Over the border

by Morgan Robertson

"No, Bill. If you're through, that'll do to-night."

"I'll want you, Bill," I interposed, as the old fellow started for the door. "Come at nine o'clock, and wear your oldest, raggedest clothes."

"Yes, sir," answered Bill, and departed.

"It's the last figure in the picture," I added quickly, to forestall a resumption of the harrowing lecture on matters I did not understand. "And it will be done about noon. I'll be glad if you will come in and look it over."

"Most certainly," said my friend. "Been a long time at it, haven't you?"

"Yes; but I didn't want to bother you until it was done. I want to be original, if I can, and depend on my own conceptions."

"That's right. Be yourself. I'll be in at noon, and look at it."

I had been a long time on that picture, in conception, composition, and execution; and it had followed a longer time of inactivity, during which I had done nothing in the way of work except to search my soul for an idea. At last it had come to me, and I had made sketches, one after the other, until, in composition, it was complete; then I had painted it.

Still, there lacked a motive. It was a picture, but it told no story intelligible to the eye without an explanatory title, and I had not yet thought of a title. The scene was on the deck of a ship—a flush-deck, polacca-masted craft, a type of rig I had seen but once in my travels—and the viewpoint was at the break of the poop, looking forward. The fore and mainsail were clewed up, hanging in the buntlines, and the flying jib was down a-bag on the jib-boom end.

The craft was heeled, a gale of wind blowing, as evidenced by the gray storm clouds and a sea washing over the bow, and scattered about the deck were dead men, of the Chinese, Malay, or negro type; but here consistency ended, for though these men were bareheaded and barefooted, indicating warm weather, huge icicles hung from the fife rails and scuttles, while the sea bordering the bow lost the translucency of water as it reached the deck, taking on the white, glistening effect of ice, in which some of the bodies were frozen.