XIX

The men in the boat continued to stare at the place where their ship had been as though they still saw her. They remained trance-like without a movement in an apparent refusal to believe their experience. They certainly heard Hale’s voice there just now. The peaceful brightness of the vacant ocean was a mistake.

It was a stupid little noise in the shining immensity which woke Colet from his far absorption with what had gone, and brought him back to notice what new thing had taken its place. Lycett, beside him, was crying, but was trying to hide it. Mr. Collins, in the stern-sheets, had also withdrawn his gaze from the sea. He indicated something to a seaman, who spat on his palms, and made a few slow strokes with his oar. Nothing remained of the past but a spreading defilement of ash and oil.

Sinclair called across to them, and Collins held up a hand in understanding. Both craft set their lugs, and, in company, began to withdraw their occupants into another extension of life. Lycett’s head was averted. He was watching the near water. An area of cinders drifted astern. He watched it go till the water was clear again. He sat looking for more cinders, but the sea continued to be pure, impersonal, and unconcerned. Colet crouched uncomfortably, without changing his position, as if this posture in an open boat were but briefly provisional, and he were waiting for a return to what was necessary and accustomed. The transition from one existence to the next had been so abrupt that he had not fully accepted the change. And big Gillespie crouching on the opposite bench, staring between his legs at the bottom-boards, was vague. It was hardly Gillespie, in that attitude and that place. Colet was still in a ship’s cabin of another time, for the last minute of that room had survived its clock.

“That’s all, Colet. Time to go.” But he had not gone yet.

Through that immediate apparition Colet presently surmised, as in a dissolving view, a threatening incline of blue water above them, at a surprising height above them. It shut out the sky astern. Before he rightly knew it was there he was soaring on it giddily, and his hand, hanging over the side, was immersed. He hastily withdrew his hand, plucking it, the last bit of himself in that enchantment, out of one dangerous dream into the next. He was transferred. From the summit of that swell he looked round upon an ocean he had never seen before. It was a narrower place, but at its centre it was more intimate and overgrown. The water had touched his hand; it was in hurrying flux near to his eyes; and the seas had become steep, and ranged close round above their mast. They were imprisoned by waves. Their complete assurance of the company of the other boat was intermittent.

They thought they heard singing. They really heard it, when their neighbour was on a crest above them; chance fragments of a song blew over from windward. A quick ear in their own boat caught some odd notes and recognised them. That stoker in the bows began to respond in drawling sardonic sentiment, “I⁠—don’t⁠—care⁠—if you⁠—don’t love⁠—me⁠—I⁠—don’t⁠—care⁠—if you go⁠—to⁠—sea.”

Wilson sat near Colet. He was triturating tobacco between his hands in a musing deliberation which hinted to Colet that there was plenty of this new time. When a movement of the boat threw him out of his balance, Wilson paused, patiently. No need to hurry.

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 hilltop. 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 man 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 seawater 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 featherbeds,” 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.”

Someone 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.”