The island of the stairs

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

I heard the door of her cabin shut violently. There was no help for it. Well, I must devise some way unaided. For I must get out for her sake. The cabin was lighted by an air port closed by a deadlight. I measured it, drew back the thick glass and examined the opening, although I knew it was a futile proposition. A slender boy might have slipped through but not a man such as I. My mighty thews and sinews and great bulk required a door and no small one, either.

The wind had increased, it was blowing hard outside and some spray came in through the port as the waves slapped the side of the ship. I closed and secured it; there was nothing to be gained there. I must seek some other way.

I was not weaponless. Nobody had thought to search my cabin, and a brace of pistols which I always kept loaded and ready for an emergency were locked securely in my chest. My hanger, none of your dandified French rapiers but a stout ship’s cutlass, ground to a razor’s edge, heavy enough to paralyze any arm but one muscled like mine, hung at the side of my berth. It was the same with which I had marked the duke.

The cabin door was a strong one. It was locked and barred without. I might have broken through it. I could have done so if I had had space enough in which to run and hurl myself against it. I might even have kicked it to pieces with my heavy seaman’s boot. Certainly I could easily have blown the lock off with my pistol, but any of these endeavors would have aroused the ship.

To let the sleeping dogs lie when you have no means of controlling them should they awaken, I have ever found to be a good maxim. I had one other hope. If Captain Matthews should come to the cabin I would appeal to him. For the rest I determined not to sleep that night. Some strange foreboding possessed me, such a feeling a man has when his own hand is taken from the helm and no other is near by to grasp it, as if the uncontrolled ship must surely broach to and founder.

We were near the latitude and longitude of the island we were seeking, if indeed there were such an island as was thought to be, and I reasoned that the men would argue that now would be a good time for an outbreak, especially since I was removed. Would it come that night? Would it come at all? Was I mistaken in the men?

I have often wondered why women were made and, since they were made, why men should be such fools about them—yet I would by no means unmake them! Here I was helpless just because I had snatched a kiss from one. Although I had ever been a decent man as man goes, I had ventured as far as kisses with maidens here and there in this little world around which I had gone so many times, and none of them had ever taken it quite like that. To be sure, none of them was like her. And now that I am in the mood for confession, I might as well say that I fully rejoiced in that kiss. It had not been on the cheek first but full and fair on her lips, and I had held her tight and drunk my fill—no not that, of course; I could never do that, but still it had been a man’s kiss on a maiden’s lips fairly given, and—

Well, whatever happened, I had the memory of that kiss. She would never forgive me. Of course, there was absolutely no hope that she would return my suit even in her poverty. She was not for such as I, and if there was anything in this old buccaneer’s parchment, if there was an island, if she did get the treasure, why the world would be at her feet again; and I, like the fool I was, was helping her get it, to bring that about. I was mad, aye, mad, with impotent helplessness that night.

I sat there in the dark, no light being vouchsafed to me and the lanterns in the outer cabin not having been lighted, for a long time. The wind rose and rose. The ship was pitching madly. My room was on the starboard side of the cabin and presently I heard all hands called to reef the topsails. Captain Matthews was alert and ready, of course. Presently he put the ship about and with some of the canvas off her she was steadier. There did not seem to be any especial danger in the weather and for that I was thankful.

I must have dozed. I was awakened by the last echoing of the bell forward. I didn’t know what time it was because I didn’t know whether I had heard it begin to strike, but I could count three couplets, which meant that it was eleven o’clock at least. I didn’t know, of course, that it was eight bells, midnight, until after a shrill piping of his whistle the long-drawn-out voice of the boatswain came to me through the low bulkhead that separated the trunk cabin from the quarter-deck above and the ’tween decks below.