CHAPTER III

‘WHO AM I?’

I sat looking about me, now watching the pretty wreaths of foam spring past the sides of the boat, now gazing at the land whose features had blended into a long, dark, compact, but hazy line, sometimes addressing questions to Bill Hitchens, and always enjoying what to me was the exquisitely pleasurable sensation of the boat buoyantly sweeping over the little feathering ripples, when, my eyes going on a sudden to my left hand, I cried out, ‘Oh, where are my rings?’

‘Your rings, lady?’ exclaimed the boatman.

‘Yes, my rings. Did you not see me take off my rings? I put them on the sail that lay near me. Oh, where are they, where are they? I cannot lose them. One is my wedding-ring and the other two are my husband’s gifts. Oh, Hitchens, where are they?’ I cried, and, with a passion of eagerness and fear, I hunted over the bottom of the boat with my eyes, peering and straining my gaze at every crevice and hollow.

‘Now be calm, lady,’ said Hitchens, ‘it’ll come right. The rings can’t be fur off. Let me question you. Where did you say you put ’em?’

‘That sail up there lay along the seats, and I put my rings on it, on a corner of it that was close to me. I believed that they would be safe there. They could not slide off canvas.’

The man’s face fell as he looked into the bottom of the boat.

‘If you’ll catch hold of this here tiller, lady,’ said he, ‘I’ll have a search. They can’t be fur off, I hope,’ he added in a voice meant to encourage me.

I put my hand on the tiller, but hardly knew what more to do with it than to keep it steady. My distress was exquisite. When I looked over the bottom of the boat and could not see any glitter of my wedding-ring and the other two rings I shivered as though possessed with a passion of grief. Oh, if I had been careless in removing my rings, it shocked me to the heart to think of losing them--of losing my wedding-ring, that symbol of my wedded love and happiness.

‘Do you see any signs of them?’ I cried to Hitchens. ‘I shall not mind the loss of the other rings, but I must have my wedding-ring--I must not lose it--I _cannot_ lose my wedding-ring.’

The poor fellow, with a face of real concern, groped about the bottom of the boat. He lifted up a board, and carefully felt about with his hand in some water that lay in a kind of well. But I was sure that if the rings were not to be seen at once they would not be seen at all, because there were three of them, and one at least must certainly be visible: for though there were many crevices in the boat they were all very shallow, and the gleam of the rings would be instantly perceptible.

‘I am afraid, lady,’ exclaimed the boatman, standing up, ‘that they’ve gone overboard.’

I moaned.

‘I didn’t,’ he continued, ‘take any notice of ’em, and in my sudden whipping up of the sail they must have been chucked ower the side. It’s a bad job true-ly,’ and again he bent his figure to look.

I now realised that I had lost my rings; it had not been a loss to be instantly felt and understood. My wedding-ring was gone; another wedding-ring I might easily buy, but the one that was consecrated to me by memory, the ring with which my husband had made me his wife, was irrecoverably gone, and as I looked upon my bare hand I wept, and then for a third time was I visited with a cold heart-subduing feeling of loneliness.

‘Turn the boat for the land,’ I said to Hitchens. ‘I am miserable and want to get home.’

As he came to the tiller he directed a look out at the west, or rather I should say in the direction of the coast, for the haze had thickened magically within the last ten minutes or so, and though the land was scarcely above three miles distant it was little more than a dim shadow, that seemed to be fading out even as we looked. But I was still so grieved and distracted by the loss of my wedding-ring that I had no eyes save for my bare hand, and no thoughts save for what was at the bottom of the sea.

‘The wind’s shifted,’ said Hitchens. ‘It is off the land. You was right, lady, arter all. Them clouds _was_ a-coming up. We shall have to ratch home.’

He dragged at some ropes which held the corners of the sails, and, moving his tiller, caused the boat to turn; but she did not turn so as to point the head for the land.

‘Why do you not steer for Piertown?’ I said.

‘The wind’s come dead foul, lady. We shall have to ratch home.’

‘What do you mean by “ratch”?’

‘We shall have to tack--we shall have to beat back.’

I did not understand his language, but neither would I tease him by questions. Now I was sensible that the wind had increased and was still increasing. I lifted up my eyes and judged that the wind was coming out of a great heap of cloud which lay over the land--the heap of cloud whose brows I had noticed rising above the edge of the cliff; but the mass had since then risen high, and there was a shadow upon it as if rain were falling. The boat lay sharply over upon her side, and her stem, as it tore through the water, made a strange stealthy noise of hissing as though it were red hot.

‘The land is fading out of sight,’ said I.

‘Ay, it’s drawed down thicker than I expected,’ answered the boatman.

‘Is not the wind very high?’

‘It’s blowing a nice sailing breeze,’ he answered; ‘though it’s a pity it’s shifted, as you’re in a hurry to get home.’

But as he gazed round the sea I seemed to witness an expression of uneasiness in his face. It appeared to me that he was sailing away from the land. I was alarmed, and questioned him. He drew a piece of chalk from his pocket and first marked down upon the seat the situation of the coast, then the situation of the boat, and then the process of tacking, and how we should have to sail at angles in order to reach Piertown harbour.

‘What time is it, Hitchens?’

He looked at his watch and said, ‘Just upon the hour of four.’

‘Oh! how the time has flown! Already four! When shall we arrive, do you think?’

‘I’m afeared,’ he answered, ‘that I sha’n’t be able to put ye ashore much before five.’

‘But the atmosphere continues to grow thicker. Look! some parts of the coast are invisible. If you should lose sight of the coast, how will you be able to steer for it?’

‘We’ll find our way home all right, lady,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘Don’t be afeared. The loss of them there rings has worried ye, as well it might, and I’d give half the worth of this boat to be able to fish ’em up.’

I sat silent and motionless, gazing at the slowly dissolving line of coast over the gunwale. The water was now streaming in lines, and every line had its edging of spray, and often from these little foaming ridges there would flash a handful of glittering crystals, as though some hand within were hurling diamonds and prisms through the curling head of the brine. The thickness of the atmosphere lay around the sea, and so shrunk the plain of water that it looked no more than a lake in size. There was also the gloom of gathering clouds in the air, not only of the clouds which were rising off the land, but of vapour forming overhead and sailing athwart the course of the boat in dirty shreds and rags of the stuff that is called by sailors ‘scud!’

‘Will you hold the tiller for a moment, lady?’ said the boatman. ‘There’s summat wrong with----’ and he pronounced a technical word which I do not remember.

I grasped the tiller and he rose and went into the bows of the boat, where he paused for a moment, looking up; he then got upon the gunwale of the boat and stood with his back to the sea, with one hand upon a rope that ran from the front mast down to the bowsprit. He preserved that posture of standing and supporting himself and looking upwards whilst one might count ten; then let go of the rope, brought his hands together over his heart and, with a kind of short rattling groan, fell backwards.

The boat sat low on the water, and as the poor fellow therefore fell from no height, he rose to the surface before the boat had gone past him by her own length; he floated on his back, and made no effort to swim; I do not remember witnessing a single struggle in him; whence I judged, when I was able to think, that he had fallen dead from the gunwale of his little vessel; and the manner in which he had seemed to clutch at his heart, and the short rattling groan that he had delivered, confirmed me in this belief.

When he fell I sprang to my feet with a shriek of horror. For some moments, which would have been precious had he been alive and struggling, I did not know what to do. My heart stood still, I could not draw a breath. Then with lightning speed there swept into my head the thought that if he were drowned I should be alone, and, being alone, I should be absolutely helpless; and this thought electrified me, and not only enabled me to reflect, but gave me power to act. For, far more swiftly than I can relate what I did, yes, even though I was talking to you instead of writing, I grasped one of the long heavy oars and launched it towards the figure of the man as a spear is hurled. I needed, indeed, the strength of terror to accomplish this; at another time it would have taxed my strength to merely drag the oar to the side and let it fall.

The boat had been sailing fast when the poor man dropped from the gunwale, but when I sprang up I released the tiller, which I had been holding steady, having no knowledge whatever of steering, and the boat being released from the government of her helm, flew round into the wind, but not until she had left the body of the man a long distance behind; and then she stood upright upon the water, with her sails angrily shaking. Wild with thought and fear, wild with despair and terror, I kept my eyes fastened upon the body of the man. Oh, I cried to myself, can he not swim? Will he not attempt to reach the oar? And I screamed out his name, pointing to the direction where the oar lay. But as I continued to point and scream out his name the body sank. It vanished instantly, as though it had been desperately jerked under water by some hidden grasp or fang below. I stood straining my gaze, not knowing but that he might rise again, and then it was that the boat, being pointed a little away from the wind by the beat of the small, short waves, was smitten by the blast in her forward canvas; she turned and rushed through the water, whitening it, and lying dangerously down under the weight of her sails; but after she had started she, of her own accord, wound round into the wind again and sat upright, plunging quickly with her canvas rattling, and time after time this process was repeated, whilst I stood staring round me, seeing nothing of the land, beholding nothing, but the contracted plain of the ocean, around which the haze or fog stood as a wall, whilst overhead the sky was of the colour of slate, shadowed by speeding wings of scud.

It was raining, and when I looked in the direction whence the wind was blowing, the rain that drove aslant splashed in my face. I thought to myself, What will next happen? The boat will overset, and I shall be drowned! What am I to do?--what am I to do? And as I thought thus, weeping bitterly, and wringing my hands in the extremity of my grief and fright, the boat heeled over and depressed her side so low that the white foam she churned up flashed and roared to the level of the line of her gunwale. I grasped the opposite side to save myself from falling, by which I no doubt saved my life, because, had I slipped and staggered to the depressed side, my weight must certainly have capsized the boat. She rushed like an arrow round again into the wind and then stopped dead, plunging yet more sharply.

I wrung my hands again and cried aloud, What am I to do? But, happily, I had sense enough to understand that the very first thing to be done was to lower the sail, and as I had repeatedly observed poor Hitchens hoist the tall sheet of canvas, I knew what rope to undo, and, stepping over the seats, I released the rope, and, the boat being at that moment with her head pointing into the wind, the sail fell, but in falling it enveloped me and threw me down, and it was some minutes before I succeeded in extricating myself.

This, to be sure, was a trifling accident, for I was not in the least degree hurt, but the being thrown down and smothered by the canvas immeasurably heightened my distress and terror; I trembled from head to foot, my knees yielded under me, and I was forced to sit. It was raining hard, and the wet made the wind feel cruelly cold as it rushed athwart the boat, whipping the crests off the waves into an angry showering of spray. But after a little I began to find some faint comfort in the belief that the boat was stationary. Alas, how great was my ignorance! Because she did not appear to sail, and because she no longer lay dangerously over, I believed she was stationary. Yet two little sails were still set, a triangular sail at the bowsprit and a small square sail at the stern, and I must have been crazed indeed not to guess that whilst this canvas remained exposed the light fabric would be blown along by the wind, either sideways or forward, and that, as the wind blew directly from the west, every minute was widening my distance from Piertown.

But not understanding this, I found some heart in the belief that the boat was stationary, and I tried to comfort myself in other ways. I said to myself, this rain may be a passing shower, the weather will brighten presently, the boat will be in view from the coast, my situation will be guessed at by the boatmen who hang about the Esplanade, and they will put off to rescue me. And I also said to myself, even if this weather should not clear up, even if I remain out here invisible from the land, yet when my sister finds that it grows dark and I have not returned, she is sure to go down to the harbour and offer rewards for my rescue, and I may count upon several boats coming out to search for me.

Thus I thought, striving to give myself heart. But oh, the desolation of that mist-environed stretch of steel-grey water--chilly, leaping, and streaming in froth! Oh, the cruel cold of the rain-laden wind pouring shrilly past my ears and penetrating my wet clothes till my breast felt like marble! Not even now could I realise my situation. I knew that I was alone and that I was helpless, but the horizon of my fears and wretchedness was contained in these simple perceptions. I did not believe that I should perish. I was sure that succour would come, and my sufferings now lay in the agony of expectation, in the present and heart-breaking torment of waiting.

The time passed, the shadow of the evening entered the gloom of the afternoon. It continued to rain, and the horizon lay shrouded close to the boat, but I believe there was no increase in the wind: I noticed no increase. But indeed I was too ignorant, too despairful, too heartbroken to heed the weather, unless it were to observe, with eyes half-blind with my own tears and the flying rain that the sea was darkening, that the thickness lay close around the boat, and that nothing ever came out of that thickness save the dusky shapes of waves.

‘Am I to be out in this boat all night?’ I thought to myself. ‘If so, I shall die of cold and exhaustion. I cannot pass the whole long night alone in this open boat in the rain, and in the bitter cold wind, wet through to the skin as I already am, without anybody to speak to, without food or drink, without a ray of light for my eyes to find comfort in resting on. O God! O God! I cried, and I went down upon my knees in the boat, and, clasping my hands, I gazed upwards into the grey, wet shadow of the sky, under which the naked mast of the boat was reeling, and I prayed to God to be with me, to watch over me, to bring help to me before I expired of fear and cold, and to return me to my sister, and to my little ones who were waiting for me.

And now I scarcely know how to proceed. What followed was a passage--a horribly long passage--of mental suffering incommunicable by the pen, nay scarcely to be remembered or understood by the sufferer herself. It fell dark, and the black night came, the blacker because there was no moon and because of the rain and the mist. I had gathered the wet cloths of the sail about me as a sort of shelter, and I sat with my head above the line of the gunwale, for ever looking to left and to right, and to right and to left, and never seeing more than the pale, near gleam of froth. At times thought grew maddening, and I shrieked like one in a fit or like a woman insane. It was not the fear of death that maddened me, it was not the anguish of the cold and the wet, nor even the fearful loneliness of my situation, a loneliness that cannot be imagined, for what magic is there in ink to figure the impenetrable blackness of the night, to imitate the snapping and sobbing sounds of the water and the hissing of the wind? No, it was the thought of my husband and my children; and it was chiefly the thought of my children. Again and again, when my mind went to them, I would catch myself moaning, and again and again I shrieked. With the eye of imagination I saw them sleeping: I saw my darling boy slumbering restfully in his little bed, I saw my baby asleep in her little cot; I bent over them in fancy; I kissed the golden hair of my boy, and I kissed the soft cheek of my baby; and then the yearnings of my heart grew into agony insupportable.

And there was a dreadful fancy that again and again visited me. Amid the crawling and blinking foam over the boat’s side I sometimes imagined I saw the body of Hitchens. It came and went. I knew it was a deception of the senses, yet I stared as though it were there indeed. Sometimes there would come a sound in the wind that resembled the groan he had uttered when he fell overboard.

At some hour of the night, but whether before or after midnight I could not have told, I was looking over the right side of the boat when a large shadow burst out of the darkness close to. It swept by wrapped in gloom. It was a vessel, and she whitened the throbbing dusky surface over which she passed with a confused tumble of froth. There was not a single spot of light upon her. Her sails blended with the midnight obscurity, and were indistinguishable. Indeed she was to be heard rather than seen, for the noise of the wind was strong and shrill in her rigging, and the sound of her passage through the water was like a rending of satin. She was visible, and then she was gone even as I looked.

All night long it rained, and it was raining at daybreak in a fine thin drizzle. The sea was shrouded as on the previous afternoon. When the cold and iron grey of the dawn was upon the atmosphere, I feebly lifted up my head, marvelling to find myself alive. I looked about me with my eyes as languid as those of a dying person’s, and beheld nothing but the streaming waters running out of the haze on one side and vanishing in the haze on the other side. Had I then possessed the knowledge of the sea that I afterwards gained, I might have known by the character of the waves that during the night the boat had been swept a long distance out. The billows were large and heavy, and the movements of the boat, whose sails were too small to steady her, were wild. Yet she rose and fell buoyantly. These things I afterwards recollected.

I was without hunger, but the presence of daylight sharpening my faculties somewhat I felt thirsty, and no sooner was I conscious of the sensation of thirst than the perception that it was not to be assuaged raised it into a torment. There was water in the bottom of the boat; I dipped my finger into one of the puddles and put the moisture to my lips. It was brackish, almost indeed as salt as the water of the sea. I pressed my parched lips to the sodden sail, which I had pulled over my shoulders, and the moisture of it was as salt as the puddle I had dipped my finger into.

And now, after this time, I have but a very indistinct recollection of what followed. All my memories are vague, as though I had dimly dreamed of what I saw and suffered. I recollect that I felt shockingly ill, and that I believed I was dying. I recollect that during some hour of this day I beheld a smudge in the grey shadow of mist and rain on my right, that it kindled an instant’s hope in me, that I held open with difficulty my heavy wet eyelids and watched it in a sickly and fainting way, believing it might prove a boat sent in search of me. I followed it with my gaze until it melted away in the thickness. I recollect that the day passed, and that the blackness of a second night came; but, this remembered, all else is a blank in my brain.

I opened my eyes and found myself in gloom. A few inches above me was a shelf; I supposed it to be a shelf. Dim as the light was, there was enough of it to enable me to see that what was stretched just above me was not part of a ceiling. I lay looking at it. I then turned my head on to my right cheek and beheld a wall. I touched it to make sure. I passed my hand slowly over it, and then looked up again at the shelf that was stretched over my head. I then turned my head and perceived a little circle of greenish light. I stared at this strange glimmering disk of light for a long while, again looked upwards, and again feebly passed my hand over the wall.

I did not ask myself where I was; I felt no curiosity. I was as one in whom an intellect has been suddenly created, and who passively accepts what the sight rests on. I lay turning my head from cheek to cheek for some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, during which my eyes, having grown used to the gloom that was faintly touched by that circle of greenish light, began to distinguish objects. And first I saw that I was in a very little dark room, lying upon a sort of shelf which, with the upper shelf, resembled a long box, of which one side was wanting; and scarcely had I perceived that I was in a little dark room than I became sensible that I was upon the water: for, as I lay on the shelf, I felt that my body was rolled from side to side, and I also felt an upwards motion and then a downwards motion, and I knew that I was at sea.

Then I thought to myself, I am in the cabin of a ship. But how did I get here and who am I? Having said to myself _Who am I_? I repeated the words over and over again; but as yet without surprise, without terror. The question haunted my mind with languid iteration, but it induced no emotion. I felt sick and extraordinarily weak. Something irritated my brow, and, lifting my hand, I found my right temple and the eyebrow and a portion of the nose as far as the bridge of it pasted over with some hard substance. I ran my fingers over this substance, but without wonderment, and then my arm fell exhausted to my side, and feebly turning my head on to my left cheek, I stared at the glimmering green disc, whilst I kept on thinking to myself, but without agitation or fear, _Who am I_?

It did not strike me as in the least degree strange that I should not know who I was. I lay looking, and I saw a man’s coat swinging by a nail near the little circle of dim light. I also saw a common cane-bottom chair and a dark chest, which I have since learnt to call by its proper name of ‘locker.’ From the ceiling of this little room there swung, suspended by thin brass chains, a strange-looking lamp, formed of a globe of metal with a glass chimney. I continued to watch that lamp swing until my eyelids closed, but whether I fainted or slumbered I am unable to say.

When I awoke or regained consciousness the glimmering circle of glass had changed from dim green into bright yellow. It rippled with brilliance as from the reflection of sunshine upon water, and there was daylight in the little cabin. I heard the sound of a fiddle and the voice of a man singing. The sounds were on the other side of the wall which I had felt over with my hand when I first awoke. Presently the music ceased, and almost at the moment that it ceased I heard the rattle of a door-handle and what looked to be a shapeless bulk stood at my side.

On straining my dim sight I saw that the figure was that of an immensely fat man. He stood with his back to the circular window, and for some while I was unable to discern his features. Meanwhile he stared at me as though there was nothing in my fixed look to satisfy him that I was alive or dead. His face was perfectly round and his cheeks puffed out as if he were in the act of blowing. Upon his upper lip were a few short straggling hairs, iron grey; his hair was scanty and grizzled; his complexion was a brick red, apparently from exposure to weather. Yet his fat face was deprived of the expression of stupid good nature that one commonly finds in such countenances by a pair of heavy, shaggy, almost white eyebrows, which, coming close together over the top of his nose, stamped the look of an habitual frown upon his forehead. His eyes were small, black and piercing, and his age might have been anything between fifty and sixty. He wore a red cap, the tasselled point of which fell over his ear, and his dress consisted of a soiled and well-worn pilot-coat hanging loose over an equally soiled and well-worn velveteen jacket. A large shawl was wound round his neck, and there were gold hoops in his ears. These points I afterwards witnessed. All that I now observed was his large round face of a dusky crimson and the small black eyes in it fixed upon me.

At last he exclaimed, in a deep voice: ‘Tiens, vous voilà enfin éveillée, après trois jours de sommeil! Eh bien, j’espère que maintenant vous soyez en état de prendre quelque nourriture et de me dire ce que vous êtes. Peste! que n’avez-vous donc échappé! C’est vrai les femmes peuvent supporter plus que les hommes. Elles ne sont pas si facilement écrasées que nous autres pauvres diables.’

I listened to these words and understood them, but I did not know they were French. Yet though I could not have given a name to the tongue in which the man spoke I knew what he said. My knowledge of French suffered me to read it and slightly understand it when spoken, but I was unable to converse in it.

What he had said was: ‘So then you are awake at last! Three days of sleep! Well, now you will be able to eat and drink, I hope, and tell me who you are. Peste! what an escape! But women have more endurance than men. They are not so easily destroyed as us poor devils.’

I gazed at him without answering. He addressed me again in French.

‘What do you say?’ I whispered.

‘Aha! you are Angleesh,’ exclaimed the man in his deep voice, and he added in French, ‘Stop! I will go and fetch Alphonse.’

His shapeless bulk moved away from the side of the shelf and I lay motionless, with my eyes fixed upon the bright circle of glass upon which the reflection of sunny waters without was dancing. But I do not know what I thought of. I cannot remember that any sort of determinable idea visited me. My mind seemed empty, with one strange question for ever dully echoing in it: _Who am I?_ Yet I also seemed to know that I was not mad. I could not tell who I was, but I felt that I was not mad. I do not say that my instincts assured me of this; I seemed to be sensible of it passively. It was a perception independent of all effort of mind, a knowledge wholly involuntary as the action of the heart is involuntary.

In a few minutes I heard the door-handle rattle again and two figures came to the side of the shelf on which I lay. One was the same stout personage that had previously visited me; the other was a clean, fresh-looking young man of the age of four or five and twenty, smoothly shaven, with coal black hair and eyes, his face of a pronounced French type. He was fairly well dressed in a suit of grey, and his white shirt collar was buttoned low so as to expose the whole of his long throat and even a portion of his chest. His posture suggested an air of habitual attention and respect, and after he had peered a while and observed that my eyes were open he removed his cap.

‘Speak to her Alphonse,’ said the large stout man.

‘How do you do, madame? How do you now feel?’ said the younger man in good English, pronouncing the words with an excellent accent.

I answered faintly, ‘I believe I am dying. Where am I?’

‘Oh,’ he exclaimed quickly, ‘you have not eaten, you have not drunken. It is impossible for people to live unless they eat and drink.’

He then addressed himself hurriedly to the fat man, who acquiesced with a grunt and a gesture of the hand. The young man went out, whilst the other remained at my side, fixedly staring at me. Even had I been able to exert my mind for conversation I could not have found my voice. It pained me to whisper. The stout man addressed me once in barbarous English; I languidly gazed at him in silence through my half-closed eyelids, and no more was said until the young man returned, bearing in one hand a cup and saucer and in the other hand a tumbler. The cup contained some warm soup; the tumbler some weak brandy and water. Now ensued a brief discussion between the two men as to whether the brandy should be administered before the soup or the soup before the brandy. The younger man’s views prevailed and, correctly judging that I was unable to feed myself, he drew the cane-bottom chair to my side, seated himself and fed me.

The fat man stood with a stolid countenance, looking on. When I had swallowed the soup the young man applied the tumbler to my lips and I slowly drank.

‘Now,’ said the young man, ‘do you feel more comfortable?’

I whispered that I felt better.

‘That is right,’ said he. ‘You must keep quiet whether you sleep or not. I am not a doctor, but I know a thing or two. I will visit you again in two hours with more soup and _eau-de-vie_.’ And he said to the fat man in his native tongue, ‘Come, uncle, she will do. She will not die. Let us leave her.’

They then withdrew.