The back wheel, p.32
The Back Wheel, page 32
And I wondered if it was their sightlessness which had prompted their gouging out of intruders’ eyes and laying them among the treasure.
Smithson, Chadwick, Boriloff and their comrades—they were beyond our aid! And much as I had loathed Chadwick, detested Smithson, I could never have wished this fate which had befallen them—nay, was befalling them still!
What we did then, I need not say. But after it was finished—and the white tribe scored heavily against us in that contest—I had seized myself a gun. We found a current of air so clean and fresh that it was like breathing scented flame. We breasted it until we broke into daylight, not through the entrance by which we had come but another, twenty feet higher and at one side.
The light was so dazzling in comparison with the caves’ blackness that it stung the eyes. There was a curious droning sound. One after the other we tumbled down to the sand and lay resting. I was intoxicated with fatigue. But the horror of the white folk was too strongly behind us, and we did not linger.
Not all of us had come forth who had gone within— but we had no intention of returning to seek the missing.
Nor did we kindle the waste and oakum piled on the beach. Our one desire was to leave that spot as swiftly as might be. Overhead the hum persisted.
We crowded into the gig, leaving the dory for any who might yet come forth.
CHAPTER XXVI
Death of the Susan Ann
I realized what the steady drone augured. The island was a gigantic ear-trumpet, its curved walls catching and amplifying distant murmurs inaudible to normal hearing. The organ note of the drone was the herald of the winds on their way.
My eyes were conditioned to the light—and it was nowhere so bright as I had imagined when fresh from the pall of the caves. The sky was painted somber with clouds and masses of scud raced across the uniform grey, like dark steeds charging.
The fjord’s water rose and fell restlessly, as if it were breathing out sighs. Ripples skipped around the bend. An unnaturally warm breeze threw feverishly ardent arms about us. Now we could see the Susan Ann. Men were hauling the launch aboard. Something had restrained them from following our boats to the island, and looking to the southern skyline, I knew what it had been. A monstrous shadow was crouching there, huddled as though to leap. It was the ugly olive shade of faded black cloth.
We emerged from the fjord into open water, and the drone dwindled behind us. Some of the men were dipping their heads and rubbing their faces on their arms as they pulled the oars. One dropped his blade to grind his fists in his eyes. I wondered uneasily whether the white clan’s blindness were infectious—certainly there was any number of septic dangers provident in the filth of their caves.
I remembered but discounted the statements of Flora and Lady Fite that the treasure had been sprinkled with blinding dust. True, dust is an excellent medium for the transmission of toxic bacteria, but the caves had been too dark for dust. And I was certain that if the treasure blinded it was in an allegorical sense.
The southern shadow leaped, spreading across the dirty paper of the sky like running ink. The breeze cooled, no longer amorous but mischievous, plucking our hair and gibbering in our ears. Ripples in glassy little triangles, spatter-fingered; united into solid ranks that caught us upon their backs and tossed us.
Some of the oarsmen were shaking their heads as though water were in their eyes—shaking the film which had slipped over their sight. One leaned over the gunwale and caught up a handful of water, dashed it into his eyes. Another lost grip on the shaft of his oar and could not find it until it ground in his chest.
A gust of colder wind burned us, and no longer mischievous but hostile. It swung the gig parallel to the crest of a rising swell. We sank sickeningly, were heaved up again and driven toward a flat of coral where the waves were spreading themselves out in swaths of tattered lace.
We righted ourselves on the crest, pulled away from the coral. The wind thrust us back and we forged into it The waves ranked into solid phalanxes and marched brandishing whitecap banners. The blackness ate half the sky.
Now I could hear the drone which the island had caught and expatiated—the sound one hears in a shell. The Susan Ann swung into the mounting gale, nosing the windward edge of the channel caging her. Those on her decks shouted to us and waved, but the blast absorbed their cries. We spurted toward her as serfs flee to their overlord’s castle from the assault of the invader, stumbling on the waves as runners trip over roots and stones.
Out of the blackness as from the opened gates of a sooty palace raced lines of white sea horses in an endless charge of cavalry. They piled in confusion on the bars; they whinnied in glassy voices as they shattered in spray on the rocks and their salt blood pelted us. Louder grew the wind, no shell-sound now but an ululation—as if the blackness bayed.
We were in the Susan Ann’s Lee, a scant twenty yards from her. The gusts swerved and she swung slowly upon us, threatening to crowd and crush us against the coral ridge. The hawsers mooring her held firm and we bobbed nauseously up and down in the narrow space left us. Those on deck still shouting, but their voices were torn from their mouths and hurled unheard over our heads. The Jacob’s ladder swung to us and we caught it, dragged ourselves scraping the ship’s side.
We leaped up that ladder two and three at a time, catapulting up it as a wave threw the gig high; hanging dangling when the wave dropped and with it the boat One of the men’s shirts opened, and the coat he had stuffed into it unfolded. Out of it flickering a rainbow shower of jewels! White hands of foam swept up greedily snatching them and he cried out soundlessly, looking down—but he did not pause in his climb nor clutch the coat.
The man beside me missed his hold—he could no longer see the rungs and had clutched at air. He toppled bade into the gig on the others. A wave swept up and knotted around my waist, throwing the boat up with it. I scrambled higher just in time to avoid the crack of it against the ship.
Then we were on deck, some of the men straining on the gig’s hawser, fighting the clutch of the wash to reach the davits. Others were crowding to us. The wind buffeted them against us, tumbled us all in a mass against the bulwarks.
And now of the sky only a silvery line remained in the north. It was darker than dusk, and the low cold light threw sharp shadows like a searchlight Identities were forgotten in that moment except by me. I gripped my gun and wriggled through the tangle of men, paused on its fringe to snatch another weapon, then reeled over the rocking deck toward the focsle companion. The shrouds were pulsing like tremendous harp strings— the wind plucking funeral music from them. I scrambled into the companionway unchallenged, caught my breath and dashed first of all to McTeague and those prisoned with him, then to Benson and Pen.
McTeague snatched the gun I proffered and darted for the main deck, Benson close behind. Pen would have clasped me close, but I feared the taint of the white people and pushed her from me. While I rescued Johnson, Mao Kenzie and Swastlow, entrusting my second gun to them, Pen freed Deborah and Lady Fitz.
The Susan Ann’s nose ground the coral with a deep coughing sound, and she shook as if coughing indeed. I was jounced as if by earthquake. Johnson and MacKenzie flew out as soon as I bad opened the door to them, but Swastlow was writing furiously and did not even look up. Scribbled sheets lay it seemed in white drifts around him.
As I made my way outside, I encountered Deborah. The Susan Ann like a huge sounding-board was throbbing with the chords of the humming shrouds. Adding this to the wailing wind, the drumming waves and the protesting creak of the masts, I could hear no word of what she screamed to me.
We fought our way outside together. The wind had caught a gull and pressed it flat on a bulkhead as if mounting a specimen or crucifying it, and its amber eye, half sealed by the third lid, burned on me as we were thrown wide-stepping toward the blinded men.
I nodded vehemently to Deborah, clapping the blind on the shoulder and pointing to the focsle. She understood and like a shepherd’s collie herded them that way.
The sky was utterly black, the waves luminous bars bearing down on us and everywhere exploding in showers of whitely phosphorescent spume. The wind stung like a whip dipped in icewater.
Climbing the foscle ladder I saw Lady Fitz. Her green gown, whipping around her, blurred into a nimbus lucent as the waves. She straightened on the focsle deck as if there were no gale at all—and she was not that woman who had muttered specious prayers, berated McTeague and fumed at Boriloff. She was that other woman who had danced on deck—still Benson’s plaything! She gestured imperiously to the waves as if they were Mends, like Tar-peia signalling the Sabines. Did she imagine that she had raised the wind? Did she think she could control it?
I was numb from cold and weariness and did not at first feel McTeague’s grasp. I was not very successfully guiding another pair of the blind men toward the focsle. His lips whisked my ear, but I barely heard him: “Where—you going? Jim—at wheel. Need these men—got guns—won’t turn against us—”
We were tom from each other before I could explain that my charges were handicapped. In my office I cupped palms to Deborah’s ear and shrieked instructions. Bottles and jars rained on us as we opened the doors of the cabinets; their shattering was soundless in that ever-rising scream of the tempest. We had to root among the rolling mess to find what we needed.
I braced myself against the bulkhead, mixing an antiseptic solution for the men’s eyes, most of it slopping over my hands. All the blind men but one sat apathetically on the cot, swaying in unison as the ship rolled, like savages marking the cadences of drums. That one had his coat unfolded on his lap and his fingers deep in ancient coins and jewels, his expression that of an infant about to cry. He felt of something as if to estimate its size and possible worth—a shell! Deborah was goggling. I left her attending the men and went up to fetch others.
One of them lay stunned on deck, the wind kicking him as if to roll him over. Above him stood Lady Fitz with the smile of Nemesis. Gems scattered as I moved him, rolling in the gusts like marbles, necklaces and gold chains writhing like injured snakes.
When I emerged outside again, I saw Benson at the wheel, Pen beside him and clinging to him against the grip of the gale. The Susan Ann bucked the waves, and I saw that they came armed against us. They had tom the trees from the isles, had snatched coral boulders to pelt us! I peered toward the ravished rocks. There were none! There was only a sheet of solid white roaring down to us, a sweeping Niagara!
A mooring-cable snapped with the hollow thud of monstrous dram, then another and still another. I read Benson’s lips rather than heard: “If only she’ll hold—meet the wave—”
He intended to ride the crest of that wave over the ridge that hemmed us in. Then we would be in an open area, could aim for Rafferty’s rock and the shield it offered from the blast. Of that island, drenched with darkness, we could see nothing but the foam which leapt its walls like fitful flame.
Down thundered the white curtain, spooning under the Susan Ann, snapping the last stays holding her, lifting her lightly to hurl over the ridge. The shock of that lifting cracked one of the jurymasts from its bands, and through the tattered veils of spindrift I saw it streaking down in a tangle of lines like a titanic harpoon.
It speared the reef and wedged just long enough to deflect the Susan Ann, twisting her in the comber’s hold. She was thrown aslant, the focsle and main decks flooded, Benson swept off his feet yet clinging inflexibly to the wheel. Pen was hurled to me at the taffrail. The swirling water that swarmed aboard clawed frantically for handhold, slipped away with some men and left in exchange the mass of foliage it had carried. A great flake of coral pierced the deck.
Yet, down on the main deck I saw Lady Fitz in nowise scathed, standing as easily as if nailed to the planks. From both of her hands dangled strands of rose and azure, green and white and gold. Benson’s jewels—or Irsuleys! They glimmered as if with light of their own, or as if partaking of that illusive nimbus she seemed to wear.
The thought flashed across my mind that the old saying was indeed apt—that God watched over fools and little children. Not to mention the inebriated, somnambulists and victims of mental jugglery!
I saw Johnson struggle from the froth decked momentarily in it like Poseidon in pearls. He shook the water from his eyes, gesticulating to us and then to the launch, which had been swept overside and was riding on leash. Men were already in it and beckoning. I saw MacKenzie at the focsle companion, his uninjured arm about Swastlow, who held papers to his breast and whose face was blankly innocent as a child’s.
Then the comber dropped us on the ridge. Coral horns gored the Susan Ann with a shock that coursed me as though I too had been pierced.
The seas subsided for the gathering of another wave. The Susan Ann hung tilted half out of them, spitted on the reef, the launch stranded entirely on the coral. Mc-Teague, popping on the ladder, stopped with incredulous eyes.
Was it the sudden drop in temperature which had weakened the ancient wood of the wheel? Or another reason?
It had split! A part of its rim and a spoke were splintering in Benson’s grip to powder! A part of its hands were missing!
McTeague mouthed something about boats and staggered towards us. Benson was staring stupidly at the broken wheel. Up the ladder came Lady Fitz and Swastlow. Far beyond them I saw Mackenzie and Deborah herding the blind to the rail, waving signals to those grounded launch.
Then even above the manic shriek of the tempest came the scream of snapping wood! The Susan Ann began to crack in two, sagging on the coral spear as if relaxing in death. The main deck buckled, folding in on itself. Swastlow, McTeague, Pen and I were flung in a heap—but Lady Fitz stood unmoved, the chains of jewels in her hands.
Benson saw them, blinked, and released the wheel. Lightly she struck him with them, then tiptoed down the ever inclining deck to McTeague and struck him also. She stepped back. Another bubbling torrent bore upon us, throwing the Susan Ann high, twisting the sharp point in her side. We toppled against the wheel—but there was no wheel! Only fast dissolving fragments like black ice-crystals which the water bore away.
I caught Pen and lurched toward the ladder, trusting that the others would follow. She stumbled and I swept her up, carried her across the ruptured deck. The launch was fawning against the Susan Ann’s side, MacKenzie dropping the blind men into it, Deborah resisting Henderson’s attempts to force her over—not so much from panic as that she didn’t like him to touch her familiarly. Respectable to the last!
The wind knocked me into the mast-stump. I looked back. The others had not followed! Lady Fitz, still held by Benson’s spell, still imagining herself the spirit of the storm, was facing the north, her arms held high—summoning. McTeague, ever Benson’s dupe, waited poised beside her, rapt and believing. He had seen the jewels. The curse was lifted. Rafferty was freed for Bridget—but McTeague was going with him!
I think that Benson would have come to us, but the woman caught his arm. He hesitated, then remained. Was it because he felt responsibility for McTeague and Lady Fitz? Did his mad mind at that crucial moment believe the story it had fabricated?
His face—Big Jim’s. The Cap’n had left him—the Cap’n, his only reason for living. Perhaps, as McTeague would follow Rafferty, so Jim chose to follow the Cap’n.
I groaned at their folly. Only Swastlow was running toward us over the riven deck. I thrust Pen to Johnson and sprinted over the sharply sloping planks. But Swastlow did not catch my outstretched hand and swing himself across the breach. He thrust his papers to me, shrieked something, nodded and smiled—and turned back!
One after another the sheets leaped from my hand, following each other like notes from a horn, flapped swirling northward like great butterflies.
Pen was beside me, shaking me, frantically pointing to her father. Her love and loyalty bound her to rescue him. She leaped the widening rift I would have followed not from suicidal impulse, but to snatch her back to safety. I crouched to leap—and could not!
I struck a wall of wind as against a curtain of glass and was thrown back. Pen reached imploringly to me. Beyond her I saw Lady Fitz smiling coldly and shaking her head. Her long white fingers twinkled at me—those tapering crued fingers of the vanished wheel!
Through the crackling of splitting timbers I heard the wind speaking Lady Fitz’ words: “You would not believe! You cannot come! The ecstasy is not for you!” And to Pen: “Go to your lover, child—while still you can!”
But Pen cried: “Father! Father!”
And the Susan Ann folded once more and wrenched away in halves, the central mast tumbling. There was nothing then but cold water in eyes and mouth and a violent tossing. The sea shook me as terror shakes a rat.
I was clutching a pinrail. The aft end of the Susan Ann had slipped yards away, far as the stars. I saw the two women and three men on it banded together and rigid as if carved. Unreal—like effigies bolted to the wood. I thought I heard a whisper in spite of the distance and tumult. Pen’s voice, broken: “Ross—oh, my darling! One day—you will know—you will find me—”
Henderson was dragging me toward the waiting launch. I did not want to go. He cuffed me. I did not feel the blow, but my knees bent. The fore section of the Susan Ann was sinking slowly. The drifting stem part was riding the waves as lightly as a bubble. I could distinguish it mainly in the seething blackness because of the green flicker of Lady Fitz’ dress.
Then we were in the launch. The Susan Ann’s bow lifted up as though saluting us and slipped down from sight. We were sucked after it. but another tremendous wave broke over the vortex, filling it; then bumbled on to us, sweeping us toward Rafferty’s dome of rock.
A flat of coral lifted before us to bar the way, like the upsurge of a shattered berg—like a gate slammed in our faces! It fell away before we could strike it. The reefs were crumbling! Enormous chunks bombarded Rafferty’s island, striking sparks and flying to bits as they battered it down. I remembered its weak foundations.
