We listened to the steward going into the bathroom 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.
II
The skipper of the Sephora had a thin red whisker all round his face,
and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that color;
also the particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the eyes.
He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high,
his stature but middling--one leg slightly more bandy
than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely around.
A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged.
I behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him.
Perhaps he was shy. He mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of
what he was saying; gave his name (it was something like Archbold--
but at this distance of years I hardly am sure), his ship's name,
and a few other particulars of that sort, in the manner
of a criminal making a reluctant and doleful confession.
He had had terrible weather on the passage out--terrible--terrible--
wife aboard, too.
By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in a
tray with a bottle and glasses. "Thanks! No." Never took liquor.
Would have some water, though. He drank two tumblerfuls.
Terrible thirsty work. Ever since daylight had been exploring
the islands round his ship.
"What was that for--fun?" I asked, with an appearance of polite interest.
"No!" He sighed. "Painful duty."
As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every word,
I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I was
hard of hearing.
"Such a young man, too!" he nodded, keeping his smeary blue,
unintelligent eyes fastened upon me. "What was the cause of it--
some disease?" he inquired, without the least sympathy and as
if he thought that, if so, I'd got no more than I deserved.
"Yes; disease," I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock him.
But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to give
me his tale. It is not worth while to record his version.
It was just over two months since all this had happened, and he had thought
so much about it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings,
but still immensely impressed.
"What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own ship?
I've had the Sephora for these fifteen years. I am a well-known shipmaster."
He was densely distressed--and perhaps I should have sympathized
with him if I had been able to detach my mental vision
from the unsuspected sharer of my cabin as though he were my
second self. There he was on the other side of the bulkhead,
four or five feet from us, no more, as we sat in the saloon.
I looked politely at Captain Archbold (if that was his name),
but it was the other I saw, in a gray sleeping suit, seated on
a low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded,
and every word said between us falling into the ears of his
dark head bowed on his chest.
"I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years,
and I've never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship.
And that it should be my ship. Wife on board, too."
I was hardly listening to him.
"Don't you think," I said, "that the heavy sea which,
you told me, came aboard just then might have killed the man?
I have seen the sheer weight of a sea kill a man very neatly,
by simply breaking his neck."
"Good God!" he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes on me.
"The sea! No man killed by the sea ever looked like that."
He seemed positively scandalized at my suggestion. And as I gazed
at him certainly not prepared for anything original on his part,
he advanced his head close to mine and thrust his tongue out at me
so suddenly that I couldn't help starting back.
After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded wisely.
If I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never forget it as long
as I lived. The weather was too bad to give the corpse a proper sea burial.
So next day at dawn they took it up on the poop, covering its face
with a bit of bunting; he read a short prayer, and then, just as it was,
in its oilskins and long boots, they launched it amongst those mountainous
seas that seemed ready every moment to swallow up the ship herself
and the terrified lives on board of her.
"That reefed foresail saved you," I threw in.
"Under God--it did," he exclaimed fervently. "It was by a special mercy,
I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane squalls."
"It was the setting of that sail which--" I began.
"God's own hand in it," he interrupted me. "Nothing less could have done it.
I don't mind telling you that I hardly dared give the order.
It seemed impossible that we could touch anything without losing it,
and then our last hope would have been gone."
The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit,
then said, casually--as if returning to a minor subject:
"You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?"
He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it
something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it
were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should
not be suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort."
Seven-and-thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty
of immaculate command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora,
seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.
"And you know," he went on, groping shame-facedly amongst his feelings,
"I did not e
ngage that young fellow. His people had some
interest with my owners. I was in a way forced to take him on.
He looked very smart, very gentlemanly, and all that.
But do you know--I never liked him, somehow. I am a plain man.
You see, he wasn't exactly the sort for the chief mate of a ship
like the Sephora."
I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret
sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being
given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that would
have done for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora.
I had no doubt of it in my mind.
"Not at all the style of man. You understand," he insisted,
superfluously, looking hard at me.
I smiled urbanely. He seemed at a loss for a while.
"I suppose I must report a suicide."
"Beg pardon?"
"Suicide! That's what I'll have to write to my owners directly I get in."
"Unless you manage to recover him before tomorrow,"
I assented, dispassionately. . . . "I mean, alive."
He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my ear
to him in a puzzled manner. He fairly bawled:
"The land--I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my anchorage."
"About that."
My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any
sort of pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust.
But except for the felicitous pretense of deafness I had not tried
to pretend anything. I had felt utterly incapable of playing
the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try.
It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions
with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and
unnatural phenomenon. And yet how else could I have received him?
Not heartily! That was impossible for psychological reasons,
which I need not state here. My only object was to keep off
his inquiries. Surlily? Yes, but surliness might have provoked
a point-blank question. From its novelty to him and from its nature,
punctilious courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man.
But there was the danger of his breaking through my defense bluntly.
I could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for psychological
(not moral) reasons. If he had only known how afraid I was of
his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test!
But, strangely enough--(I thought of it only afterwards)--
I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse
side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded
him of the man he was seeking--suggested a mysterious similitude
to the young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.
However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged.
He took another oblique step.
"I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship.
Not a bit more."
"And quite enough, too, in this awful heat," I said.
Another pause full of mistrust followed. Necessity, they say, is mother
of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
And I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news of my other self.
"Nice little saloon, isn't it?" I remarked, as if noticing for the first
time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the other.
"And very well fitted out, too. Here, for instance," I continued,
reaching over the back of my seat negligently and flinging the door open,
"is my bathroom."
He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance.
I got up, shut the door of the bathroom, and invited him to have
a look round, as if I were very proud of my accomodation.
He had to rise and be shown round, but he went through the business
without any raptures whatever.
"And now we'll have a look at my stateroom," I declared,
in a voice as loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin
to the starboard side with purposely heavy steps.
He followed me in and gazed around. My intelligent double had vanished.
I played my part.
"Very convenient--isn't it?"
Very nice. Very comf . . ." He didn't finish and went out
brusquely as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine.
But it was not to be. I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful;
I felt I had him on the run, and I meant to keep him on the run.
My polite insistence must have had something menacing in it,
because he gave in suddenly. And I did not let him off a single item;
mate's room, pantry, storerooms, the very sail locker which was
also under the poop--he had to look into them all. When at last I
showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long, spiritless sigh,
and mumbled dismally that he must really be going back to his ship now.
I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see to the captain's boat.
The man of whiskers gave a blast on the whistle which he used
to wear hanging round his neck, and yelled, "Sephora's away!"
My double down there in my cabin must have heard, and certainly
could not feel more relieved than I. Four fellows came running
out from somewhere forward and went over the side, while my
own men, appearing on deck too, lined the rail. I escorted
my visitor to the gangway ceremoniously, and nearly overdid it.
He was a tenacious beast. On the very ladder he lingered,
and in that unique, guiltily conscientious manner of sticking
to the point:
"I say . . . you . . . you don't think that--"
I covered his voice loudly:
"Certainly not. . . . I am delighted. Good-by."
I had an idea of what he meant to say, and just saved myself
by the privilege of defective hearing. He was too shaken
generally to insist, but my mate, close witness of that parting,
looked mystified and his face took on a thoughtful cast.
As I did not want to appear as if I wished to avoid all
communication with my officers, he had the opportunity
to address me.
"Seems a very nice man. His boat's crew told our chaps a very
extraordinary story, if what I am told by the steward is true.
I suppose you had it from the captain, sir?"
"Yes. I had a story from the captain."
"A very horrible affair--isn't it, sir?"
"It is."
"Beats all these tales we hear about murders in Yankee ships."
"I don't think it beats them. I don't think it resembles them
in the least."
"Bless my soul--you don't say so! But of course I've no
acquaintance whatever with American ships, not I so I couldn't
go against your knowledge. It's horrible enough for me.
. . . But the queerest part is that those fellows seemed to have
some idea the man was hidden aboard here. They had really.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?"
"Preposterous--isn't it?"
We were walking to and fro athwart the quarter-deck. No one of the crew
forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued:
"There was some little dispute about it. Our chaps took offense.
`As if we would harbor a thing like that,' they said.
`Wouldn't you like to look for him in our coal-hole?' Quite a tiff.
But they made it up in the end. I suppose he did drown himself.
Don't you, sir?"
"I don't suppose anything."
"You have no doubt in the matter, sir?"
"None whatever."
I left him suddenly. I felt I was producing a bad impression,
but with my double down there it was most trying to be on deck. And it
was almost as trying to be below. Altogether a nerve-trying situation.
But on the whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him.
There was no one in the whole ship whom I dared take into
my confidence. Since the hands had got to know his story,
it would have been impossible to pass him off for anyone else,
and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than ever.
. . .
The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner,
we could talk only with our eyes when I first went down.
Later in the afternoon we had a cautious try at whispering.
The Sunday quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness
of air and water around her was against us; the elements,
the men were against us--everything was against us in our
secret partnership; time itself--for this could not go on forever.
The very trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt.
Shall I confess that this thought cast me down very much?
And as to the chapter of accidents which counts for so much
in the book of success, I could only hope that it was closed.
For what favorable accident could be expected?
"Did you hear everything?" were my first words as soon as we took
up our position side by side, leaning over my bed place.
He had. And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, "The man told you
he hardly dared to give the order."
I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.
"Yes. He was afraid of it being lost in the setting."
"I assure you he never gave the order. He may think he did,
but he never gave it. He stood there with me on the break of the poop
after the main topsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope--
positively whimpered about it and nothing else--and the night coming on!
To hear one's skipper go on like that in such weather was enough
to drive any fellow out of his mind. It worked me up into a sort
of desperation. I just took it into my own hands and went
away from him, boiling, and--But what's the use telling you?
YOU know! . . . Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce
with them I should have got the men to do anything? Not It!
The bo's'n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn't a heavy sea--it was a sea
gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be something like that;
and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it--
but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.
I was precious little better than the rest. Only--I was an officer
of that old coal wagon, anyhow--"
"I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.
He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly.
It was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four
men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil,
crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.
But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter--
footsteps in the saloon, a heavy knock. "There's enough wind
to get under way with, sir." Here was the call of a new claim
upon my thoughts and even upon my feelings.
"Turn the hands up," I cried through the door. "I'll be on deck directly."
I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship.
Before I left the cabin our eyes met--the eyes of the only
two strangers on board. I pointed to the recessed part where
the little campstool awaited him and laid my finger on my lips.