"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea Part 18

"Koch!" he answered eagerly and proudly. "Oh, I know Koch; I've met him. And I know about microscopes, too. Why, Koch had me under his microscope once. He discovered my family, and named us--the comma bacilli--the Spirilli of Asiatic Cholera."

In silent horror they drew away from him, and then conversed together.

Other white warriors drifting along stopped and joined the conference, and when a hundred or more were ma.s.sed before him, they spread out to a semi-spherical formation and closed in.

"What's the matter?" he asked nervously. "What's wrong? What are you going to do? I haven't done anything, have I?"

"It's not what you've done, stranger," said his quondam friend, "or what we're going to do. It's what you're going to do. You're going to die. Don't see how you got past quarantine, anyhow."

"What--why--I don't want to die. I've done nothing. All I want is peace and quiet, and a place to swim where it isn't too light nor too dark. I mind my own affairs. Let me alone--you hear me--let me alone!"

They answered him not. Slowly and irresistibly the hollow formation contracted--individuals slipping out when necessary--until he was pushed, still protesting, into the nearest movable cave. The walls crashed together and his life went out. When he was cast forth he was in five pieces.

And so our gentle, conservative, non-combative cholera microbe, who only wanted to be left alone to mind his own affairs, met this violent death, a martyr to prejudice and an unsympathetic environment.

Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson:

August 18. As period of incubation for both cholera and hydrophobia has pa.s.sed and no initial symptoms of either disease have been noticed, patient is this day discharged, cured.

FROM THE ROYAL-YARD DOWN

As night descended, cold and damp, the wind hauled, and by nine o'clock the s.h.i.+p was charging along before a half-gale and a rising sea from the port quarter. When the watch had braced the yards, the mate ordered the spanker brailed in and the mizzen-royal clued up, as the s.h.i.+p steered hard. This was done, and the men coiled up the gear.

"Let the spanker hang in the brails; tie up the royal," ordered the mate from his position at the break of the p.o.o.p.

"Aye, aye, sir," answered a voice from the group, and an active figure sprang into the rigging. Another figure--slim and graceful, clad in long yellow oilskin coat, and a sou'wester which could not confine a tangled fringe of wind-blown hair--left the shelter of the after-companionway and sped along the alley to the mate's side.

"The foot-rope, Mr. Adams," she said hurriedly. "The seizing was chafed, you remember."

"By George, Miss Freda!" said the officer. "Forgot all about it. Glad you spoke. Come down from aloft," he added in a roar.

The sailor answered and descended.

"Get a piece of spun yarn out o' the b.o.o.by-hatch and take it up wi'

you," continued the mate. "Pa.s.s a temporary seizing on the lee royal foot-rope. Make sure it's all right 'fore you get on it, now."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The man pa.s.sed down the p.o.o.p steps, secured the spun yarn, and while rolling it into a ball to put in his pocket, stood for a moment in the light s.h.i.+ning from the second mate's room. The girl on the p.o.o.p looked down at him. He was a trim-built, well-favored young fellow, with more refinement in his face than most sailors can show; yet there was no lack of seamanly deftness in the fingers which balled up the spun yarn and threw a half-hitch with the bight of the lanyard over the point of the marlinespike which hung to his neck. As he climbed the steps, the girl faced him, looking squarely into his eyes.

"Be careful, John--Mr. Owen," she said. "The seizing is chafed through.

I heard the man report it--it was Dutch George of the other watch. Do be careful."

"Eh, why--why, yes, Miss Folsom. Thank you. But you startled me. I've been Jack for three years--not John, nor Mister. Yes, it's all right; I----"

"Get aloft to that mizzenroyal," thundered the mate, now near the wheel.

"Aye, aye, sir." He touched his sou'wester to the girl and mounted the weather mizzen-rigging, running up the ratlines as a fireman goes up a ladder. It was a black night with cold rain, and having thrown off his oiled jacket, he was already drenched to the skin; but no environment of suns.h.i.+ne, green fields and woodland, and flower-scented air ever made life brighter to him than had the incident of the last few moments; and with every nerve in his body rejoicing in his victory, and her bitter words of four years back crowding his mind as a contrasting background, he danced up and over the futtock-shrouds, up the topmast-rigging, through the crosstrees, and up the topgallant-rigging to where the ratlines ended and he must climb on the runner of the royal-halyards. As the yard was lowered, this was a short climb, and he swung himself upward to the weather yard-arm, where he rolled up one side of the sail with extravagant waste of muscular effort; for she had said he was not a man, and he had proved her wrong: he had conquered himself, and he had conquered her.

He hitched the gasket, and crossed over to the lee side, forgetting, in his exhilaration, the object of the spun yarn in his pocket and the marlinespike hung from his neck, stepped out on the foot-rope, pa.s.sed his hands along the jack-stay to pull himself farther, and felt the foot-rope sink to the sound of snapping strands. The jackstay was torn from his grasp, and he fell, face downward, into the black void beneath.

An involuntary shriek began on his lips, but was not finished. He felt that the last atom of air was jarred from his lungs by what he knew was the topgallant-yard, four feet below the royal; and, unable to hold on, with a freezing cold in his veins and at the hair-roots, he experienced in its fullness the terrible sensation of falling,--whirling downward,--clutching wildly at vacancy with stiffened fingers.

The first horror past, his mind took on a strange contemplativeness; fear of death gave way to mild curiosity as to the manner of it. Would he strike on the lee quarter, or would he go overboard? And might he not catch something? There was rigging below him--the lee royal-backstay stretched farthest out from the mast, and if he brushed it, there was a possible chance. He was now face upward, and with the utmost difficulty moved his eyes,--he could not yet, by any exercise of will or muscle, move his head,--and there, almost within reach, was a dark line, which he knew was the royal-backstay; farther in toward the spars was another--the topgallant-backstay; and within this, two other ropes which he knew for the topgallant-rigging, though he could see no ratlines, nor could he distinguish the lay of the strands; the ropes appeared like solid bars. This, with the fact that he was still but a few feet below the topgallant-yard, surprised him, until it came to him that falling bodies travel over sixteen feet in the first second of descent, which is at a rate too fast for distinct vision, and that the apparent slowness of his falling was but relative--because of the quickness of his mind, which could not wait on a sluggish optic nerve and more sluggish retina.

Yet he wondered why he could not reach out and grasp the backstay. It seemed as though invisible fetters bound every muscle and joint, though not completely. An intense effort of will resulted in the slow extension of all the fingers of his right hand, and a little straightening of the arm toward the backstay; but not until he had fallen to the level of the upper topsail-yard was this result reached.

It did no good; the backstay was now farther away. As it led in a straight line from the royal-masthead to the rail, this meant that he would fall overboard, and the thought comforted him. The concussion would kill him, of course; but no self-pity afflicted him now. He merely considered that she, who had relented, would be spared the sight of him crushed to a pulp on the deck.

As he drifted slowly down past the expanse of upper topsail, he noticed that his head was sinking and his body turning so that he would ultimately face forward; but still his arms and legs held their extended position, like those of a speared frog, and the thought recalled to him an incident of his infancy--a frog-hunt with an older playmate, his prowess, success, wet feet, and consequent illness. It had been forgotten for years, but the chain was started, and led to other memories, long dead, which rose before him. His childhood pa.s.sed in review, with its pleasures and griefs; his school-days, with their sports, conflicts, friends and enemies; college, where he had acquired the polish to make him petted of all but one--and abhorrent to her.

Almost every person, man or woman, boy or girl, with whom he had conversed in his whole life, came back and repeated the scene; and as he pa.s.sed the lower topsail-yard, nearly head downward, he was muttering commonplaces to a brown-faced, gray-eyed girl, who listened, and looked him through and through, and seemed to be wondering why he existed.

And as he traversed the depth of the lower topsail, turning gradually on his axis, he lived it over--next to his first voyage, the most harrowing period of his life: the short two months during which he had striven vainly to impress this simple-natured sailor-girl with his good qualities, ending at last with his frantic declaration of a love that she did not want.

"But it's not the least use, John," she said to him. "I do not love you, and I cannot. You are a gentleman, as they say, and as such I like you well enough; but I never can love you, nor any one like you. I've been among men, real men, all my life, and perhaps have ideals that are strange to you. John,"--her eyes were wide open in earnestness,--"you are not a man."

Writhing under her words, which would have been brutal spoken by another, he cursed, not her, nor himself, but his luck and the fates that had shaped his life. And next she was showing him the opened door, saying that she could tolerate profanity in a man, but not in a gentleman, and that under no circ.u.mstances was he to claim her acquaintance again. Then followed the snubbing in the street, when, like a lately whipped dog, he had placed himself in her way, hoping she would notice him; and the long agony of humiliation and despair as his heart and soul followed her over the seas in her father's s.h.i.+p, until the seed she had planted--the small suspicion that her words were true--developed into a wholesome conviction that she had measured him by a higher standard than any he had known, and found him wanting. So he would go to her school, and learn what she knew.

With lightning-like rapidity his mind rehea.r.s.ed the details of his tuition: the four long voyages; the brutality of the officers until he had learned his work; their consideration and rough kindness when he had become useful and valuable; the curious, incongruous feeling of self-respect that none but able seamen feel; the growth in him of an aggressive physical courage; the triumphant satisfaction with which he finally knew himself as a complete man, clean in morals and mind, able to look men in the face. And then came the moment when, mustering at the capstan with the new crew of her father's s.h.i.+p, he had met her surprised eyes with a steady glance, and received no recognition.

And so he pleaded his cause, dumbly, by the life that he lived. Asking nothing by word or look, he proved himself under her eyes--first on deck; first in the rigging; the best man at a weather-earing; the best at the wheel; quick, obedient, intelligent, and respectful, winning the admiration of his mates, the jealous ill will of the officers, but no sign of interest or approval from her until to-night--the ninety-second day of the pa.s.sage. She had surrendered; he had reached her level, only to die; and he thought this strange.

Facing downward, head inboard now, and nearly horizontal, he was pa.s.sing the cross-jack yard. Below him was the sea--black and crisp, motionless as though carved in ebony. Neither was there movement of the s.h.i.+p and its rigging; the hanging bights of ropes were rigid, while a breaking sea just abaft the main chains remained poised, curled, its white crest a frozen pillow of foam. "The rapidity of thought," he mused dreamily; "but I'm falling fast enough--fast enough to kill me when I strike."

He could not move an eyelid now, nor was he conscious that he breathed; but, being nearly upright, facing aft and inboard, the quarter-deck and its fittings were before his eyes, and he saw what brought him out of eternity to a moment of finite time and emotion. The helmsman stood at the motionless wheel with his right hand poised six inches above a spoke, as though some sudden paralysis gripped him, and his face, illumined by the binnacle light, turned aloft inquiringly. But it was not this. Standing at the taffrail, one hand on a life-buoy, was a girl in yellow looking at him,--unspeakable horror in the look,--and around her waist the arm of the mate, on whose rather handsome face was an evil grin.

A pang of earthly rage and jealousy shot through him, and he wished to live. By a supreme effort of will he brought his legs close together and his arms straight above his head; then the picture before him shot upward, and he was immersed in cold salt water, with blackness all about him. How long he remained under he could not guess. He had struck feet first and suffered no harm, but had gone down like a deep-sea lead. He felt the aching sensation in his lungs coming from suppressed breathing, and swam blindly in the darkness, not knowing in which direction was the surface, until he felt the marlinespike--still fastened to his neck--extending off to the right. Sure that it must hang downward, he turned the other way, and, keeping it parallel with his body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were c.u.mbersome, and with a little trouble he shed them.

He was alive, and his world was again in motion. Seas lifted and dropped him, occasionally breaking over his head. In the calm of the hollows, he listened for voices of possible rescuers. On the tops of the seas,--ears filled with the roar of the gale,--he shouted, facing to leeward, and searching with strained eyes for sign of the s.h.i.+p or one of her boats. At last he saw a pin-point of light far away, and around it and above it blacker darkness, which was faintly shaped to the outline of a s.h.i.+p and canvas--hove to in the trough, with maintopsail aback, as he knew by its foreshortening. And even as he looked and shouted it faded away. He screamed and cursed, for he wanted to live. He had survived that terrible fall, and it was his right.

Something white showed on the top of a sea to leeward and sank in a hollow. He sank with it, and when he rose again it was nearer.

"Boat ahoy!" he sang out. "Boat ahoy!--this way--port a little--steady."

He swam as he could, c.u.mbered by the life-buoy, and with every heaving sea the boat came nearer. At last he recognized it--the s.h.i.+p's dinghy; and it was being pulled into the teeth of that forceful wind and sea by a single rower--a slight figure in yellow.

"It's Freda," he exclaimed; and then, in a shout: "This way, Miss Folsom--a little farther."

She turned, nodded, and pulled the boat up to him. He seized the gunwale, and she took in the oars.

"Can you climb in alone, John?" she asked in an even voice--as even as though she were asking him to have more tea. "Wait a little,--I am tired,--and I will help you."

She was ever calm and dispa.s.sionate, but he wondered at her now; yet he would not be outdone.

"I'll climb over the stern, Freda, so as not to capsize you. Better go forward to balance my weight."