The Unknown Sea Part 22

'I would not offer it.'

'Only as the wild beast you showed yourself, look to be kept bound.'

Such putting to shame was simply just, but oh! hard.

'I may not withstand you,' he said, hardly, steadily, 'but ah, sir! ah, Philip, suffer me! If this night I am to go to my account, I do greatly require that, through my default, the lives of two men may not drop in the loaded scale.'

To them the plea rang strained and false.

'We choose our risk; against treachery of the skies will we rather provide.'

He surrendered his hands to the Adventurer. Philip took the helm, but the miserable culprit winced to hear how the strain brought from him a sob of distress. The old man did his best under direction for shortening sail; but while yet this was doing, again the ominous roar sounded and grew, and a squall caught them unready.

The light boat quivered in every plank as she reared against the heavy charge; sheets of water flew over, blinding. Christian heard from the helm a shriek of pain and despair, and at that, frantic, such an access of strength swelled in him, that suddenly his bonds parted like thread, and he caught the restive tiller out of Philip's incompetent hold. There could be no further question of him whom by a miracle Heaven had thus graced in strength for their service. And for their lives they needed to bale. Christian blessed the cruel, fierce elements.

Far ahead heaved lights, revealed on the blown seas: far, so far. Right in their teeth drove the promised gale, with intermittent bursts of sleet and hail. Upon bodies brine-wet the icy wind cut like a knife. Twin lights sprang, low down, giving the wanted signal; bore down, then stood away: the appointed ship followed after her consorts, not daring, with a gale behind, to near the cruelest coast known.

Struggling on under a mere st.i.tch of canvas, the wind resenting even that, clutching it, threatening to tear out the mast, they went reeling and shuddering on to their desperate fortune. For hours the long endeavour lasted, with gain on the double lights by such slow degrees as mocked at final achievement.

Except that his hands were like to freeze out of use Christian cared marvellously little for outer miseries. To him all too short was the span of life left for retrieving one guilty minute; no future could he look for to live it down, so certain had he become that this night death was hard after him.

Two stars reeling, kind, bright stars, shone life for others though not for him. Perhaps for him, he wanted to believe; some coward drop in his blood tried to cheat reason and conscience. Why not for him? Could his doom be so heavy as to sink that great bulk with its scores of souls? And though now he should freely release others of his peril, who would ever count it to him for righteousness, to soften the reproach that would lie against his name so long as ever it were remembered?

The cold touched his brain. Surely he had died before, long ago, out of all this pain and distress. Waves heaved gigantically; spray dashed hard in his face; he shrank humanly, knowing he was not fit to die; she was coming through the sea bringing life. No, ah! not now. She was lurking in the sea holding death.

'Madness and treason are not in him.'

'He is a devil,' said Philip, 'a very devil. See! Go you now, and feign to persuade for abandoning the boat, and shipping together.'

'That will I in all good faith,' and he went and came again.

'First he refused outright; then he said, when the moment came we should know as well as he.'

'I knew it, I knew it,' chattered Philip, 'oh, a devil he is! Sir, you will see me out of his hands. I know what he intends: on the instant you quit the boat he casts off and has me at his mercy, he and that thing below. I am no coward, and it ill becomes you to hint it; and I fear death no more than any sinner must, no clean, straight death.

'Sir, his putting out of life was long and b.l.o.o.d.y: I saw it; death by inches. And he looked at me with infernal hatred then; the very same I saw in his eyes but now. Why should he check at sudden murder, but for a fouler revenge. You cannot judge as I. You have not seen him day after day. Treacherously he accepts friendship; he feigns to be witless; and all the while this h.e.l.l-fire is hidden out of sight. You do not know how he has been denied opportunity, till rashly I offered it.

'O sir, quit of him this once, I am quit of him for ever! No, I mean no villainy against him, but--but--it happens--there is every inducement for him to choose that he and his boat never be seen of us again. Drown? no, he never was born to drown. The devil sees to his own.

'It is true--true. You saw the Thing yourself. Also, did he not refuse an oath? So has he all his life. Now know I: there are certain words he for his contract may not utter.'

When tall masts rocked above, and voices hailed, and a rope shot across, again the Adventurer pressed Christian hard with precious human kindness.

Men big and fair-haired were shouting, knocking at his heart strangely.

Most foolish and absurd came a longing just once before he died to be warm and dry again, just once. He shook his head.

Philip kept off, nor by word or sign offered the forgiveness he ached after, but hasted to pa.s.s first. Then the other followed; he loosed the rope; it leapt away. The last face he saw gleaming above him was Philip's, with its enmity and a ghastly drawn smile of relief: never to be seen of him again.

How long would her vengeance delay? The vast anger of the sea leaped and roared round him, s.n.a.t.c.hing, striking. An hour pa.s.sed, and he was still afloat, though the mast was gone; and near another, and he was still afloat, but by clinging to an upward keel. In cruel extremity, then, he cried the name of Diadyomene, with a prayer for merciful despatch, and again her name, and again.

Diadyomene heard. The waves ran ridged with light that flickered and leaped like dim white flame. Phosphor fires edged the keel; a trailing rope was revealed as a luminous streak. He got it round his body, and his hands were eased.

Up from below surged a dark, snaky coil, streaming with pale flakes of fire; it looped him horribly; a second length and a third flung over him; a fourth overhung, feeling in air. A loathsome knot worked upon the planks, spread, and rooted there. He plucked an arm free, and his neck was circled instead. His knife he had not: barehanded he fought, frenzied by loathing of the foul monster, the foulest the sea breeds.

Before his eyes rose the sea's fairest, towered above him on the rush of a wave, sank to his level. Terrible was her face of anger, and cruel, for she smiled. She flung out a gesture of condemnation and scorn, that flashed flakes of light off shoulder and hair. She called him 'traitor,'

and bade him die; and he, frantic, tore away the throttled coil at his throat, and got out, 'Forgive.'

Like challenge and defiance she hurled then her offer of mercy: 'Stretch, then, your hand to me--on my lips and my breast swear, give up your soul: then I forgive.'

She heard the death agony of a man cried then. Ceasing to struggle, his throat was enwound again; both arms were fast: he cried to his G.o.d to resume his soul, and to take it straight out of his body and out of h.e.l.l.

Away she turned with teeth clenched and furious eyes; then, writhing, she returned, reached out, with one finger touched, and the foul creature shrank, relaxed, drew coil by coil away, dropped, and was gone.

Diadyomene flashed away.

When the night and the trouble of the storm were past, not a ship afloat was scatheless. From one that crawled disabled, a boat was spied, drifting keel upward, with the body of a man hanging across it, whose bright hair shone in the early sun, making a swarter race wonder. Against all conjecture life proved to be in him yet. And what unimaginable death had been at him? What garland was this on his throat: blossoms of blood under the skin? When he was recovered to speech he would not say. Good christian men, what could they think? His boat was righted, and with scant charity he was hustled back into it; none of these, suddenly eager to be quit of him, wishing him G.o.d-speed.

Under cover of night he crawled up to his home, dreading in his guilt to face the dear, stern eyes of his mother. Ah! no, he entered to no questioning and little heed: the two women sat stricken with sorrow; not for him: in the room beyond Giles lay dead.

So Christian's three gold pieces buried Giles with such decent honour as Lois could desire.

CHAPTER XIV

Christian's misdoing was not to pa.s.s unregarded.

A woman turned upon Rhoda pa.s.sing with a mutter so like a curse that the girl's surprise struck her to a pause. It was Philip's mother who faced her, glowering hate.

'What have you done with my boy?'

'I?' said Rhoda, with widening eyes, though she blushed.

'You--smooth-faced chit--yes, you! Oh, keep those fine eyes and that colour to take in men, for me they will not! I can see through you! I know you, and the games you are playing!'

'What then?' flashed Rhoda. 'You accuse me? Of what? and by what right?'

'Right! The right of a mother whose son you have driven away.'

'He is nothing to me--never will be--never--nothing!'

'I know it. I know it well, and I told him so: nothing! 'Tis only your vanity to have at your heels the properest lad and the bravest of the place.'

'He!' cried Rhoda, in disdain.

'Ay, I know how your fancy has run, against natural liking for the dark-haired and dark-eyed of your own race; your vagary goes after fair hair and grey eyes. Well, see for all your sly offers that great blond dolt gapes and gapes over your bait, never closing to it. That northern blood is half brine.'

Rhoda stood speechless; her anger, shame, and pain transcended blushes, and she changed to dead white.