LITMIR.BIZ

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. “But it kept me from — Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the gunwale! . . . ” He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. . . . “Like this — see? One little tilt backwards and I would have been gone — after the others. One little tilt — the least bit — the least bit.” He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip of his middle finger, “It was there all the time,” he said impressively. “All the time — that notion. And the rain — cold, thick, cold as melted snow — colder — on my thin cotton clothes — I’ll never be so cold again in my life, I know. And the sky was black too — all black. Not a star, not a light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree’d thief. Yap! yap! ‘What you doing here? You’re a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin’ gentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To sneak in? Did you?’ Yap! yap! ‘You ain’t fit to live!’ Yap! yap! Two of them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from the stern through the rain — couldn’t see him — couldn’t make it out — some of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . ‘I wonder you had pluck enough to jump. You ain’t wanted here. If I had known who it was, I would have tipped you over — you skunk! What have you done with the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump — you coward? What’s to prevent us three from firing you overboard?’ . . . They were out of breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was nothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard, did they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? ‘Try,’ I said. ‘I would for twopence.’ ‘Too good for you,’ they screeched together. It was so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried.”

      ‘I couldn’t help exclaiming, “What an extraordinary affair!”

      ‘“Not bad — eh?” he said, as if in some sort astounded. “They pretended to think I had done away with that donkey-man for some reason or other. Why should I? And how the devil was I to know? Didn’t I get somehow into that boat? into that boat — I . . . ” The muscles round his lips contracted into an unconscious grimace that tore through the mask of his usual expression — something violent, short-lived and illuminating like a twist of lightning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret convolutions of a cloud. “I did. I was plainly there with them — wasn’t I? Isn’t it awful a man should be driven to do a thing like that — and be responsible? What did I know about their George they were howling after? I remembered I had seen him curled up on the deck. ‘Murdering coward!’ the chief kept on calling me. He didn’t seem able to remember any other two words. I didn’t care, only his noise began to worry me. ‘Shut up,’ I said. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. ‘You killed him! You killed him!’ ‘No,’ I shouted, ‘but I will kill you directly.’ I jumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an awful loud thump. I don’t know why. Too dark. Tried to step back I suppose. I stood still facing aft, and the wretched little second began to whine, ‘You ain’t going to hit a chap with a broken arm — and you call yourself a gentleman, too.’ I heard a heavy tramp — one — two — and wheezy grunting. The other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the stern. I saw him moving, big, big — as you see a man in a mist, in a dream. ‘Come on,’ I cried. I would have tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He stopped, muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had heard the wind. I didn’t. It was the last heavy gust we had. He went back to his oar. I was sorry. I would have tried to — to.. .”

      ‘He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an eager and cruel flutter. “Steady, steady,” I murmured.

      ‘“Eh? What? I am not excited,” he remonstrated, awfully hurt, and with a convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac bottle. I started forward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had been exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted, crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face white about the nostrils. A look of intense annoyance succeeded. “Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!” he mumbled, very vexed, while the pungent odour of spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere of a low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The lights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered solitary in the long gallery, and the columns had turned black from pediment to capital. On the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour Office stood out distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre pile had glided nearer to see and hear.

      ‘He assumed an air of indifference.

      ‘“I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for anything. These were trifles. . . . ”

      ‘“You had a lively time of it in that boat,” I remarked

      ‘“I was ready,” he repeated. “After the ship’s lights had gone, anything might have happened in that boat — anything in the world — and the world no wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just dark enough too. We were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern with anything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. Nothing mattered.” For the third time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was no one about to suspect him of being only drunk. “No fear, no law, no sounds, no eyes — not even our own, till — till sunrise at least.”

      ‘I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more complete — there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after waiting for a while, ‘Well, what happened?” A futile question. I knew too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. “Nothing,” he said. “I meant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing happened.”

      ‘And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in the bows of the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been holding the tiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped the rudder overboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got kicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and down that boat trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get clear of the side. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and apparently he had been clutching it for six hours or so. If you don’t call that being ready! Can you imagine him, silent and on his feet half the night, his face to the gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms watchful of vague movements, straining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the stern-sheets! Firmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? And the endurance is undeniable too. Six hours more or less on the defensive; six hours of alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated arrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the sea, calmed, slept at last; while the clouds passed above his head; while the sky from an immensity lustreless and black, diminished to a sombre and lustrous vault, scintillated with a greater brilliance, faded to the east,

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