Sylvia & Michael Part 40

Wal, Mr. B.'s fellows didn't answer from round about Lagos, and he said bad words, and how it was three days too soon, and who in h.e.l.l did I think I was, anyway, telling him Mr. B.'s fellows was waiting? So I told him there was a mistake somewheres, and asked him what about taking you Thaso for twenty dollars. We talked for a bit and he said, 'Yes.'

Now we got to make him go Samothraki."

At this point the captain of the caique, a brown and shriveled old man seeming all the more shriveled in the full-seated breeches of the Greek islander, joined them below for an argument with Yanni that sounded more than usually acrimonious and voluble. When it was finished, the captain had agreed, subject to a windy moonrise, to land them at Samothraki on payment of another ten pounds in gold. They went on deck and sat astern, for the rain was over now. A slim, rusty moon was creeping out of the sea and conjuring from the darkness forward the shadowy bulk of Thasos; presently, with isolated puffs that frilled the surface of the water like the wings of alighting birds, the wind began to blow; the long oars were shipped, and the crew set the curved mainsail that crouched in a defiant bow against whatever onslaught might prepare itself; from every mountain gorge in Thrace the northern blasts rushed down with life for the stagnant sea, and life for the dull, decrescent moon, which in a spray of stars they drove glittering up the sky.

"How gloriously everything hums and gurgles!" Sylvia shouted in Michael's ear. "When shall we get to Samothrace?"

He shrugged his shoulders and leaned over to Yanni, who told them that it might be about midday if the wind held like this.

For all Sylvia's exultation, the vision of enchanted s.p.a.ce that seemed to forbid sleep on such a night soon faded from her consciousness, and she did not rouse herself from dreams until dawn was scattering its roses and violets to the wind.

"I simply can't shave," Michael declared, "but Samothrace is in sight."

The sun was rising in a fume of spindrift and fine gold when Sylvia scrambled forward into the bows. Huddled upon a coil of wet rope, she first saw Samothrace faintly relucent like an uncut sapphire, where already it towered upon the horizon, though there might be thirty thundering miles between.

"I'm glad we ended our adventure with this glorious sea race," shouted Michael, who had joined her in the bows. "Are you feeling quite all right?"

She nodded indignantly.

"See how gray the sky is now," he went on. "It's going to blow even harder, and they're shortening sail."

They looked aft to where the crew, whose imprecations were only visible, so loud was the drumming of the wind, were getting down the mainsail; and presently they were running east southeast under a small jib, with the wind roaring upon the port quarter and the waves champing at the taffrail. It did not strike either of them that there was any reason to be anxious until Yanni came forward with a frightened yellow face and said that the captain was praying to St. Nicholas in the cabin below.

"Samothraki bad place to go," Yanni told them, dismally. "Many fish-mens drowned there."

A particularly violent squall shrieked a.s.sent to his forebodings, and the helmsman, looking over his shoulder, crossed himself as the squall left them and tore ahead, decapitating the waves in its course so that the surface of the water, blown into an appearance of smoothness, resembled the powdery damascene of ice in a skater's track.

"It's terrible, ain't it?" Yanni moaned.

"Cheer up," Michael said. "I'm looking forward to your shaving me before lunch in your native island."

"We sha'n't never come Samothraki," Yanni said. "And I can't pray no more somehows since I went away to America. Else I'd go and pray along with the captain. Supposing I was to give a silver ship to the pa?a???a in Teno, would you lend me the money for the workmens to do it?"

"I'll pay half," Michael volunteered. "A silver ship to Our Lady of Tenos," he explained to Sylvia.

"Gee!" Yanni shouted, more cheerfully. "I'm going to pray some right now. I guess when I get kneeling the trick'll come back to me. I did so much kneeling in New York to shine boots that I used to lie in bed on a Sunday. But this G.o.ddam storm's regular making my knees itch."

He hurried aft in a panic of religious devotion, whither Michael and Sylvia presently followed him in the hope of coffee. Every one on board except the helmsman was praying, and there was no signs of fire; even the sacred flame before St. Nicholas had gone out. The cabin was in a confusion of supplicating mariners prostrate amid onions, oranges, and cheese; the very c.o.c.kroaches seemed to listen anxiously in the wild motion. The helmsman was not steering too well, or else the sea was growing wilder, for once or twice a stream of water poured down the companion and drenched the occupants, until at last the captain rushed on deck to curse the offender, calling down upon his head the pains of h.e.l.l should they sink and he be drowned.

Michael and Sylvia found the most sheltered spot in the caique and ate some cheese. The terror of the crew had reacted upon their spirits; the groaning of the wind in the shrouds, the seething of the waves, and the frightened litany below quenched their exultation and silenced their laughter.

Yanni, more yellow than ever, came up and asked Michael if he would mind paying the captain now.

"He says he don't believe he can get into port, but if he can't, he's going to try and get around on the south side of Samothraki, only he'd like to have his money in case anything should happen."

Three hours tossed themselves free from time; and now in all its majesty and in all its menace the island rose dark before them, girdled with foam and crowned with snow above six thousand feet of chasms, gorges, cliffs, and forests.

"What a fearful lee sh.o.r.e!" Michael exclaimed, with a shudder.

"Yes, but what a sublime form!" Sylvia cried. "At any rate, to be wrecked on such a coast is not a mean death."

Yanni explained that the only port of the island lay on this side of the low-lying promontory that ran out to sea on their starboard bow. In order to make this, the captain would have to beat up to windward first, which with the present fury of the gale and so lofty a coast was impossible. The captain evidently came to the same conclusion, though at first it looked as if he had changed his mind too late to avoid running the caique ash.o.r.e before he could gain the southerly lee of the island.

Sylvia held her breath when the mast lost itself against the darkness of land and breathed again when anon it stood out clear against the sky.

Yet so frail seemed the caique in relation to the vast bulk before them that it was incredible this haunt of t.i.tans should not exact another sacrifice.

"I think, as we get nearer, that the mast shows itself less often against the sky," Sylvia shouted to Michael.

"About equal, I think," he shouted back.

Certainly the caique still labored on, and it might be that, after all, they would clear the promontory and gain shelter.

"Do you know what I'm thinking of?" Michael yelled.

She shook her head, blinking in the spray.

"The Round Pond!" he yelled again.

"I can't imagine that even the Round Pond's really calm at present," she shouted back.

Suddenly astern there was a cry of despair that rose high above the howling of the wind; the tiller had broken, and immediately the prow of the caique, swerving away from the sky, drove straight for the sh.o.r.e.

Two men leaped forward to cut the ropes of the jib, which flapped madly aloft; then it gave itself to the wind and danced before them till it was no more than a gull's wing against dark and mighty Samothrace.

The caique rocked alarmingly until the oars steadied her; the strength of the rowers endured long enough to clear the promontory, but, unfortunately, the expected shelter on the other side proved to be an illusion, and, though a new tiller had been provided by this time, it was impossible for the exhausted men to do their part. The caique began to ship water, so heavily, indeed, that the captain gave orders to run her ash.o.r.e where the sand of a narrow cove glimmered between huge towers of rock. The beaching would have been effected safely had it not been for a sunken reef that ripped out the bottom of the caique, which crumpled up and shrieked her horror like a live, sentient thing. Sylvia found herself, after she had rolled in a dizzy switchback from the summit of one wave to another, clinging head downward to a slippery ledge of rock, her fingers in a mush of sea-anemones, her feet wedged in a crevice; then another wave lifted her off and she was swept over and over in green somersaults of foam, until there came a blow as from a hammer, a loud roaring, and silence.

When Sylvia recovered consciousness she was lying on a sandy slope with Michael's arms round her.

"Was I drowned?" she asked; then common sense added itself to mere consciousness and she began to laugh. "I don't mean actually, but nearly?"

"No, I think you hit your head rather a thump on the beach. You've only been lying here about twenty minutes."

"And Yanni and the captain and the crew?"

"They all got safely ash.o.r.e. Rather cut about, of course, but nothing serious. Yanni and the captain are arguing whether Our Lady of Tenos or St. Nicholas is responsible for saving our lives. The others are making a fire."

She tried to sit up; but her head was going round, and she fell back.

"Keep quiet," Michael told her. "We're in a narrow, sandy cove from which a gorge runs up into the heart of the mountains. There's a convenient cave higher up full of dried gra.s.s--a goatherd's, I suppose--and when the fire's alight the others are going to scramble across somehow to the village and send a guide for us to-morrow. There won't be time before dark to-night. Do you mind being left for a few minutes?"

She smiled her contentment, and, closing her eyes, listened to the echoes of human speech among the rocks above, and to the beating of the surf below.

Presently Yanni and Michael appeared in order to carry her up to the cave; but she found herself easily able to walk with the help of an arm, and Michael told Yanni to hurry off to the village.

Sylvia and he were soon left alone on the parapet of smoke-blackened earth in front of the cave, whence they watched the sailors toiling up the gorge in search of a track over the mountain. Then they took off nearly all their clothes and wandered about in overcoats, breaking off boughs of juniper to feed the fire for their drying.

"Nothing to eat but cheese," Michael laughed. "Our diet since we left Rakoff has always run to excess of one article. Still, cheese is more nutritious than Turkish-delight, and there's plenty of water in that theatrical cascade. The wind is dropping; though in any case we shouldn't feel it here."

Shortly before sunset the gorge echoed with liquid tinklings, and an aged goatherd appeared with his flock of brown sheep and tawny goats, which with the help of a wild-eyed boy he penned in another big cave on the opposite side. Then he joined Sylvia and Michael at their fire and gave them an unintelligible, but obviously cordial, salutation, after which he entered what was evidently his dwelling-place and came out with bottles of wine and fresh cheese. He did not seem in any way surprised by their presence in his solitude, and when darkness fell he and the boy piped ancient tunes in the firelight until they all lay down on heaps of dry gra.s.s. Sylvia remained awake for a long while in a harmony of distant waves and falling water and of sudden restless tinklings from the penned flock. In the morning the old man gave them milk and made them a stately farewell; he and his goats and his boy disappeared up the gorge for the day's pasturage in a jangling tintinnabulation that became fainter and fainter, until the last and most melodious bells tinkled at rare intervals far away in the dim heart of the mountain.

The cove and the gorge were still in deep shadow; but on the slopes above toward the east bright sunlight was hanging the trees with emeralds beneath a blue sky, and seaward the halcyon had lulled the waves for her azure nesting.