“It will be just ten years to a day,” Sard said, “at five to-morrow morning, since that dream was a fire in my soul; but all the same, I will not go ashore; this inner life of mine shall fool me no longer.”
He passed the evening making his room all ready for sea-fight, for the Pathfinder was a lively ship when not loaded down to her marks. When all was stowed and chocked, he took his flute and played some of the airs printed in D’Urfey’s “Pills to Purge Melancholy.” He was not more than a competent player, but the night and the water gave a magic to his fluting. The men came aft as far as the waist and hung in a body there,
“Listening to that sweet piping.”
At about ten o’clock, knowing that he was to be on deck at daybreak, he turned in. He heard Captain Cary, in the chart-house on deck, call the steward for his nightcap; he heard the steward go, and the spoon chink in the glass. Then the watchman went shuffling forward from the main hatch, tapping out his pipe. The sea gurgled down the side, then life was shut off as by the turning of a tap, he was asleep in a sea-sleep, dead to the world.
Out of his sleep he started up, an hour before dawn, with the knowledge that a gigantic cock of fire was bursting out of clouds and crowing:
“To-day, to-day, to-day, for the second of the three times, O be ready, O be ready, O be ready; at the house of the xicale flowers; to-day, to-day, to-day.”
Instantly the crowing of the cock and the image of the house were merged in the memory of the first time, so that all was burning with the idea of her. He leaped up, for all these things were real, in his room, there, as it seemed, to be touched and caught. He saw them slowly fade from him, die away, not as it seemed, into his brain, but out of his three forward ports into the greyness of morning. He followed them till his brow was pressed on the brass rim of one of the ports. There was nothing beyond but the deck, the hatch, the bulk of the mainmast made darker by the mizen staysail, and the noise of the dropping of dew.
“To-day,” he said, “to-day. Why, we sail to-day. We shall be gone in two hours, far out of this, and God knows if I shall ever be here again.
“Very well, then. I will go ashore. I will leave ship and sea, so as not to fail her.
“I cannot do that,” he added, “I am tied, both to Captain Cary and to the ship. I shall sail at daybreak. I must get on deck.”