The Grain Ship Part 2

"'No, it doesn't. Life was as sweet to them as to you or the skipper.'

"'But I've a Master's license. All I wanted was my chance, and I thought my chance had come. Draper, if I'd taken this ship into port I'd have been a hero and obtained my command.'

"'So, that's your cheap way of looking at it, is it?' I answered, as I hove on the wheel and kicked rats from underfoot. 'A hero by the toll of twenty-four deaths. Down off the river Plate I didn't realize the horror of all this. Off St.-Louis I did, and advised you. You withstood, to be a hero. Well, I'm sorry for you, that's all.'

"A big rat jumped from the wheel-box at this moment, climbed my clothing, and had reached my chest before I knocked it off with my fist.

"'You see, Barnes, the rat does not know, and I did not kill it. But you do know, and I shall hasten your death with a bullet if you approach me. It will not be murder, nor manslaughter. It will be an act of mercy; but I cannot do it now. See how I feel?'

"'Oh, G.o.d!' he shrieked, running away from me. He reached the break of the p.o.o.p, then turned and came back.

"'Got your gun on you, Draper? Kill me now; kill me, and have it over with. I'm down and done for. There's nothing more for me.'

"I refused; and yet I know that with regard to that man's mental agony for the next few days, culminating in the first physical symptoms of unrest, fever, and thirst, I should have obeyed his request. He was doomed, and knew it. And he was a madman from mental causes before the physical had produced effects, even though the disease ran its course quickly in him. On the third day he was raving of a black-eyed woman who kept a candy store in Boston, and who had promised to marry him when he obtained command.

"I got out a bottle of bromide from the medicine chest and induced Barnes to take a good dose of it. He drank about half a teacup of it, and in an hour was asleep. Then, clad in boots and mittens, with a sailor's clothes-bag over my head, I went aloft and lashed myself in the mizzentopmast crosstrees, where I obtained about six hours' sleep, which I needed badly. Barnes was worse when I came down; three more rats had bitten him, he declared, and he begged me to shoot him. It never occurred to him to do the job himself, and I couldn't suggest it to him.

"'Well, Draper,' he said at last, 'I'm going, and I know it. Now, if you escape, sometime you'll be in Boston. Will you take the street-car out the Boston Road, and at Number 24 Middles.e.x Place drop in and say a few words to that woman? Call her Kate, and say we were shipmates, and I told you to. Tell her about this, and that I thought of her, and didn't want to die because of her. Tell her, will you, Draper?'

"'Barnes, I promise,' I said. 'I will hunt up or write to that woman if I get ash.o.r.e. I'll tell her all about it. Now, go and lie down.'

"But he couldn't lie down; and when the time came that I had to sleep in the crosstrees again, I found, on waking, that Barnes had followed me, and in some way had got my gun out of my pocket. I knew he had it by the insane way he laughed as I came down from my perch. I hunted through the cabin for pistols or rifles, but he had been ahead of me; and as I came up and he stood near the wheel--the wheel, like everything else, was neglected now--there was a crazy look in his eyes that meant bad luck for me.

"'Going to kill me, weren't you?' he chuckled. 'Well, you won't. Nor will you get that woman out the Boston Road. I'm dead on to you, you dog. And you'll get no credit for the advice you gave--that I put down in the log. Not much you won't.'

"He darted into the cabin and returned with the ship's log, which he had charge of, and the official log of the skipper. I do not know what was entered in them, but he tossed them overboard.

"'There goes your record of efficiency,' he said.

"He came toward me on the run, his eyes blazing, but I did not budge.

He made no gun-play, but put up his fists, and I met him; I was used to this form of fighting. However, I went down before his plunges and punches, and realized that I was up against a bigger, heavier, stronger man than myself, and could not hope to win. I'm no small boy, as you see, but Barnes was a giant, and a skilled fighter.

"I got away from him and kept away. I wanted to hoist an ensign, union down, but the lunatic prevented me; his intelligence had left him. He watched me as a cat watches a mouse, or I might have brought a handspike down on his head and ended his troubles and some of my own.

And it would have been no foul play to have done so; but I could not.

He followed me everywhere, ready to pounce upon me at the first move I made.

"I spent that night walking away from him as he nosed me around the deck, and brushing off the crazy rats that climbed my legs. I did not dare make for the rigging, for without my bag I would have been worse off than on deck, and at such a move he would have jumped on me. But in the morning he had his first convulsion, and it left him a wreck. While he lay gasping and choking on the deck, with equally afflicted rats crawling over him and nipping where they felt flesh, I managed to get a bite from the steward's storeroom, and it roused me up and strengthened me. I came out, resolved to bind him down, but I was too late. He was on his feet, the paroxysm gone, crazy as ever, and, though weak, still able to master me.

"The ship was rolling heavily in the trough of a Biscay sea, which, no matter how the wind, is a violent, troublesome heave of cross-forces.

The upper canvas was carried away, or hanging in the buntlines. Some of the braces were adrift and the yards swinging. We had the courses clewed up when the men were alive, and the lower yards were fairly square; so the ship, with the aid of the head-sails, kept the canvas full, and she sailed along, manned by a crew of rabid rats, a crazy first mate, and a half-crazy second mate. I knew I was half-crazy, for I had a fixed, insistent thought that would not go--that of a little school-ma'am who had whipped me in childhood. I deserved the whipping, but--Lord, how I hated her now!

"I feared the mate. He was again nosing me around the deck, glaring murder at me and talking to himself. I feared him more than I feared the rats, for I could brush them off. I could not get out of his sight; but I did venture on grabbing a circular life-buoy from the quarter-rail as I pa.s.sed it, and slipping it over my head, and he did not seem to notice the maneuver. I was resolved, as a last resort, to jump into the sea with this scant protection against death by drowning, hunger, or thirst, rather than risk another a.s.sault by this lunatic or a bite from a rat. These were numbered now by the thousands. The deck was black with them in places, and here and there a rope was as big around as a stove-pipe.

"All was quiet this last day aboard. The mate busied himself in following me around, talking to the rats and to himself, even as they bit him, and I busied myself in quietly keeping out of his way and brushing off rats that climbed my legs. I was dead tired, being on my feet so long, and in sheer desperation and love of life I hoped for another convulsion that would give me relief from the strain. But before it came to him I was out of his way, and, I strongly suspect, he was out of the way of the convulsion.

"He caught me on the forecastle deck and made for me, half mad from the disease, but wholly mad from his mental state. There was no escape except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes.

I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker. His face was twisted in frenzy, and he growled and barked like a dog, occasionally breaking into a horrible, rat-like squeal. But he didn't bite me; he simply squeezed me in both arms, and in that effort lost his hold on the back-rope and fell, taking me with him. We struck the water together, and his grip loosened, for he was now up against something too strong for him--the sound and sight and feeling of cold water. When we came up, the cut.w.a.ter was between us, and I didn't see him again, though I heard his convulsive gurgling and screaming from the other side of the ship. Then the sounds stopped, and I think he must have gone under; but I was too busy with myself to speculate much. I was trying to get a finger-nail grip on that smooth, black side slipping by me, but could not. There was nothing to get hold of, and no ropes were hanging over. Then I thought of the rudder and the iron b.u.mpkin on it that the rudder-chains fastened to, and swam with all my strength under the quarter as it came along. But it was no good. The life-buoy hampered me in swimming, and I missed the rudder by an inch.

"The ship went on and left me alone on the sea. I remember very little of it. I think my mind must have slowly gone out of me, leaving me another person. I remember a few sensations--and it only seems like a week ago to me--one, of being alone on the surface of the sea at night, supported by the life-buoy; and then, I seemed to be back among the rats, but that was just as I wakened on your floor here. The next sensation was the sight of you, and the sound of your voice, speaking to me, and then the knowledge that I was really alive and ash.o.r.e."

"And the woman out the Boston Road?" I inquired at length.

"I will write to her as I promised. But I will not go there. Boston is too close to the sea."

FROM THE DARKNESS AND THE DEPTHS

I had known him for a painter of renown--a master of his art, whose pictures, which sold for high prices, adorned museums, the parlors of the rich, and, when on exhibition, were hung low and conspicuous. Also, I knew him for an expert photographer--an "art photographer," as they say, one who dealt with this branch of industry as a fad, an amus.e.m.e.nt, and who produced pictures that in composition, lights, and shades rivaled his productions with the brush.

His cameras were the best that the market could supply, yet he was able, from his knowledge of optics and chemistry, to improve them for his own uses far beyond the ability of the makers. His studio was filled with examples of his work, and his mind was stocked with information and opinions on all subjects ranging from international policies to the servant-girl problem.

He was a man of the world, gentlemanly and successful, about sixty years old, kindly and gracious of manner, and out of this kindliness and graciousness had granted me the compliment of his friendship, and access to his studio whenever I felt like calling upon him.

Yet it never occurred to me that the wonderful and technically correct marines hanging on his walls were due to anything but the artist's conscientious study of his subject, and only his casual misp.r.o.nounciation of the word "leeward," which landsmen p.r.o.nounce as spelled, but which rolls off the tongue of a sailor, be he former dock rat or naval officer, as "looward," and his giving the long sounds to the vowels of the words "patent" and "tackle," that induced me to ask if he had ever been to sea.

"Why, yes," he answered. "Until I was thirty I had no higher ambition than to become a skipper of some craft; but I never achieved it. The best I did was to sign first mate for one voyage--and that one was my last. It was on that voyage that I learned something of the mysterious properties of light, and it made me a photographer, then an artist. You are wrong when you say that a searchlight cannot penetrate fog."

"But it has been tried," I remonstrated.

"With ordinary light. Yes, of course, subject to refraction, reflection, and absorption by the millions of minute globules of water it encounters."

We had been discussing the wreck of the _t.i.tanic_, the most terrible marine disaster of history, the blunders of construction and management, and the later proposed improvements as to the lowering of boats and the location of ice in a fog.

Among these considerations was also the plan of carrying a powerful searchlight whose beam would illumine the path of a twenty-knot liner and render objects visible in time to avoid them. In regard to this I had contended that a searchlight could not penetrate fog, and if it could, would do as much harm as good by blinding and confusing the watch officers and lookouts on other craft.

"But what other kind of light can be used?" I asked, in answer to his mention of ordinary light.

"Invisible light," he answered. "I do not mean the Rontgen ray, nor the emanation from radium, both of which are invisible, but neither of which is light, in that neither can be reflected nor refracted. Both will penetrate many different kinds of matter, but it needs reflection or refraction to make visible an object on which it impinges.

Understand?"

"Hardly," I answered dubiously. "What kind of visible light is there, if not radium or the Rontgen ray? You can photograph with either, can't you?"

"Yes, but to see what you have photographed you must develop the film.

And there is no time for that aboard a fast steamer running through the ice and the fog. No, it is mere theory, but I have an idea that the ultraviolet light--the actinic rays beyond the violet end of the spectrum, you know--will penetrate fog to a great distance, and in spite of its higher refractive power, which would distort and magnify an object, it is better than nothing."

"But what makes you think that it will penetrate fog?" I queried. "And if it is invisible itself, how will it illumine an object?"

"As to your first question," he answered, with a smile, "it is well known to surgeons that ultraviolet light will penetrate the human body to the depth of an inch, while the visible rays are reflected at the surface. And it has been known to photographers for fifty years that this light--easily isolated by dispersion through prisms--will act on a sensitized plate in an utterly dark room."

"Granted," I said. "But how about the second question? How can you see by this light?"

"There you have me," he answered. "It will need a quicker development than any now known to photography--a traveling film, for instance, that will show the picture of an iceberg or a ship before it is too late to avoid it--a traveling film sensitized by a quicker acting chemical than any now used."

"Why not puzzle it out?" I asked. "It would be a wonderful invention."