Part 15

I felt I ought not to be there. There was no telling whether I was too soon or too late, whether I was the first man, or the last. I doubted that hush, and that dim appearance about me. When the air did stir, it was as if it were the breath of death, and the earth were the body of death. Then I made up my mind. It was no use going to sea, as I had intended. I would go back to bed. At that moment there were footsteps, and the quay at once became solid. Two black figures approached, the size of men. One of them put his foot into a great hole in the quay, and he did not vanish instantly, but made a splash and an exclamation. That voice certainly was something I knew. The other man laughed quietly, the familiar satiric comment which comes of resignation to fate. We were all going to sea, as far as the Foreland.

That cape is the western horn to the bay, and nobody goes there, except sailors who die because they see the loom of it, or hear its warning, too late. The Foreland to the people of Burra is like the clouds. It is part of their own place, but it is unapproachable. At times it is missing. In some winds it will evaporate; though usually at sunset it shapes again, high, black, and fantastic, the end of the land to the west, and as distant and sombre as the world of the sagas. Is it likely, then, that one would ever think of a voyage to it? That cape, which one sees either because the light is at the right incidence, or because one is dreaming, might be no more than a thought turned backward to vague antiquity; to Ultima Thule, where the sun never rises now, but where it is always evening twilight. It would have no trees. It would be a desolation of granitic crags, mossed and lichened, and the seas below would be sounding doom, knowing that even the old gods were dead. It was not likely that we could credit such a voyage; yet the truth is we had assembled for it, and because of a promise made carelessly with an ancient mariner in a tavern on the previous afternoon. What, on such a morning, and in such a place, was such a promise? As intangible as was our quay when I first saw it that morning, and no more matter than the Foreland itself, which is always distant, and then is gone.

Yet here we were. We had met before dawn, for that very voyage, because of an indifferent word spoken yesterday. The bar, too, would have to be crossed. The bar! Besides, we were getting most unreasonably hungry, and so could not smoke; and this induced the early morning temper, which is vile, and would be worse than the early morning courage but for the fact that that sort of courage is unknown in man, never rising to more than a bleak and miserable fortitude.

Charon hailed us from below the quay. He had with him a nondescript attendant. We embarked for his craft, which he said was anchored in midstream. We recognised him as our sailor of yesterday, though now there was something glum and ominous about him. He had no other word for us, but rowed steadily, and looked down his beard. His bark was like himself, when, still in resignation to what we had asked for, we boarded her. She was flush-decked, her freeboard was about eighteen inches, she had no bulwarks--to tell the truth, she was but a very barge, with that look of stricken poverty which is the sure mark of the usefulness of the merely industrious. She would float, I guessed, if not kept too long in seas that washed her imperfect hatch-covers. She would sail her distance, if the wind did not force her over till the water reached the rent in her deck. She could carry thirty tons of stone; and, in fair weather, with reckless men, thirty-five tons. She had a freeboard, I repeat, of one foot six inches, now she was light, and peering through the interstices of her hatch-boards I could see her kelson, and note that though she did not leak like a basket she was doing her best. We were going to the Foreland to gather stones for the ballast of ships. Absurd and desperate enterprise! We could hear faint moaning, when attentive. That was the voice of the bar, three miles away.

The skipper and his man hoisted the mainsail, and we three manned the windlass, working in link by link a cable without end, till we were automata going up and down indifferent to both this life and the life to come. The barge gave a little leap as the anchor cleared.

The foresail was set. We drifted sideways round the hill. The silent houses, with white faces, looked at us one by one. We found a little wind, and the barge walked off past the lighthouse, which still was winking at us. There came a weighty gust; the gear shook and banged, but held taut. Off she went.

Burra was behind us. Before us was a morose grey void. The bay apparently was only space, uncreated, unlighted; though in the neighbourhood of our barge we noticed there was the beginning of form in that dim and neutral world. Long leaden mounds of water out of nowhere moved inwards past us, slow and heavy, lifting the barge and dropping her into hollows where her sails shook, and spilled their draught. We three grasped stays, and peered outwards into the icy vacancy, wondering whether this was the free life, whether we were enjoying it, whether we wanted to go to the Foreland, and how long this would last. In the east there formed a low stratum of gold. Some of the leaden mounds were now burnished, or they glinted with precious ore. When the light broadened the air seemed to grow colder, as though day had sharpened the arrows of the wind.

The hollow murmur from the bar increased to an intermittent plunging roar, and presently we fell into that noise. The smother stood the barge up, and stood her down, and drenched the mainsail to the peak. But it was only in play. We were worth nothing worse. We were allowed to go by, and one of us pumped the wash out of her, for the play had been somewhat rough.

In the long swell of the bay our movements became rhythmic, and we settled down quietly in a long reach. A vault of blue had shaped over us. The Foreland was born into the world. It looked towards the new day, and was of amber; but over the moors to the north-east the rain-clouds, a gathering of sullen battalions, challenged the dawn with an entrenched region of gloom. Yet when the sun arose and looked straight at them, they went. It was a good morning. Now we could see all the bay, coloured and defined in every hanging field, steep, and combe. The waters danced. The head of the skipper appeared at the scuttle--only one at a time could get into our cabin--and he had a large communal basin of tea, and a loaf speared on a long knife.

The Foreland, to which for hours our work seemed to bring us no nearer, which had been mocking the efforts to approach it of an obstinate little ship with a crew too stupid to realise that efforts to reach an enchanted coast were futile, suddenly relented. It grew higher and tangible. At last we felt that it was drawing us, rather too intimately, towards its overshadowing eminence. The nearer it got, the greater grew my surprise that in a time long past man had found the heart to put off in a galley, to leave what he knew, and to stand in to an unknown shore, if it offered no more than our cape. The apparition of the Foreland was as chill as the shadow in the soul of man. It appeared to have some affinity with that shadow. Though monstrous and towering, it seemed buoyant and without gravity, an image of original and sombre doubt. Above our mast, when I looked up, earthquakes and landslides were impending, arrested in collapse. But I thought they were quivering, as though the arrest were momentary. That vast mass seemed based on rumblings, shouts, and hollow shadows. Our craft still moved in, projected forward on vehement billows, past black jags in blusters of foam, and then anchored with calamity suspended above. Our ship heaved and fell on submarine displacements. The skipper and his man went below.

When they reappeared they were naked. It was a good and even necessary hint. We got into the boat, and pulled towards a beach which was a narrow shelf at the base of a drenched wall. The rocks which flanked that little beach were festooned with weeds, and sea growths hung like curtains before the night of caves. Somehow there the water was stilled, and all but one of us leaped into it. One man remained in the boat.

The ocean was exploding on steeples and tables of rock. It formed domes green and shining over submerged crags. The midday sun gave the foam the brilliance of an unearthly light. The shore looked timeless, but it smelt young. The sun was new in heaven.

And what were those ivory figures leaping and shouting in the surf? As I watched them in that light a doubt shook me. I began to wonder whether I knew that little ship, and those laughing figures, and that sea. Who were they? Where was it? When was it?

THE END

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Transcriber’s note

Hyphenation was standardized where appropriate.

Spelling has been retained as originally published except for the changes below:

Page 63: “recruitment of orang-utans” “recruitment of orangutans” Page 91: “draws its toils tighter” “draws its coils tighter” Page 162: “whose volatile enthusiams” “whose volatile enthusiasms” Page 243: “space, uncreate, unlighted” “space, uncreated, unlighted” Page 245: “hung like curtains befor” “hung like curtains before”