters, sir," explained the young man. "He expects to take her up
the river the day after to-morrow."
After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he
slipped out of the cabin. The mate observed regretfully that he
"could not account for that young fellow's whims." What prevented
him telling us all about it at once, he wanted to know.
I detained him as he was making a move. For the last two days the
crew had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had
very little sleep. I felt painfully that I--a stranger--was doing
something unusual when I directed him to let all hands turn in
without setting an anchor-watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself
till one o'clock or thereabouts. I would get the second mate to
relieve me at that hour.
"He will turn out the cook and the steward at four," I concluded,
"and then give you a call. Of course at the slightest sign of any
sort of wind we'll have the hands up and make a start at once."
He concealed his astonishment. "Very well, sir." Outside the
cuddy he put his head in the second mate's door to inform him of my
unheard-of caprice to take a five hours' anchor-watch on myself. I
heard the other raise his voice incredulously--"What? The captain
himself?" Then a few more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A
few moments later I went on deck.
My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that
unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary
hours of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew
nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more. Fast
alongside a wharf, littered like any ship in port with a tangle of
unrelated things, invaded by unrelated shore people, I had hardly
seen her yet properly. Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the
stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very fine under the stars.
Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very inviting. I descended
the poop and paced the waist, my mind picturing to myself the
coming passage through the Malay Archipelago, down the Indian
Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar enough to
me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to
face me on the high seas--everything! . . . except the novel
responsibility of command. But I took heart from the reasonable
thought that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men,
and that the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises
expressly for my discomfiture.
Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a
cigar and went below to get it. All was still down there.
Everybody at the after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I
came out again on the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my
sleeping-suit on that warm breathless night, barefooted, a glowing
cigar in my teeth, and, going forward, I was met by the profound
silence of the fore end of the ship. Only as I passed the door of
the forecastle I heard a deep, quiet, trustful sigh of some sleeper
inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea
as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that
untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an
elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its
appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.
The riding-light in the fore-rigging burned with a clear,
untroubled, as if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the
mysterious shades of the night. Passing on my way aft along the
other side of the ship, I observed that the rope side-ladder, put
over, no doubt, for the master of the tug when he came to fetch
away our letters, had not been hauled in as it should have been. I
became annoyed at this, for exactitude in small matters is the very
soul of discipline. Then I reflected that I had myself
peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act had
prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly
attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere
with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of
motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness
only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my
conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of
their new captain. I was vexed with myself.
Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I
proceeded to get the ladder in myself. Now a side-ladder of that
sort is a light affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug,
which should have brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon
my body in a totally unexpected jerk. What the devil! . . . I was
so astounded by the immovableness of that ladder that I remained
stock-still, trying to account for it to myself like that imbecile
mate of mine. In the end, of course, I put my head over the rail.
The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling
glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated
and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a
guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue
suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping
water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night
sky. With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the
long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a
greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom
rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless
corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop
and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all
things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a
dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side. But even then I
could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired
head. However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation
which had gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of
vain exclamations was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar
and leaned over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer
to that mystery floating alongside.
As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea-lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it
ghastly, silvery, fish-like. He remained as mute as a fish, too.
He made no motion to get out of the water, either. It was
inconceivable that he should not attempt to come on board, and
strangely troubling to suspect that perhaps he did not want to.
And my first words were prompted by just that troubled incertitude.
"What's the matter?" I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to
the face upturned exactly under mine.
"Cramp," it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, "I say, no
need to call any one."
"I was not going to," I said.
"Are you alone on deck?"
"Yes."
I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go
the ladder to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came. But,
for the moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the
bottom of the sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship)
wanted only to know the time. I told him. And he, down there,
tentatively:
"I suppose your captain's turned in?"
"I am sure he isn't," I said.
He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the
low, bitter murmur of doubt. "What's the good?" His next words
came out with a hesitating effort.
"Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?"
I thought the time had come to declare myself.
"_I_ am the captain."
I heard a "By Jove!" whispered at the level of the water. The
phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his
limbs, his other hand seized the ladder.
"My name's Leggatt."
The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice. The self-
possession of that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in
myself. It was very quietly that I remarked:
"You must be a good swimmer."
"Yes. I've been in the water practically since nine o'clock. The
question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on
swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or--to come on board here."
I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real
alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered
from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are
ever confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure
intuition on my part. A mysterious communication was established
already between us two--in the face of that silent, darkened
tropical sea. I was young, too; young enough to make no comment.
The man in the water began suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I
hastened away from the rail to fetch some clothes.
Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at
the foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door
of the chief mate's room. The second mate's door was on the hook,
but the darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too, was
young and could sleep like a stone. Remained the steward, but he
was not likely to wake up before he was called. I got a sleeping-
suit out of my room and, coming back on deck, saw the naked man
from the sea sitting on the main-hatch, glimmering white in the
darkness, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. In a
moment he had concealed his damp body in a sleeping-suit of the
same grey-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing and followed me
like my double on the poop. Together we moved right aft,
barefooted, silent.
"What is it?" I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp
out of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.
"An ugly business."
He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under
somewhat heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth
on his cheeks; a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round
chin. His expression was concentrated, meditative, under the
inspecting light of the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man
thinking hard in solitude might wear. My sleeping-suit was just
right for his size. A well-knit young fellow of twenty-five at
most. He caught his lower lip with the edge of white, even teeth.
"Yes," I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle. The warm, heavy
tropical night closed upon his head again.
"There's a ship over there," he murmured.
"Yes, I know. The Sephora. Did you know of us?"
"Hadn't the slightest idea. I am the mate of her--" He paused and
corrected himself. "I should say I WAS."
"Aha! Something wrong?"
"Yes. Very wrong indeed. I've killed a man."
"What do you mean? Just now?"
"No, on the passage. Weeks ago. Thirty-nine south. When I say a
man--"
"Fit of temper," I suggested, confidently.
The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly
above the ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit. It was, in the night,
as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a
sombre and immense mirror.
"A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy," murmured my
double, distinctly.
"You're a Conway boy?"
"I am," he said, as if startled. Then, slowly . . . "Perhaps you
too--"
It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he
joined. After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I
thought suddenly of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and
the "Bless my soul--you don't say so" type of intellect. My double
gave me an inkling of his thoughts by saying:
"My father's a parson in Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and
jury on that charge? For myself I can't see the necessity. There
are fellows that an angel from heaven--And I am not that. He was
one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time with a
silly sort of wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business
to live at all. He wouldn't do his duty and wouldn't let anybody
else do theirs. But what's the good of talking! You know well
enough the sort of ill-conditioned snarling cur--"
He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as
our clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such
a character where there are no means of legal repression. And I
knew well enough also that my double there was no homicidal
ruffian. I did not think of asking him for details, and he told me
the story roughly in brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no
more. I saw it all going on as though I were myself inside that
other sleeping-suit.
"It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk.
Reefed foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only
sail we had left to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it
had been like for days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me
some of his cursed insolence at the sheet. I tell you I was
overdone with this terrific weather that seemed to have no end to
it. Terrific, I tell you--and a deep ship. I believe the fellow
himself was half crazed with funk. It was no time for gentlemanly
reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up and at
me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands
saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat,
and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look
out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head.
They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen
of the ship--just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head
and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It
was a miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the
forebits. It's clear that I meant business, because I was holding
him by the throat still when they picked us up. He was black in
the face. It was too much for them. It seems they rushed us aft
together, gripped as we were, screaming "Murder!" like a lot of
lunatics, and broke into the cuddy. And the ship running for her
life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in a sea fit
to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I understand that the
skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. The man had
been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this
sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out
of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after getting
the carcass of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers. They
had rather a job to separate us, I've been told. A sufficiently
fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a
bit. The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the
maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of
the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face
out of his sou'wester.
"'Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as
chief mate of this ship.'"
His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a
hand on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all
that time did not stir a limb, so far as I could see. "Nice little
tale for a quiet tea-party," he concluded in the same tone.
One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither
did I stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot
from each other. It occurred to me that if old "Bless my soul--you
don't say so" were to put his head up the companion and catch sight
of us, he would think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come
upon a scene of weird witchcraft; the strange captain having a
quiet confabulation by the wheel with his own grey ghost. I became
very much concerned to prevent anything of the sort. I heard the
other's soothing undertone.
"My father's a parson in Norfolk," it said. Evidently he had
forgotten he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice
little tale.
"You had better slip down into my stateroom now," I said, moving
off stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet
made no sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after
giving a call to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.
"Not much sign of any wind yet," I remarked when he approached.
"No, sir. Not much," he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice,
with just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.
"Well, that's all you have to look out for. You have got your
orders."
"Yes, sir."
I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position
face forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging
before I went below. The mate's faint snoring was still going on
peacefully. The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which
stood a vase with flowers, a polite attention from the ship's
provision merchant--the last flowers we should see for the next
three months at the very least. Two bunches of bananas hung from
the beam symmetrically, one on each side of the rudder-casing.
Everything was as before in the ship--except that two of her
captain's sleeping-suits were simultaneously in use, one motionless
in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain's
stateroom.
It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital
letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short
part of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the
right; my writing-desk and the chronometers' table faced the door.
But any one opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view
of what I call the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It
contained some lockers surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes,
a thick jacket or two, caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on
hooks. There was at the bottom of that part a door opening into my
bath-room, which could be entered also directly from the saloon.
But that way was never used.
The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this
particular shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big
bulkhead lamp swung on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see
him anywhere till he stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung
in the recessed part.
"I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once," he
whispered.
I, too, spoke under my breath.
"Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission."
He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he
had been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept
under arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was
nothing sickly in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit
like me, really; yet, as we stood leaning over my bed-place,
whispering side by side, with our dark heads together and our backs
to the door, anybody bold enough to open it stealthily would have
been treated to the uncanny sight of a double captain busy talking
in whispers with his other self.
"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side-
ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after
he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the
Sephora once the bad weather was over.
"When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those
matters out several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing
else, and with only an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the
quarter-deck."
He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed-place, staring
through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of
this thinking out--a stubborn if not a steadfast operation;
something of which I should have been perfectly incapable.
"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land," he
continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing, near as we were
to each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. "So I asked to
speak to the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to
see me--as if he could not look me in the face. You know, that
foresail saved the ship. She was too deep to have run long under
bare poles. And it was I that managed to set it for him. Anyway,
he came. When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
at me as if I had the halter round my neck already--I asked him
right away to leave my cabin door unlocked at night while the ship
was going through Sunda Straits. There would be the Java coast
within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted nothing
more. I've had a prize for swimming my second year in the Conway."
"I can believe it," I breathed out.
"God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of
their faces you'd have thought they were afraid I'd go about at
night strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it?
By Jove! if I had been he wouldn't have trusted himself like that
into my room. You'll say I might have chucked him aside and bolted
out, there and then--it was dark already. Well, no. And for the
same reason I wouldn't think of trying to smash the door. There
would have been a rush to stop me at the noise, and I did not mean
to get into a confounded scrimmage. Somebody else might have got
killed--for I would not have broken out only to get chucked back,
and I did not want any more of that work. He refused, looking more
sick than ever. He was afraid of the men, and also of that old
second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years--a grey-
headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil
knows how long--seventeen years or more--a dogmatic sort of loafer
who hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No
chief mate ever made more than one voyage in the Sephora, you know.
Those two old chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the
skipper wasn't afraid of (all his nerve went to pieces altogether
in that hellish spell of bad weather we had)--of what the law would
do to him--of his wife, perhaps. Oh, yes! she's on board. Though
I don't think she would have meddled. She would have been only too
glad to have me out of the ship in any way. The 'brand of Cain'
business, don't you see. That's all right. I was ready enough to
go off wandering on the face of the earth--and that was price
enough to pay for an Abel of that sort. Anyhow, he wouldn't listen
to me. 'This thing must take its course. I represent the law
here.' He was shaking like a leaf. 'So you won't?' 'No!' 'Then
I hope you will be able to sleep on that,' I said, and turned my
back on him. 'I wonder that YOU can,' cries he, and locks the
door.
"Well, after that, I couldn't. Not very well. That was three
weeks ago. We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea;
drifted about Carimata for ten days. When we anchored here they
thought, I suppose, it was all right. The nearest land (and that's
five miles) is the ship's destination; the consul would soon set
about catching me; and there would have been no object in bolting
to these islets there. I don't suppose there's a drop of water on
them. I don't know how it was, but to-night that steward, after
bringing me my supper, went out to let me eat it, and left the door
unlocked. And I ate it--all there was, too. After I had finished
I strolled out on the quarterdeck. I don't know that I meant to do
anything. A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe. Then
a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers and was
in the water before I had made up my mind fairly. Somebody heard
the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo. 'He's gone! Lower
the boats! He's committed suicide! No, he's swimming.' Certainly
I was swimming. It's not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit
suicide by drowning. I landed on the nearest islet before the boat
left the ship's side. I heard them pulling about in the dark,
hailing, and so on, but after a bit they gave up. Everything
quieted down and the anchorage became as still as death. I sat
down on a stone and began to think. I felt certain they would
start searching for me at daylight. There was no place to hide on
those stony things--and if there had been, what would have been the
good? But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going back. So
after a while I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a bundle
with a stone inside, and dropped them in the deep water on the
outer side of that islet. That was suicide enough for me. Let
them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I
meant to swim till I sank--but that's not the same thing. I struck
out for another of these little islands, and it was from that one
that I first saw your riding-light. Something to swim for. I went
on easily, and on the way I came upon a flat rock a foot or two
above water. In the daytime, I dare say, you might make it out
with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and rested
myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last spell must
have been over a mile."
His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he
stared straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not
even a star to be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was
something that made comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps
in himself; a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name
for. And when he ceased, all I found was a futile whisper: "So
you swam for our light?"
"Yes--straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn't
see any stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I
couldn't see the land, either. The water was like glass. One
might have been swimming in a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern
with no place for scrambling out anywhere; but what I didn't like
was the notion of swimming round and round like a crazed bullock
before I gave out; and as I didn't mean to go back . . . No. Do
you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one of these little
islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a wild beast?
Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not want any
of that. So I went on. Then your ladder--"
"Why didn't you hail the ship?" I asked, a little louder.
He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our
heads and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side
of the poop and might have been hanging over the rail, for all we
knew.
"He couldn't hear us talking--could he?" My double breathed into
my very ear, anxiously.
His anxiety was an answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I
had put to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that
situation. I closed the port-hole quietly, to make sure. A louder
word might have been overheard.
"Who's that?" he whispered then.
"My second mate. But I don't know much more of the fellow than you
do."
And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take
charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a
fortnight ago. I didn't know either the ship or the people.
Hadn't had the time in port to look about me or size anybody up.
And as to the crew, all they knew was that I was appointed to take
the ship home. For the rest, I was almost as much of a stranger on
board as himself, I said. And at the moment I felt it most
acutely. I felt that it would take very little to make me a
suspect person in the eyes of the ship's company.
He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the
ship, faced each other in identical attitudes.
"Your ladder--" he murmured, after a silence. "Who'd have thought
of finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out
here! I felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the
life I've been leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out
of condition. I wasn't capable of swimming round as far as your
rudder-chains. And, lo and behold! there was a ladder to get hold
of. After I gripped it I said to myself, 'What's the good?' When
I saw a man's head looking over I thought I would swim away
presently and leave him shouting--in whatever language it was. I
didn't mind being looked at. I--I liked it. And then you speaking
to me so quietly--as if you had expected me--made me hold on a
little longer. It had been a confounded lonely time--I don't mean
while swimming. I was glad to talk a little to somebody that
didn't belong to the Sephora. As to asking for the captain, that
was a mere impulse. It could have been no use, with all the ship
knowing about me and the other people pretty certain to be round
here in the morning. I don't know--I wanted to be seen, to talk
with somebody, before I went on. I don't know what I would have
said. . . . 'Fine night, isn't it?' or something of the sort."
"Do you think they will be round here presently?" I asked with some
incredulity.
"Quite likely," he said, faintly.
He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden. His head rolled on
his shoulders.
"H'm. We shall see then. Meantime get into that bed," I
whispered. "Want help? There."
It was a rather high bed-place with a set of drawers underneath.
This amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing
his leg. He tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm
across his eyes. And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must
have looked exactly as I used to look in that bed. I gazed upon my
other self for a while before drawing across carefully the two
green serge curtains which ran on a brass rod. I thought for a
moment of pinning them together for greater safety, but I sat down
on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling to rise and hunt for
a pin. I would do it in a moment. I was extremely tired, in a
peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by the
effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement.
It was three o'clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine,
but I was not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep. I sat there,
fagged out, looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the
confused sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly
bothered by an exasperating knocking in my head. It was a relief
to discover suddenly that it was not in my head at all, but on the
outside of the door. Before I could collect myself the words "Come
in" were out of my mouth, and the steward entered with a tray,
bringing in my morning coffee. I had slept, after all, and I was
so frightened that I shouted, "This way! I am here, steward," as
though he had been miles away. He put down the tray on the table
next the couch and only then said, very quietly, "I can see you are
here, sir." I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared not meet
his eyes just then. He must have wondered why I had drawn the
curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch. He went
out, hooking the door open as usual.
I heard the crew washing decks above me. I knew I would have been
told at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought, and I
was doubly vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever. The steward
reappeared suddenly in the doorway. I jumped up from the couch so
quickly that he gave a start.
"What do you want here?"
"Close your port, sir--they are washing decks."
"It is closed," I said, reddening.
"Very well, sir." But he did not move from the doorway and
returned my stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time.
Then his eyes wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice
unusually gentle, almost coaxingly:
"May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?"
"Of course!" I turned my back on him while he popped in and out.
Then I unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt. This
sort of thing could not go on very long. The cabin was as hot as
an oven, too. I took a peep at my double, and discovered that he
had not moved, his arm was still over his eyes; but his chest
heaved; his hair was wet; his chin glistened with perspiration. I
reached over him and opened the port.
"I must show myself on deck," I reflected.
Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no one to
say nay to me within the whole circle of the horizon; but to lock
my cabin door and take the key away I did not dare. Directly I put
my head out of the companion I saw the group of my two officers,
the second mate barefooted, the chief mate in long india-rubber
boots, near the break of the poop, and the steward half-way down
the poop-ladder talking to them eagerly. He happened to catch
sight of me and dived, the second ran down on the main-deck
shouting some order or other, and the chief mate came to meet me,
touching his cap.
There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like. I
don't know whether the steward had told them that I was "queer"
only, or downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good
look at me. I watched him coming with a smile which, as he got
into point-blank range, took effect and froze his very whiskers. I
did not give him time to open his lips.
"Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to
breakfast."
It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship;
and I stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need
of asserting myself without loss of time. That sneering young cub
got taken down a peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the
opportunity of having a good look at the face of every foremast man
as they filed past me to go to the after braces. At breakfast
time, eating nothing myself, I presided with such frigid dignity
that the two mates were only too glad to escape from the cabin as
soon as decency permitted; and all the time the dual working of my
mind distracted me almost to the point of insanity. I was
constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my
actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that
door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table. It was very
much like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.
I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened
his eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an
inquiring look.
"All's well so far," I whispered. "Now you must vanish into the
bath-room."
He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and I then rang for the
steward, and facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my
stateroom while I was having my bath--"and be quick about it." As
my tone admitted of no excuses, he said, "Yes, sir," and ran off to
fetch his dust-pan and brushes. I took a bath and did most of my
dressing, splashing, and whistling softly for the steward's
edification, while the secret sharer of my life stood drawn up bolt
upright in that little space, his face looking very sunken in
daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern, dark line of his
eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.
When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was
finishing dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some
insignificant conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the
terrific character of his whiskers; but my object was to give him
an opportunity for a good look at my cabin. And then I could at
last shut, with a clear conscience, the door of my stateroom and
get my double back into the recessed part. There was nothing else
for it. He had to sit still on a small folding stool, half
smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We listened to the
steward going into the bath-room out of the saloon, filling the
water-bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights,
whisk, bang, clatter--out again into the saloon--turn the key--
click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible.
Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And
there we sat; I at my writing-desk ready to appear busy with some
papers, he behind me, out of sight of the door. It would not have
been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the
excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself. Now and
then glancing over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting
rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms
folded, his head hanging on his breast--and perfectly still.
Anybody would have taken him for me.
I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance over
my shoulder. I was looking at him when a voice outside the door
said:
"Beg pardon, sir."
"Well!" . . . I kept my eyes on him, and so, when the voice outside
the door announced, "There's a ship's boat coming our way, sir," I
saw him give a start--the first movement he had made for hours.
But he did not raise his bowed head.
"All right. Get the ladder over."
I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what? His
immobility seemed to have been never disturbed. What could I tell
him he did not know already? . . . Finally I went on deck.
