“I would have had it here between my knees. And I would have had the little bottle from the cabin—the last that boots you to sleep——”
“And so that is what you sent her back for—sent her to her death——”
“You lie. She was held here—trying to get the hamber to me. There would have been time. She would have gone and come. She would have been here now——”
Bellair and Fleury glanced at each other.
“I am rotted with drink—and will drink the brine first, but you will follow me. You will bring it up with your hands and drink—and drink——”
He was looking at Fleury now. The intensity of thirst in the spectacle of him—the presence of that vast galvanism of thirst—was like a burning sun in their throats. The baby cried, and the mother drew him shudderingly to her breast. Fleury swallowed hard, his face haggard and drawn in the daybreak. He went over and took his seat before the monster. Bellair was tempted to ask him to be easy, but there was no need. Fleury turned and drew a cup of water and handed it to the other. Bellair’s jaws ached cruelly from the drain of empty glands.
“We should pity you, Stackhouse,” he said, “but we are not facing death now. You fill the boat with thirst—you fill the sea—with your thinking drink and talking drink—until you bring a cry of thirst to the little child. It’s as if we had gone sixty hours—instead of six——”
He talked on for the sake of the woman. Stackhouse drank and grew silent. Bellair felt better and braver—even though the full light revealed nothing but empty sea and heavenly sky.
2
Bellair surveyed his world as the dawn came up.... Thirst and fasting; possibly, the end.... The peculiar part of his open boat contemplations, no two were alike. Physical denial hurried him from one plane to another from which he regarded his world—his two worlds, for Stackhouse behind was one, and his friends forward, another; the one drawing his love, courage [Pg 116]and finest ideals; the other, repression of self, lest he wear himself out in hatred. They were not talkers in front. He had not seen quite the entire fulfilment of Fleury’s meaning about talking until late moments. The Faraway Woman invariably said little; the child was the silentest of all; Fleury had met this demon and put it away. Stackhouse had talked and talked, and to the pictures he made with words, he belonged not at all, but to unspeakable things. Bellair remembered his own talk to Filbrick. It made him writhe. He had become crossed and complicated and ineffective that day. He had not talked in the straight line of heart and brain. He saw that a man who talks that which he is not, is less than nothing, as Stackhouse was less than nothing.