Read The Secret Sharer Page 2

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 tomorrow."

  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 main-deck seemed to me very find 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 forerigging 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 some 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 stockstill, 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, fishlike. 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 t
he face

  upturned exactly under mine.

  "Cramp," it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, "I say,

  no need to call anyone."

  "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 gray-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 mustache, 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 gray of my sleeping suit. It was, in the night,

  as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths

  of a somber 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 he
ad

  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 forebitts.

  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 gray 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 shipmate 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 gray 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.