Widdershins Part 14

Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"

With a nervous giggle the answer came:

"_We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure.... Yes, of course, we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the d.i.c.kens you are._"

Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling, and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded him of the honour due to the _Mary of the Tower_. Blister-white and at the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.

"You that spoke--are you the master of that ship?"

"_Officer of the watch_," the words floated back; "_the captain's below_."

"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel Keeling replied.

He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring, as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling's frame. He wondered what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of his memory....

"_Ahoy!_" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "_What's all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer_ Seapink, _out of Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now who are you?_"

"The _Mary of the Tower_, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint Anne, and only two men--"

A gasp interrupted him.

"_Out of_ WHERE?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.

"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Suss.e.x ... nay, give ear, else I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so together!... Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur, and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the wind-chamber....

"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the wind-chamber...."

Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "_The wind-chamber_?..."

"... that driveth the vessel--perchance 'tis not wind--a steel bow that is bent also conserveth force--the force you store, to move at will through calm and storm...."

"Can you make out what it's driving at?"

"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute...."

"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines.

It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!... Well, no harm in humouring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!" came the voice to Abel Keeling, a little more strongly, as if a shifting wind carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind, but steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion engines, indicated horse-power four thousand, and we can do 430 revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would like to know about our armament?..."

Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The _Seapink_--that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and narrow, low-carged and square-built aft....

"_And as for our armament,_" the voice with the tones that so profoundly troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "_we've two revolving Whitehead torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most d.a.m.nably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our top. Care to come aboard?_"

But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it was straining forward anxiously over the rail.

"_Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight,_" another voice was muttering.

"I wish I was sure it was happening at all.... Poor old spook!"

"I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think she'll go down, or just melt?"

"Kind of go down ... without wash...."

"Listen--here's the other one now--"

For Bligh was singing again:

"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such If we great things obtain, And in the getting of the same Do feel no grief or pain,

"We little do esteem thereof; But, hardly brought to pa.s.s, A thousand times we do esteem More than the other was."

_"But oh, look--look--look at the other!... Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand old boy! Look!"_

For, transfiguring Abel Reeling's form as a prophet's form is transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future, as if G.o.d's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously, completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course."

From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he knew her--read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows, for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there would be no morrow for him in this world....

And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his gla.s.s, indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.

"Ho, there!... This ancient ship, the _Mary of the Tower_, cannot steam thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air soar?"

"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"

"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"

"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"

But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.

"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"

The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a m.u.f.fled sound came from below and an ominous tremor shook the galleon.

"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"

"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.

"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran high, "is he there?"

"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.

"_Oh, be quick!_"

There was a moment in which hoa.r.s.e cries from many voices, a heavy thud and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.

"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice I know. _What is your name_?"

In a torn sob the answer came across the water:

"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my G.o.d!_"

And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"