Part 25

"We must cling to the inner rim of the circle," said Tom Horn, still with his finger on the chart, "for all things carried by the current drift toward its center; the moon and the running tides and the turning of the world draw them. And we must follow the circle to the place where it begins to bend to the south; the hulk we seek may have been delayed in its passage, for no man knows what the sea will do, and no one can judge the mysteries of the wind."

All through the breakfast, Anthony and mademoiselle talked with Tom Horn, and more than one of his peculiar charts came to the table while they sat there; then the two went on deck, leaving the man poring over his figures, his signs, and his curving lines. The morning was sparkling: the west wind pushed boisterously in the sails, and the little schooner leaped ahead. Corkery approached from amidships, at a look from Anthony.

"How does she set into her work?" asked the young man.

"As ably as a craft twice her bulk," said the mate. "This is no narrow spread of sail," with a look up at the strong, weather-stained canvas, "and yet see how steadily she stands under it."

The _Roebuck_ slipped easily up the long sides of the sea, her sharp prow split its crests, and then she'd sleek jauntily down into the vast hollows, flirting the water from her like a duck. The sky was a rare color, with racing clouds upon its breast; the sun lifted higher and higher, and the gleam of the sea grew brighter, throwing back the sky's own blue, the waves thinning to a green and breaking into a sudden, hissing white. The face of mademoiselle was filled with wonder.

"I have never before been to sea in a little ship," she said, "and so I have not known what being at sea means." Her eyes swept the sky and heaving water; she breathed in the wonderful, singing air; her body swayed with the spring of the craft beneath her. "It is glorious!" she said.

Anthony nodded: _he_ did not look at the sea and sky; he looked at _her_. And he said:

"Yes, it is glorious."

The full west wind held and blew the _Roebuck_ before it all that day; it whistled sharply through the night, and Anthony, whose watch it was on deck stripped the schooner of a part of her sail. The second morning saw the sea running grayer and longer; the sky was steely, and the sun was hidden. This held for twenty-four hours; then the wind hauled around to the east and scraped the sky's gray into mountains of black; the rain and wind lashed about, and the sea leaped to meet them; the schooner, under topsail and jib, was tossed like a chip, but she held stanchly upright and fought her way through, the blow scarcely wetting her decks. At the end of the fourth day out, Anthony, who stood near the helmsman, mademoiselle at his side, saw a blue gleam through the sober sky.

"The sun will shine to-morrow," he said, "and the sea will run down during the night."

"I am almost sorry," she said. "The angry sea is amazing; I'm afraid I shall not like it, smiling, as greatly as I did before."

As Anthony foretold, the wind slackened during the night and the sea ran down; the sun rose, huge and yellow, in the morning, and the sky bent lightly to the water on the horizon's edge. The wind continued good and from the southwest; the schooner heeled a little to it, her sails bulging full; and either Anthony or Corkery constantly walked the deck. But no eye on board was as watchful as Tom Horn's, as those smooth, rolling days at sea slipped by. He'd take his place in the bow, early of a morning, and there he'd stay with intent face until far into the night. The water racing past the vessel's side seemed to fascinate him; he'd brood over its passage, wearing a strange look; and as the earth slowly turned, giving a new facet to the sun's warmth, the odd clerk would watch its progress in wonder and in silence.

The lowering sun, almost level in the west, one evening caught an object to the east and held it glittering.

"St. Michael's," said Anthony, searching the spot with a glass.

The rising of the Azores caused a deal of excitement in Tom Horn. He came aft to where Anthony stood, and the young man felt a shaking hand upon his arm.

"South," said Tom Horn. "South, and a trifle to the west, the merest trifle; for that is as the waters run. The ship may be in those seas," and he pointed to starboard: "she may be drifting there, still outside the rim of dead things. We must watch, night and day; we must watch!"

The _Roebuck_ was headed south, and so held for a week; there followed a succession of light winds; they made but little headway; and with each day the sea grew quieter; there seemed a gathering of drift on the surface; the sky was shot with yellow; the dulled sun threw off a sweltering heat. At last the sails hung idle; rocking gently, the schooner was borne on through a thickening sea.

"Slowly," said Tom Horn, "very slowly." He gazed about over the forbidding waters, a look that seemed both exaltation and fear, in his strange eyes. "It was about here that the _William and Mary_ first touched the edge of that strange place," he said. "She drifted as we are drifting; sometimes it seemed that she did not move at all. But she came to it at last, as all helpless things must come to it when once the circle draws them. Without wind we are as helpless as she was," said Tom Horn. "Just as helpless. And we are being carried on, as she was carried on, and as the _Rufus Stevens_ is being carried on, somewhere outside our vision."

Corkery, who stood by, and heard the man's words, cocked an eye after him as he went forward; and he said to Anthony:

"He's worse than I ever saw him before. I've heard say he was out of balance, but up to now I have noticed only that he kept stiller than most."

"He is excited," said Anthony. "This region brings up memories of certain suffering he's gone through."

Corkery said nothing for a space, and his keen eye went backward and forward over the sluggish sea. Then he spoke:

"You haven't said what your meaning is in this voyage, and I haven't asked any questions. But in the last few days I've come to see that our friend there," and he nodded toward Tom Horn, who had taken his accustomed place in the bow, "has something to do with it; and so I bid you look to your facts. Even now we are in strange seas; and we're headed for stranger still."

Anthony nodded.

"The ship is commissioned for an errand out of the common," he said. "And we are headed now as I intended to head from the first."

Corkery looked at the sky to the north, and then at the limp sails.

"We'll have a stir of wind in a little," he said. "And I'll be pleased enough when it comes."

But the breeze was a light one, and, though it huddled into the sails, it increased the schooner's pace but little. Mademoiselle Lafargue, who had come on deck, gazed out across the water with its masses of weed and its bits of wreckage.

"I had been trying to read," she said. "But there is something oppressive in the air, and I could not. So I sat and looked out at the port; the sea looks strange, and the birds that hover about are stranger still."

She pointed to where some dirty, evil-looking fowl hung, poised, near the schooner; their great wings seldom stirred, and their narrow eyes were fixed upon the _Roebuck_.

"Tom Horn has told me of those," said Anthony. "It seems to be a sort of vulture, and, no doubt, there is much drifts into these seas which goes to keeping them sleek."

She shivered as she looked at the birds.

"What can be to the south of us," she said, "when the approach is so full of anxiety? The very air seems poisonous."

"It blows over the grave of many a hope, if all I hear is true," said Anthony. "But let us not think of that. To us it offers a chance of victory; and we can't let our nerves grow slack because of the tales of other men, whether false or true. Ahead is our direction." He looked at her soberly. "And ahead we must go, no matter what foul promises grow in our sight."

She looked into his face; and deep in her woman's eyes was the candor of a child.

"That is like you," she said. "It is very like you. I am ashamed."

"God knows," he said, "I like the place no more than you! Give me clear water, and it may rage as it likes, for that is only natural. But a sea which runs with a kind of slime, and whose birds are eaters of carrion, has no place in the book of things. Nevertheless," and he nodded to her and smiled, "we'll move deeper into it; and then I may have occasion to alter my views."

Two weeks passed; often their sails hung idle, while time went completely around the clock; a slow, hot wind sometimes blew; and they held to the south and made what time they might. The drift grew thicker; the weed sometimes choked their progress; a green, stiff sea spread out before them; strange life crept upon it, and the hideous birds perched upon bits of wreckage, much as crows might in a stump-filled field.

In the mists of one morning a cry came from Tom Horn; and Corkery, whose watch on deck it was, advanced toward him. The clerk, trembling and clinging to the forward rail with one hand, was pointing away to the south with the other.

Corkery followed the direction indicated; through the piling formations of mist he saw a vast huddle; it loomed up out of the sea, hung with flying tendrils of fog; a dim light set through its spaces, pale, phosphorescent, unreal.

"Land!" said Corkery. "Land, by God!"

"No," said Tom Horn. "It is the place of my captivity! It is the city of dead ships!"

XLI

The mate had Anthony on deck directly, and the young man eagerly searched the mists to make out what manner of a place it was that bulked up so out of the sea. In a few moments mademoiselle also appeared; and as she stood with them in the schooner's bow her face was white, but she said nothing.

The sails were motionless; the rotting sea piled against their prow; the air was hot and dull; the mist, veiling the whole region, was like steam.

"The pull of this current promises a deal of discomfort to us if we can't make way against it," said Anthony to the mate.

"I could wish we were well quit of it," said Corkery. "A little farther into the midst of this sea, and it might take more than a wind to help us away again."

"What depth of water does your chart give?" said Anthony, to Tom Horn.

The clerk turned his head but still kept his tight clutch on the rail.

"I so feared what was beneath these waters," he said, "that I never sounded them. But there is a great depth; there must be, because of the dreadful life that swarms there."

"Too much water for an anchor," said the mate. But he called for the lead, nevertheless, and watched fathom after fathom of line run over the side. "As deep a hole as there is in all the sea," he grumbled.

"If every cable in the ship were fastened end to end," said Tom Horn, "they'd do no good. There would be nothing for your anchor to grapple with. It would be like hanging over the rim of the moon, fishing for the world."

Slowly the sun seeped through the mist; then it rent holes in it; the vapor curled forlornly before the light, and lifted away from the surface of the sea. The vague loom ahead now became solid; it took both body and color; it was a huddle of broken ships, crowding together like cattle in a green field. The rotting sea held them; their planks were warped; their seams gaped thirstily. And, as the schooner's company watched, the drift rode the _Roebuck_ on; the mass of weed and sea-rubbish turned, and shifted drearily, and seemed to deepen.

As there was no sign of a breeze, Anthony ordered out a boat; three men were put into it, and he took an oar himself; a line was made fast to the schooner, and they lay to the work of pulling her head around. But the mass of weed was too stiff; the stout, ashen oars bent in the thole-pins; but the vessel did not swerve; the boat could make no way; the drift went on, and they went with it. And while the boat was being hoisted in Tom Horn spoke to mademoiselle.

"The circle has tightened; no power can slacken it--no wind--no wash of the sea. It is the grip of the great law, the world's roll, and the force of the planet that guides the tides. It gives nothing up."

"You were once lost in this place," said the girl, her face still pale, but with steady voice. "And you made away from it."

"I was here until my heart died in me," said Tom Horn. "I was here so long that it seemed the very heavens were splashed with slime; and my hope rotted as everything must rot that stays here. Each morning," he said, in his odd way, "the sun lifted out of the east like a threat and hung burning over a ghastly sea. All day I saw dead things or dead men; I saw shapes rear themselves out of the scum that withered my sight. By night winged horrors drifted across the moon; in the dark there were millions of pale candles, lighted round the coffin of a world that had passed."

The schooner's company was gathered in the waist as Anthony went below; he noted them whispering and nodding, sullen looks upon their faces; and his own was grim as he sat down to his breakfast. Mademoiselle was already at the table. And they ate for some time in silence. The hideous, turgid sea lay flat through the schooner's stern window, and the girl's eyes were fixed upon it. Anthony studied her; the sparkle which had filled her eyes from the time they had put to sea was gone; her face was intent; fear worked beneath her look.

"Tom Horn does not seem to have a mind for his breakfast," said Anthony.

"No," she replied.

She kept her eyes fixed upon the motionless sea; there was another silence.

"And," said the young man, "you do not appear to be greatly inclined to it yourself."

"No," she said again.

"For some days," said Anthony, "I have noted you engaged in talk with Tom. And a little space ago I saw you again, after we'd sighted the wrecks ahead. And I would suggest," continued the young man, "that you not give too much attention to his sayings at this time."

"It is your own word," said the girl, "that of all those with whom you have spoken this man has been nearest the truth."

Anthony poured some wine into a high glass; its amber body picked up a ray of light, bathed joyously in it, and then shot it out, stained and gleaming. And while the young man studied its cheerful message he replied to the girl:

"What you say is fact; I'd be the last to question it. Queer as his way has been, odd and circuitous as his warnings and suggestions, he has often grasped the truth and drawn the darkness from about it. But witness: All these matters dealt with the goings-on at Rufus Stevens' Sons; they had to do with things of record, with the accounts of the house, with the book of arithmetic. He was, no doubt, soundly trained in those things and so stands straight in them. But this," and Anthony nodded out the window, "is a region where he once was cast away, where his spirit sank in the stillness, and his blunting mind gave the darkness shapes no man had known. Many say Tom Horn is mad. I don't know. But if it is so then his distemper took form in this sea; so, when he talks of it, I balance his words with doubt. And if you did the like it would be a careful thing."

"When he spoke of the chance of finding the ship _Rufus Stevens_, did he not speak of this sea?" asked the girl. "And yet you showed no doubt then; you thought it a thing to follow out with speed and hopefulness."

"And I still think so," said Anthony. "For the chance of the ship being somewhere within the great ocean current, and of finally drifting into this slack sea, is a thing which comes of his arithmetic and not of his madness."

She regarded him quietly for a moment.

"When you wear that look," she said, "I cannot help but see things as you see them."

Her hand rested upon the table quite near to him, and his own went out and rested upon it.

"Keep your courage," he said. "You must not lose it because of the fears of a man whose wits are amiss. Hold to your first thoughts of good fortune, for a look like you wore brings luck to a ship."

She was smiling now; and there was that brightness in her eyes that tears make.

"I will be brave," she said. "Indeed, I will be more than that," her chin going out much as Anthony's own did on occasions. "I will be helpful."

He looked at her with his heart quickening.

"There is no one who could be more so than you, if you willed it so. Let your soul warm to what's ahead, for only strength of soul can conquer this stark place and bring our journey to a fortunate end."

The sun burned its way across the sky, and the day began to wane; the mists rose once more from the great fields of decaying matter and sent their fanciful plumes into the air.

"We do not seem any nearer to the hulks than we were this morning," said Corkery.

"We approach them slowly," said Tom Horn. "But we are nearer, nevertheless. I was weeks in coming abreast of them. The current is slow here, but it is strong and does not give up. We must not struggle against it. Be warned by me. Flow with it peacefully. Let us give our minds to finding the ship we are in search of; let the current take us deep into the core of the circle; it will take us out again, as it took me after I had learned its secret."

Corkery pointed to the mass of broken ships ahead.

"It has not taken those out," he said.

"They are dead," said Tom Horn. "And they are over-borne by other dead; they have no minds to call on God; they have no sails to hold aloft to the winds; and so they remain here, and will remain until they sink, as many have sunk before them, into the thick depths and to horrors that no one has seen."

The sun grew red as it went behind the climbing mist; it grew huge and fiery and shot long, threatening darts across the silent sea; the hideous birds came croaking out of the air and settled heavily upon the broken spars and green, fungus-grown bits of wreckage. Thicker and thicker grew the mist, and things magnified marvelously; it shook and waved like banners; it arose and floated like clouds.

"It is a wall," said Tom Horn. "It is a vast thing come between heaven and men who are lost. What does it seek to hide?" he asked of Anthony, as the sun's rim dipped below the sea and the shadows suddenly thickened. "What is there in the air above that the malevolence of this dying sea tries to keep from its victims? I once thought," and his voice was now a whisper, "that it might be hope, a something which told of release. I'd hold that in my mind through whole long nights; and comfort came from it for then I'd not seem so completely forsaken and alone."

After this it grew dark; the ship's lights glowed feebly; heavy flights of birds stirred the air; from distant places came queer, deep movements of the water, then long silences. Anthony wrapped mademoiselle in a great cloak to protect her from the damp, and side by side they walked the deck. The binnacle-light threw a glow over the man at the wheel; outside the lamp's radius the mist banked steep and white. Then a wind crept up; in the lantern-light the mist became agitated; it rolled and mounted and sunk; and then it began to drift away. A dim glow showed itself out over the drift. Suddenly mademoiselle said, in a voice of fear:

"Look! The wrecked ships! Some one is aboard them!"

Through the seams and ports of the distant hulks, pale lights were glimmering, illuminating the sea with a ghastly radiance.

"They are 'witch' lights such as one sees in a marsh; a place like the Sargasso would have many of them," said Anthony.

For some time they stood together, watching the silent hulks, and the corpse lights on their decks and rails; then the moon came up, clear, cold, and almost at its full; its rays, glancing upon the shreds of mist, sparkled wanly. The wind grew more active; it rustled in the sails, as though calling attention to its presence, and Anthony, with the help of the watch, trimmed the canvas to get what good there was in it.

"By morning," said one of the men, "we'll be in that press of wreckage ahead there."

"What wind there is," said Anthony, "will not give us head against this grass and litter; if we move at all it must be forward."

"I've heard tales of this sea," said the other man, putting his weight on the line willingly enough. "It's no place for a human with a heart in his body."

"We'll come safe out of it," said Anthony. "We have sound planks under us, upstanding masts, and a dress of sails. There's wind here, as in other places, and where there's wind and water there a ship can go without a deal a hazard."

The moon's white light bleached the thick top of the sea to a silver; the brittle stars flickered raggedly in their settings of violet; from the topmasts of the _Roebuck_ and from her bowsprit leaped little glowing spots of light.

"Mark that!" said one of the hands. "Did you see it?"

"It's a visitation," said the other. "A hand of fire touches our spars; it may be bidding us to go back!"

Anthony laughed.

"If it is a fiery hand," said he, "it is the hand of St. Elmo. And no honest person has anything to fear from him, for, from the sound of him, he was a fine old hero and well intentioned. As for the fire that carries his name it is nothing at all; for it has shown itself on more than one ship I've sailed in, and no harm came to any of them."

It was some time later that mademoiselle went below; Anthony walked the deck through his watch, with the moon sailing high and free in the sky; the strange sea held his eye; bleached white by the light, it lay flat, motionless; the corpse candles glowed in the hulks; the strange, deep movements of water came now and then from a long way off. About the third hour of his watch, Anthony heard a step at his side. It was Tom Horn.

"I thought you were abed this long time," said the young man.

"No," said the clerk, "I cannot sleep. I must watch."

"Watch?" said Anthony. As he looked at the man, the pale, luminous something which he'd always noticed in him seemed magnified. The white, still moonlight seemed kin to him; he was as strange, as quiet, and as cold.

"There are memories," said Tom Horn, "memories of nights like this; they were nights in which my soul was troubled. In the quiet I heard stirrings that had no place in the world; in the light I saw things God had not sanctioned. It is ill for a man to be alone; and I was alone for a long, long time. At first odd things pass before him--things he has not known; then they become strange; then monstrous. For there is death within life; there is evil within good. Surrounded by other souls, a man is safe; but when he is abandoned, as I was abandoned, when there is no spirit to touch his own in kindness, he is naked to evil things, and God's world is far away."

"God's world is here," said Anthony. "Where sea and sky meet, there He is; no matter how remote the place, or how desolate, God stands there, armed against evil."

The wan moon lighted the clerk's face, and Anthony saw him smile.

"That saying is good; it is the touch of a friendly spirit," he said. "Let two souls be together, and they make each other strong. But let one be alone, as I was alone, let there be no warmth, no kindliness, and hope dies. Horrors creep in; the nether world comes close, and the corporal eye, grown keen by the soul's suffering, is witness to things it should not see."

Just then there came one of the deep movements which Anthony had noted more than once; the ocean's scum seemed to heave under the moon. Tom Horn's hand touched Anthony's arm and held there; his voice fell to a whisper.

"It is very deep," he said. "Oh, quite deep! I never sounded it. The life below is monstrous. Ask God that the sight of His work be kept from your eyes."