WITH her anchor at the bow and clothed in canvas to her very trucks, my command seemed to stand as motionless as a model ship set on the gleams and shadows of polished marble.It was impossible to distinguish land from water in the enigmatical tranquillity of the immense forces of the world.
A sudden impatience possessed me.
"Won't she answer the helm at all?" I said irritably to the man whose strong brown hands grasping the spokes of the wheel stood out lighted on the darkness; like a symbol of mankind's claim to the direction of its own fate.
He answered me.
"Yes, sir.She's coming-to slowly."
"Let her head come up to south."
"Aye, aye, sir."
I paced the poop.There was not a sound but that of my footsteps, till the man spoke again.
"She is at south now, sir."
I felt a slight tightness of the chest before I gave out the first course of my first command to the silent night, heavy with dew and sparkling with stars.There was a finality in the act commit-ting me to the endless vigilance of my lonely task.
"Steady her head at that," I said at last."The course is south.""South, sir," echoed the man.
I sent below the second mate and his watch and remained in charge, walking the deck through the chill, somnolent hours that precede the dawn.
Slight puffs came and went, and whenever they were strong enough to wake up the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly.
I was bitterly tired.The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak.It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost gray, with a strange reminder of high latitudes.
The voice of the look-out man hailed from for-ward:
"Land on the port bow, sir."
"All right."
Leaning on the rail I never even raised my eyes.
The motion of the ship was imperceptible.Pres-ently Ransome brought me the cup of morning coffee.After I had drunk it I looked ahead, and in the still streak of very bright pale orange light Isaw the land profiled flatly as if cut out of black paper and seeming to float on the water as light as cork.But the rising sun turned it into mere dark vapour, a doubtful, massive shadow trembling in the hot glare.
The watch finished washing decks.I went be-low and stopped at Mr.Burns' door (he could not bear to have it shut), but hesitated to speak to him till he moved his eyes.I gave him the news.
"Sighted Cape Liant at daylight.About fifteen miles."He moved his lips then, but I heard no sound till I put my ear down, and caught the peevish comment: "This is crawling....No luck.""Better luck than standing still, anyhow," Ipointed out resignedly, and left him to whatever thoughts or fancies haunted his awful immobility.
Later that morning, when relieved by my second officer, I threw myself on my couch and for some three hours or so I really found oblivion.It was so perfect that on waking up I wondered where I was.
Then came the immense relief of the thought: on board my ship! At sea! At sea!
Through the port-holes I beheld an unruffled, sun-smitten horizon.The horizon of a windless day.But its spaciousness alone was enough to give me a sense of a fortunate escape, a momentary exultation of freedom.
I stepped out into the saloon with my heart lighter than it had been for days.Ransome was at the sideboard preparing to lay the table for the first sea dinner of the passage.He turned his head, and something in his eyes checked my modest elation.
Instinctively I asked: "What is it now?" not ex-pecting in the least the answer I got.It was given with that sort of contained serenity which was characteristic of the man.
"I am afraid we haven't left all sickness behind us, sir.""We haven't! What's the matter?"
He told me then that two of our men had been taken bad with fever in the night.One of them was burning and the other was shivering, but he thought that it was pretty much the same thing.
I thought so, too.I felt shocked by the news.
"One burning, the other shivering, you say? No.
We haven't left the sickness behind.Do they look very ill?""Middling bad, sir." Ransome's eyes gazed steadily into mine.We exchanged smiles.Ran-some's a little wistful, as usual, mine no doubt grim enough, to correspond with my secret exasperation.
I asked:
"Was there any wind at all this morning?""Can hardly say that, sir.We've moved all the time though.The land ahead seems a little nearer."That was it.A little nearer.Whereas if we had only had a little more wind, only a very little more, we might, we should, have been abreast of Liant by this time and increasing our distance from that contaminated shore.And it was not only the distance.It seemed to me that a stronger breeze would have blown away the contamination which clung to the ship.It obviously did cling to the ship.Two men.One burning, one shivering.Ifelt a distinct reluctance to go and look at them.
What was the good? Poison is poison.Tropical fever is tropical fever.But that it should have stretched its claw after us over the sea seemed to me an extraordinary and unfair license.I could hardly believe that it could be anything worse than the last desperate pluck of the evil from which we were escaping into the clean breath of the sea.If only that breath had been a little stronger.How-ever, there was the quinine against the fever.Iwent into the spare cabin where the medicine chest was kept to prepare two doses.I opened it full of faith as a man opens a miraculous shrine.The upper part was inhabited by a collection of bottles, all square-shouldered and as like each other as peas.Under that orderly array there were two drawers, stuffed as full of things as one could im-agine--paper packages, bandages, cardboard boxes officially labelled.The lower of the two, in one of its compartments, contained our provision of quinine.
There were five bottles, all round and all of a size.One was about a third full.The other four remained still wrapped up in paper and sealed.
