Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

First, I hated to be stared at. But that was not all. His persistent way of watching me filled me with alarming thoughts. I believed that he was rehearsing some extraordinary scheme to restore my memory. He seldom addressed me but that he would affirm the only remedy for my affliction was a shock, and whenever I observed him staring at me I would think that man may be scheming to give me a shock. Dare he attempt such a thing alone? The grave and serious Captain Ladmore was not likely to listen to such a remedy, nor was it probable that Mr. Harris would take the doctor into his confidence. Therefore single-handed he might attempt some desperate trick upon my nerves, not doubting—for of course he could not doubt—that the result would justify his expectations and earn him the reputation of a very clever man throughout the ship.

These were my fears, begotten of a low nervous condition. But I held my peace lest I should be laughed at. Not to Mrs. Lee, nor even to her daughter, did I utter a word on the subject; and yet it came to this, that I never went to my lonely berth of a night without slipping the bolt of the door, and peeping under the bunk that was high enough from the deck to conceal the body of a man.

Captain Ladmore I occasionally conversed with. Once he gave me his arm and together we paced the deck for nearly an hour; but he was a reserved man, somewhat austere, grave and slow in speech, and the expression of his face made one know that the memory of his bereavement was always with him. For the most part he held aloof from us all, walking a space of the deck from the wheel to the aftermost of the skylights with his hands behind him, his tall figure very upright, his eyes sometimes glancing seawards, sometimes up at the vessel. It was hard to associate him with his calling. He had the air of a clergyman rather than of a bluff sea-captain.

During this time, that is to say until we had reached some parallel of latitude to the south of Madeira, Alice Lee kept her cabin. She had slowly read the list of names she had made out, wistfully pausing after each delicate utterance, and gazing earnestly at me with her sweet affectionate eyes; but to no purpose. Name after name was pronounced, but it was like whispering into deaf ears. How could it have been otherwise? Alice was now always calling me by the name of Agnes; her mother also called me by that name; it was my own—yet I knew it not. How then could it have been otherwise than as it was with Alice Lee’s list of names? Having given me the name of Agnes, she omitted it from the list which we went through together; but even if she had lighted upon my name in full—by happy conjecture contriving it Agnes Campbell—it would have been all the same; I should not have known it.

‘No matter, dear,’ said she when she put the paper away, ‘there are many more things to try.’

But she was mistaken. There were very few things indeed to try. My memory was indeed so impenetrable that it rendered experiment almost hopeless. So, by degrees, Alice Lee desisted, and I own that I was grateful when she did so, for the dark struggles, the blind efforts her questions and suggestions excited in me grew too fierce for my strength. She of course never could have imagined the anguish she caused me. But once I observed her viewing me steadfastly after she had asked me some question, and from that time she gradually relaxed her efforts to help me.

Mrs. Lee was glad to have me as a companion for her daughter. It made me happy to wait upon the dear girl, and my ministrations lightened the mother’s duties. I read aloud to Alice, and heard her read aloud to me. She had a hundred things to tell me about her home, about Newcastle, and the sister who had been taken from her. She possessed a little draught-board, and she taught me to play that simple game—taught me to play it though it had been one of the most familiar of our games at home! She owned a volume of solemn, heart-inspiring thoughts, which she loved to read to me and I to listen to. Often have I desired to meet with that book since; but persistently as I have inquired never could I hear of a copy. It was a collection of extracts from great and holy thinkers. Many human griefs and sufferings were dealt with, and the language of every man was simple and sublime, so that there was scarcely a passage that Alice Lee read aloud which I was unable to understand.

Never can I forget her look as we sat together in her cabin one afternoon, she reading from this book and I listening. The subject was Death. As she read her face lighted up. I gazed with wonder, with something of awe and adoration at the tender triumphant enthusiasm of her expression. A delicate flush tinged her cheeks, her bosom rose and fell as though to a sobbing of joy. From time to time she paused with lifted eyes, and her lips murmured inarticulately.

‘It is beautiful and it is true!’ she exclaimed as she closed the book. ‘Why is not death always thus represented? All must suffer. Why should death be called the King of Terrors? The imaginations of men picture sleep as an angel bending over the weary, lulling pain, wreathing sorrowful lips with smiles. But death—the deeper sleep, the angel that is God’s messenger to man—death must be made terrifying and shocking! It is a dreadful spectre poising a lance! Oh, death is divine; it is no terrifying skeleton, but an angel of love, whose gift of slumber is sweet and sure, from whose dreamless sleep you arise to find yourself in the presence of God.’

In this strain would she talk to me, but in words and thoughts more exalted than I have memory for. When I look back and recall these sentences I have just written down, I often think to myself that it was faith and not death that was the holy, soothing, and healing angel she spoke of, and God’s messenger to man; for it was faith that lighted up her eye and painted an expression of rapture upon her face when she looked up to heaven and thought of the grave as but the little gate that was to admit her into the shining glorious highway. And, again, when I think of her, I often say to myself, Who to obtain faith would not exchange all the treasures of this world?—to feel a deeper joy in surrendering all things than many know in the acquisition of a few, to have your hope fixed high like some bright star in the heavens, to desire death rather than to shrink from it, to feel that the deep night of death is on this side the grave, and that the true dawn breaks not until the spirit stands on the other side of that little silent chamber of earth in which the body rests—to know this, to feel this is the sweet sure gift of faith, the angel in whose atmosphere of heavenly light death the shadow perishes.