CHAPTER XXIII
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA
The wind strengthened, and the men hoisted sail and began to beat into the island. The breeze filled the canvas, and for half an hour the jib lay over the side, while the fishing-boat scudded along like a startled bird. The sun rose over the land, a thin gauze obscuring it. The red light flashed and died away, and fanned the air as if the wind itself were the sunshine. The men's haggard faces caught at moments a lurid glow from it. In the west a mass of bluish cloud rested a little while on the horizon, and then passed into a nimbus of gray rain-cloud that floated above it. Such was the dawn and sunrise of a fateful day.
Dan stood at the helm. When the speck that had glided along the waters like a spectre boat could be no more seen, he gazed in silence toward the eastern light and the green shores of morning. Then he had a sweet half-hour's blessed respite from terrible thoughts. He saw calmly what he had done, and in what a temper of blind passion he had done it. "Surely God is merciful," he thought, and his mind turned to Mona. It relieved him to think of her. She intertwined herself with his yearning hope of pardon and peace. She became part of his scheme of penitence. His love for her was to redeem him in the Father's eye. He was to take it to the foot of God's white throne, and when his guilt came up for judgment, he was to lay it meekly there, and look up into the good Father's face.
The crew had now recovered from their first consternation, and were no longer obeying Dan's orders mechanically. They had come aboard with no clear purpose before them, except that of saving their friend; but nature is nature, and a pitiful thing at the best, and now every man began to be mainly concerned about saving himself. One after one they slunk away forward and sat on the thwart, and there they took counsel together. The wind was full on their starboard beam, the mainsail and yawl were bellied out, and the boat was driving straight for home. But through the men's half-bewildered heads there ran like a cold blast of wind the thought that home could be home no longer. The voices of girls, the prattle of children, the welcome of wife, the glowing hearth – these could be theirs no more. Davy Fayle stayed aft with Dan, but the men fetched him forward and began to question him.
"'Tarprit all this mysterious trouble to us," they said.
Davy held down his head and made no answer.
"You were with him – what's it he's afther doin'?"
Still no answer from the lad.
"Out with it, you cursed young imp," said old Billy.
"Damn his fool's face, why doesn't he spake?"
"It's the mastha's saycret, and I wunnit tell it," said Davy.
"You wunnit, you idiot waistrel?"
"No, I wunnit," said Davy, stoutly.
"Look here, ye beachcomber, snappin' yer fingers at yer old uncle that's after bringin' you up, you pauper – what was it goin' doin' in the shed yander?"
"It's his saycret," repeated Davy.
Old Billy took Davy by the neck as if he had been a sack with an open mouth, and brought down his other hand with a heavy slap on the lad's shoulder.
"Gerr out, you young devil," he said.
Davy took the blow quietly, but he stirred not an inch, and he turned on his uncle with great wide eyes.
"Gerr out, scollop eyes;" and old Billy lifted his hand again.
"Aisy, aisy," said Crennell, interposing; and then, while Davy went back aft, the men compared notes again.
"It's plain to see," said Ned Teare, "it's been a quarrel and maybe a fight, and he's had a piece more than the better, as is only natheral, and him a big strapping chap as strong as a black ox and as straight as the backbone of a herring, and he's been in hidlins, and now he's afther takin' a second thought, and goin' back and chance it."
This reading of the mystery commended itself to all.
"It's aisy for him to lay high like that," said Ned again. "If I was the old Bishop's son I'd hould my luff too, and no hidlins neither. But we've got ourselves in for it, so we have, and we're the common sort, so we are, and there's never no sailin' close to the wind for the like of us."
And to this view of the situation there were many gruff assents. They had come out to sea innocently enough and by a kindly impulse, but they had thereby cast in their lot with the guilty man; and the guilty man had favor in high places, but they had none. Then their tousled heads went together again.
"What for shouldn't we lay high, too?" whispered one, which, with other whispers, was as much as to say, why should they not take the high hand and mutiny, and put Dan into irons, and turn the boat's head and stand out to sea? Then it would be anywhere, anywhere, away from the crime of one, and the guilt of all.
"Hould hard," said old Billy Quilleash, "I'll spake to himself."
Dan, at the tiller, had seen when the men went forward, and he had also seen when some of them cast sidelong looks over their shoulders in his direction. He knew – he thought he knew – the thought wherewith their brave hearts were busy. They were thinking – so thought Dan – that if he meant to throw himself away they must prevent him. But they should see that he could make atonement. Atonement? Empty solace, pitiful unction for a soul in its abasement, but all that remained to him – all, all.
Old Quilleash went aft, sidled up to the helm, and began to speak in a stammering way, splicing a bit of rope while he spoke, and never lifting his eyes to Dan's face.
"What for shouldn't we gerr away to Shetlands?" he said.
"Why to Shetlands?" asked Dan.
"Aw, it's safe and well we'll be when we're there. Aw, yes, I've been there afore to-day. They're all poor men there, but right kind; and what's it sayin', 'When one poor man helps another poor man, God laughs.'"
Dan thought he saw into the heart of the old fellow. His throat grew hard and his eyes dim, and he twisted his face away, keeping one hand on the tiller. They should yet be justified of their loyalty, these stout sea-dogs – yes, God helping him.
"No, no, Billy," he said, "there's to be no running away. We're going back to see it out."
At that old Quilleash threw off some of his reserve.
"Mastha Dan," he said, "we came out to sea just to help you out of this jeel, and because we've shared work, shared meat with you, and a frien' should stand to a frien'; but now we're in for it too, so we are, and what you'll have to stand to we'll have to stand to, and it'll be unknownst to the law as we are innocent as kittens; and so it's every man for himself and God for us all."
Then Dan understood them – how had he been blind so long to their position?
"You want me to put about; is that it?" he asked.
Old Quilleash nodded his head, still keeping his eyes down.
"You think you'll be taken with me?"
Old Quilleash made an abashed mutter of assent. "Aw, yes, as 'cessories before the fac's," he added.
At that Dan's great purpose began to waver.
"Don't fear, Billy," he said, "I'll speak up for you."
"And what'll that go for? Nothin'. Haven't we been tryin' to put 'it' away?"
"That's true."
It was a fearful situation. The cold sweat rose in big beads on Dan's forehead. What had he done? He had allowed these brave fellows to cast in their lot with him. They were with him now for good or ill. He might say they were innocent, but what would his word avail? And he had no proof. They had tried to cover up his crime; they could not cover it; God had willed that the crime should not be hidden. And now, if he wished to lose his life to save his soul, what right had he to take the lives of these men also? The brave fellows had wives that waited for them, and children that claimed their knees. Atonement? Empty heroics to be bought at the price of the blood of five loyal fellows whose only crime was that they had followed him. He had dressed himself in a proud armor of self-sacrifice, but a righteous God, that sees into the heart of man and hates pride and brings it to the dust, had stripped him naked.
Dan's soul was in a turmoil. What should he do? On the one hand were love, honor, Mona, even everlasting life; and on the other were five innocent men. The agony of that moment was terrible. Atonement? God must have set his face against it.
Dan's hand rested on the tiller, but there was no strength in his arm, because there was now no resolve in his heart. The fishing-boat was about three miles west of Jurby Point, going well before the wind. In half an hour more it would run into the creek. It was now to act or never. What was he to do? What? What?
It was, then, in that moment of awful doubt, when the will of a strong man might have shriveled up, that nature herself seemed to give the answer.
All at once the wind fell again to a dead calm. Then Dan knew, or seemed to know, that God was with the men, and against him. There was to be no atonement. No, there was to be no proud self-sacrifice.
Dan's listless hand dropped from the tiller, and he flung himself down in his old seat by the hatches. The men looked into each other's faces and smiled a grisly smile. The sails flapped idly; the men furled them, and the boat drifted south.
The set of the tide was still to ebb, and every boat's length south took the boat a fathom farther out to sea. This was what the men wanted, and they gathered in the cockpit, and gave way to more cheerful spirits.
Dan lay by the hatches, helpless and hopeless, and more haggard and pale than before. An unearthly light now fired his eyes, and that was the first word of a fearful tale. A witch's Sabbath, a devil's revelry, had begun in his distracted brain. It was as though he were already a being of another world. In a state of wild hallucination he saw his own spectre, and he was dead. He lay on the deck; he was cold; his face was white, and it stared straight up at the sky. The crew were busy about him; they were bringing up the canvas and the weights. He knew what they were going to do; they were going to bury him in the sea.
Then a film overspread his sight, and when he awoke he knew that he had slept. He had seen his father and Mona in a dream. His father was very old, the white head was bent, and the calm, saintly gaze was fixed upon him. There was a happy thought in Mona's face. Everything around her spoke of peace. The dream was fresh and sweet and peaceful to Dan when he woke where he lay on the deck. It was like the sunshine and the caroling of birds and the smell of new-cut grass. Was there no dew in Heaven for parched lips, no balm for the soul of a man accursed?
Hours went by. The day wore on. A passing breath sometimes stirred the waters, and again all was dumb, dead, pulseless peace. Hearing only the faint flap of the rippling tide, they drifted, drifted, drifted.
Curious and very touching were the changes that came over the feelings of the men. They had rejoiced when they were first becalmed, but now another sense was uppermost. The day was cold to starvation. Death was before them – slow, sure, relentless death. There could be no jugglery. Then let it be death at home rather than death on this desert sea! Anything, anything but this blind end, this dumb end, this dying bit by bit on still waters. To see the darkness come again, and the sun rise afresh, and once more the sun sink and the darkness deepen, and still to lie there with nothing around but the changeless sea, and nothing above but the empty sky, and only the eye of God upon them, while the winds and the waters lay in His avenging hands – let it rather be death, swift death, just or unjust.
Thus despair took hold of them, and drove away all fear, and where there is no fear there is no grace.
"Share yn olk shione dooin na yn olk nagh nhione dooin," said old Billy, and that was the old Manx proverb that says that better is the evil we know than the evil we do not know.
And with such shifts they deceived themselves, and changed their poor purposes, and comforted their torn hearts.
The cold, thick, winter day was worn far toward sunset, and still not a breath of wind was stirring. Gilded by the sun's hazy rays, the waters to the west made a floor of bleared red. The fishing-boat had drifted nearly ten miles to the south. If she should drift two miles more she must float into the south-eastern current that flows under Contrary Head. At the thought of that, and the bare chance of drifting into Peeltown Harbor, a little of the vague sense of hopelessness seemed to lift away. The men glanced across at Dan, and one murmured: "Let every herring hang by its own gill;" and another muttered: "Every man to the mill with his own sack."
Davy Fayle lay on the deck a few paces from Dan. The simple lad tried to recall the good words that he had heard in the course of his poor, neglected, battered life. One after one they came back to him, most of them from some far-away dreamland, strangely bright with the vision of a face that looked fondly upon him, and even kissed him tenderly. "Gentle Jesus," and "Now I lay me down to sleep" – he could remember them both pretty well, and their simple words went up with the supplicatory ardor of his great-grown heart to the sky on which his eyes were bent.
The men lounged about, and were half frozen. No one cared to go below. None thought of a fire. Silence and death were in their midst. Once again their hearts turned to home, and now with other feelings. They could see the island through the haze, and a sprinkling of snow dotted its purple hills. This brought to mind the bright days of summer, and out of their hopelessness they talked of the woods, and the birds, and the flowers. "D'ye mind my ould mother's bit of a place up the glen," said Crennell, "an' the wee croft afore it swaying and a-flowing same as the sea in the softest taste of a south breeze, and the red ling like a rod of goold running up the hedge, and the fuchsia stretchin' up the wall of the loft, and drooping its red wrack like blood, and the green trammon atop of the porch – d'ye mind it?" And the men said "Ay," and brushed their eyes with their sleeves. Each hard man, with despair seated on his rugged face, longed, like a sick child, to lay his head in the lap of home.
It was Christmas Day. Old Quilleash remembered this, and they talked of Christmas Days gone by, and what happy times they had been. Billy began to tell a humorous story of the two deaf men, Hommy-beg, the gardener, and Jemmy Quirk, the schoolmaster, singing against each other at Oiel Verree; and the old fellow's discolored teeth, with their many gaps between, grinned horribly like an ape's between his frozen jaws when he laughed so hard. But this was too tender a chord, and soon the men were silent once more. Then, while the waters lay cold and clear and still, and the sun was sinking in the west, there came floating to them from the land, through the breathless air, the sound of the church bells ringing at home.
It was the last drop in their cup. The poor fellows could bear up no longer. More than one dropped his head to his knees and sobbed aloud. Then old Quilleash, in a husky voice, and coarsely, almost swearing as he spoke, just to hide his shame in a way, said, spitting from his quid, "Some chap pray a spell." "Ay, ay," said another. "Aw, yes," said a third. But no one prayed. "You, Billy," said Ned Teare. Billy shook his head. The old man had never known a prayer. "It was Pazon Ewan that was powerful at prayer," said Crennell. "You, Crennell." Crennell could not pray.
All lay quiet as death around them, and only the faint sound of the bells was borne to them as a mellow whisper. Then, from near where Dan sat by the hatches, Davy Fayle rose silently to his feet. None had thought of him. With the sad longing in his big, simple eyes, he began to sing. This was what he sang:
"Lo! He comes with clouds descending,
Once for favored sinners slain."
The lad's voice, laden with tears, floated away over the great waters. The men hung their heads, and were mute. The dried-up well of Dan's eyes moistened at last, and down his hard face ran the glistening tears in gracious drops like dew.
CHAPTER XXIV
"THERE'S GOLD ON THE CUSHAGS YET."
Then there came a breath of wind. At first it was soft as an angel's whisper. It grew stronger, and ruffled the sea. Every man lifted his eyes and looked at his mates. Each was struggling with a painful idea that perhaps he was the victim of a delusion of the sense. But the chill breath of the wind was indeed among them.
"Isn't it beginning to puff up from the sou'west?" asked Crennell, in an uncertain whisper. At that old Quilleash jumped to his feet. The idea of the supernatural had gone from him. "Now for the sheets and to make sail," he cried, and spat the quid.
One after one the men got up and bustled about. Their limbs were wellnigh frozen stiff. All was stir and animation in an instant. Pulling at the ropes, the men had begun to laugh, yes, with their husky, grating, tear-drowned voices, even to laugh through their grisly beards. A gruesome sense of the ludicrous had taken hold of them. It was the swift reaction from solemn thoughts. When the boat felt her canvas she shook herself like a sea-bird trying her wings, then shot off at full flight.
"Bear a hand there. Lay on, man alive. Why, you're going about like a brewing-pan, old fellow. Pull, boy, pull. What are your arms for, eh?" Old Quilleash's eyes, which had been dim with tears a moment ago, glistened with grisly mischief. "Who hasn't heard that a Manxman's arms are three legs?" he said with a hungry grin. How the men laughed! What humor there was now in the haggard old saw!
"Where are you for, Billy?" cried Corkell.
"Peel, boy, Peel, d – it, Peel," shouted Quilleash.
"Hurroo! Bould fellow! Ha, ha, he, he."
"Hurroo! There's gold on the cushags yet."
How they worked! In two minutes the mast was stepped, the mainsail and mizzen were up, and they filled away and stood out. From the shores of death they had sailed somehow into the waters of life, and hope was theirs once more.
They began to talk of what had caused the wind. "It was the blessed St. Patrick," said Corkell. St. Patrick was the patron saint of that sea, and Corkell was more than half a Catholic, his mother being a fish-wife from Kinsale.
"Saint Patrick be – ," cried Ned Teare, with a scornful laugh, and they got to words and at length almost to blows.
Old Quilleash was at the tiller. "Drop it," he shouted, "we're in the down stream for Contrary, and we'll be in harbor in ten minutes."
"God A'mighty! it's running a ten-knots tide," said Teare.
In less than ten minutes they were sailing under the castle islet up to the wooden pier, having been eighteen hours on the water.
Not a man of the four had given a thought to Dan, whether he wished to go back to the island, or to make a foreign port where his name and his crime would be unknown. Only the lad Davy had hung about him where he sat by the hatches. Dan's pale face was firm and resolute, and the dream of a smile was on his hard-drawn lips. But his despair had grown into courage, and he knew no fear at all.
The sun was down, the darkness was gathering, and through the day-mist the dew fog was rising as the fishing-boat put to under the lee of a lantern newly lighted, that was stuck out from the end of the pier on a pole. The quay was almost deserted. Only the old harbor-master was there, singing out, as by duty bound, his lusty oaths at their lumberings. Never before did the old grumbler's strident voice sound so musical as now, and even his manifest ill-temper was sweet to-night, for it seemed to tell the men that thus far they were not suspected.
The men went their way together, and Dan went off alone. He took the straightest course home. Seven long miles over a desolate road he tramped in the darkness and never a star came out, and the moon, which was in its last quarter, struggling behind a rack of cloud, lightened the sky sometimes, but did not appear. As he passed through Michael he noticed, though his mind was preoccupied and his perception obscure, that the street was more that usually silent, and that few lights burned behind the window-blinds. Even the low porch of the "Three Legs," when Dan came to it, was deserted, and hardly the sound of a voice came from within the little pot-house. Only in a vague way did these impressions communicate themselves to Dan's stunned intelligence as he plodded along, but hardly had he passed out of the street when he realized the cause of the desolation. A great glow came from a spot in front of him, as of many lanterns and torches burning together, and though in his bewilderment he had not noticed it before, the lights lit all the air about them. In the midst of these lights there came and went out of the darkness the figures of a great company of people, sometimes bright with the glare on their faces, sometimes black with the deep shadow of the torchlight.
Obscure as his ideas were, Dan comprehended everything in an instant, and, chilled as he was to the heart's core by the terrors of the last night and day, his very bones seemed now to grow cold within him.
It was a funeral by torchlight, and these maimed rites were, by an ancient usage, long disused, but here revived, the only burial of one whose death had been doubtful, or whose body had washed ashore on the same day.
The people were gathered on the side of the churchyard near to the high road, between the road and the church. Dan crept up to the opposite side, leaped the low cobble wall, and placed himself under the shadow of the vestry by the chancel. He was then standing beneath the window he had leaped out of in his effort to escape the Bishop on that Christmas Eve long ago of his boyish freak at Oiel Verree.
About an open vault three of four mourners were standing, and, a little apart from them a smoking and flickering torch cast its light on their faces. There was the Bishop, with his snowy head bare and deeply bowed, and there by his elbow was Jarvis Kerruish in his cloak and beaver, with arms folded under his chin. And walking to and fro, from side to side, with a quick nervous step, breaking out into alternate shrill cries and harsh commands to four men who had descended into the vault, was the little, restless figure of the Deemster. Behind these, and about them was the close company of the people, with the light coming and going on their faces, a deep low murmur, as of many whispers together, rising out of their midst.
Dan shook from head to foot. His heart seemed to stand still. He knew on what business the mourners were met; they were there to bury Ewan. He felt an impulse to scream, and then another impulse to turn and fly. But he could not utter the least cry, and quivering in every limb he could not stir. Standing there in silence he clung to the stone wall with trembling fingers.
The body had been lowered to its last home, and the short obsequies began. The service for the dead was not read, but the Bishop stretched out his hands above the open vault and prayed. Dan heard the words, but it was as if he heard the voice only. They beat on his dazed, closed mind as a sea-gull, blown by the wind, beats against a window on a stormy night. While the Bishop prayed in broken accents, the deep thick boom of the sea came up from the distant shore between the low-breathed murmurs of the people.
Dan dropped to his knees, breathless and trembling. He tried to pray, too, but no prayer would come. His mind was beaten, and his soul was barren. His father's faltering voice ceased, and then a half-stifled moan burst from his own lips. In the silence the moan seemed to fall on every ear, and the quick ear of the Deemster was instantly arrested. "Who's that?" he cried, and twisted about.
But all was still once more, and then the people began to sing. It was a strange sight, and a strange sound: the torches, the hard furrowed faces in the flickering light, the white-headed Bishop, the restless Deemster, and the voices ringing out in the night over the open grave. And from where he knelt Dan lifted his eyes, and by the light of the torches he saw the clock in the church tower; the hands still stood at five.
He rose to his feet and turned away. His step fell softly on the grass of the churchyard. At one instant he thought that there were footsteps behind him. He stopped and stretched his arms half-fearfully toward the sound. There was nothing. After he had leaped the cobble wall, he was conscious that he had stopped again, and was listening as though to learn if he had been observed.