Part 25

It was dark when he returned to the hut; he lighted two candles, and, when he had a good bed of coals in the fireplace, cooked his supper, which he ate with great comfort. The sea air was thin and chill after the sun had gone; so with the fire built up, the candles drawn close, and a blanket thrown over the biggest of the arm-chairs, he sat with a book until almost midnight; after that he rolled himself up in his bunk and slept soundly.

Next morning he bent a sail on a boat he'd brought from the mainland and prowled about among the coves of the bay; in the afternoon he explored the island to the north, and found it abruptly cut by a swift and dangerous-looking inlet, at the mouth of which began the range of shoals and bars he'd noticed the evening before.

To the south all was beach and dunes and sky; the gulls winged above the water; fish-hawks flopped drearily up and down the line of surf; sandpipers followed one receding wave in search of beach insects, to scamper alertly back before the rolling advance of the next. The air was bracing; the smell of the sea was grateful. As the charm of the place settled upon him, Anthony would stand at midday upon elevations, with the free wind blowing about him, the sun warm upon his body, and feel the life mounting in him. Days and then weeks went by; he took fish out of the bay for food; he brought turtles from the high bar; he cut green, edible plants for his table; now and then he had a duck, though they were none too plump at that season; at rare times he had a rabbit for the pot with a dried leek from the cluster hanging to a hook in the rafters.

The sun burned him brown; the rowing, hauling, and tramping toughened his thews and gave stiffness to his bones. His eyes grew bright and ready; and, as those grinding, punishing last days at Rufus Stevens' Sons became fainter in his memory, the old tilt came back to his chin and the steadfast quality returned once more to his gaze. He'd plunge into the surf of a morning; tingling with the water, air, and sun, he'd cut wood for his fire, and cook his porridge, and bake his corn-bread upon the coals. Then he'd sit by the open window, eating, and sipping his wine and water, and he said to himself that he had begun no days like them since those he'd spent breasting the wilderness, or stepping the deck of a Spanish ship, voyaging among the southern seas.

After breakfast he'd scour the beach to see what the tide had brought in; planks, cordage, spars, broken ship's furniture, all added to his ease of life; and tinkering it into useful things passed many of his hours with profit. In mid-morning he'd hoist the sail of his boat and point away to his fishing-places; in the afternoon he'd lie on the top of a dune in the still of the sun; the sea washed in monotonously, a fishing bird complained in his passage, the wind rustled in the thickets on the meadow edge; but the sense of isolation would be on him completely; his eye and body were keen and eager, but his mind drowsed, resting after its wearing fight.

In all this time Anthony had seen no one on the island, and there was no sign of another habitation anywhere. Toward the mainland he'd frequently see a small sail, but they kept to their side of the bay; to seaward many vessels passed. Ships, schooners, brigs, and sloops, when the wind was in the west, ventured into the flat, near-shore waters, though none ever paused on their way. But one day while a tower of storm-clouds was building in the northwest he saw a small brig, standing on and off, and seeming in no haste. She was, as far as Anthony could see, a craft of no outstanding character; her hull had the unkempt look of a carelessly kept fishing-vessel; her dress of sails was patched, and discolored by long use, except one topsail, and that was white and new and shining. Though the wind freshened and blew levelly out of the windows of the storm-tower, the brig still kept pondering in and out; once a boat was lowered; but a shrill note crept into the wind, and the sea began to leap a little under its urging, and the boat was hoisted aboard directly; and the vessel pointed her nose toward the southeast and ran for deep water.

While at his supper that night Anthony listened to the rain washing against the cabin windows and roaring on the roof. The wind carried the sand and spray before it; the thunder rattled, and the lightning drove sharply across the sky. But the fine fish Anthony had hooked smoked deliciously on the table; there was rice cooked white and dry; there were stewed leeks and good corn-bread; and a brandy-flask seemed to expand its stout mid-section and smile rosily at the candle-light. And, later, snug and safe in the stout cabin, Anthony put more wood upon the fire; for all of early June the east wind chilled the air with its wet touch; the candles were cheery, the billets flamed up, and, with a book and pipe and a comfortable chair, he saw the storm through to its peak; then he blew out the light and went to bed, while it still jeered and strove, but with a tiring voice; and he slept soundly.

He found the beach cut and lashed desperately next day; and the seas were still roaring and boiling in, making the cuts deeper and changing the whole aspect of the shore. But the wind had gone down, and late in the day the sea sullenly did likewise. Then, far down the line of shore, as Anthony trudged along to view the havoc of the gale, he saw the stern of a long-boat sticking out of the sand. His eye told him, as he approached it, that some previous storm had driven it in and buried it; and now this one had uncovered it once more. The stern was badly stove; he saw that as he drew nearer; and another thing he saw was that the boat, for all her mishandling, was a new one. And then, as he stepped around the broken stern, he found painted upon it the name of _Rufus Stevens_!

Anthony stood quite still for a long time; his eyes never moved from the painted name; his mind carried a picture of the vessel to which the boat had belonged. The _Rufus Stevens_! A stout, good ship! The hopes that had been put in her!--hopes as precious as the stuffs she stowed! And now she was a broken ruin somewhere in the sea's depths, and the hopes were broken, too, in the ruined mind of her owner. A plunging, bold ship! And she would have come safe home if the dirty hand of villainy had not been put upon her. A broad-sailed ship. Christ! it was a shame to think of her, used like that; and no mind or voice to save her.

"I'd give my arm to have stood on her deck when her peril came upon her," said Anthony, all his muscles tight. "The rats! They sank her in the sea, and brought living death to as kindly a man as ever God made!"

That night Anthony did not sleep well, for the thought of the lost ship troubled him gravely; so he arose and dressed and stepped out into the quiet of the summer night. His eyes went seaward, for something there caught his attention; it was a light at no great distance--intermittent, winking, sometimes with long pauses between, sometimes rapid, considered, carrying an undoubted meaning. Then the night grew dark and blank; and, though he watched a long time, Anthony saw the light no more. He tramped about until weariness urged him back to bed, and this time he slept with no disturbing thoughts breaking in upon him.

Next morning he was early upon the beach and looking sharply about for any sign that might give a reason for the light that had come winking offshore. He saw nothing until he reached the spot where the stove long-boat of the _Rufus Stevens_ protruded from the sands. All about her were the imprints of men's feet, which the making tide had already begun to wash away. Anthony studied them, his eyes intent under frowning brows; and then, as he lifted his head, he saw a vessel riding upon the horizon-line. She was a brig; and one of her topsails glinted white in the morning sun.

XXXVI

It so chanced that Tom Horn did not appear at Christopher Dent's for some nights; and so Mademoiselle Lafargue, with brisk little shoes clicking upon the floor, and silken gloves upon her hands, and a lace shawl about her head, came into the apothecary's shop in the twilight before he had kindled his lamps. She forthwith demanded that he keep his promise and go with her to Tom Horn's lodgings, that she might speak with the odd clerk in the matter he had dwelt so earnestly upon some nights before.

Christopher eagerly put on his hat and tailed coat, and wrote a legend announcing that because of unavoidable matters his shop would be closed for a few hours, which he stuck upon the door; then he turned the key in the lock with care and, with mademoiselle at his side, proceeded in the direction of Pump Court. This was a wide court, of no great depth, with three broad-fronted houses on each side of it, and a cool flagged space between; and in the center stood the pump, with a tub under its spout, from which the court took its name. There was a little fringe of grass about the edge of each of the houses, and vines climbed the walls; the shutters were green and stood wide; the door- and window-frames were white. Christopher pointed to the sloping roof of one of the houses, where a dormer-window leaned outward.

"That," said the little apothecary, "is Tom Horn's lodgings."

They climbed the wide, solid steps, and at the top of the house knocked upon a door. Tom Horn opened it; he did not seem at all surprised, but only opened it a great deal wider when he saw who it was.

"Come in," he said. "I am glad to see you."

The room was a very large one and sparely furnished; on a broad table, with lighted candles set about it, was a great clutter of papers.

"Figures," said Christopher, as he looked down at the papers. "All figures." He looked at Tom Horn and rubbed his own shining crown. "They must be like a spoken language to you."

"Figures are truer and more dependable than a language made of words," said Tom Horn. "The circles come at through them are perfect ones. There is no bending them to other shapes. Words, now, can be wrought to fit both prejudice and unreason."

"That is true," said the little apothecary, and he turned a look upon mademoiselle which told of his admiration for the saying. "That is very true, indeed."

There were bare spaces upon the walls of Tom Horn's lodgings, and pinned there were what looked like maps, but maps such as neither mademoiselle nor Christopher had ever seen before. For about the islands and along the headlands and through the bulk of the sea itself were drawn long lines which curled slowly toward an inevitable roundness. Figures were set down in red ink along these lines, and arrows of blue pointed out their circular, grasping sweep. Upon the mantel was a slim array of books, and mademoiselle, as she looked at their worn sheep bindings and their inked-in titles, saw that astronomy, navigation, and geometry were the matters there dealt with.

The place had a clean, bare look; the single twinkling light in the court could be seen from the high window; a thrush on an open perch stirred now and then and chirped sleepily; and a wooden-wheeled clock ticked and grumbled in its high case. Mademoiselle listened to the two men for a space after they had settled down, and then, in a silence between them, she spoke to Tom Horn.

"Mr. Dent has told me of the interest he feels in your theory of tides and currents, and especially in how they might have affected the ship _Rufus Stevens_. And we have come to-night to hear more of it, if you are of the mind to tell it."

"We have a curiosity concerning your idea," said Christopher cautiously. "And so, if there is any more to tell, we beg of you to tell it plainly, for it may be a thought with a deal of value, and which could be put to a practical use."

Never had Tom Horn looked so worn and fragile as he did at that moment, sitting with the mass of calculations before him and with the candle-light upon him; never before had the strange, luminous quality that he threw off been so pronounced, never had the odd, hopeful look in his eyes shown so fully through their fixed despair.

"I will say what I can," he said, "and that is not much; for no man can speak with authority on things urged by powers whose weight he can only surmise. But this I know: In the south region of the world, the edge of Africa and that of South America make the two sides of a vast throat, and through this the waters warmed by the tropics force themselves northward. The current clings to the American side and, when opposite the mouth of the Amazon, begins to thicken. It sweeps between Trinidad and the Barbados into the Carribbean; it rounds the West Indies to the south and curves into the gulf, and then, out and away, along the North American coast."

"And holds all its parts to itself on the way," marveled Christopher. "That is wonderful, indeed. It is as though it were a vast living thing."

"From the north," said Tom Horn, and he pointed a long finger at one of the maps on the wall, "comes a second current, cold, holding to the coast and meeting the warm current where the ocean's bed rises so abruptly off Newfoundland. Here the two merge and swing off toward the east. But the land turns them south; holding to the African rim they flow back through the great throat, completing the circle. And somewhere inside that circle," said Tom Horn, "is the Sargasso; it lies to the south of the Azores, to the west of the Canaries, and northwest of the Cape Verdes Islands, a vast pool of slack water; and into it is drawn all those things which the currents have ravished from the world."

"It is your thought, then," said mademoiselle, "that the ship _Rufus Stevens_, if still afloat, may have fallen into the grip of this great circle. But might it not be that the storm blew her out of reach of the currents? Who can say what happened in a great wind like that?"

Tom Horn took one of the sheets from the table.

"It was Captain Frisbee who saw the ship. And the spot where he saw her, made by dead reckoning, is set down here. It was three in the afternoon, and the wind was blowing from the southwest. Captain Frisbee told me these things himself," said Tom Horn. "I went to him and asked. And he judged that the gale was blowing at seventy miles an hour, and held so until nightfall on the following day, when it had blown itself out. That gives twenty-seven hours of wicked weather, the wind blowing into the east by north all the time.

"With that body of wind," the clerk went on, "and that number of hours, a ship without masts or sails can be figured to have been driven so many leagues. And my calculations show me that when the storm fell the _Rufus Stevens_ lay at or near this spot on the ocean's water," and he picked the place out on the paper with his finger, "at or near this spot, which is south of the Azores, and on the inner rim of the great circle. And being so situated, and without help," said Tom Horn, "nothing can prevent her from drifting into the Grassy Sea."

"Could it not be," said Christopher Dent, "that she might have settled into some other current after the wind fell, and so floated away in another direction?"

"One whole year I drifted in the _William and Mary_," said Tom Horn. "Each day of that year I marked down in a book, and underneath I wrote what I saw in the sea and in the sky. The _William and Mary_ was a good ship, but misfortune touched her. Time has told me that it was not the misfortune of chance; men had to do with it; there was a purpose in it; but what, or how, I could never contrive. The ship was down by the head when they left her; they desired me to get into a boat with the second mate, Ezra Hardy, who was a plain, honest man. But I said I would stay with the ship. And that boat, with all who were in her, was never heard of again."

"And the others?" asked Christopher Dent.

"The boat of the captain was a strong one," said Tom Horn. "And so was the first mate's. They lived: oh, yes, that was seen to. They lived buoyantly through the storm."

"Do you say," and mademoiselle's voice shook, "that you refused to leave the ship because you believed the second mate's boat was meant to go down?"

"First," said Tom Horn, "I desired to remain with the cargo while there was a chance of saving it. Second," and he whispered this, "it was as you say."

"Now, God save us!" said Christopher Dent in horror. "God in His Heaven save us!"

"I watched the sea all that day," said the clerk, "and I listened through the night; for it was heavy in my mind that the captain and first mate would return. For I knew the men who were in their boats,--hardy, desperate, unsparing men,--and I feared for my life."

"They did not return!" said the little apothecary. "Oh, no, I trust not! I dread to think otherwise."

"The drifting water took the hulk, weighted as it was," said Tom Horn; "with her forecastle down and her forward hatch almost under, the great circle took her and carried her away; and so the villains lost all track of her, and I drifted into the lonely sea. The sun shone through a haze," said the clerk; "its color was russet and streaked with white; so still was the air I saw spirals of mist, like ropes, lowered from the sky. On every side the sea was like a grassy field; I saw planks and spars lying on what seemed solid ground; great birds sat and watched me as though waiting for the time when I should die. There was a ghastly kind of vegetation: pallid, slimy plants,--bloodless,--like things that had grown in the dark; they were horrible to see and more horrible to touch. And," said Tom Horn, "a monstrous life stirred beneath the green scum of the sea. Since time began, God's hand has been turned to many dreadful tasks; but He has hidden them from most men's eyes."

"We will grant," said the girl, "that a ship, circumstanced as you believe the _Rufus Stevens_ was at the end of the storm, must have fallen into the grasp of the great current and so came, or will come, to the Grassy Sea. But before going so far we must assure ourselves she remained afloat."

"Any one who watched her building," said Tom Horn, "must have seen she was a strong vessel. Siddons is an honest man; he never slights a task; he does honest, sound work. Live-oak is tough; hammered iron does not give readily; the ship was new, and, though the masts were out of her when Frisbee saw her, the decks were sound and the hatches fast down. I questioned him about that, and he was quite sure. The ship was like a cask," said Tom Horn. "The sea could not harm her, there being nothing to dash her against. Mark me! she is adrift at this moment in the slimy grass of that silent place; and her cargo is as dry and safe as it would be if it were in a merchant's storehouse."

Mademoiselle's hands trembled, but her voice was steady as she said:

"Would it be possible to find this strange ocean backwater? Could you--could any one--take a ship into it?"

"South of the Azores," said Tom Horn, "northwest of the Cape Verdes, and west of the Canaries." He nodded his head. "I could find my way back to it," said he. "Through all the vast spaces of the sea I could find my way back there, for it is so fixed in my mind that the very sky above it would be known to me if I once lifted it to the horizon-line."

"Anthony Stevens!" said mademoiselle to Christopher. "He must be told!"

"But his health!" protested the little apothecary.

"This will be health to him," said the girl. "This news would put life in him if he stood on the verge of the grave."

"Very well. He shall be told," said Christopher. "He shall be told, and at once."

XXXVII

The movements of the brig which hung so close to shore, and which prowled up and down so mysteriously, greatly interested Anthony Stevens. Late in the day, after the episode of the wrecked long-boat, he saw the vessel at anchor a few miles out and just to the south of the shoals; a small boat had put out from her and was weaving in and out slowly apparently searching for a channel to the inlet.

She was still there next morning, riding at anchor, and before noon two boats had put away from her and engaged in the same weaving in and out. At evening Anthony baked his bread on the coals and roasted a fish; he ate his supper at the window and then tidily washed and put away his gear. He read for an hour or two by candle-light; and about ten o'clock, when he'd made up his mind for bed, he stepped out for a breath of cool air. The night was quiet; the sky carried thousands of stars; through a space between two dunes he could see the surf, thick with phosphorus, breaking brilliantly on the sand. The moon was lifting out of the sea--a great, yellow moon; he moved toward the beach; for a time the light was hidden by a high dune; then the moon's rim began to rise above it, enormous, like a wide eye searching the quiet world. Higher and higher it lifted, the light bathing the sand-hills mysteriously; half of it was now above the line of the dune, and suddenly, against its shining face, Anthony saw a movement. There were two figures,--men,--and they stood upon the top of the hill with the half-moon behind them; their heads were together as though they were conversing, and one of them lifted a hand and pointed out to sea.