XXXVI
It so chanced that Tom Horn did not appear at Christopher Dent's for some nights; and so Mademoiselle Lafargue, with brisk little shoes clicking upon the floor, and silken gloves upon her hands, and a lace shawl about her head, came into the apothecary's shop in the twilight before he had kindled his lamps. She forthwith demanded that he keep his promise and go with her to Tom Horn's lodgings, that she might speak with the odd clerk in the matter he had dwelt so earnestly upon some nights before.
Christopher eagerly put on his hat and tailed coat, and wrote a legend announcing that because of unavoidable matters his shop would be closed for a few hours, which he stuck upon the door; then he turned the key in the lock with care and, with mademoiselle at his side, proceeded in the direction of Pump Court. This was a wide court, of no great depth, with three broad-fronted houses on each side of it, and a cool flagged space between; and in the center stood the pump, with a tub under its spout, from which the court took its name. There was a little fringe of grass about the edge of each of the houses, and vines climbed the walls; the shutters were green and stood wide; the door- and window-frames were white. Christopher pointed to the sloping roof of one of the houses, where a dormer-window leaned outward.
"That," said the little apothecary, "is Tom Horn's lodgings."
They climbed the wide, solid steps, and at the top of the house knocked upon a door. Tom Horn opened it; he did not seem at all surprised, but only opened it a great deal wider when he saw who it was.
"Come in," he said. "I am glad to see you."
The room was a very large one and sparely furnished; on a broad table, with lighted candles set about it, was a great clutter of papers.
"Figures," said Christopher, as he looked down at the papers. "All figures." He looked at Tom Horn and rubbed his own shining crown. "They must be like a spoken language to you."
"Figures are truer and more dependable than a language made of words," said Tom Horn. "The circles come at through them are perfect ones. There is no bending them to other shapes. Words, now, can be wrought to fit both prejudice and unreason."
"That is true," said the little apothecary, and he turned a look upon mademoiselle which told of his admiration for the saying. "That is very true, indeed."
There were bare spaces upon the walls of Tom Horn's lodgings, and pinned there were what looked like maps, but maps such as neither mademoiselle nor Christopher had ever seen before. For about the islands and along the headlands and through the bulk of the sea itself were drawn long lines which curled slowly toward an inevitable roundness. Figures were set down in red ink along these lines, and arrows of blue pointed out their circular, grasping sweep. Upon the mantel was a slim array of books, and mademoiselle, as she looked at their worn sheep bindings and their inked-in titles, saw that astronomy, navigation, and geometry were the matters there dealt with.
The place had a clean, bare look; the single twinkling light in the court could be seen from the high window; a thrush on an open perch stirred now and then and chirped sleepily; and a wooden-wheeled clock ticked and grumbled in its high case. Mademoiselle listened to the two men for a space after they had settled down, and then, in a silence between them, she spoke to Tom Horn.
"Mr. Dent has told me of the interest he feels in your theory of tides and currents, and especially in how they might have affected the ship Rufus Stevens. And we have come to-night to hear more of it, if you are of the mind to tell it."
"We have a curiosity concerning your idea," said Christopher cautiously. "And so, if there is any more to tell, we beg of you to tell it plainly, for it may be a thought with a deal of value, and which could be put to a practical use."
Never had Tom Horn looked so worn and fragile as he did at that moment, sitting with the mass of calculations before him and with the candle-light upon him; never before had the strange, luminous quality that he threw off been so pronounced, never had the odd, hopeful look in his eyes shown so fully through their fixed despair.
"I will say what I can," he said, "and that is not much; for no man can speak with authority on things urged by powers whose weight he can only surmise. But this I know: In the south region of the world, the edge of Africa and that of South America make the two sides of a vast throat, and through this the waters warmed by the tropics force themselves northward. The current clings to the American side and, when opposite the mouth of the Amazon, begins to thicken. It sweeps between Trinidad and the Barbados into the Carribbean; it rounds the West Indies to the south and curves into the gulf, and then, out and away, along the North American coast."
"And holds all its parts to itself on the way," marveled Christopher. "That is wonderful, indeed. It is as though it were a vast living thing."
"From the north," said Tom Horn, and he pointed a long finger at one of the maps on the wall, "comes a second current, cold, holding to the coast and meeting the warm current where the ocean's bed rises so abruptly off Newfoundland. Here the two merge and swing off toward the east. But the land turns them south; holding to the African rim they flow back through the great throat, completing the circle. And somewhere inside that circle," said Tom Horn, "is the Sargasso; it lies to the south of the Azores, to the west of the Canaries, and northwest of the Cape Verdes Islands, a vast pool of slack water; and into it is drawn all those things which the currents have ravished from the world."
"It is your thought, then," said mademoiselle, "that the ship Rufus Stevens, if still afloat, may have fallen into the grip of this great circle. But might it not be that the storm blew her out of reach of the currents? Who can say what happened in a great wind like that?"
Tom Horn took one of the sheets from the table.
"It was Captain Frisbee who saw the ship. And the spot where he saw her, made by dead reckoning, is set down here. It was three in the afternoon, and the wind was blowing from the southwest. Captain Frisbee told me these things himself," said Tom Horn. "I went to him and asked. And he judged that the gale was blowing at seventy miles an hour, and held so until nightfall on the following day, when it had blown itself out. That gives twenty-seven hours of wicked weather, the wind blowing into the east by north all the time.
"With that body of wind," the clerk went on, "and that number of hours, a ship without masts or sails can be figured to have been driven so many leagues. And my calculations show me that when the storm fell the Rufus Stevens lay at or near this spot on the ocean's water," and he picked the place out on the paper with his finger, "at or near this spot, which is south of the Azores, and on the inner rim of the great circle. And being so situated, and without help," said Tom Horn, "nothing can prevent her from drifting into the Grassy Sea."
"Could it not be," said Christopher Dent, "that she might have settled into some other current after the wind fell, and so floated away in another direction?"
"One whole year I drifted in the William and Mary," said Tom Horn. "Each day of that year I marked down in a book, and underneath I wrote what I saw in the sea and in the sky. The William and Mary was a good ship, but misfortune touched her. Time has told me that it was not the misfortune of chance; men had to do with it; there was a purpose in it; but what, or how, I could never contrive. The ship was down by the head when they left her; they desired me to get into a boat with the second mate, Ezra Hardy, who was a plain, honest man. But I said I would stay with the ship. And that boat, with all who were in her, was never heard of again."
"And the others?" asked Christopher Dent.
"The boat of the captain was a strong one," said Tom Horn. "And so was the first mate's. They lived: oh, yes, that was seen to. They lived buoyantly through the storm."
"Do you say," and mademoiselle's voice shook, "that you refused to leave the ship because you believed the second mate's boat was meant to go down?"
"First," said Tom Horn, "I desired to remain with the cargo while there was a chance of saving it. Second," and he whispered this, "it was as you say."
"Now, God save us!" said Christopher Dent in horror. "God in His Heaven save us!"
"I watched the sea all that day," said the clerk, "and I listened through the night; for it was heavy in my mind that the captain and first mate would return. For I knew the men who were in their boats,—hardy, desperate, unsparing men,—and I feared for my life."
"They did not return!" said the little apothecary. "Oh, no, I trust not! I dread to think otherwise."
"The drifting water took the hulk, weighted as it was," said Tom Horn; "with her forecastle down and her forward hatch almost under, the great circle took her and carried her away; and so the villains lost all track of her, and I drifted into the lonely sea. The sun shone through a haze," said the clerk; "its color was russet and streaked with white; so still was the air I saw spirals of mist, like ropes, lowered from the sky. On every side the sea was like a grassy field; I saw planks and spars lying on what seemed solid ground; great birds sat and watched me as though waiting for the time when I should die. There was a ghastly kind of vegetation: pallid, slimy plants,—bloodless,—like things that had grown in the dark; they were horrible to see and more horrible to touch. And," said Tom Horn, "a monstrous life stirred beneath the green scum of the sea. Since time began, God's hand has been turned to many dreadful tasks; but He has hidden them from most men's eyes."
"We will grant," said the girl, "that a ship, circumstanced as you believe the Rufus Stevens was at the end of the storm, must have fallen into the grasp of the great current and so came, or will come, to the Grassy Sea. But before going so far we must assure ourselves she remained afloat."
"Any one who watched her building," said Tom Horn, "must have seen she was a strong vessel. Siddons is an honest man; he never slights a task; he does honest, sound work. Live-oak is tough; hammered iron does not give readily; the ship was new, and, though the masts were out of her when Frisbee saw her, the decks were sound and the hatches fast down. I questioned him about that, and he was quite sure. The ship was like a cask," said Tom Horn. "The sea could not harm her, there being nothing to dash her against. Mark me! she is adrift at this moment in the slimy grass of that silent place; and her cargo is as dry and safe as it would be if it were in a merchant's storehouse."
Mademoiselle's hands trembled, but her voice was steady as she said:
"Would it be possible to find this strange ocean backwater? Could you—could any one—take a ship into it?"
"South of the Azores," said Tom Horn, "northwest of the Cape Verdes, and west of the Canaries." He nodded his head. "I could find my way back to it," said he. "Through all the vast spaces of the sea I could find my way back there, for it is so fixed in my mind that the very sky above it would be known to me if I once lifted it to the horizon-line."
"Anthony Stevens!" said mademoiselle to Christopher. "He must be told!"
"But his health!" protested the little apothecary.
"This will be health to him," said the girl. "This news would put life in him if he stood on the verge of the grave."
"Very well. He shall be told," said Christopher. "He shall be told, and at once."