Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories Part 33

'Why did you try to stop it?'

'Well, a big sea had just washed the Old Man down in the lee scuppers, an' if the spar had struck him it would ha' killed him.'

'It's killed you, Bill,' said Jansen. 'Didn't you think o' that?'

'Me!' exclaimed Bill scornfully. 'Who's me?'

'But why did you want to save his life?' insisted Jansen.

'The ship 'ud stand a likely chance in a blow like this without a skipper, wouldn't she?'

'Then you thought--'

'Thought nothin'! There was no time to think. I see the spar comin' an'

I says, "Blazes! That'll kill the skipper!" an' I tried to stop it.'

'You ain't sorry you did it?'

'Sorry nothin. What's done's done.'

'See here, Bill,' said old Jansen earnestly. 'I'll tell you what you did. You did your duty! An' you laid down your life for another. You saved the captain's life, an' mebbe the ship, an' all our lives through him. An' you did it without thought o' reward. Don't you s'pose you'll get a little credit for that?'

'I'm thinkin',' said Bill. He lay silent for a minute. 'Read that again,' he requested.

Old Jansen did so, and after a pause he added, 'Now, if I was you I wouldn't worry no more about h.e.l.l. Just make your mind as easy as you can. That's a better way to go.'

'I've got that,' said Bill. 'It's all right. Go on; read to me some more.'

Jansen lifted the book and resumed his reading. He turned the pages frequently, choosing pa.s.sages with which he was familiar. The other moaned at intervals. With every roll of the ship, water plashed faintly underneath the bunks. The lantern swung unwearied, and sodden clothing slapped against the walls. Dark shadows rose and stooped and rose again as if longing and afraid to peer into the narrow berth. The sound of the storm outside was grave and insistent.

The reader came to the end of a pa.s.sage, and laid the book on his knee.

Suddenly he realized that the moans had ceased. He leaned over and looked at the man in the bunk. He was dead.

Old Jansen sat motionless, deep in thought. At length he reopened the little book, and read once more the lines which he had already repeated at the dying man's request:--

He is not lost, thou son of Pritha! No!

Nor earth, nor heaven is forfeit, even for him, Because no heart that holds one right desire Treadeth the road of loss!

He closed the book and again meditated. Later, he rose, replaced the book in his chest, drew the dead man's blanket over his face, and went out on deck.

THE CLEARER SIGHT

BY ERNEST STARR

Noakes leaned over a stand in one of the Maxineff laboratories and looked intently into a crucible, while he advanced the lever of a control-switch regulating the furnace beneath it. He held a steady hand on the lever, so that he might push it back instantly if he saw in the crucible too sudden a transformation. As he watched, the dull saffron powder took on a deeper hue about the edge, the body of it remaining unchanged. For several minutes he peered with keen intentness at the evil, inert little ma.s.s. No further change appeared. He leaned closer over it, regardless of the thin choking haze that spread about his face.

In his att.i.tude there was a rigidity of controlled excitement out of keeping with the seeming harmlessness of the experiment. He was as a man attuned to a tremendous hazard, antic.i.p.ation and mental endurance taut, all his force focused on one throbbing desire. He bent closer, and the hand on the lever trembled in nervous premonition. The deepened hue touched only the edge, following regularly the contour of the vessel; it made no advance toward the centre of the substance.

'It shall!' Noakes breathed; and as if conning an oft-repeated formula, he said, 'The entire ma.s.s should deepen in color, regularly and evenly.

Heat! Heat!'

His glance shifted to the control-switch under his hand. Its metal k.n.o.bs, marking the degrees of intensity of the current it controlled, caught the light and blinked like so many small, baleful eyes.

Particularly one, that which would be capped next in the orbit of the lever, held him fascinated; the winking potentiality of it thralled him, as the troubled crystal devours the gaze of the Hindu magi.

He jerked back his head decisively; he would increase the current. The thought burned before him like a live thing; and in the light of it he saw many pictures--heliographs of happenings in and about the laboratories: flame, smoke dense and turgid, splintered wood, metal hurtling through air, bleeding hands, lacerated b.r.e.a.s.t.s, sightless eyes.

'That's the trouble with high explosives,' he half groaned.

He turned away from the stand and went to the single window that lit the room. Through it he saw shops, store-houses, and small buildings similar to his own, all a part of the plant of Maxineff. He thought of each small laboratory as a potential inferno, each experimenter a bondman to ecstasy, the whole frenzied, gasping scheme a furtherance of the fame and power of Henry Maxineff, already world-known, inventor of the deadliest high explosives. One of the buildings had been turned into a temporary hospital. He thought of the pitiful occupant--his face scarred, one socket eyeless--and shivered.

'It isn't that I want to hedge,' he said. 'I shall take the chance; but having risked everything, I will go to her able and whole, offering it all without an apology.'

His gaze was drawn back to the crucible. In the thin haze above it a face seemed to shine. Avidly he gave himself to the spell his tight-strung imagination had conjured--a face oval and delicately tinted; lips joyously curved; gray eyes not large, but br.i.m.m.i.n.g with enthusiasm, fearlessness, and truth; a white brow beneath simply arranged light hair.

'Let me bring with an avowal all that you have now, more!--for in your life there can't be anything bigger than my love. And it's that which makes the deal right. Don't judge me yet! Wait until I've finished, and grant me that it's worth while.'

He whispered to the face, and his breath made little swirls and eddies in the haze about it. The filmy curves wafted toward him, bringing it close to his lips. The lids fluttered. Then an acrid odor filled his throat and nostrils. The face vanished. He started back, distraught.

A rushing recollection of Maxineff's tragedies came to him, more vivid even than the face. Halsey, who jarred the nitro, had been annihilated.

Ewell was mad from the violent termination of an experiment similar to that now in development.

'A year ago!' Noakes said, 'and still Ewell lives and raves!'

How alike the cases were! The difference lay in the crucible. If the mixture there were properly prepared, added heat would metamorphose it calmly from its present harmlessness into something new, wonderful, deadly. It would become imbued with marvelous possibility, a thing for which royal military bureaus, imperial navies, would pay a great price.

A twist of the lever would do it. Yet how alike-- And Ewell was mad, injured gruesomely, living dead.

Again the blinking switch caught him, but he shrugged away its evil suggestiveness. He sought to flee the strain of the moment, to make it seem natural and like the smaller risks of his daily occupation. He a.s.sumed a tottering bravado, and as he put his hand to the lever, he smiled crookedly.

A light, quick tread sounded on the walk outside, on the double step; as the k.n.o.b turned, a voice said, 'May I come, Mr. Alchemist?'

His hand left the lever as if it p.r.i.c.ked him.

'You!'

'Am I a wraith?'

Noakes looked at her silently. In the moment's abstraction her presence seemed a manifestation of some psychic conduction which he tried lamely to understand--here, now, in a moment of danger of which she unknowingly was the moving force.

'Then exorcise me quickly, but don't sprinkle me with acid; it would be fatal to my clothes.'

Noakes warmed to the aura of light and cheer about her.

'There isn't an alkali in the shop; I won't endanger you,' he replied easily.