Fate Knocks at the Door: A Novel

by Will Levington Comfort

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The Truxton was now six days out of Manila. For the past thirty-six hours, she might as well have been sunk in pitch, for any progress she made…. The ship's bell had just struck four. Bedient had finished clearing away tiffin things, and stepped on deck. The planking was like the galley-range he had left, and the fresh white paint of the three boats raised in blisters. The sea had an ugly look, yellow-green and dead, save where a shark's fin knifed the surface. The crew was lying forward under the awnings—a fiend-tempered outfit of Laskars and Chinese. Captain Carreras appeared on deck through the companion-way still farther aft and nodded to Bedient. Then both men looked at the sky, which was brassy above, but thickening in the North. It augmented darkly and streakily—like a tub of water into which bluing is added drop by drop…. A Chinese arose and tossed a handful of joss-tatters into the still air. And now the voice of the Captain brought the rest of the crew to its feet.

The China Sea can generate much deviltry to a square mile. The calm of death and the burn of perdition are in its bosom. Cholera, glutted with victims, steals to his couch in the China Sea; and since it is the pool of a thousand unclean rivers, the sins of Asia find a hiding-place there. It has ended for all time the voyages of brave mariners and mighty ships, and become a vault for the cargoes, and a tomb for the bones of men. The China Sea fostered the pirate, aided him in his bloody ways, and dragged him down, riches and all. Bed of disease, secret-place of the unclean, and graveyard of the seas; yet, this yellow-breasted fiend, ancient in devil-lore, can smile innocently as a child at the morning sun, and beguile the torrid stars to twinkling.

It was in this black heart that was first conceived the Tai Fung (typhoon), and there the great wind has its being to-day, resting and rising.

The Captain's eyes were deep in the North. Bedient's soul seemed to sense the awful solemnity on the face of the waters. He was unable afterward to describe his varying states of consciousness, from that first moment. He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain was; that their sailing together was done…. A sympathetic disorder was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the Godivari—a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid. Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often followed his gaze into the churning, blackening North.

A chill came into the deathly heat, but it was the cold of caverns, not of the vital open. The heat did not mix with it, but passed by in layers—a novel movement of the atmospheres. Had the coolness been clean and normal, the sailors would have sprung to the rigging to breathe it, and to bare their bodies to the rain—after two days of hell-pervading calm—but they only murmured now and fell to work.

An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in brilliant expectation…. In some hall-way when Bedient was a little boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been a long narrow pane of yellow-green glass over the front door. The light used to come through that in the afternoon and fill the hall and frighten him. It was so on deck now.

The voices of the sailors had that same unearthly quality as the light—ineffectual, remote. Out of the hold of the Truxton came a ghostly sigh. Bedient couldn't explain, unless it was some new and mighty strain upon the keel and ribs.

A moment more and the Destroyer itself was visible in the changing North. It was sharp-lined—a great wedge of absolute night—and from it, the last vestiges of day dropped back affrighted. And Bedient heard the voice of It; all that the human ear could respond to of the awful dissonances of storm; yet he knew there were ranges of sound above and below the human register—for they awed and preyed upon his soul…. He thought of some papers dear to him, and dropped below for them. The ship smelled old—as if the life were gone from her timbers.

Above once more, he saw a hideous turmoil in the black fabric—just wind—an avalanche of wind that gouged the sea, that could have shaken mountains…. The poor little Truxton stared into the End—a puppy cowering on the track of a train.