Walking Shadows: Sea Tales and Others

by Alfred Noyes

"Turn it over," said Fitch.

I obeyed him, and saw that the whole back of the kakemono, which measured about four feet by two, was covered with a fine scrawl of Japanese characters in purple copying-pencil. I had overlooked it at first, or accepted it, with the eye of ignorance, as a mere piece of Oriental decoration.

"That is what we all did," said Fitch. "We all overlooked the simple fact that Japanese words have a meaning. We didn't trouble about it—you know how vaguely one's eye travels over a three-foot sign on a Japanese tea-house—we didn't even think about it till Mr. Kato turned up in our office a week or two ago. You can't read it. Nor can I. But we got Mr. Knight here to handle it for us."

"It turns out to be a message from Harper," said Knight. "Apparently, he was lying helpless in his berth, and told the Japanese to write it down. A few sentences here and there are unintelligible, owing to the refraction of the Oriental mind. Fortunately, it is Harper's own message. I have made two versions, one a perfectly literal one which requires a certain amount of re-translation. The other is an attempt to give as nearly as possible what Harper himself dictated. This is the version which I had better read to you now. The original has various repetitions, and shows that Harper's mind occasionally wandered, for he goes into trivial detail sometimes. He seems to have been possessed, however, with the idea of getting his account through to the owners; and, whenever he got an opportunity, he made the Japanese take up his pencil and write, so that we have a very full account."

Knight took out a note-book, adjusted his glasses, and began to read, while the ghostly original fluttered in my hand, as the night-wind blew from the sea.

"A terrible thing has happened, and I think it my duty to write this, in the hope that it may fall into the hands of friends at home. I am not likely to live another twenty-four hours. The first hint that I had of anything wrong was on the night of March the fifteenth, when Mrs. Burgess came up to me on deck, looking very worried, and said, 'Mr. Harper, I am in great trouble. I want to ask you a question, and I want you to give me an honest answer.' She looked round nervously, and her hands were fidgeting with her handkerchief, as if she were frightened to death. 'Whatever your answer may be,' she said, 'you'll not mention what I've said to you.' I promised her. She laid her hand on my arm and said with the most piteous look in her face I have ever seen, 'I have no other friends to go to, and I want you to tell me. Mr. Harper, is my husband sane?'

"I had never doubted the sanity of Burgess till that moment. But there was something in the dreadfulness of that question, from a woman who had only been married a few months, that seemed like a door opening into the bottomless pit.

"It seemed to explain many things that hadn't occurred to me before. I asked her what she meant and she told me that last night Burgess had come into the cabin and waked her up. His eyes were starting out of his head, and he told her that he had seen Captain Dayrell walking on deck. She told him it was nothing but imagination; and he laid his head on his arms and sobbed like a child. He said he thought it was one of the deckhands that had just come out of the foc'sle, but all the men were short and smallish, and this was a big burly figure. It went ahead of him like his own shadow, and disappeared in the bows. But he knew it was Dayrell, and there was a curse on him. To-night, she said, half an hour ago, Burgess had come down to her, taken her by the throat, and sworn he would kill her if she didn't confess that Dayrell was still alive. She told him he must be crazy. 'My mind may be going,' he said, 'but you sha'n't kill my soul.' And he called her a name which she didn't repeat, but began to cry when she remembered it. He said he had seen Dayrell standing in the bows with the light of the moon full on his face, and he looked so brave and upright that he knew he must have been bitterly wronged. He looked like a soldier facing the enemy, he said.

"While she was telling me this, she was looking around her in a very nervous kind of way, and we both heard some one coming up behind us very quietly. We turned round, and there—as God lives—stood the living image of Captain Dayrell looking at us, in the shadow of the mast. Mrs. Burgess gave a shriek that paralyzed me for the moment, then she ran like a wild thing into the bows, and before any one could stop her, she climbed up and threw herself overboard. Evans and Barron were only a few yards away from her when she did it, and they both went overboard after her immediately, one of them throwing a life-belt over ahead of him as he went. They were both good swimmers, and as the moon was bright, I thought we had only to launch a boat to pick them all up. I shouted to the Kanakas, and they all came up running. Two of the men and myself got into one of the starboard boats, and we were within three feet of the water when I heard the crack of a revolver from somewhere in the bows of the Evening Star. The men who were lowering away let us down with a rush that nearly capsized us. There were four more shots while we were getting our oars out. I called to the men on deck, asking them who was shooting, but got no reply. I believe they were panic-stricken and had bolted into cover. We pulled round the bows, and could see nothing. There was not a sign of the woman or the two men in the water.

"We could make nobody hear us on the ship, and all this while we had seen nothing of Captain Burgess. It must have been nearly an hour before we gave up our search, and tried to get aboard again. We were still unable to get any reply from the ship, and we were about to try to climb on board by the boat's falls. The men were backing her in, stern first, and we were about ten yards away from the ship when the figure of Captain Dayrell appeared leaning over the side of the Evening Star. He stood there against the moonlight, with his face in shadow; but we all of us recognized him, and I heard the teeth of the Kanakas chattering. They had stopped backing, and we all stared at one another. Then, as casually as if it were a joke, Dayrell stretched out his arm, and I saw the moonlight glint on his revolver. He fired at us, deliberately, as if he were shooting at clay pigeons. I felt the wind of the first shot going past my head, and the two men at once began to pull hard to get out of range. The second shot missed also. At the third shot, he got the man in the bows full in the face. He fell over backwards, and lay there in the bottom of the boat. He must have been killed instantaneously. At the fourth shot, I felt a stinging pain on the left side of my body, but hardly realized I had been wounded at the moment. A cloud passed over the moon just then, and the way we had got on the boat had carried us too far for Dayrell to aim very accurately, so that I was able to get to the oars and pull out of range. The other man must have been wounded also, for he was lying in the bottom of the boat groaning, but I do not remember seeing him hit. I managed to pull fifty yards or so, and then fainted, for I was bleeding very badly.