The great longing, the parching thirst of a hothouse intellect for hardship swept over him like a wave of the sea itself. Hardship assumed an intrinsic value for him at once, as it had one winter in the South when he missed savagely the bleak Januaries of his Northern home; as it had when he read of the Homeric heroes who so relished battle, and the brawn children of Thor, and Sir Lancelot with his great shoulders in iron, oppressed and conquering. It seemed as though hardships were the only road to reality, somehow. Hardships of the sea,—the grim knowledge of experience; that would have given him something solid in his mind! But none of that on the ocean now. Where there had been towers of canvas (as he visualized it) now there were freighters. Clippers and freight ships! The sea rather intriguing whimsical people like himself—when once she held men until it was her will to fling them away! Whimsy! What was this compared to a strong man’s desire? What was this careful self-consciousness of his feelings to his grand impulses?—the humorous affairs of life to the grim ones?—dilettantism to the austere compulsion of a passion?
While Daniel was working himself up in this manner, he was steering straight out to sea, and, in doing so, overhauling a tramp steamer that was starting on a voyage. He was coming abreast of what he later called his fate. Upon impulse, he dared the wash of the boat when he came opposite and ran in close along her side, slowing down so as to keep pace for a while. She was old and scarred, with a dip in her middle like an overworked horse’s back which seemed to give her a jaunty air. Paint had not been wasted on her ramshackle sides, nor any white on her cabin above, nor red on her rusty funnel. Filthy clothes, drying in the sun, hung from clotheslines; a thick rope dragged over the side near the stern and it splashed irregularly in the water. She was dilapidated. But some of her crew were singing for some reason or other as they finished stowing cargo, and the sight of the little boat facing outward and the sight of the great, blank, capricious sea ahead waiting for her was distinctly thrilling, particularly as a fog was coming up, making even the horizon mysterious in its invisibility.
What would it be like, Daniel wondered all of a sudden, if he were to hail this boat and jump aboard? Often he had considered doing some quite possible thing like this, such as getting off a Western train as it stopped at a little, unknown town and—simply staying there, or chucking his work some morning and going on the stage. But there he was again with those light fancies of his. People like himself seemed to have their individualities in glass cases, to be looked at like shell-flowers. What was he, anyway, that he actually could not do what he wanted to? Why should he be so bound, and he was bound, he knew, as if with iron bars. Tied down. Slaves, slaves, slaves. People thought of doing this and that—they still had impulses at least, thank God—and were powerless to do them. There seemed no manhood left. People didn’t seem to be in control of themselves any more. Freedom!—he wondered at the word. Oh, for a touch of it—just a taste—just a whiff! Creatures in the grasp of something huge and stolid! Damn those infernal practical considerations! What was the world, a gigantic taskroom—an ogre-like mill to be turned? By heaven, he must have a will! God knew he must stand there free! He even looked around wildly to assure himself that he was there alone and free.
Then he stood up. There was the rope hanging over the side. He sprang for it, clutched it, and swung there.
There was no shield between him and a rasping sense of mortification as he dragged himself spluttering and coughing into his motorboat once more forty seconds later. He had so neatly proved what he had railed at in this unusual seizure of the disease of spring, and so humorously. Had staid old common sense ever had to deal so brazenly with an impulse as to make a man jump into the sea? Damp physically, and with a real bitterness in his heart at such a plain statement of affairs, the world seemed very dark. Depression swooped down upon his mind like the swift black shadow of a vulture, and as he made his way home for three hours it seemed to be actually feeding on his nerves. It was that dark, stone-wall type of depression which is unarguable and seems final—as though trusted old hope had a limit which was suddenly glimpsed around a bend in the road. It left no room for hypothesis; things were seen clearly to be foundationless that had been rocks to the imagination.
He resolved at any rate to bury this experience in his heart as a tragic sort of trophy which should represent in its bitter essence all the disgust with life that assails people during a lifetime. He had nearly played a trick upon mortality, he reflected. A fine gesture had been made, and he had snatched lustily for the unvouchsafed. It was an affecting experience and one to be reverenced. But of course what really happened was that he made a very good story out of it and one which afforded intense amusement to his friends, though he was prone to shed a mental tear as he told it now and then.
W. T. BISSELL.
Association
He sat across from me, one hand on chin,
The other, carrion-clawed, twitched side to side,