The Slave of the Lamp

by Henry Seton Merriman

The pale light of a grey dawn was stealing slowly up into the riven sky, lighting up the clouds which were flying eastward on the shoulder of a boisterous wind. The heavy grey sea, heaving, surging, and hissing, threw itself upwards into broken spray, which flew to leeward at a sharp angle, blown from the summit of the wave like froth from an over-filled tankard. After a night of squally restlessness, accompanied by a driving rain that tasted brackish, things had settled down with the dawn into a steady, roaring gale of wind. In the growing light sea-gulls rose triumphantly with smooth breasts bravely facing the wind.

In the midst of this a dripping vessel laboured sorely. The green water rushed from side to side over her slippery, filthy deck as she rolled, and carried with it a tangled mass of ropes, a wooden bucket, a capstan bar, and—ominous sign—a soaking, limp fur cap. The huge boom, reaching nearly the whole length of the little vessel, swung wildly from side to side as the yawl dipped her bulwarks to the receding wave. It was certain death for a man to attempt to stand upright upon the sopping deck, for the huge spar swung shoulder high. The steersman, crouching low by his strong tiller, was doing his best to avoid a clean sweep, but only a small jib and the mizzen were standing with straining clews and gleaming seams. Crouching beneath the weather bulwarks, with their feet wedged against the low combing of the hatch, three men were vainly endeavouring to secure the boom, and to disentangle the clogged ropes. Two were huge fellows with tawny, washed-out beards innocent of brush or comb, their faces were half hidden by rough sou'-westers, and they were enveloped from head to foot in oilskins from which the water ran in little rills. The third was Christian Vellacott, who looked very wet indeed. The water was dripping from his cuffs and running down his face. His black dress-clothes were clinging to him with a soppy hindrance, while the feet firmly planted against the combing of the hatch were encased in immaculate patent-leather shoes, and the salt water ran off silk socks. It would have been very funny if it were not that Fortune invariably mingles her strokes of humour most heedlessly with sadder things. Christian Vellacott was apparently unconscious of the humour of the situation. He was working patiently and steadily, as men must needs work when fighting Nature, and his half-forgotten sea-craft was already coming back. Beneath his steady hands something akin to order was slowly being achieved; he was coiling and disentangling the treacherous rope, of which the breaking had cast the boom adrift, laying low a good seaman.

Farther forward upon the hatch lay the limp body of a very big man. His matted head was bare, and the dead, brown face, turned upward to its Maker, jerked from side to side as the vessel heaved. The stalwart legs were encased in greasy sea-boots, deeply wrinkled, and the coils of a huge scarf of faded purple lay upon his broad breast, where they had been dragged down by a hasty hand in order to see more clearly the still features.

At the dead man's side knelt upon the deck a small, spare figure clad in black and wearing his left arm in a sling. With his right hand he held a crucifix to the blue lips that would never breathe a prayer to the Virgin again. The small mouth and refined features of the praying man were strangely out of keeping with his tempestuous surroundings. Unmindful, however, of wind and waves alike, he knelt and prayed audibly. Each lurch of the vessel threw him forward, so that, in order to save himself from falling, he was obliged to press heavily upon the dead man's throat and breast; but this he heeded not. His girlish blue eyes were half closed in an ecstasy of religious fervour, and the pale, narrow face wore a light that was not reflected from sea or sky. This was the man who had unhesitatingly attacked Vellacott, had dared to pit his small strength, more of nerve than of muscle, against the young Englishman's hardened sinews. Violence in itself was most abhorrent to him; it had no part in his nature; and consequently, by the strange tenets of Ignatius Loyola's disciples, he was condemned to a course of it. Any objectionable duty, such as this removal of Vellacott, was immediately assigned to him in the futile endeavour of subjecting the soul to the brain. A true Jesuit must have no nature of his own and no individuality. He is simply a machine, with likes and dislikes, conscience and soul subject to the will of his superior, whose mind is also under the same arbitrary control; and so on to the top. If at the head there were God, it would be well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even though it amount to blasphemy.

René Drucquer, the man kneeling on the slimy deck, was as nearly a religious fanatic as his soft, sweet nature would allow. With greater bodily strength and attendant greater passions, he would have been a simple monomaniac. In him the passion for self-devotion was singularly strong, and contact with men had cooled it down into an unusually deep sense of duty.

Personally courageous, his bravery was of a high order, if the spirit of self-devotion called it into existence. In this his courage was more akin to that of women than of men. If duty drove him he would go where the devil drags most people, and René Drucquer was not by any means the first man or woman whose life has been wrecked, wasted, and utterly misled by a blind devotion to duty.

When throwing himself upon Christian Vellacott, no thought of possible danger to his own person had restrained or caused him a moment's hesitation. His blind faith in the righteousness of his cause was, however, on the wane. This disciple of St. Ignatius might have lived a true and manly life three hundred years earlier when his master trod the earth, but the march of intellect had trodden down the “Constitutions” years before René Drucquer came to study them. An ignoramus and a zealot who lived nearly four centuries ago can be no guide or help to men of the present day, and this young priest was overshadowed by the saddest doubt that comes to men on earth—the doubt of his own Creed.

While Christian Vellacott was assisting the sailors he glanced occasionally towards the kneeling priest, and on the narrow, intelligent face he read a truth that never was forgotten. He saw that René Drucquer was unconscious of his surroundings—unmindful of the fact that he was on board a disabled vessel at the mercy of the wild wind. His whole being was absorbed in prayer: this priest remembered only that the soul of the great, rough, disfigured man was winging its serene way to the land where no clouds are. Christian was not an impressionable man—journalism had killed all that—nor, it is to be feared, did he devote much thought to religion; but he recognised goodness when he met it. The young journalist's interest was aroused, and in that trifling incident lay the salvation of the priest. From that small beginning came the gleam of light that was to illuminate gloriously the darkness of a mistaken life.

Chance had capriciously ruled that the hand that had dislocated the Abbé's arm should set it again, and the dead sailor lying on the sticky, tarred hatch-cover had helped. The “patron” of the boat, for he it was whose head had been smashed by the spar, had held the priest's trembling, swollen shoulder while Christian's steady hands gave the painful jerk required to slip the joint back into its socket. The great, coarse lips which had trembled a little, with a true Frenchman's sympathy for suffering, were now blue and drawn; the stout, tender hands were nerveless.

The priest prayed on, while the men worked near at hand seeking to restore order, and to repair the damages made by sea and wind. They had got over their sullen, native shyness on finding that Christian could speak French like the Abbé and was almost as good a sailor as themselves. One offered him a rough blue jersey, while another placed a gold-embroidered Sunday waistcoat at his disposal, with a visible struggle between kindness of heart and economy. The first was accepted, but the waistcoat was given back with a kind laugh and an assurance that the jersey was sufficient.