whose waters flowed continually; flowed, though you drank of them with the awful thirst of one who had been denied water for weeks and weeks and weeks, for three whole months—an eternity, as it seemed to them.
Then they pictured life as it might be if God permitted them to return to earth once more. They would pace K—— Street at noon, and revisit that capital restaurant where many a time they had feasted, though in those days they were unknown to one another; they would call for coffee, and this dish and that dish, and a whole bill of fare, the thought of which made their feverish palates grow moist again. They would meet friends whom they had never loved as they now loved them; they would reconcile old feuds and forgive everybody everything; they held imaginary conversations, and found life very beautiful and greatly to be desired; and somehow they would get back to the little café and there begin eating again, and with a relish that brought the savoury tastes and smells vividly before them, and their lips would move and the impalpable morsels roll sweetly over their tongues.
It had become a second nature to scour the horizon with jealous eyes; never for a moment during their long martyrdom had their covetous eyes fixed upon a stationary object. But it came at last. Out of a cloud a sail burst like a flickering flame. What an age it was a-coming! how it budded and blossomed like a glorious white flower, that was transformed suddenly into a bark bearing down upon them! Almost within hail it stayed its course; the canvas fluttered in the wind; the dark hull slowly rose and fell upon the water; figures moved to and fro—men, living and breathing men! Then the ghosts staggered to their feet and cried to God for mercy. Then they waved their arms, and beat their breasts, and lifted up their imploring voices, beseeching deliverance out of that horrible bondage. Tears coursed down their hollow cheeks, their limbs quaked, their breath failed them; they sank back in despair, speechless and forsaken.
Why did they faint in the hour of deliverance when that narrow chasm was all that separated them from renewed life? Because the bark spread out her great white wings and soared away, hearing not the faint voices, seeing not the thin shadows that haunted that drifting wreck. The forsaken ones looked out from their eyrie, and watched the lessening sail until sight failed them; and then the lad, with one wild cry, leaped toward the fleeting bark, and was swallowed up in the sea.
Alone in a wilderness of waters. Alone, without compass or rudder, borne on by relentless winds into the lonesome, dreary, shoreless ocean of despair, within whose blank and forbidding sphere no voyager ventures; across whose desolate waste dawn sends no signal and night brings no reprieve; but whose sun is cold, and whose moon is clouded, and whose stars withdraw into space, and where the insufferable silence of vacancy shall not be broken for all time.
O pitiless Nature! thy irrevocable laws argue sore sacrifice in the waste places of God's universe!
The "Petrel" gave a tremendous lurch, that sent two or three of us into the lee corners of the cabin; a sea broke over us, bursting in the companion-hatch, and half filling our small and insecure retreat. The swinging lamp was thrown from its socket and extinguished; we were enveloped in pitch darkness, up to our knees in salt water. There was a moment of awful silence; we could not tell whether the light of day would ever visit us again; we thought perhaps it wouldn't. But the "Petrel" rose once more upon the watery hill-tops, and shook herself free of the cumbrous deluge; and at that point, when she seemed to be riding more easily than usual, some one broke the silence: "Well, did the captain of the 'Mouette' live to tell the tale?"
Yes, he did. God sent a messenger into the lonesome deep, where the miserable man was found insensible, with his eyes wide open against the sunlight, and lips shrunken apart—a hideous, breathing corpse. When he was lifted into the arms of the brave fellows who had gone to his rescue, he said, "Great God! am I saved?" as though he couldn't believe it when it was true; then he fainted, and was nursed through a long delirium, and was at last restored to health and home and happiness.
Our cabin boy managed to fish up the lamp, and after a little we were illuminated; the agile swab soon sponged out the cabin, and we resumed our tedious watch for dawn and fair weather.
Somehow, my mind brooded over the solitary wreck that was drifting about the sea. I could fancy the rotten timbers of the "Mouette" clinging together, by a miracle, until the "Ancient Mariner" was taken away from her, and then, when she was alone again, with nothing whatever in sight but blank blue sea and blank blue sky, she lay for an hour or so, bearded with shaggy sea-moss and looking about a thousand years old. Suddenly it occurred to her that her time had come—that she had outlived her usefulness, and might as well go to pieces at once. So she yawned in all her timbers, and the sea reached up over her, and laid hold of her masts, and seemed to be slowly drawing her down into its bosom. There was not an audible sound, and scarcely a ripple upon the water; but when the waves had climbed into the foretop, there was a clamour of affrighted birds, and a myriad bubbles shot up to the surface, where a few waifs floated and whirled about for a moment. It was all that marked the spot where the "Mouette" went down to her eternal rest.
"Ha, ha!" cried our skipper, with something almost like a change of expression on his mahogany countenance, "the barometer is rising!" and sure enough it was. In two hours the "Petrel" acted like a different craft entirely, and by-and-by came daybreak, and after that the sea went down, down, down into a deep, dead calm, when all the elements seemed to have gone to sleep after their furious warfare. Like half-drowned flies we crawled out of the close, ill-smelling cabin to dry ourselves in the sun: there, on the steaming deck of the schooner, we found new life, and in the hope that dawned with it we grew lusty and joyful.
Such a flat, oily sea as it was then! So transparent, that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped like little one-legged harlequins.
Flat-headed gonies sat high on the water, piping their querulous note as they tugged at something edible, a dozen of them entering into the domestic difficulty: one after another would desert the cause, run a little way over the sea to get a good start, leap heavily into the air, sail about for a few minutes, and then drop back on the sea, feet-foremost, and skate for a yard or two, making a white mark and a pleasant sound as it slid over the water.
The exquisite nautilus floated past us, with its gauzy sail set, looking like a thin slice out of a soap-bubble; the strange anemone laid its pale, sensitive petals on the lips of the wave and panted in ecstasy; the "Petrel" rocked softly, swinging her idle canvas in the sun; we heard the click of the anchor-chain in the forecastle, the blessedest sea-sound I wot of; a sailor sang while he hung in the ratlines and tarred down the salt-stained shrouds. The afternoon waned; the man at the wheel struck two bells—it was the delectable dog-watch. Down went the swarthy sun into his tent of clouds; the waves were of amber; the fervid sky was flushed; it looked as though something splendid were about to happen up there, and that it could hardly keep the secret much longer. Then came the purplest twilight; and then the sky blossomed all over with the biggest, ripest, goldenest stars—such stars as hang like fruits in sun-fed orchards; such stars as lay a track of fire in the sea; such stars as rise and set over mountains and beyond low green capes, like young moons, every one of them; and I conjured up my spells of savage enchantment, my blessed islands, my reefs baptized with silver spray; I saw the broad fan-leaves of the banana droop in the motionless air, and through the tropical night the palms aspired heavenward, while I lay dreaming my sea-dream in the cradle of the deep.
CHUMMING WITH A SAVAGE.
PART I.
KÁNA-ANÁ.
