Part 27

"There is no place for a woman in such an expedition," said Anthony. He looked at the girl, who had now arisen and was standing by her father's chair, tall, straight, wonderful. It rose in his heart to say that he was a fool; that there was a place for her anywhere; that, if it were given him to do, he'd make a place for her--and a safe place--at the very feet of peril itself. But he did not say it. He only looked at her stubbornly, and denied her permission to put foot on the _Roebuck_. But she said nothing; it was Mr. Sparhawk who spoke.

"It would be as well," said the little gentleman, "to hear our reasons for this." He crossed his legs and dandled one foot, while he looked at Anthony mildly. "It is customary," he proceeded, "when a ship puts to sea to have on board of her a person who represents the owners of the cargo. The presence of this person also serves the owners and officers of the ship; because, in case of unavoidable mischance, he is present as a witness and can absolve them from blame. Of course," and Mr. Sparhawk gestured lightly, "the _Roebuck_ carries no cargo out; but it is the hope of those who send her, the creditors of Rufus Stevens' Sons, that she will return with a most valuable one. It would be a useful thing if there were some one on board to receive this merchandise and set down, as far as might be, a report of its conditions."

"And it is your thought to send a girl to fill that office?" said Anthony, frowning. "A ship like this, and bound upon the errand this one's to set out on, stands to meet peril of more than the usual kind. If a supercargo must be sent, let it be a man, and one used to the sea and its mishaps."

"Do not forget," said Mr. Sparhawk, "that we who engage in this enterprise must keep it secret. If the news of the _Roebuck's_ purpose got out, the sea would be covered with sail, and each ship would be seeking to salvage the _Rufus Stevens_. So we must guard our intention; we must trust no one. I would go with you, but matters of business press; monsieur is not in good health; the only person available in whom the creditors have complete confidence is mademoiselle; so," and Mr. Sparhawk pursed his lips and raised his brows, "what are we to do?"

The stubborn answer was in Anthony's mouth; but before it was spoken he chanced to look at the girl. She was so still; there was such spirited beauty in her fine eyes; her color was wonderful; her attitude was of eager desire; and yet she held herself proudly. A rush of feeling came smothering into the young man's mind; he tried to fight it back, but could not. Then he felt very quiet; peace followed where resentment had been; there was a warm joy; he admired the cleverness of Mr. Sparhawk in making it so impossible to refuse. His eyes drank her in; there was a surprise, an incredulous amazement, that he should have ever held her off, that he had been resolved to leave her behind, when everything favored her going with him.

"I shall have your trunks taken on board," said he to the girl. "And you must follow well before the tide swings."

"Yes, Captain Stevens," she said.

He caught the smile hidden behind the words and smiled himself. And for the first time since the night at the Crooked Billet the bitter wind that blew between them died completely down; he placed her chair for her, and drew his own toward it; and he talked to her in a new tone, with confidence and spirit; she sat and listened, and the hands which were folded in her lap trembled ever so little, and her eyes were even brighter than before.

XL

The _Roebuck_ let go her moorings in the gray of the July morning; one of the boats towed her out of the run and into the river; then under mainsail, topsail, and jibs she pointed her nose downstream on the tedious journey to the capes. The tide ran out strongly, and the wind favored the vessel's progress; she had dropped the city behind by sun-up, the flats went by, and she picked up the towns on the river-bank one by one. The bay opened out late in the afternoon; the mate marked the lights of Lewes well into the night; and by morning they were at sea, under full sail and headed directly east.

The mulatto proved a good cook, and the breakfast he brought into the main cabin was excellent and plentiful. There was a large cut of Westphalia ham upon a broad platter, hot, candied, and delicious; there was a dish of rice like a hillock of snow, ship's biscuit, and steaming chocolate in a tall, slim pot.

"We are to be well fed, at all events," said Anthony, as he sat to the breakfast, with satisfaction. Mademoiselle and Tom Horn had been seated before he came in, and the clerk had a chart, marked in red and blue and black ink, upon the table between them. "The schooner is pointed due east," said Anthony. "Corkery tells me those were your directions."

"East, on the inner skirt of the circle until we reach the Azores," said Tom Horn, pointing to the characters on his chart and following them with a finger. "Then south to the Sargasso."

Mademoiselle, as she followed the tracing finger, bent forward; and, as it stopped at the region where lay the sea of grass, she saw its place was marked by a widening circle of skulls. She shivered a little and drew back.

"With the wind holding," said Anthony, "We should raise the Azores in two weeks."

"We must cling to the inner rim of the circle," said Tom Horn, still with his finger on the chart, "for all things carried by the current drift toward its center; the moon and the running tides and the turning of the world draw them. And we must follow the circle to the place where it begins to bend to the south; the hulk we seek may have been delayed in its passage, for no man knows what the sea will do, and no one can judge the mysteries of the wind."

All through the breakfast, Anthony and mademoiselle talked with Tom Horn, and more than one of his peculiar charts came to the table while they sat there; then the two went on deck, leaving the man poring over his figures, his signs, and his curving lines. The morning was sparkling: the west wind pushed boisterously in the sails, and the little schooner leaped ahead. Corkery approached from amidships, at a look from Anthony.

"How does she set into her work?" asked the young man.

"As ably as a craft twice her bulk," said the mate. "This is no narrow spread of sail," with a look up at the strong, weather-stained canvas, "and yet see how steadily she stands under it."

The _Roebuck_ slipped easily up the long sides of the sea, her sharp prow split its crests, and then she'd sleek jauntily down into the vast hollows, flirting the water from her like a duck. The sky was a rare color, with racing clouds upon its breast; the sun lifted higher and higher, and the gleam of the sea grew brighter, throwing back the sky's own blue, the waves thinning to a green and breaking into a sudden, hissing white. The face of mademoiselle was filled with wonder.

"I have never before been to sea in a little ship," she said, "and so I have not known what being at sea means." Her eyes swept the sky and heaving water; she breathed in the wonderful, singing air; her body swayed with the spring of the craft beneath her. "It is glorious!" she said.

Anthony nodded: _he_ did not look at the sea and sky; he looked at _her_. And he said:

"Yes, it is glorious."

The full west wind held and blew the _Roebuck_ before it all that day; it whistled sharply through the night, and Anthony, whose watch it was on deck stripped the schooner of a part of her sail. The second morning saw the sea running grayer and longer; the sky was steely, and the sun was hidden. This held for twenty-four hours; then the wind hauled around to the east and scraped the sky's gray into mountains of black; the rain and wind lashed about, and the sea leaped to meet them; the schooner, under topsail and jib, was tossed like a chip, but she held stanchly upright and fought her way through, the blow scarcely wetting her decks. At the end of the fourth day out, Anthony, who stood near the helmsman, mademoiselle at his side, saw a blue gleam through the sober sky.

"The sun will shine to-morrow," he said, "and the sea will run down during the night."

"I am almost sorry," she said. "The angry sea is amazing; I'm afraid I shall not like it, smiling, as greatly as I did before."

As Anthony foretold, the wind slackened during the night and the sea ran down; the sun rose, huge and yellow, in the morning, and the sky bent lightly to the water on the horizon's edge. The wind continued good and from the southwest; the schooner heeled a little to it, her sails bulging full; and either Anthony or Corkery constantly walked the deck. But no eye on board was as watchful as Tom Horn's, as those smooth, rolling days at sea slipped by. He'd take his place in the bow, early of a morning, and there he'd stay with intent face until far into the night. The water racing past the vessel's side seemed to fascinate him; he'd brood over its passage, wearing a strange look; and as the earth slowly turned, giving a new facet to the sun's warmth, the odd clerk would watch its progress in wonder and in silence.

The lowering sun, almost level in the west, one evening caught an object to the east and held it glittering.

"St. Michael's," said Anthony, searching the spot with a glass.

The rising of the Azores caused a deal of excitement in Tom Horn. He came aft to where Anthony stood, and the young man felt a shaking hand upon his arm.

"South," said Tom Horn. "South, and a trifle to the west, the merest trifle; for that is as the waters run. The ship may be in those seas," and he pointed to starboard: "she may be drifting there, still outside the rim of dead things. We must watch, night and day; we must watch!"

The _Roebuck_ was headed south, and so held for a week; there followed a succession of light winds; they made but little headway; and with each day the sea grew quieter; there seemed a gathering of drift on the surface; the sky was shot with yellow; the dulled sun threw off a sweltering heat. At last the sails hung idle; rocking gently, the schooner was borne on through a thickening sea.

"Slowly," said Tom Horn, "very slowly." He gazed about over the forbidding waters, a look that seemed both exaltation and fear, in his strange eyes. "It was about here that the _William and Mary_ first touched the edge of that strange place," he said. "She drifted as we are drifting; sometimes it seemed that she did not move at all. But she came to it at last, as all helpless things must come to it when once the circle draws them. Without wind we are as helpless as she was," said Tom Horn. "Just as helpless. And we are being carried on, as she was carried on, and as the _Rufus Stevens_ is being carried on, somewhere outside our vision."

Corkery, who stood by, and heard the man's words, cocked an eye after him as he went forward; and he said to Anthony:

"He's worse than I ever saw him before. I've heard say he was out of balance, but up to now I have noticed only that he kept stiller than most."

"He is excited," said Anthony. "This region brings up memories of certain suffering he's gone through."

Corkery said nothing for a space, and his keen eye went backward and forward over the sluggish sea. Then he spoke:

"You haven't said what your meaning is in this voyage, and I haven't asked any questions. But in the last few days I've come to see that our friend there," and he nodded toward Tom Horn, who had taken his accustomed place in the bow, "has something to do with it; and so I bid you look to your facts. Even now we are in strange seas; and we're headed for stranger still."

Anthony nodded.

"The ship is commissioned for an errand out of the common," he said. "And we are headed now as I intended to head from the first."

Corkery looked at the sky to the north, and then at the limp sails.

"We'll have a stir of wind in a little," he said. "And I'll be pleased enough when it comes."

But the breeze was a light one, and, though it huddled into the sails, it increased the schooner's pace but little. Mademoiselle Lafargue, who had come on deck, gazed out across the water with its masses of weed and its bits of wreckage.

"I had been trying to read," she said. "But there is something oppressive in the air, and I could not. So I sat and looked out at the port; the sea looks strange, and the birds that hover about are stranger still."

She pointed to where some dirty, evil-looking fowl hung, poised, near the schooner; their great wings seldom stirred, and their narrow eyes were fixed upon the _Roebuck_.

"Tom Horn has told me of those," said Anthony. "It seems to be a sort of vulture, and, no doubt, there is much drifts into these seas which goes to keeping them sleek."

She shivered as she looked at the birds.

"What can be to the south of us," she said, "when the approach is so full of anxiety? The very air seems poisonous."

"It blows over the grave of many a hope, if all I hear is true," said Anthony. "But let us not think of that. To us it offers a chance of victory; and we can't let our nerves grow slack because of the tales of other men, whether false or true. Ahead is our direction." He looked at her soberly. "And ahead we must go, no matter what foul promises grow in our sight."

She looked into his face; and deep in her woman's eyes was the candor of a child.

"That is like you," she said. "It is very like you. I am ashamed."

"God knows," he said, "I like the place no more than you! Give me clear water, and it may rage as it likes, for that is only natural. But a sea which runs with a kind of slime, and whose birds are eaters of carrion, has no place in the book of things. Nevertheless," and he nodded to her and smiled, "we'll move deeper into it; and then I may have occasion to alter my views."

Two weeks passed; often their sails hung idle, while time went completely around the clock; a slow, hot wind sometimes blew; and they held to the south and made what time they might. The drift grew thicker; the weed sometimes choked their progress; a green, stiff sea spread out before them; strange life crept upon it, and the hideous birds perched upon bits of wreckage, much as crows might in a stump-filled field.

In the mists of one morning a cry came from Tom Horn; and Corkery, whose watch on deck it was, advanced toward him. The clerk, trembling and clinging to the forward rail with one hand, was pointing away to the south with the other.

Corkery followed the direction indicated; through the piling formations of mist he saw a vast huddle; it loomed up out of the sea, hung with flying tendrils of fog; a dim light set through its spaces, pale, phosphorescent, unreal.

"Land!" said Corkery. "Land, by God!"

"No," said Tom Horn. "It is the place of my captivity! It is the city of dead ships!"

XLI

The mate had Anthony on deck directly, and the young man eagerly searched the mists to make out what manner of a place it was that bulked up so out of the sea. In a few moments mademoiselle also appeared; and as she stood with them in the schooner's bow her face was white, but she said nothing.

The sails were motionless; the rotting sea piled against their prow; the air was hot and dull; the mist, veiling the whole region, was like steam.

"The pull of this current promises a deal of discomfort to us if we can't make way against it," said Anthony to the mate.

"I could wish we were well quit of it," said Corkery. "A little farther into the midst of this sea, and it might take more than a wind to help us away again."

"What depth of water does your chart give?" said Anthony, to Tom Horn.

The clerk turned his head but still kept his tight clutch on the rail.

"I so feared what was beneath these waters," he said, "that I never sounded them. But there is a great depth; there must be, because of the dreadful life that swarms there."

"Too much water for an anchor," said the mate. But he called for the lead, nevertheless, and watched fathom after fathom of line run over the side. "As deep a hole as there is in all the sea," he grumbled.

"If every cable in the ship were fastened end to end," said Tom Horn, "they'd do no good. There would be nothing for your anchor to grapple with. It would be like hanging over the rim of the moon, fishing for the world."

Slowly the sun seeped through the mist; then it rent holes in it; the vapor curled forlornly before the light, and lifted away from the surface of the sea. The vague loom ahead now became solid; it took both body and color; it was a huddle of broken ships, crowding together like cattle in a green field. The rotting sea held them; their planks were warped; their seams gaped thirstily. And, as the schooner's company watched, the drift rode the _Roebuck_ on; the mass of weed and sea-rubbish turned, and shifted drearily, and seemed to deepen.

As there was no sign of a breeze, Anthony ordered out a boat; three men were put into it, and he took an oar himself; a line was made fast to the schooner, and they lay to the work of pulling her head around. But the mass of weed was too stiff; the stout, ashen oars bent in the thole-pins; but the vessel did not swerve; the boat could make no way; the drift went on, and they went with it. And while the boat was being hoisted in Tom Horn spoke to mademoiselle.

"The circle has tightened; no power can slacken it--no wind--no wash of the sea. It is the grip of the great law, the world's roll, and the force of the planet that guides the tides. It gives nothing up."

"You were once lost in this place," said the girl, her face still pale, but with steady voice. "And you made away from it."

"I was here until my heart died in me," said Tom Horn. "I was here so long that it seemed the very heavens were splashed with slime; and my hope rotted as everything must rot that stays here. Each morning," he said, in his odd way, "the sun lifted out of the east like a threat and hung burning over a ghastly sea. All day I saw dead things or dead men; I saw shapes rear themselves out of the scum that withered my sight. By night winged horrors drifted across the moon; in the dark there were millions of pale candles, lighted round the coffin of a world that had passed."

The schooner's company was gathered in the waist as Anthony went below; he noted them whispering and nodding, sullen looks upon their faces; and his own was grim as he sat down to his breakfast. Mademoiselle was already at the table. And they ate for some time in silence. The hideous, turgid sea lay flat through the schooner's stern window, and the girl's eyes were fixed upon it. Anthony studied her; the sparkle which had filled her eyes from the time they had put to sea was gone; her face was intent; fear worked beneath her look.

"Tom Horn does not seem to have a mind for his breakfast," said Anthony.

"No," she replied.

She kept her eyes fixed upon the motionless sea; there was another silence.

"And," said the young man, "you do not appear to be greatly inclined to it yourself."

"No," she said again.

"For some days," said Anthony, "I have noted you engaged in talk with Tom. And a little space ago I saw you again, after we'd sighted the wrecks ahead. And I would suggest," continued the young man, "that you not give too much attention to his sayings at this time."

"It is your own word," said the girl, "that of all those with whom you have spoken this man has been nearest the truth."

Anthony poured some wine into a high glass; its amber body picked up a ray of light, bathed joyously in it, and then shot it out, stained and gleaming. And while the young man studied its cheerful message he replied to the girl:

"What you say is fact; I'd be the last to question it. Queer as his way has been, odd and circuitous as his warnings and suggestions, he has often grasped the truth and drawn the darkness from about it. But witness: All these matters dealt with the goings-on at Rufus Stevens' Sons; they had to do with things of record, with the accounts of the house, with the book of arithmetic. He was, no doubt, soundly trained in those things and so stands straight in them. But this," and Anthony nodded out the window, "is a region where he once was cast away, where his spirit sank in the stillness, and his blunting mind gave the darkness shapes no man had known. Many say Tom Horn is mad. I don't know. But if it is so then his distemper took form in this sea; so, when he talks of it, I balance his words with doubt. And if you did the like it would be a careful thing."

"When he spoke of the chance of finding the ship _Rufus Stevens_, did he not speak of this sea?" asked the girl. "And yet you showed no doubt then; you thought it a thing to follow out with speed and hopefulness."

"And I still think so," said Anthony. "For the chance of the ship being somewhere within the great ocean current, and of finally drifting into this slack sea, is a thing which comes of his arithmetic and not of his madness."

She regarded him quietly for a moment.

"When you wear that look," she said, "I cannot help but see things as you see them."

Her hand rested upon the table quite near to him, and his own went out and rested upon it.