Section 10

I went below, not because I meant to take some rest, but simply because I couldn’t bear to look at it just then. The indefatigable Ransome was busy in the saloon. It had become a regular practice with him to give me an informal health report in the morning. He turned away from the sideboard with his usual pleasant, quiet gaze. No shadow rested on his intelligent fore- head.
“There are a good many of them middling bad this morning, sir,” he said in a calm tone.
“What? All knocked out?”
“Only two actually in their bunks, sir, but
“Tts the last night that has done for them. We have had to pull and haul all the blessed time.’
“I heard, sir. I had a mind to come out and help only, you know. ni
“Certainly not. Youmustn’t. . . . The fellows
koi
88 THE SHADOW-LINE
lie at night about the decks, too. It isn’t good for them.”
Ransome assented. But men couldn’t be looked after like children. Moreover, one could hardly blame them for trying for such coolness and such air as there were to be found on deck. He himself, of course, knew better.
He was, indeed, a reasonable man. Yet it would have been hard to say that the others were not. The last few days had been for us like the ordeal of the fiery furnace. One really couldn’t quarrel with their com- | mon, imprudent humanity making the best of the moments of relief, when the night brought in the illusion of coolness and the starlight twinkled through the heavy, dew-laden air. Moreover, most of them were so weakened that hardly anything could be done without everybody that could totter mustering on the braces. No, it was no use remonstrating with them. But I fully believed that quinine was of very great use indeed.
I believed in it. I pinned my faith to it. It would save the men, the ship, break the spell by its medicinal virtue, make time of no account, the weather but a passing worry, and, like a magic powder working against mysterious malefices, secure the first passage of my first command against the evil powers of calms and pestilence. I looked upon it as more precious than gold, and unlike gold, of which there ever hardly seems to be enough anywhere, the ship had a sufficient store of it. I went in to get it with the purpose of weighing out doses. I stretched my hand with the feeling of a man reaching for an unfailing panacea, took up a fresh bottle and unrolled the wrapper, noticing as I did so that the ends, both top and bottom, had come un- sealed. :
But why record all the swift steps of the appalling
THE SHADOW-LINE 89
discovery. You have guessed the truth already, There was the wrapper, the bottle, and the white powder in- side, some sort of powder! But it wasn’t quinine. One look at it was quite enough. I remember that at the very moment of picking up the bottle, before I even dealt with the wrapper, the weight of the object I had in my hand gave me an instant of premonition. Quinine is as light as feathers; and my nerves must have been exasperated into an extraordinary sensibility. Ilet the bottle smash itself on the floor. The stuff, whatever it was, felt gritty under the sole of my shoe. I snatched up the next bottle and then the next. The weight alone told the tale. One after another they fell, breaking at my feet, not because I threw them down in my dismay, but slipping through my fingers as if this disclosure were too much for my strength.
It is a fact that the very greatness of a mental shock helps one to bear up against it, by producing a sort of temporary insensibility. I came out of the state- room stunned, as if something heavy had dropped on, my head. From the other side of the saloon, across the table, Ransome, with a duster in his hand, stared open- mouthed. I don’t think that I looked wild. It is quite possible that I appeared to be in a hurry because I was instinctively hastening up on deck. An example of this training become instinct. The difficulties, the dangers, the problems of a ship at sea must be met on deck.
To this fact, as it were of nature, I responded in- stinctively; which may be taken as a proof that for a moment I must have been robbed of my reason.
I was certainly off my balance, a prey to impulse, for at the bottom of the stairs I turned and flung myself at the doorway of Mr. Burns’ cabin. The wildness of his aspect checked my mental disorder. He was sitting up
90 THE SHADOW-LINE
in his bunk, his body looking immensely long, his head drooping a little sideways, with affected complacency. He flourished, in his trembling hand, on the end of a fore-arm no thicker than a stout walking-stick, a shining pair of scissors which he tried before my very eyes to jab at his throat.
I was to a certain extent horrified; but it was rather 3 secondary sort of effect, not really strong enough to make me yell at him in some such manner as: “Stop!” ‘ . “Heavens!” . . . “What are you doing?”
In reality he was simply overtaxing his returning strength in a shaky attempt to clip off the thick growth of his red beard. A large towel was spread over his lap, and a shower of stiff hairs, like bits of copper wire, was descending on it at every snip of the scissors. 3
He turned to me his face grotesque beyond the fantasies of mad dreams, one cheek all bushy as if with a swollen flame, the other denuded and sunken, with the untouched long moustache on that side asserting itself, lonely and fierce. And while he stared thunderstruck, with the gaping scissors on his fingers, I shouted my discovery at him fiendishly, in six words, without comment.
Vv
I nean the clatter of the scissors escaping from his hand, noted the perilous heave of his whole person over _ the edge of the bunk after them, and then, returning to my first purpose, pursued my course on to the deck. The sparkle of the sea filled my eyes. It was gorgeous and barren, monotonous and without hope under the empty curve of the sky. The sails hung motionless and slack, the very folds of their sagging surfaces moved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my advent made the man at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth could have made it do so? It was a whistling note like a bird’s. For a long, long time I faced an empty world, steeped in an infinity of silence, through which the sunshine poured and flowed for some mysterious purpose. Then I heard Ransome’s voice at my elbow.
“I have put Mr. Burns back to bed, sir.”
“You have?”
“Well, sir, he got out, all of a sudden, but when he let go of the edge of his bunk he fell down. He isn’t light- headed, though, it seems to me.”
“No,” I said dully, without looking at Ransome. He waited for a moment, then, cautiously as if not to give offence: “I don’t think we need lose much of that stuff, sir,” he said, “I can sweep it up, every bit of it almost, and then we could sift the glass out. I will go about it at once. It will not make the breakfast late, not ten minutes.”
“Oh, yes,” I said bitterly. “Let the breakfast wait,
91
92 THE SHADOW-LINE
sweep up every bit of it, and then throw the damned lot overboard!” ,
The profound silence returned, and when I looked over my shoulder Ransome—the intelligent, serene Ransome—had vanished from my side. The intense loneliness of the sea acted like poison on my brain. When I turned my eyes to the ship, I had a morbid vision of her as a floating grave. Who hasn’t heard of ships found drifting, haphazard, with their crews all dead? I looked at the seaman at the helm, I had an impulse to speak to him, and, indeed, his face took on an expectant cast as if he had guessed my intention. But in the end I went below, thinking I would be alone with the greatness of my trouble for a little while. But through his open door Mr. Burns saw me come down, and addressed me grumpily: “Well, sir?”
I went in. “It isn’t well at all,” I said.
_ Mr. Burns, re-established in his bed-place, was con- cealing his hirsute cheek in the palm of his hand.
“ That confounded fellow has taken away the scissors from me,” were the next words he said.
The tension I was suffering from was so great that it was perhaps just as well that Mr. Burns had started on this grievance. He seemed very sore about it and grumbled, “Does he think I am mad, or what?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Burns,” I said. Ilooked upon him at that moment as a model of self-possession. I even conceived on that account a sort of admiration for that man, who had (apart from the intense materi- ality of what was left of his beard) come as near to being a disembodied spirit as any man can do and live. I noticed the preternatural sharpness of the ridge of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very š$oon. Enviable man! So near extinction—while I
THE SHADOW-LINE 93
had to bear within me a tumult of suffering vitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an indefinite re- luctance to meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering: “I feel as if I were going mad myself.”
Mr. Burns glared spectrally, but otherwise wonder- fully composed.
“I always thought he would play us some deadly trick,” he said, with a peculiar emphasis on the he.
It gave me a mental shock, but I had neither the mind nor the heart nor the spirit to argue with him. My form of sickness was indifference. The creeping paralysis of a hopeless outlook. So I only gazed at him. Mr. Burns broke into further speech.
“Eh? What? No! You won’t believe it? Well, how do you account for this? How do you think it could have happened?”
“Happened?” I repeated dully. “Why, yes, how in the name of the infernal powers did this thing happen?”
Indeed, on thinking it out, it seemed incomprehen- sible that it should just be like this: the bottles emptied, refilled, rewrapped, and replaced. A sort of plot, a sinister attempt to deceive, a thing resembling sly vengeance—but for what?—or else a fiendish joke. But Mr. Burns was in possession of a theory. It was simple, and he uttered it solemnly in a hollow voice.
“I suppose they have given him about fifteen pounds in Haiphong for that little lot.”
“Mr. Burns!” I cried.
He nodded grotesquely over his raised legs, like two broomsticks in the pyjamas, with enormous bare feet at the end.
“Why not? The stuff is pretty expensive in this
94 THE SHADOW-LINE
part of the world, and they were very short of it in Tonkin. And what did he care? You have not known him. Ihave, and I have defied him. He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him. I faced him in that cabin where you live now, when he was sick, and I cowed him then. He thought I was going to twist his neck for him. If he had had his way we would have been beating upagainst the North-East | monsoon, as long as he lived and afterwards too, for ages and ages. Acting the Flying Dutchman in the China Sea! Ha! Ha!”
“But why should he replace the bottles like this? 3. a .« Tbegan.
“Why shouldn’t he? Why should he want to throw the bottles away? They fit the drawer. They be- long to the medicine chest.”
“ And they were wrapped up,” I cried.
“Well, the wrappers were there. Did it from habit, I suppose, and as to refilling, there is always a lot of stuff they send in paper parcels that burst after a time. And then, who can tell? I suppose you didn’t taste it, sir?) But, of course, you are sure . .
“No,” I said. “I didn’t taste it. It is all over- board now.”
Behind me, a soft, cultivated voice said: “I have tasted it. It seemed a mixture of all sorts, sweetish, saltish, very horrible.”
Ransome, stepping out of the pantry, had been listening for some time, as it was very excusable in him to do.
“A dirty trick,” said Mr. Burns. “I always said he would.”
THE SHADOW-LINE 95
The magnitude of my indignation was unbounded. And the kind, sympathetic doctor too. The only sympathetic man I ever knew . . . instead of writing that warning letter, the very refinement of sympathy, why didn’t the man make a proper inspec- tion? But, as a matter of fact, it was hardly fair to blame the doctor. The fittings were in order and the medicine chest is an officially arranged affair. There was nothing really to arouse the slightest suspicion. The person I could never forgive was myself. Nothing should ever be taken for granted. The seed of everlast- ing remorse was sown in my breast.
“T feel it’s all my fault,” I exclaimed, “mine, and nobody else’s. That’s how I feel. I shall never for- give myself.”
“That’s very foolish, sir,” said Mr. Burns fiercely.
And after this effort he fell back exhausted on his bed. He closed his eyes, he panted; this affair, this abomi-; nable surprise had shaken him up too. As I turned away I perceived Ransome looking at me blankly. He appreciated what it meant, but he managed to produce his pleasant, wistful smile. Then he stepped back into his pantry, and I rushed up on deck again to see whether there was any wind, any breath under the sky, any stir of the air, any sign of hope. The deadly stillness met me again. Nothing was changed except that there was a different man at the wheel. Helookedill. His whole figure drooped, and he seemed rather to cling to the spokes than hold them with a controlling grip. I said to him:
“You are not fit to be here.”
“I can manage, sir,” he said feebly.
As a matter of fact, there was nothing for him to do. The ship had no steerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlasting Koh-ring visible over
96 THE SHADOW-LINE
the stern, with a few small islets, black spots in the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for those bits of land there was no speck on the sky, no speck on the water, no shape of vapour, no wisp of smoke, no sail, no boat, no stir of humanity, no sign of life, nothing!
The first question was, what to do? What could one do? The first thing to do obviously was to tell the men. I did it that very day. I wasn’t going to let the knowledge simply get about. I would face them. They were assembled on the quarter-deck for the purpose. Just before I stepped out to speak to them I discovered that life could hold terrible moments. No confessed criminal had ever been so oppressed by his sense of guilt. This is why, perhaps, my face was set hard and my voie curt and unemotional while I made my declaration that I could do nothing more for the sick, in the way of drugs. As to such care as could be given them they knew they had had it.
I would have held them justified in tearing me limb from limb. The silence which followed upon my words was almost harder to bear than the angriest uproar. I was crushed by the infinite depth of its reproach. But, as a matter of fact, I was mistaken. In a voice which I had great difficulty in keeping firm, I went on: “I suppose, men, you have understood what I said, and you know what it means.”
A voice or two were heard: “Yes, sir. . . . We understand.”
They had kept silent simply because they thought that they were not called to say anything; and when I told them that I intended to run into Singapore and that the best chance for the ship and the men was in ` the efforts all of us, sick and well, must make to get her along out of this, I received the encouragement of a
THE SHADOW-LINE 97
low assenting murmur and of a louder voice exclaiming, “Surely there is a way out of this blamed hole.”
* * *
Here is an extract from the notes I wrote at the time:
We have lost Koh-ring at last. For many days now I don’t think I have been two hours below altogether. I remain on deck, of course, night and day, and the nights and the days wheel over us in succession, whether long or short, who can say? All sense of time is lost in the monotony of expectation, of hope, and of desire—which is only one: Get the ship to the southward! Get the ship to the southward! The effect is curiously mechanical; the sun climbs and descends, the night swings over our heads as if somebody below the horizon were turning a crank. It is the pettiest, the most aim- less! . . . and all through that miserable performance I go on, tramping, tramping. the deck. How many miles have I walked on the poop of that ship! A stubborn pilgrimage of sheer restless- ness, diversified by short excursions below to look upon Mr. Burns. I don’t know whether it is an illusion, but he seems to become more substantial from day to day. He doesn’t say much, for, indeed, the situation doesn’t lend itself to idle remarks. I notice this even with the men as I watch them moving or sitting about the decks. They don’t talk to each other. It strikes me that if there exist an invisible ear catching the whispers of the earth, it will find this ship the most silent spot on it. r