Section 8

I believe he had partly fretted himself into that ill- ness; the climate did the rest with the swiftness of an invisible monster ambushed in the air, in the water, in the mud of the river bank. Mr. Burns was a pre- destined victim.
I discovered him lying on his back, glaring sullenly ‘and radiating heat on one like a small furnace. He would hardly answer my questions, and only grumbled: Couldn’t a man take an afternoon off duty with a bad headache—for once? .
That evening, as I sat in the saloon after dinner, I could hear him muttering continuously in his room. Ransome, who was clearing the table, said to me:
“I am afraid, sir, I won’t be able to give the mate all the attention he’s likely to need. I will have to be forward in the galley a great part of my time.”
Ransome was the cook. The mate had pointed him out to me the first day, standing on the deck, his arms crossed on his broad chest, gazing on the river.
Even at a distance his well-proportioned figure, something thoroughly sailor-like in his poise, made him
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‘noticeable. On nearer view the intelligent, quiet eyes, a well-bred face, the disciplined independence of his manner made up an attractive personality. When, in addition, Mr. Burns told me that he was the best sea- man in the ship, I expressed my surprise that in his earliest prime and of such appearance he should sign on as cook on board a ship.
“Its his heart,’ Mr. Burns had said. “There’s something wrong with it. He mustn’t exert himself too much or he may drop dead suddenly.”
And he was the only one the climate had not touched —perhaps because, carrying a deadly enemy in his breast, he had schooled himself into a systematic con- trol of feelings and movements. When one was in the secret this was apparent in his manner. After the poor steward died, and as he could not be replaced by a white man in this Oriental port, Ransome had volunteered to, do the double work. s
“I can do it all right, sir, as long as I go about it quietly,” he had assured me.
But obviously he couldn’t be expected to take up sick- nursing in addition. Moreover, the doctor peremp- torily ordered Mr. Burns ashore. l
With a seaman on each side holding him up under the arms, the mate went over the gangway more sullen than ever. We built him up with pillows in the gharry, and he made an effort to say brokenly: j
*“Now—you’ve got—what you wanted—got me out
of—the ship.”
“You were never more mistaken in your life, Mr. Burns,” I said quietly, duly smiling at him; and the trap drove off to a sort of sanatorium, a pavilion of bricks which the doctor had in the grounds of his resi- dence.
I visited Mr. Burns regularly. After the first few
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days, when he didn’t know anybody, he received me as if I had come either to gloat over a crushed enemy or else to curry favour with a deeply-wronged person. It was either one or the other, just as it happened accord- ing to his fantastic sick-room moods. Whichever it was, he managed to convey it to me even during the period when he appeared almost too weak to talk. I treated him to my invariable kindliness.
Then one day, suddenly, a surge of downright panic burst through all this craziness.
If I left him behind in this deadly place he would die. He felt it, he was certain of it. But I wouldn’t have the heart to leave him ashore. He had a wife and child in Sydney.
He produced his wasted fore-arms from under the sheet which covered him and clasped his fleshless claws. He would die! He would die here.
He absolutely managed to sit up, but nt for a mo- ment, and when he fell back I really thought that he would die there and then. I called to the Bengali dis- penser, and hastened away from the room.
Next day he upset me thoroughly by renewing his entreaties. I returned an evasive answer, and left him the picture of ghastly despair. The day after I went in with reluctance, and he attacked me at once in a much stronger voice and with an abundance of argument which was quite startling. He presented his case with a sort of crazy vigour, and asked me finally how would I like to have a man’s death on my conscience? He wanted me to promise that I would not sail without him.
I said that I really must consult the doctor first. He cried out at that. The doctor! Never! That would be a death sentence.
The effort had exhausted him. He closed his eyes, but
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went on rambling in alow voice. I had hated him from the start. The late captain had hated him too. Had wished him dead. Had wished all hands dead.
“What do you want to stand in with that wicked corpse for, sir? He'll have you too,” he ended, blink- ing his glazed eyes vacantly.
“Mr. Burns,” I cried, very much discomposed, “what on earth are you talking about?”
He seemed to come to himself, though he was too weak to start. ;
“I don’t know,” he said languidly. “But don’t ask that doctor, sir. You and I are sailors. Don’t ask him, sir. Some day perhaps you will have a wife and child yourself.”
And again he pleaded for the promise that I would not leave him behind. I had the firmness of mind not to give it to him. Afterwards this sternness seemed criminal; for my mind was made up. That pros- trated man, with hardly strength enough to breathe and ravaged by a passion of fear, was irresistible. And, besides, he had happened to hit on the right words. He and I were sailors. That was a claim, for I had no other family. As to the wife-and-child (some day) argument it had no force. It sounded merely bizarre.
I could imagine no claim that would be stronger and more absorbing than the claim of that ship, of these men snared in the river by silly commercial com- plications, as if in some poisonous trap.
However, I had nearly fought my way out. Out to sea. The sea—which was pure, safe, and friendly. Three days more.
That thought sustained and carried me on my way back to the ship. In the saloon the doctor’s voice greeted me, and his large form followed his voice, issuing out of the starboard spare cabin where the ship’s
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medicine chest was kept securely lashed in the bed- place.
Finding that I was not on board he had gone in there, he said, to inspect the supply of drugs, bandages, and so on. Everything was completed and in order.
I thanked him; I had just been thinking of asking him to do that very thing, as in a couple of days, as he knew, we were going to sea, where all our troubles of every sort would be over at last.
He listened gravely and made no answer. But when I opened to him my mind as to Mr. Burns he sat down by my side, and, laying his hand on my knee amicably, begged me to think what it was I was exposing myself to.
The man was just strong enough to bear being moved and no more. But he couldn’t stand a return of the fever. I had before me a passage of sixty days perhaps, beginning with intricate navigation and ending prob- ably with a lot of bad weather. Could I run the risk of having to go through it single-handed, with no chief officer and with a second quite a youth?
He might have added that it was my first command too. He did probably think of that fact, for he checked himself. It was very present to my mind.
He advised me earnestly to cable to Singapore for a chief officer, even if I had to delay my sailing for a week.
“Not a day,” I said. The very thought gave me the shivers. The hands seemed fairly fit, all of them, and this was the time to get them away. Once at sea I was not afraid of facing anything. The sea was now the only remedy for all my troubles.
The doctor’s glasses were directed at me like two lamps searching the genuineness of my resolution. He opened his lips as if to argue further, but shut them lagain without saying anything. I had a vision of poor
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Burns so vivid in his exhaustion, helplessness, and anguish, that it moved me more than the reality I had come away from only an hour before. It was purged from the drawbacks of his personality, and I could not resist it.
“Look here,” I said. “Unless you tell me officially that the man must not be moved Pll make arrange- ments to have him brought on board to-morrow, and shall take the ship out of the river next morning, even if I have to anchor outside the bar for a couple of days to get her ready for sea.”
“Oh! Pll make all the arrangements myself,” said the doctor at once. “I spoke as I did only as a friend— as a well-wisher, and that sort of thing.”
He rose in his dignified simplicity and gave me a warm handshake, rather solemnly, I thought. But he was as good as his word. When Mr. Burns appeared at the gangway carried on a stretcher, the doctor him- self walked by its side. The programme had been altered in so far that this transportation had been left to the last moment, on the very morning of our departure.
It was barely an hour after sunrise. The doctor waved his big arm to me from the shore and walked back at once to his trap, which had followed him empty to the river-side. Mr. Burns, carried across the quarter-deck, had the appearance of being absolutely lifeless. Ransome went down to settle him in his cabin. I had to remain on deck to look after the ship, for the tug had got hold of our tow-rope already.
The splash of our shore-fasts falling in the water produced a complete change of feeling in me. It was like the imperfect relief of awakening from a nightmare. But when the ship’s head swung down the river away from that town, Oriental and squalid, I missed the ex- pected elation of that striven-for moment. What there
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was, undoubtedly, was a relaxation of tension which translated itself into a sense of weariness after an in- glorious fight.
About mid-day we anchored a mile outside the bar. The afternoon was busy for all hands. Watching the work from the poop, where I remained all the time, I detected in it some of the languor of the six weeks spent in the steaming heat of the river. The first breeze would blow that away. Now the calm was complete. I judged that the second officer—a callow youth with an unpromising face—was not, to put it mildly, of that invaluable stuff from which a commander’s right hand ismade. But I was glad to catch along the main deck a few smiles on those seamen’s faces at which I had hardly had time to have a good look as yet. Having thrown off the mortal coil of shore affairs, I felt myself familiar with them and yet a little strange, like a long- lost wanderer among his kin.
Ransome flitted continually to and fro between the galley and the cabin. It was a pleasure to look at him. The man positively had grace. He alone of all the crew had not had aday’s illness in port. But with the knowledge of that uneasy heart within his breast I could detect the restraint he put on the natural sailor-like agility of his movements. It was as though he had something very fragile or very explosive to carry about his person and was all the time aware of it.
I had occasion to address him once or twice. He answered me in his pleasant quiet voice and with a faint, slightly wistful smile. Mr. Burns appeared to be resting. He seemed fairly comfortable.
After sunset I came out on deck again to meet only a still void. The thin, featureless crust of the coast could not be distinguished. The darkness had risen around the ship like a mysterious emanation from the dumb and
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lonely waters. I leaned on the rail and turned my ear to the shadows of the night. Not a sound. My com- mand might have been a planet flying vertiginously on its appointed path in a space of infinite silence. I clung to the rail as if my sense of balance were leaving me for good. How absurd. I hailed nervously.
“On deck there!”
The immediate answer, “Yes, sir,” broke the spell. The anchor-watch man ran up the poop ladder smartly. I told him to report at once the slightest sign of a breeze coming.
Going below I looked in on Mr. Burns. In fact, I could not avoid seeing him, for his door stood open. The man was so wasted that, in that white cabin, under a white sheet, and with his diminished head sunk in the white pillow, his red moustaches captured one’s eyes exclusively, like something artificial—a pair of mous- taches from a shop exhibited there in the harsh light of the bulkhead-lamp without a shade.
While I stared with a sort of wonder he asserted him- self by opening his eyes and even moving them in my direction. A minute stir.
“Dead calm, Mr. Burns,” I said resignedly.
In an unexpectedly distinct voice Mr. Burns began a rambling speech. Its tone was very strange, not as if affected by his illness, but as if of a different nature. It sounded unearthly. As to the matter, I seemed to make out that it was the fault of the “old man’—the late captain—ambushed down there under the sea with some evil intention. It was a weird story.
I listened to the end; then stepping into the cabin I laid my hand on the mate’s forehead. It was cool. He was light-headed only from extreme weakness. Sud- denly he seemed to become aware of me, and in his own voice—of course, very feeble—he asked regretfully:
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“fs there no chance at all to get under way, sir?”
“What’s the good of letting go our hold of the ground only to drift, Mr. Burns?” I answered.
He sighed, and I left him to his immobility. His hold on life was as slender as his hold on sanity. I was op- pressed by my lonely responsibilities. I went into my cabin to seek relief in a few hours’ sleep, but almost before I closed my eyes the man on deck came down reporting a light breeze. Enough to get under way with, he said.
And it was no more than just enough. I ordered the windlass manned, the sails loosed, and the topsails set. But by the time I had cast the ship I could hardly feel any breath of wind. Nevertheless, I trimmed the yards and put everything on her. I was not going tọ give up the attempt.
IV
Wits her anchor at the bow and clothed in canvas to her very trucks, my command seemed to stand as motionless as a model ship set on the gleams and shad- ows of polished marble. It was impossible to dis- tinguish land from water in the enigmatical tranquillity of the immense forces of the world. A sudden im- patience possessed me.
“Won’t she answer the helm at all?” I said irritably to the man whose strong brown hands grasping the spokes of the wheel stood out lighted on the darkness, like a symbol of mankind’s claim to the direction of its own fate.
He answered me:
“Yes, sir. She’s coming-to slowly.”
“Let her head come up to south.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
I paced the poop. There was not a sound but that of my footsteps, till the man spoke again.
“She is at south now, sir.”
I felt a slight tightness of the chest before I gave out the first course of my first command to the silent night, heavy with dew and sparkling with stars. There was a finality in the act committing me to the endless vigi- lance of my lonely task.
“Steady her head at that,” I said at last. “The course is south.”
“South, sir,” echoed the man.
I sent below the second mate and his watch and remained in charge, walking the deck through
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the chill, somnolent hours that precede the dawn.
Slight puffs came and went, and whenever they were strong enough to wake up the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly. I was bitterly tired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost grey, with a strange reminder of high latitudes.
The voice of the look-out man hailed from forward:
“Land on the port bow, sir.”
“All right.”
Leaning on the rail I never even raised my eyes. The motion of the ship was imperceptible. Presently Ran- some brought me the cup of morning coffee. After I had drunk it I looked ahead, and in the still streak of very bright pale orange light I saw the land profiled flatly as if cut out of black paper and seeming to float on the water as light as cork. But the rising sun turned it into mere dark vapour, a doubtful, massive shadow trem- bling in the hot glare.