<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER 9 </h2>
<p>'"I was saying to myself, 'Sink—curse you! Sink!'" These were the
words with which he began again. He wanted it over. He was severely left
alone, and he formulated in his head this address to the ship in a tone of
imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed the privilege of witnessing
scenes—as far as I can judge—of low comedy. They were still at
that bolt. The skipper was ordering, "Get under and try to lift"; and the
others naturally shirked. You understand that to be squeezed flat under
the keel of a boat wasn't a desirable position to be caught in if the ship
went down suddenly. "Why don't you—you the strongest?" whined the
little engineer. "Gott-for-dam! I am too thick," spluttered the skipper in
despair. It was funny enough to make angels weep. They stood idle for a
moment, and suddenly the chief engineer rushed again at Jim.</p>
<p>'"Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your only chance away? Come and
help, man! Man! Look there—look!"</p>
<p>'And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed with maniacal
insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had eaten up already
one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come up there about that
time of the year. First you see a darkening of the horizon—no more;
then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straight edge of vapour lined
with sickly whitish gleams flies up from the southwest, swallowing the
stars in whole constellations; its shadow flies over the waters, and
confounds sea and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still. No
thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then in the
tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like undulations
of the very darkness run past, and suddenly, wind and rain strike together
with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid.
Such a cloud had come up while they weren't looking. They had just noticed
it, and were perfectly justified in surmising that if in absolute
stillness there was some chance for the ship to keep afloat a few minutes
longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make an end of her
instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the burst of such a
squall would be also her last, would become a plunge, would, so to speak,
be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to the bottom. Hence these new
capers of their fright, these new antics in which they displayed their
extreme aversion to die.</p>
<p>'"It was black, black," pursued Jim with moody steadiness. "It had sneaked
upon us from behind. The infernal thing! I suppose there had been at the
back of my head some hope yet. I don't know. But that was all over anyhow.
It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I was angry, as though I
had been trapped. I <i>was</i> trapped! The night was hot, too, I
remember. Not a breath of air."</p>
<p>'He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he seemed to sweat and
choke before my eyes. No doubt it maddened him; it knocked him over afresh—in
a manner of speaking—but it made him also remember that important
purpose which had sent him rushing on that bridge only to slip clean out
of his mind. He had intended to cut the lifeboats clear of the ship. He
whipped out his knife and went to work slashing as though he had seen
nothing, had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They thought him
hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared not protest noisily against
this useless loss of time. When he had done he returned to the very same
spot from which he had started. The chief was there, ready with a clutch
at him to whisper close to his head, scathingly, as though he wanted to
bite his ear—</p>
<p>'"You silly fool! do you think you'll get the ghost of a show when all
that lot of brutes is in the water? Why, they will batter your head for
you from these boats."</p>
<p>'He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim's elbow. The skipper kept up a
nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, "Hammer! hammer! Mein Gott! Get
a hammer."</p>
<p>'The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, broken arm and all, he
turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually,
mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it
must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks
like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. He was back
instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without a pause flung himself at
the bolt. The others gave up Jim at once and ran off to assist. He heard
the tap, tap of the hammer, the sound of the released chock falling over.
The boat was clear. Only then he turned to look—only then. But he
kept his distance—he kept his distance. He wanted me to know he had
kept his distance; that there was nothing in common between him and these
men—who had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It is more than probable
he thought himself cut off from them by a space that could not be
traversed, by an obstacle that could not be overcome, by a chasm without
bottom. He was as far as he could get from them—the whole breadth of
the ship.</p>
<p>'His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to their indistinct
group bowed together and swaying strangely in the common torment of fear.
A hand-lamp lashed to a stanchion above a little table rigged up on the
bridge—the Patna had no chart-room amidships—threw a light on
their labouring shoulders, on their arched and bobbing backs. They pushed
at the bow of the boat; they pushed out into the night; they pushed, and
would no more look back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had
been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to be worth an
appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had no leisure to look back upon
his passive heroism, to feel the sting of his abstention. The boat was
heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging
word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like
chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions into a bit of
fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed
with their hands, with their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the
weight of their bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls—only
no sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of the davit than
they would leave off like one man and start a wild scramble into her. As a
natural consequence the boat would swing in abruptly, driving them back,
helpless and jostling against each other. They would stand nonplussed for
a while, exchanging in fierce whispers all the infamous names they could
call to mind, and go at it again. Three times this occurred. He described
it to me with morose thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of
that comic business. "I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all
that," he said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful
glance. "Was ever there any one so shamefully tried?"</p>
<p>'He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man driven to
distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These were things he could not
explain to the court—and not even to me; but I would have been
little fitted for the reception of his confidences had I not been able at
times to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon his
fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile
vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—a
degradation of funny grimaces in the approach of death or dishonour.</p>
<p>'He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this distance of time
I couldn't recall his very words: I only remember that he managed
wonderfully to convey the brooding rancour of his mind into the bare
recital of events. Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude
that the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open them again.
Each time he noted the darkening of the great stillness. The shadow of the
silent cloud had fallen upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed to have
extinguished every sound of her teeming life. He could no longer hear the
voices under the awnings. He told me that each time he closed his eyes a
flash of thought showed him that crowd of bodies, laid out for death, as
plain as daylight. When he opened them, it was to see the dim struggle of
four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. "They would fall back
before it time after time, stand swearing at each other, and suddenly make
another rush in a bunch. . . . Enough to make you die laughing," he
commented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a moment to my face
with a dismal smile, "I ought to have a merry life of it, by God! for I
shall see that funny sight a good many times yet before I die." His eyes
fell again. "See and hear. . . . See and hear," he repeated twice, at long
intervals, filled by vacant staring.</p>
<p>'He roused himself.</p>
<p>'"I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut," he said, "and I couldn't. I
couldn't, and I don't care who knows it. Let them go through that kind of
thing before they talk. Just let them—and do better—that's
all. The second time my eyelids flew open and my mouth too. I had felt the
ship move. She just dipped her bows—and lifted them gently—and
slow! everlastingly slow; and ever so little. She hadn't done that much
for days. The cloud had raced ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel
upon a sea of lead. There was no life in that stir. It managed, though, to
knock over something in my head. What would you have done? You are sure of
yourself—aren't you? What would you do if you felt now—this
minute—the house here move, just move a little under your chair.
Leap! By heavens! you would take one spring from where you sit and land in
that clump of bushes yonder."</p>
<p>'He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone balustrade. I held my
peace. He looked at me very steadily, very severe. There could be no
mistake: I was being bullied now, and it behoved me to make no sign lest
by a gesture or a word I should be drawn into a fatal admission about
myself which would have had some bearing on the case. I was not disposed
to take any risk of that sort. Don't forget I had him before me, and
really he was too much like one of us not to be dangerous. But if you want
to know I don't mind telling you that I did, with a rapid glance, estimate
the distance to the mass of denser blackness in the middle of the
grass-plot before the verandah. He exaggerated. I would have landed short
by several feet—and that's the only thing of which I am fairly
certain.</p>
<p>'The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move. His feet
remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking about loose in
his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around the
boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms, totter
and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he only slid gently into a sitting
posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against the side
of the engine-room skylight. "That was the donkey-man. A haggard,
white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third engineer," he
explained.</p>
<p>'"Dead," I said. We had heard something of that in court.</p>
<p>'"So they say," he pronounced with sombre indifference. "Of course I never
knew. Weak heart. The man had been complaining of being out of sorts for
some time before. Excitement. Over-exertion. Devil only knows. Ha! ha! ha!
It was easy to see he did not want to die either. Droll, isn't it? May I
be shot if he hadn't been fooled into killing himself! Fooled—neither
more nor less. Fooled into it, by heavens! just as I . . . Ah! If he had
only kept still; if he had only told them to go to the devil when they
came to rush him out of his bunk because the ship was sinking! If he had
only stood by with his hands in his pockets and called them names!"</p>
<p>'He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down.</p>
<p>'"A chance missed, eh?" I murmured.</p>
<p>'"Why don't you laugh?" he said. "A joke hatched in hell. Weak heart! . .
. I wish sometimes mine had been."</p>
<p>'This irritated me. "Do you?" I exclaimed with deep-rooted irony. "Yes!
Can't <i>you</i> understand?" he cried. "I don't know what more you could
wish for," I said angrily. He gave me an utterly uncomprehending glance.
This shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the man to
bother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was
not fair game. I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,—that
he had not even heard the twang of the bow.</p>
<p>'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead. The next minute—his
last on board—was crowded with a tumult of events and sensations
which beat about him like the sea upon a rock. I use the simile advisedly,
because from his relation I am forced to believe he had preserved through
it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as though he had not acted but
had suffered himself to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected
him for the victim of their practical joke. The first thing that came to
him was the grinding surge of the heavy davits swinging out at last—a
jar which seemed to enter his body from the deck through the soles of his
feet, and travel up his spine to the crown of his head. Then, the squall
being very near now, another and a heavier swell lifted the passive hull
in a threatening heave that checked his breath, while his brain and his
heart together were pierced as with daggers by panic-stricken screams.
"Let go! For God's sake, let go! Let go! She's going." Following upon that
the boat-falls ripped through the blocks, and a lot of men began to talk
in startled tones under the awnings. "When these beggars did break out,
their yelps were enough to wake the dead," he said. Next, after the
splashing shock of the boat literally dropped in the water, came the
hollow noises of stamping and tumbling in her, mingled with confused
shouts: "Unhook! Unhook! Shove! Unhook! Shove for your life! Here's the
squall down on us. . . ." He heard, high above his head, the faint
muttering of the wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain. A lost voice
alongside started cursing a swivel hook. The ship began to buzz fore and
aft like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was telling me of all
this—because just then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in
voice—he went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, "I
stumbled over his legs."</p>
<p>'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. I could not
restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had started him off at last, but
of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility, he
knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid it low.
All this had come to him: the sounds, the sights, the legs of the dead man—by
Jove! The infernal joke was being crammed devilishly down his throat, but—look
you—he was not going to admit of any sort of swallowing motion in
his gullet. It's extraordinary how he could cast upon you the spirit of
his illusion. I listened as if to a tale of black magic at work upon a
corpse.</p>
<p>'"He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the last thing I
remember seeing on board," he continued. "I did not care what he did. It
looked as though he were picking himself up: I thought he was picking
himself up, of course: I expected him to bolt past me over the rail and
drop into the boat after the others. I could hear them knocking about down
there, and a voice as if crying up a shaft called out 'George!' Then three
voices together raised a yell. They came to me separately: one bleated,
another screamed, one howled. Ough!"</p>
<p>'He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if a steady hand
from above had been pulling him out of the chair by his hair. Up, slowly—to
his full height, and when his knees had locked stiff the hand let him go,
and he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion of awful
stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very voice when he said
"They shouted"—and involuntarily I pricked up my ears for the ghost
of that shout that would be heard directly through the false effect of
silence. "There were eight hundred people in that ship," he said, impaling
me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare. "Eight hundred living
people, and they were yelling after the one dead man to come down and be
saved. 'Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump!' I stood by with my hand on the
davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch dark. You could see
neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat alongside go bump, bump, and not
another sound down there for a while, but the ship under me was full of
talking noises. Suddenly the skipper howled 'Mein Gott! The squall! The
squall! Shove off!' With the first hiss of rain, and the first gust of
wind, they screamed, 'Jump, George! We'll catch you! Jump!' The ship began
a slow plunge; the rain swept over her like a broken sea; my cap flew off
my head; my breath was driven back into my throat. I heard as if I had
been on the top of a tower another wild screech, 'Geo-o-o-orge! Oh, jump!'
She was going down, down, head first under me. . . ."</p>
<p>'He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made picking motions
with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs, and
afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second before he
blurted out—</p>
<p>'"I had jumped . . ." He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . . "It
seems," he added.</p>
<p>'His clear blue eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, and looking at him
standing before me, dumfounded and hurt, I was oppressed by a sad sense of
resigned wisdom, mingled with the amused and profound pity of an old man
helpless before a childish disaster.</p>
<p>'"Looks like it," I muttered.</p>
<p>'"I knew nothing about it till I looked up," he explained hastily. And
that's possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a small boy
in trouble. He didn't know. It had happened somehow. It would never happen
again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across a thwart. He
felt as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken; then he
rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising above him,
with the red side-light glowing large in the rain like a fire on the brow
of a hill seen through a mist. "She seemed higher than a wall; she loomed
like a cliff over the boat . . . I wished I could die," he cried. "There
was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a well—into an
everlasting deep hole. . . ."'</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />