I left him suddenly.I felt I was producing a bad impression, but with my double down there it was most trying to be on deck.And it was almost as trying to be below.Altogether a nerve-trying situation.
But on the whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him.
There was no one in the whole ship whom I dared take into my confidence.Since the hands had got to know his story, it would have been impossible to pass him off for anyone else, and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than ever.
...
The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could talk only with our eyes when I first went down.
Later in the afternoon we had a cautious try at whispering.
The Sunday quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the elements, the men were against us--everything was against us in our secret partnership; time itself--for this could not go on forever.
The very trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt.
Shall I confess that this thought cast me down very much?
And as to the chapter of accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could only hope that it was closed.
For what favorable accident could be expected?
"Did you hear everything?" were my first words as soon as we took up our position side by side, leaning over my bed place.
He had.And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, "The man told you he hardly dared to give the order."I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.
"Yes.He was afraid of it being lost in the setting.""I assure you he never gave the order.He may think he did, but he never gave it.He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the main topsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope--positively whimpered about it and nothing else--and the night coming on!
To hear one's skipper go on like that in such weather was enough to drive any fellow out of his mind.It worked me up into a sort of desperation.I just took it into my own hands and went away from him, boiling, and--But what's the use telling you?
YOU know!...Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce with them I should have got the men to do anything? Not It!
The bo's'n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn't a heavy sea--it was a sea gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be something like that;and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it--but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.
I was precious little better than the rest.Only--I was an officer of that old coal wagon, anyhow--""I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.
He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly.
It was all very ******.The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil, crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.
But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter--footsteps in the saloon, a heavy knock."There's enough wind to get under way with, sir." Here was the call of a new claim upon my thoughts and even upon my feelings.
"Turn the hands up," I cried through the door."I'll be on deck directly."I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship.
Before I left the cabin our eyes met--the eyes of the only two strangers on board.I pointed to the recessed part where the little campstool awaited him and laid my finger on my lips.
He made a gesture--somewhat vague--a little mysterious, accompanied by a faint smile, as if of regret.
This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man who feels for the first time a ship move under his feet to his own independent word.In my case they were not unalloyed.
I was not wholly alone with my command; for there was that stranger in my cabin.Or rather, I was not completely and wholly with her.
Part of me was absent.That mental feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy had penetrated my very soul.Before an hour had elapsed since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the pagoda, I caught myself reaching up to his ear in whispers.
I say I caught myself, but enough had escaped to startle the man.
I can't describe it otherwise than by saying that he shied.
A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him henceforth.
A little later I moved away from the rail to look at the compass with such a stealthy gait that the helmsman noticed it--and I could not help noticing the unusual roundness of his eyes.
These are trifling instances, though it's to no commander's advantage to be suspected of ludicrous eccentricities.
But I was also more seriously affected.There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a menaced eye.
A certain order should spring on to his lips without thinking;a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak, without reflection.But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me.
I had to make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the conditions of the moment.
I felt that I was appearing an irresolute commander to those people who were watching me more or less critically.
And, besides, there were the scares.On the second day out, for instance, coming off the deck in the afternoon (I had straw slippers on my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and spoke to the steward.He was doing something there with his back to me.
At the sound of my voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, as the saying is, and incidentally broke a cup.
"What on earth's the matter with you?" I asked, astonished.
He was extremely confused."Beg your pardon, sir.I made sure you were in your cabin.""You see I wasn't."