CHAPTER XII. JULIA CALLS "JOHNNY!"
It was about half-past two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun shone hotly. The breeze was a pleasant wind for that boat, and the captain put her dead before it and blew onwards into the boundless distance, squarely seated at the amidship helm, with the white and placid face of the drugged girl at his feet.
He would often look at her with a passionate eagerness, and then direct his brilliant eyes over the sea, and his countenance was now shocking with its expression of real madness, charged with the ghastly illumination of his one maniacal belief, that the girl, who was fresh from the sea when he missed his boy, knew where he was and would take him to the child, and then they would return to the ship, and once more the drum would rattle and the whistle awaken the birds in the rigging.
Never before in all human tradition of ocean life had fate painted upon the bosom of the deep a picture more wonderful by virtue of its secret and tragic meaning. There would be nothing in the mere scene of a beautiful clipper ship under all plain sail, her canvas hollowing inwards visibly, to all intents and purposes derelict; there would be nothing in the spectacle of a little open boat borne onwards by the humming heart of its swelling square of canvas, steered by a lonely figure, the other being hidden. It might be to a distant eye the flight of a single survivor from a floating pest-house. But it was the story of the thing which makes it so extraordinary that I who am writing pause with astonishment, dismayed also by the lack of the exquisite cunning I need to submit the truth.
The girl had been drugged with morphia, but in what dose, and in what doses the men, it is impossible to conjecture. The madman reading the book of directions may have understood it, but insanity had rendered memory useless when it came to his mixing the poison with the liquor and the wine. But she was not dead; he would have found that out if he had bared her breast and put his ear to the white softness. But would she die in that sleep which was as death? for I believe it is the heart's action that fails in such cases, and at any moment her soul might return to God.
But he! poor unhappy wretch, if he understood what his mad but most moving love for his child had impelled him to do, his perception would not be as ours. His heart burned with desire that she should awake and tell him in which direction he should steer, for already the ship was a toy astern, three spires of ice-like radiance dipping to the eye on the brows of the blue swell as the boat rose and sank, jewelling the water with two foam-threaded lines of little yeasty bubbles.
Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the early hours of the night.
But these were not his speculations. His mind was intent on one object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was.
It passed into about an hour before sunset.
From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had created it he sighed and frowned.
He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows. All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's sail—so low seated was the gunwale of that boat—lay a small vessel, partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the trysail was stowed.
"He will be there! he will be there!" cried the captain in a voice that swept like a shriek from his lips, and as the words left him the girl, with a long, strange sigh, opened her eyes full upon the wild nightmare face that was on a line with her head, for he had sprung to his feet.
"He is there!" he shouted again.
Then looking down he saw her watching him, and had he been sane would have witnessed the awakening reason in her darkening into horror. She tried to sit up, but her body was heavy as lead.
"Oh, what is this? Where am I?" she asked, more in a mutter than in clear speech.
"He is there!" he cried, pointing with a frantic gesture, "and you have known it throughout your sleep. Look!" He stooped, put his hands under her arms and lifted her out of the bottom of the boat into the stern-sheets, against whose back-board she sank.
Now morphia gives you but sleep if it does not kill you, and reason with many is immediately active when slumber is ended; but the captain's face alone would have sufficed to stimulate the most sluggish consciousness into clear perception, and without understanding the reason of it she grasped her situation.
She was alone in a boat with the mad captain of the York, and there was nothing in sight save the everlasting circle of the sea girdling a small broken vessel toward which the boat was running, for the captain had his hand upon the yoke, and the little fabric was dead before it once again.
Despair laid the ice-cold hand of death upon the poor girl's heart. What could she do? What would he do?
As the sun slowly floated down the slope he was glorifying, the moon brightened her broken face. Julia's lips were dry; her tongue had the rasp of a cat's upon the roof of her mouth.
"Is there water here?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. You shall have water. Put your hand upon this. What sha'n't you have who have helped me to find him!"
She extended her hand and held the yoke steady, and he went into the bows with the glass and filled it from the breaker, all as sensibly as though he was right in mind; but he stood two or three moments to look at the vessel they were nearing and talk to her.
She drank with the thirst of fever, and then perfect realisation possessing her, a little impulse of hope quickened the beat of her heart, for she thought to herself, made cool by hope, "There are people in that ship, and I shall be saved."
The vessel was a small brig, floating on a cargo of timber. She showed a tolerable height of side, and judging from her condition she had started a butt, and the inrush had overmastered the pump, and as her davits were empty her people had no doubt got away in the boats. She made a churchyard picture for forlornness, with the broken moon hanging over her, though daylight still throbbed in folds of cloud in the deep west.
Julia saw with a fainting heart that the brig was deserted, and she turned her eyes up to God and asked what should she do?
The captain stood in silence, with one hand backward upon the yoke, his head inclined forward with intent, searching stare.
"He may be in that brig," at last he said. "What moved then? No, 'twas the swing of the forebrace. And if he is not in that vessel," he continued, in a voice of cunning, "you who know where he is will tell me where to steer."
She brought the whole of her wits together in her resolution to live, and remembered that she had given some order to this man's insanity by her system of answering his talk. She exclaimed with all the tranquillity she could summon:
"If he is not in that vessel, Captain Layard, you will let me rest in her for the night, because if you keep me sitting in this open boat I shall be worn out, or I might die—I am not strong—and how, then, could I help you to find little Johnny?"
"Right! You are right," he answered, swiftly; "you shall rest in that brig if he is not there; but if he is there," changing his voice into a note of triumph, he added, "we must rejoin the ship, because I want the men to see him. And I am dying for his company at night, and for the sound of his drum."
As he spoke these words the boat was alongside the abandoned timberman, and with the dexterity of a sailor—for in all professional work he was as sane as the sanest—he put the helm down, sprang to let go the halliards of the lug, and secured the boat by passing her painter through a channel plate.
This brig had old-fashioned channels, which were platforms secured to the ship's side so as to give a wide spread to the shrouds and backstays. The boat sat close beside the main-channel. With the resolution of one who works for life the girl seized the lanyards of the dead-eyes, and with the ease which her graceful figure would have promised gained the platform of channel, and a minute later the deck.
With aberration disciplined by professional habit the captain went to work, his intentions being perfectly sane, save that he discovered an extraordinary anxiety and eagerness to get on board the brig. He knew that he and the girl were to pass the night in the vessel, and so, with the quick motions of madness and with the strength which madness often confers, he got the breaker of water into the main-channel, then placed beside it the stock of provisions he had stowed away aft, and called to Julia:
"Do you see him?"
"Come on deck, and we will look," she answered, for now that she stood on a solid deck her nerve had returned.
"Steady this breaker on the rail," he called.
He handed it on to the rail, and she held it. He then threw the provisions on to the deck, leapt inboard, and placed the breaker betwixt a couple of loose planks. The moon was shining brightly, and its light rippled in lines of lustrous pearl. The heave of the sea was slow and solemn, the wind was soft and weak, and the west was still scored with streaks of crimson; but night was at hand, and some stars were trembling in the east.
She was one of those little brigs which are among the quaintest of the marine objects of the port or harbour. Her forward-deck from the main-hatchway was heaped with timber cleverly stowed, with room for a little caboose and a narrow alley to it from the hatch. Some of the running rigging lay loose about the decks, and this gave her a look of confusion. Otherwise, from the appearance of her deck cargo, it was clear that she had not been hurt by weather. A deck-house nearly filled the quarter-deck; there was just room on either hand for a man to walk.
The captain stood silent for a minute staring about him. He then muttered:
"Nothing moves; I see nothing alive. He may be there. Come, for it will be you to see him first."
He went to the door of the deck-house, and Julia followed. Two windows stood on either side the door, and four windows ran down either wall. But when they entered the moon made so faint a light through the door and the windows that it was difficult to see. Yet distinctive features of the interior were visible: a table, three or four chairs, and a bulkhead abaft, which might screen from the living-room two holes for the skipper and his mate to sleep in.
"Call him," whispered the captain, as though he stood in a dead-house.
"Johnny!" cried the girl, "come to father if you are here, Johnny!"
She had a wonderful spirit to say this. She felt the horrible mockery of it and the recoil of its ghastly derisiveness upon her heart, but she knew that Hardy could not be far off, and would seek her. The passion of life was strong in her, and she judged that her only chance lay in inspiriting the poor man's dreadful conviction that she could help him to find his son.
"Call him again," said the captain, and again she called.
He advanced a step, and she saw him in the faint suffusion straining in a posture of desperate gaze, of desperate hearkening, as though his teeth were set and the sweat of blood was on his brow, and the palms of his hands were bloody with the penetration of the finger-nails.
At that moment she heard a single stroke of a bell. She started with a cry, with instant rejoicing, for she believed there were men in the vessel.
"What was that?" said the captain.
"A bell!" she exclaimed.
"O God! it may be Johnny!" he shouted, and he rushed through the open door.
She quickly followed; she was not a superstitious fool, she was a girl at sea, and, as a girl might, she supposed that if a bell were struck upon a ship's deck it was by a man.
A small bell was hung betwixt the foremast and the foremost end of the galley or caboose, and immediately under it lay, bottom up, secured to the deck, a small tub of a boat. It was easy to understand why the bell should have tolled. It had been struck by some bight of buntline or clewline in the sway of the brig as she heeled to the fold, and the sharp return of the bell jerked the tongue against the metal side in a single stroke.
But the captain was too mad to understand this, and Julia was a girl at sea without eyes for bights of running gear. She was startled, nay, a sudden horror of superstition visited her when following the captain. She stood near the bell and saw no signs of human creature. She cast looks of fear all about; one, even one, man would protect her against the horrible yokedom of this passage. The planks had the sheen of satin in the moonlight, and the power of the satellite sufficed to fling dark shadows upon the decks, and these shadows moved as the brig rolled. But she saw no man; and what ghostly hand then had struck that bell? For the night might go before the swing of the bight of gear should, by adjustment of the rolling of the vessel, exactly hit the bell again and make it ring.
The captain began to call, "Johnny, Johnny, where are you? Come out of your hiding-place, little sonny. Here's father waiting for you."
He breathed deep, listening and gazing about him; but no other reply reached his ear than the sob of water under the bow, the moan of night wind in the rigging, the sullen slap of canvas against the mast.
"Do you see him?" the captain asked, and the eyes of madness sparkled in the moonshine as he turned his gaze upon the girl.
She answered, huskily, "No, I do not see him. Who struck that bell?"
"He did," said the captain. "O God! O everlasting Father! Why does he hide himself from me?"
He clasped his hands and raised them and looked up, and in that posture he muttered as though he prayed, and all the while Julia was staring about her, faint with fear, and with the sight of that imploring figure of afflicted manhood; for who had struck the bell? And did the dead come to life again in phantoms? And was the spirit of Johnny invisibly present?
Poor Julia!
"He may come out of his hiding-place if we go aft," said the captain in his voice of cunning. "Stop!"
He stepped to the little caboose and entered it.
"Not here, not here," he groaned as he came out, "but we must have patience. We will sit and wait. We'll sit and watch the deck, and at any moment you may see his little figure coming along."
Weak with fear and superstition, and the horror of her ghastly situation, she followed the miserable man to the deck-house. He entered and brought out two chairs, which he placed in front of the door, and they sat down. It was certain that the man believed the child to be in this abandoned vessel, and this was assurance to Julia that he would not compel her to enter the boat and sail away in search of the boy. The thought inspired some faint hope; she knew that this was no unfrequented tract of ocean, and that even if Hardy did not seek her, any hour next day might bring along some ship which she could signal to by flourishing her handkerchief. But Hardy! She began to think whilst her dreadful companion sat beside her staring along the moonlighted deck, and waiting for his boy to come. She fully understood that she had been drugged; her thoughts went to the medicine-chest; had the captain poisoned Hardy and the rest of the crew that he might steal her from the ship? This puzzled her, for if the crew had been drugged they might have been drugged to death by the irresponsible hand of this madman, and Hardy would be lost to her for ever, and his ship would not come to rescue her.
These were her thoughts "too deep for tears," but it was fortunate that she had slept soundly and well in the boat, for now, though wearied in bone and faint at heart, she was as sleepless as the poor, tireless creature beside her. She could not have endured to enter the deck-house and rest there; she needed the companionship of the moon and the stars, and the visible surface of the deep blackening out from either hand the wake of the luminary to its limitless recesses. The whisper of the wind in the rigging was companionship, but the movements of the shadows upon the whitened planks were a perpetual fear, for who had struck the bell? and was the vessel haunted? Her throat was parched and she asked for water.
"Certainly; oh, yes. He is long in coming, but when he comes we'll rejoin the ship," the captain said as he rose, and quite sanely he went to the breaker, filled the tumbler, and returned with a glassful and a biscuit.
There was the courtesy of good breeding in the poor fellow as he handed her the glass, for the soul that is never mad will shine through disease, and Captain Layard, who was born a gentleman, proved a gentleman even when insane. She drank gratefully and ate the biscuit.
He took the glass from her and filled it for himself, but did not eat. Then he returned to his chair, and that dreadful watch on deck again began. Often he would say:
"Do you see him? Why should he keep in hiding?"
And sometimes he would quit his seat and go to the rail, and look into the sea over the side.
The water swarmed with fire this night; the chilly sea-glow started in fibres, in clouds like luminous smoke, in coils like revolving eels, and it is conceivable that the crazed eye which was bent upon these lights should fashion them into phantasms, into grotesque shapes, into the crowd of brassy faces which the sealed but waking vision beholds when the brain is drugged. He would spend twenty minutes in searching the waters, and then cross to the other side and spend a quarter of an hour in a like hunt. Always when he returned to his chair he would mutter to himself, "Why doesn't he come?" And once he started up with a frantic cry which was frightful with inarticulateness; he dashed his hand to his forehead and held it there, with his left arm stiffened out and the fingers curled with the agony of his mind.
At that moment the bell was again struck, and now it was Julia who shrieked. She started up and bent her head forward, thinking to see the figure that had struck the bell. The captain broke into a wild laugh.
"I see him! I see him!" he cried. "O Johnny, I'm your father!" and he started into a run with his arms outstretched, as if to seize the phantom he beheld.
He ran past the bell, and crying, "I am coming, Johnny, I am coming!" climbed on to the top of the deck load, and in a strange croaking voice, as though it proceeded from some huge sea-bird sailing overhead, he exclaimed:
"There you are at last, my Johnny! Father is coming to you!" and sprang overboard.
Julia fell upon the deck and lay lifeless in a swoon.