A Man and the Sea

ON the great shiny plain of the Atlantic, hushed and passive as though resting after the gale, the dismasted, stormstricken hull of a vessel rolled sickishly from side to side in the trough of the sluggish swells. Her decks, previously a tar-lined stretch of boards shadowed by the sails above, now lay desolate beneath the sun, strewn with broken bits of planking from the shattered deck-house and covered with a meshwork of tangled ropes and spars. The after-part of the starboard gunwale had been washed away, leaving the deck in that section open to the sea ; and facing the gap, propped up against the jagged stump of the mainmast, sat a man.

There had been six of them in all when the vessel cleared from Rio Janeiro. Five the sea had already taken. This One had yet to wait. He was a large man, well along in middle age. His face was dark, heavy-featured, almost hard; with a bold, self-contained look about the black eyes that showed him to be a man determined to have his own way in all things, and accustomed to dominate over his fellow men. But a falling yard-arm had broken his leg, and he remembered, with a half - cynical smile on his paindrawn lips, how, when the gale was screeching and seething about him, he had seen the fifth man sweep down the deck in the swash of the boarding sea, hurled straight through that gap in the gunwale ; and how he had sat there powerless even to cast the poor devil a rope.

So all through the morning of the calm he gazed stupidly out over the illimitable heaving level of the sea to where the blue dome of the heavens bent down to the sun-white water, drawing at the imagined meeting the curved and delusive line of the horizon. He seldom moved, for the pain in his leg was less intense when he kept very still; but he knew the sea was the same behind him, and over the bows, and over the stern the same.

Now and again he heard a strange bumping, and felt the shocks tremble through the hull. At first he thought it some hindrance in the ceaseless clanking of the wheel-gear ; then it occurred to him it was the end of the mainmast, held close to the vessel by the ratlines, thumping against her quarter. After that he waited for the shocks. But they came irregularly. When two of them followed each other in quick succession it startled him ; when a longer spell of quiet intervened, he thought he must snatch up the great spar from the water and smash it against the planking. He reasoned against it. The thirst and heat, he told himself, were drying him up, and it was only natural that the spar should pound. His teeth came together hard for a minute ; then he grew calmer, and waited no more for the shocks.

The morning passed slowly away. The sun, almost directly overhead now, shone blazing from the sky and softened the tar in the decking, so that the man could poke shallow holes in the black lines with his stubby finger. Then a blotch of cloud crept up from behind the edge of sea before him, wafted along in an upper draft of air. It grew larger as it approached, changing in form. Finally it reached the sun and cast its shadow over the deck. The man breathed deep in the cool it afforded, thankful for the respite from the stifling heat. The ragged end of the cloud, however, was drawing near on the water. It came to the vessel, drifting in silence over the litter of boards and ropes. Just one more breath in the cool. He must have it. Instinctively he stretched out his hands as if he could hold the line back. But the cloud above was moving fast, the shadow moved with it, and as the man inhaled he sucked into his aching throat the warm, dry air of the sunshine.

A whimpering cry broke from his lips, and in sheer desperation at his helplessness he picked up the end of a board and hurled it into the sea. A slight splash, and the circle of little waves scampered outward over the water. Larger and larger grew the arch of the circle, the little waves less distinct. The man watched the wrinkles intently, — watched them until they disappeared. But what had become of them ? Had they quietly sunk back again into the ocean, or were they still spreading, somewhere outside the range of sight, running toward the distant horizon, and beyond?

The sun sank lower in the west, and at last dropped into the sea. A great red daub of varying color lingered in the sky, which simmered in reflection on the water and streaked the glaring surface prettily with pink. Thus the water appeared to the eye, in the sunset. Below, unconscious of sunset, storm, or calm, the unknown depths of the ocean lay hidden in ominous mystery.

The swells had quieted down. The spar must have drifted from under the vessel’s quarter, for the bumping had ceased. Only the uneasy squeaking of the helm and the splashing chuckle of the water on the sides of the hull broke upon the silence of the evening.

As the still night came on, the man watched the dim horizon narrow in to vanish in the black of the water alongside, and saw the multitude of stars grow in the heavens. Then after a little while he fell into a turbulent sleep, whilst the huge night hung thick about him.

He awoke some hours later with the pain in his leg. And there before him, as if suspended from a star, a chain of bright red lights ran down obliquely to the sea. He rubbed his eyes wonderingly, but the lights remained hanging brilliant against the blackness of the sky. He remembered how a former shipmate of his, in mid - ocean, had seen lights along the shore before turning insane, and the fear of madness choked his lungs. A nameless something was creeping stealthily upon him ; in from the sea, squirming along the deck, and sliding down the stump of spar at his back. Not a sound now disturbed the stillness. The large man, unmindful of his broken leg, cowered before it. He tried to crawl away. But on came the thing, noiseless and slimy, like the closing in of the fog. He could almost feel it touch him. Then of a sudden the well-known bump of the mast-end, with its vibrating shock, shattered the strain, and he fell backward upon the deck with a groan.

The pounding continued, less frequent, still irregular ; but now in the dark it came as a friendly companionship to the man. Each time the spar struck the quarter he smiled contentedly to himself; each time it waited longer than usual he became afraid lest it had slipped away.

After a while the dawn appeared in the east and widened rapidly over the sky. Every moment it grew lighter. The stars above paled out and disappeared; the gray and misty sea stretched below. The spar all the time had been thumping at the planking. He noticed that the vessel, when she rolled, seemed clumsy and awkward in the movement, and he heard the slopping of the water inside. As the morning broke clear the vessel sank lower and lower.

So the end of it all was near. He tried to think, — tried to collect his senses and find out what the sinking meant. It came to him that as he had been a swimmer since his childhood he would not drown at once ; that he would be left behind on that vast plain of sea. It would not be long, for his broken leg would soon exhaust him, but while it lasted the great sky and indefinite ocean would be worse than the dark and the crawling thing of madness. And another fear, that of being alone in his universe, rushed upon him, and rolling to where a rope lay, made fast to a belaying-pin at the gunwale, he tied the end hastily about his waist.

He stopped suddenly with his hand upon the knot, gazing fixedly over the stern. The fear was still upon him, but a certain quiet had come over him in which he was made to realize that he was afraid. Again, as on the day before, when the pounding of the mast-end was torturing him, his teeth clicked sharply together. He began tugging at the knot to unloosen it, trembling lest he should not free himself in time. As the rope fell from about his waist he dragged himself up until he stood on one foot, leaning against the battered gunwale, — a man alone beneath the morning light, staring desperately over the vastness of the space before him.

Then the hull staggered and plunged bow first. A green wall of water poured over the gunwale with a clinging chill, throwing him to the deck, and the suction of the sinking vessel dragged him down.

Guy H. Scull.