Sleep was not a success. He had slept badly for a long time, and when he did sleep his dreams were often worse than wakefulness. Violent and uneasy thoughts do not make a good pillow, and there was nothing soothing to-night in the throb and quiver of the boat, nor the unceasing crash-crash of the stern-wheel paddles under him. He dozed and woke, dozed and finally found himself intensely and nervously awake, his whole imagination concentrated on the encounter he anticipated at the end of the journey. He tentatively touched the little automatic pistol that never left him, slung in a holster under his left arm. He sat and looked out, then dressed himself and went out to the desolate darkness of the forward deck.
The night was pitchy black, and a little fog hung low on the muddy surface of the Alabama. The glow of the boat’s deck lights showed the passing shore close alongside, a sliding series of bald white sycamore trunks, bare cypresses, water maples, clumps of mistletoe, Spanish moss, depths of unending swamp that looked as savage as Africa. The powerful searchlight at the bow shot ahead like an inquiring finger, touching the stream in the far distance, shifting and lifting, throwing into uncanny brilliance a clump of trees on the next bend a mile ahead, as the pilot picked out his landmarks for the deep channel.
Occasionally the whole boat vibrated and shook with the terrific blast of the whistle, a powerful siren made to carry twenty miles over the swamps, to let every landing know the boat was coming, and give plenty of time to meet her.
The air was full of dampness and fog and a woody, musky smell of rotting vegetation from the vast swamps. No light, no sign of human occupation showed anywhere along the shores. Lockwood returned to his stateroom, wearied and mosquito bitten, lay down in his berth, and tried to read yesterday’s Mobile paper.
He could not read any more than he could sleep. He had a singular feeling that something was going to happen at last. Perhaps the boat would run on a sand bar, or blow up her boilers; they were directly under him, but he felt highly indifferent. Some one else was sleepless as well as himself, for in the adjoining cabin he heard a soft sound of movement, a rustle of paper, the click of a suit case being opened and shut. He did not know who was in there. The door of that cabin had remained closed ever since the boat left Mobile that afternoon, and the occupant had not come out for supper.
Lockwood had no curiosity about it. He was brain weary, but not sleepy. He felt desperately tired that night—tired of everything, tired particularly of the long trail he had followed so far without success, which he was still following, which he would continue to follow as long as he lived, for he had nothing else to do with his life.
He had no anxiety, for he feared nothing and loved nothing, he thought. He felt that he was even tired of hate, which, he considered, was the only emotion left for him on earth—the only emotion, that is, except that great final one which he was seeking, and which would last not much longer than the flash of a pistol shot.
He was tired, and perhaps he was so tired that he even dozed a little after all, for he came to himself suddenly, shaken by the enormous bellow of the boat’s siren. It blew again; he heard the clang of a bell. Probably they were approaching a landing, and he got up and opened his door upon the side deck. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly two o’clock.
Down below him in the gloom there was a great stirring and shouting of the negro roustabouts who were getting out the freight. No port was in sight, but far ahead he saw at last a flicker of a fire somewhere far ahead. The searchlight found it, quenched it for an instant with its white intensity, then shifted, giving a glimpse of trees, of a wooden shed. Undoubtedly this was a stopping place. Again the whistle roared tremendously.
A negro steward came out from the saloon carrying a couple of suit cases.