Gallions Reach (15 page)

The boat was rather crowded; there was a great variety of heads and caps forward. One fellow rejoiced to recognise a pal in the bows.

“'Ullo, Percy, I see you. Coming for a nice sail?”

There was a long silence; nothing was to be heard but the shrill swish and flight of the waters along the gunwale, and the creaking of the boat. When she mounted a sea and was exposed to the wind, she heeled and jammed into the broad round of the hill-top. Collins sat mute and observant, but occasionally made a request to a man:

“Keep watch by the halyards there.”

Presently Gillespie spoke to him:

“You and Sinclair agreed about it?”

“Yes, the old mah gave us our orders. The only thing to do. We ought to be picked up, on this course.”

They heard, breaking another long interval of quiet, a plaintive voice in the crowd forward.

“Alf, 'ave you noticed where the gentlemen's room is in this ship?”

It grew hot, but there was no shelter from the glare. They must keep still, and ache. They could not ease away from the white fire. Colet, like his fellows, watched the seas. There was no more singing. They had begun already to peer beyond intently for the chance which would take them out of this huddled discomfort. Their narrow foothold was as lively as a bubble, flinching from every minor torment of the ascent and the dive. The inclines of the ocean were mesmeric with the horror of bulk whelming in unrest. The waters never paused. Respite was not there, and Colet found himself sighing for an outlook that would keep straight and still, and let him have his thoughts in peace. The sun continued its fire from a cloudless sky on the shelterless and silent boatful; but, whenever they were superior on a summit, and could see beyond the shifting and translucent parapets of their prison, only Sinclair and his crowd were in sight. And Sinclair's boat looked overladen and trifling. The inconsequence of their neighbour, when she was sighted below, as if fixed in a spacious hollow, was a warning to themselves;
they, too, were like that. Colet spied Sinclair's charge with relief, if it were but the top of her mast above an intervening ridge. All right, so far. Sinclair was still there.

Gillespie sat noting the pursuit of the following seas. He exclaimed to the helmsman:

“Look out, Collins. Here's a beauty coming.”

Collins smiled, but kept his back to whatever was after them astern. The boat went squattering on the running hill till it found the wind at the top of it, and the hill was swinging ahead from under them. Not that time. Gillespie shook his head with dislike of it; but his eyes went again up their wake to look for the next attack.

The seas quivered in their mass with the original eagerness of that impulse which first sent them rolling round the globe. They would never stop. Their glassy inclines were fretted with lesser waves and hurrying cornices. They were flanged by outliers which deceived with hidden valleys, and the boat, rising briefly, dropped unexpectedly under the shadow of the superior headlong hill.

“Look out!” The startled watcher beside the steersman was compelled then to an involuntary shout of warning.

“It could be worse,” said Collins. “She's not bad to steer, but it makes me sleepy. Here Wilson. Take a turn at it.”

Collins then superintended the distribution of some rations. A little water, a very little water, and some biscuit went round.

“And listen, you men,” he called out; “if you don't want to go balmy, leave the sea-water alone. Bear that in mind tomorrow. All loonies will be put overside.”

“Good for you, sir. We'll watch it. But chase the cook along with the ham and eggs.”

The sunset suffused with red and gold the transparent crests of the heights roving about them, and reflected in flashes from every transient facet of that region of crystal, where the foam glowed as runnels of coloured fire. Their little craft was
transfigured. Its sail and boards were of a radiant and filmy substance too aerial to be scathed any more by the winds of earth. Its company were shining immortals, who had passed through their tribulation and were released at last from the labour and the wrecks where time is, and the lower seas of a troubled world.

“I doubt it will be a cold night,” mused Gillespie, looking round on the brightness, “and my pants are wet now.” A noisy shower of rubies swept over the crowd forward.

“That's it,” said the engineer, “and wet shirts for the laddies.”

The group aft, about Wilson, murmured a conversation, in which Wilson learned the name of the star which was in the general direction of their course, and how he should use it. They continued some speculations about the stars, whispering their attempts at mysteries, while the navigator gave names, haunting and occult names, to the glittering points of night.

“We shall have to keep this man awake,” said Collins. “I was not quite all there all the time I was steering.”

Their gossip went back to the ship. They guessed at where her plates had parted. They spoke of their old ship, but they did not name her master. Collins explained his hopes of the course they were on, and they wondered how long it would be before a ship was sighted. Frequently they glanced to the spark which showed where Sinclair was in the night. Then Gillespie was left to keep the steersman company, and to call Colet at midnight to sit with the second officer.

Colet tried to sleep, but he had no sooner forgotten the cramp and the cold than the boat kicked him awake again. He turned about, to try the other side, and so got a memory of Wilson's head bent forward, a presiding head, austere and calm, isolated in the gloom. A fellow at the other end was retching. The hours stood still. He thought he would never sleep; but then again the boat jolted him into full consciousness
of the cold, and in surprise he saw over them the dark wing of the sail. He turned back again. The bench was hard and wet, and gave nowhere. He could feel the slight timber vibrating under his arm; she was as giddy as an air-ball. Impossible to sleep, while listening to the fall of waters in the dark. When Gillespie gently pressed his knee, he sat up abruptly as if he had been dreaming of a crisis. Collins was taking Wilson's place.

“Eight bells,” said Gillespie, “and all's well. Change over.”

Colet's teeth chattered on their own account. They got into full speed before they were checked. And nobody would have guessed that night itself could be so dark, when there was nothing in it but the sound of unseen waters in flight, and the thin protests of their frail security as it was hurled along through nothing.

Colet took a seat beside the steersman.

“Well, what have you got to say. Something good?” asked Collins. “Get any sleep?”

“Tell him about feather-beds,” murmured a voice.

Then another voice piped up, with a quaver in it. “No. Tell him about all the pubs you know, sir. I know a nice warm little place kept by a widder.”

“Shut up. You'd better go to sleep,” said Collins.

“How can I sleep, sir? There's a bloke's boots in my mouth. Besides, she wants baling.”

“Is there much water there?”

“Only enough for a drop of gin, as you might say, sir. It'll all soak in my shirt, the next time she heels.”

Some one drawled a protest.

“It's a lie, Jim. You fellers on the lee side are as well orf as what we are. Our shirts 'ere got no more stowage.”

“I don't wonder at it, Dave. It was Dave spoke, wasn't it? I know you, Dave, and I know that shirt of yourn. It's the same one, ain't it?”

There was a thumping on the boards forward.

“Put a stopper in it, aft. We're trying to forget it, up here.”

“Then yore wasting yore perishing time, Alec, my lad. Only brass monkeys could forget it.” She lurched, and a heavy shower fell across her, by the mast. The men up there groaned and swore. But they heard a laugh in the dark at the after end.

“Got that lot, Alec? Try to forget it.”

The interminable days merged for those open boats. Time lapsed into an uneventful fortitude, a thirsty desert, to which apathy could see no end. The sail of each boat was double-reefed and goose-winged, perhaps because Sinclair was afraid cf running too far, or because he thought exhaustion would make his men careless. Smoke was sighted, one day. It was a smear which persisted for so long that the castaways thought they could make to windward till they were seen. They never lifted that steamer. And more than once a light had been glimpsed at night, when Collins' boat was on the back of a high sea.

“Light ahead!”

The men waited hopefully for the next lucky impulse which would lift them to a clear view towards the horizon. Yes.

“There it is. A light!”

But Mr. Collins had sighted it too. “That? That's a star.”

The men huddled down again without another word.

“Better luck next time,” their officer assured them. “Keep a good look-out. We're in the way of traffic.”

It was strange. Colet, if he stood, was now easily thrown out of his balance by a movement of the boat. He was a little surprised by that. It was not, of course, that he was weak. He wasn't weak. He did not care much; that was all. But he ought not to fall over, though that would be the easiest thing to do. No good. Almost sure to knock against somebody. Pull yourself together, old son. Look at young Collins. Fine fellow, Collins; and he'd hardly had a word with him till after
the ship went down. Never thought there was much in Collins. But that youngster's pasture, wherever it was, was the place for mettle. And Wilson, too. The whole lot of them. Not a murmur. There was something damned fine in this ordinary stuff.

If he could only keep seated he could last till domesday. He could steer that boat into the Styx, and save the passage money. Hullo, Charon, now watch a bit of real boat work. Beat that. He was only thirsty. Not hungry. It would be all right if that thick slime could be washed out of the mouth.

“You off biscuits?” asked Collins that morning. “So am I. I can't make anything of 'em, except to spit dust.”

A few of the men lay as if dead on the bottom boards. If they were trodden on they did not move, and did not speak. You had to look at their faces again to make sure. The unshaven faces of the men were like those of destitute but bearded children. The purser sat considering vacancy, steering the boat. The way she was going, you kept the draught on your left jaw.

“We ought to see something any time,” Collins soliloquised, a little querulously. “No need to worry.”

The purser smiled, with his eye on the quivering luff of the sail. He felt resigned.

“I'm not worrying.” That was the strange thing about it. He imagined his mind had never been clearer. It was like a steady light inside him. Nothing could blow that out. No wind could flicker it. Never knew before he had a mind. Sure of it now. He felt pale and lucid inside, but he did not want to move. He could look on, a sort of lamp, till the last wave of the sea had unrolled. The sea and sky could pass away, if they liked. They were passing away. They had got more distant, and less impressive. They could no longer daunt with their show of grandeur and dominance, and so they were going. Their game was up. But this old boat, she could go on till they had sighted Helicon. They might beat to windward
round the Last Hope. Something like seafaring, something like life, when you knew you could hold on till the dark was encircled. Get right round it. One more drink, and he could sit there till the sail was a film, the men were ghosts, and they had the Pleiades close abeam. He gave her a touch, and she nicely missed an ugly one.

“Purser, you might have been doing this all your life,” the officer told him.

Colet reflected. “I think I have.” he said. Quite true; all the life he had had. Collins glanced at him, with a trace of alarm.

“I say, Colet. Don't you go light-headed like some of 'em.”

“I'm all right.”

“I wish it would rain.”

“A drop would about save the worst cases. Lycett's bad.”

“Yes. I can't do any more, can I?”

“Collins, you're fine. We're lucky.”

“I wonder how Sinclair's bunch is getting on?”

There she was, just on the round of a sea, a tiny model. They sighted her together.

“About the same, of course.”

“Well, we'll hear when we're picked up. I say, Colet, it wouldn't do to give the fellows more water, would it?”

“No. Not the way we've reckoned it. Wouldn't do. We must wait.”

“Yes. Take our chance. Colet … talking of drink. Lord. I was going to talk about it, but I won't.”

“No. Keep off the drink, Collins.”

“I know. My mouth's coated with gum.”

The quivering of the sail had a strange effect. It was like a ceaseless glittering. It was like sun-points on a milldam on a drowsy summer afternoon, when you could just hear the rumbling of the mill. Colet took his eyes off that hypnotising movement, and glanced to windward. A mass of smooth
glass was about to pass under them, and deep in its body he saw a long phantom, a suspended monster, that writhed once, and faded. It had gone under the boat.

The steersman's eyes went back to the sail. Collins was still talking, but his voice was only like the muttering of the mill. The men were very still. Somebody ought to cover up Lycett's face. The sun was too bright.

“Wilson,” he said, “cover up Lycett's face.” But he did not hear his own voice in that silence. It was impossible to break that silence. Wilson did not move. The seaman sat like a statue. He was the Sphinx, his hands on his knees, staring like that.

Nobody moved. Nobody. They couldn't. They would never move again. They were dead. There was only a deep humming. That was the world. It was droning in space. That was the sound of its sleep. They were floating off. All their weight had gone. Their boat was under them, and so plain you could still see it. There it was, that shadow inside the sea, but it was fading, fading. The old world was sinking under them. That was why they could hear it. It was dwindling and droning away. Wilson was watching the world leave them, and it was all right. You could trust Wilson. They were getting near that star now. Light ahead! The star was coming their way, and it was growing, growing round, like the sun, growing bigger every minute: so bright that it was a white blaze, the white centre of eternity with time streaming from it in spears. That was God. His face was going to show in that white light. They must keep looking.…