CHAPTER II
RIALLARO
SUCH was the name that one group of islands gave to this mystic region of the sea; and it meant “the ring of mist.” A sense of awe fell on me as I listened to the chorus. Whither was I dragging these young spirits with me? What would be the end of our expedition? Would we ever come forth alive from this misty sphere? It held within it, I felt, some of the most momentous secrets of existence; but whether these would be baneful or gracious no one could tell. It was only after I had felt everything ready for my venture that I became tremulous as to the result. The energy of my nature, that had been absorbed in definite search for knowledge, and definite preparation, was now set free for brooding; and I passed daily in thought from hope to despair, from despair to hope. All the delight of outlook was now lost in the uncertainty. The few shreds of fact, that I had been able to pick out of hint and tradition and religious fear, seemed in the immediate presence of the mystery to be ridiculous and inadequate for any definite step. I became the prey of trepidation and self-upbraiding. Dreams of failure and disaster haunted me day and night. I thought over the stories of Ulysses, and Æneas, of Orpheus, and Dante as the prototypes of our enterprise; they had returned from the lower world; might not we too return from this nebulous hades? But alas! no consolation came from such tales; they were but the shadows of dreams; whilst we were about to face an impossible geographical problem in the midst of a sceptical scientific generation. How could I close my eyes to the insane hardihood of our venture?
Before I could recover from the truculent despotism of such thoughts, this sphinx of mist stared me in the face, and no retreat was left for us. Long and silent meditations and pacings of the deck had left me exhausted, and one breathless and moonless night I sank into a profound sleep that fettered me down long after sunrise. My officers could not waken me, and it was only at last sheer necessity that drove them to rouse me by main force. I stared about me dazed; but one word from them—“Riallaro”—set every nerve a-quiver. I rushed on deck and saw close on us a mist that blurred the whole eastern side of the sky. I stopped the engines and then reversed them. But on came the mist; on flew the ship into it. I looked over the bulwarks, and saw that we were borne along by a current like a mill-race. My men stared blankly at me. The engines had little effect in stemming the force of the water. And before we could think what to do the fog had closed in upon us, and we could not see above a ship’s length in any direction.
Away we rushed, whither we knew not, for the compass spun wildly back and forward on its pivot. Every piece of iron on the ship seemed to be turned into a magnet. And what was worse, my signals to the engine-room were unheeded; and on looking down, we found the engineers lying stiff upon its floor. I sent two down to take their place; and as soon as they had stopped the engines, they too succumbed and fell into a trance. Even the man at the wheel felt drowsy and incapable, only violent self-control and movement resisting the somnolence that seemed to creep over him. I remembered that the house in which he stood was iron, and that around there was more iron than anywhere else on the ship, except in the engine-room. I determined to husband my crew till I had understood our position, and was ready for a supreme effort at escape.
Amazement passed into terror, as there swept out of the mist and slowly passed us an old Spanish caravel, with rotting sails and yards, and shrivelled mummies in antique Spanish costume lying on the poop and at various points of the deck, in the attitude of sleep. We could have almost leapt on board this ship of death, so close was it to us. The horror paralysed us, and out of sight it vanished, taking giant proportions to it in the mist. Not many yards behind it moved another apparition of the past, a canoe with mummied natives fallen at the oar as in a trance. And still another in the ghostly funeral train, a Malay proa with motionless crew that seemed just fallen asleep, loomed spectral in our rear. Was this awful procession never to cease? Were we to fall into its line and sail on for ages? The last apparition was right in our wake, and had it moved nearer to us would have struck us on the stern; but it swept on after a brief interval aft. And then I had time to think that it was the impulse of the reversed engines that had thus brought us within sight of three different craft in this ghastly pageant.
The native superstition that nests in every seafarer’s heart began to leaven my crew and master even their courage and their loyalty to me. A curse seemed to rest on all that were drawn into this mist-bearing current. Whither it was to take us and what would be our fate weighed heavily on my own mind. A drowsy feeling crept over me as I stood and meditated; only when I moved about could I drive off the lethargy. If once we went to sleep, there was clearly no awaking. Action was needed; and yet how to act was a puzzle; in which direction to steer we knew not.
Out of my reverie was I startled by a new and appalling danger. There rose gigantic out of the mist upon our starboard bow a great ship as still and silent as the reef into which it was wedged. My men rushed with a wild cry to the bulwarks to fend off our yacht; but we grazed past her unhurt; and on her decks we saw the forms of English sailors stretched in sleep at least if not in death. The sight dispelled the creeping torpor from our minds. I saw that swift action must be taken. I sent a volunteer down into the engine-room; and, before the iron drowse overcame him, he managed to fasten two ropes, that we let down from the skylights, in such a way that we could start or stop the engines from the deck. We must get steering way upon the ship in order to avoid these reefs and their wrecks. We moved gently ahead and passed along the ghostly procession; every generation for centuries past, every seafaring race upon earth seemed to contribute one ship of death, or more, to this long funeral train; ghastly lay their crew, sometimes shrivelled by long ages of rest, often seeming to have just fallen asleep.
My newly stirred thought now grasped the meaning of this sepulchral pageant. The movement of these hurrying graves must be in a circle round some centre that lay on the starboard; round and round they had wheeled for years, many of them for centuries. If I were to fulfil the purpose of my voyage, our way lay to the right; for from the larboard side we had been sucked into this whirlpool.