[begin page 102]

statement by mrs. edwards.

We were in no way prepared for this dreadful thing. We were a happy family, we had been happy from the beginning; we did not know what trouble was, we were not thinking of it nor expecting it.

My husband was thirty-five years old, and seemed ten years younger, for he was one of those fortunate people who by nature are overcharged with breezy spirits and vigorous health, and from whom cares and troubles slide off without making any impression. He was my ideal, and indeed my idol. In my eyes he was everything that a man ought to be, and in spirit and body beautiful. We were married when I was a girl of 16, and we now had two children, comely and dear little creatures: Jessie, 8 years old, and Bessie, 6.

The house had been in a pleasant turmoil all day, this 19th of March, for it was Jessie's birthday.1 Henry (my husband) had romped with the children till I was afraid he would tire them out and unfit them for their party in the evening, which was to be a children's fancy dress dance; and so I was glad when at last in the edge of the evening he took them to our bedroom to show them the grandest of all the presents, the microscope. I allowed them fifteen minutes for this show. I would put the children into their costumes, then, and have them ready to receive their great flock of [begin page 103] little friends and the accompanying parents. Henry would then be free to jot down in short-hand (he was a past-master in that art) an essay which he was to read at the social club the next night. I would show the children to him in their smart costumes when the party should be over and the good-night kisses due.

I left the three in a state of great excitement over the microscope, and at the end of the fifteen minutes I returned for the children. They and their papa were examining the wonders of a drop of water through a powerful lens. I delivered the children to a maid and they went away. Henry said—

“I will take forty winks and then go to work. But I will make a new experiment with the drop of water first. Won't you please strengthen the drop with the merest touch of Scotch whisky and stir up the animals?”

Then he threw himself on the sofa and before I could speak he uttered a snore. That came of romping the whole day. In reaching for the whisky decanter I knocked off the one that contained brandy and it broke. The noise stopped the snore. I stooped and gathered up the broken glass hurriedly in a towel, and when I rose to put it out of the way he was gone. I dipped a broomstraw in the Scotch whisky and let a wee drop fall upon the glass slide where the water-drop was, then I crossed to the glass door to tell him it was ready. But he had lit the gas and was at his table writing. It was the rule of the house not to disturb him when he was at work; so I went about my affairs in the picture gallery, which was our house's ballroom.

statement by mr. edwards

We were experimenting with the microscope. And pretty ignorantly. Among the little glass slides in the box we found one labeled “section of a fly's eye.” In its centre was faintly visible a dot. We put it under a low-power lens and it showed up like a fragment of honey-comb. We put it under a stronger lens and it became a [begin page 104] window-sash. We put it under the most powerful lens of all, then there was room in the field for only one pane of the several hundred. We were childishly delighted and astonished at the magnifying capacities of that lens, and said, “Now we can find out if there really are living animals in a drop of water, as the books say.”

We brought some stale water from a puddle in the carriage-house where some rotten hay lay soaking, sucked up a dropperful and allowed a tear of it to fall on a glass slide. Then we worked the screws and brought the lens down until it almost touched the water; then shut an eye and peered eagerly down through the barrel. A disappointment—nothing showed. Then we worked the screws again and made the lens touch the water. Another disappointment—nothing visible. Once more we worked the screws and projected the lens hard against the glass slide itself. Then we saw the animals! Not frequently, but now and then. For a time there would be a great empty blank; then a monster would enter one horizon of this great white sea made so splendidly luminous by the reflector and go plowing across and disappear beyond the opposite horizon. Others would come and go at intervals and disappear. The lens was pressing against the glass slide; therefore how could those bulky creatures crowd through between and not get stuck? Yet they swam with perfect freedom; it was plain that they had all the room and all the water that they needed. Then how unimaginably little they must be! Moreover, that wide circular sea which they were traversing was only a small part of our drop of stale water; it was not as big as the head of a pin; whereas the entire drop, flattened out on the glass, was as big around as a child's finger-ring. If we could have gotten the whole drop under the lens we could have seen those gruesome fishes swim leagues and leagues before they dwindled out of sight at the further shore!

I threw myself on the sofa profoundly impressed by what I had seen, and oppressed with thinkings. An ocean in a drop of water—and unknown, uncharted, unexplored by man! By man, who gives all his time to the Africas and the poles, with this unsearched marvelous world right at his elbow. Then the Superintendent of [begin page 105] Dreams appeared at my side, and we talked it over. He was willing to provide a ship and crew, but said—

“It will be like any other voyage of the sort—not altogether a holiday excursion.”

“That is all right; it is not an objection.”

“You and your crew will be much diminished, as to size, but you need not trouble about that, as you will not be aware of it. Your ship itself, stuck upon the point of a needle, would not be discoverable except through a microscope of very high power.”

“I do not mind these things. Get a crew of whalers. It will be well to have men who will know what to do in case we have trouble with those creatures.”

“Better still if you avoid them.”

“I shall avoid them if I can, for they have done me no harm, and I would not wantonly hurt any creature, but I shan't run from them. They have an ugly look, but I thank God I am not afraid of the ugliest that ever plowed a drop of water.”

“You think so now, with your five feet eight, but it will be a different matter when the mote that floats in a sunbeam is Mont Blanc compared to you.”

“It is no matter; you have seen me face dangers before—”

“Finish with your orders—the night is slipping away.”

“Very well, then. Provide me a naturalist to tell me the names of the creatures we see; and let the ship be a comfortable one and perfectly appointed and provisioned, for I take my family with me.”2

Half a minute later (as it seemed to me), a hoarse voice broke on my ear—

“Topsails all—let go the lee brace—sheet home the stuns'l boom—hearty, now, and all together!”

[begin page 106]

I turned out, washed the sleep out of my eyes with a dash of cold water, and stepped out of my cabin, leaving Alice quietly sleeping in her berth. It was a blustering night and dark, and the air was thick with a driving mist out of which the tall masts and bellying clouds of sail towered spectrally, faintly flecked here and there aloft by the smothered signal lanterns. The ship was heaving and wallowing in the heavy seas, and it was hard to keep one's footing on the moist deck. Everything was dimmed to obliteration, almost; the only thing sharply defined was the foamy mane of white water, sprinkled with phosphorescent sparks, which broke away from the lee bow. Men were within twenty steps of me, but I could not make out their figures; I only knew they were there by their voices. I heard the quartermaster report to the second mate—

“Eight bells, sir.”

“Very well—make it so.”

Then I heard the muffled sound of the distant bell, followed by a far-off cry—

“Eight bells and a cloudy morning—anchor watch turn out!”

I saw the glow of a match photograph a pipe and part of a face against a solid bank of darkness, and groped my way thither and found the second mate.

“What of the weather, mate?”

“I don't see that it's any better, sir, than it was the first day out, ten days ago; if anything it's worse—thicker and blacker, I mean. You remember the spitting snow-flurries we had that night?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we've had them again to-night. And hail and sleet besides, b'George! And here it comes again.”

We stepped into the sheltering lee of the galley, and stood there listening to the lashing of the hail along the deck and the singing of the wind in the cordage. The mate said—

“I've been at sea thirty years, man and boy, but for a level ten-day stretch of unholy weather this bangs anything I ever struck, north of the Horn—if we are north of it. For I'm blest if I know where we are—do you?”

It was an embarrassing question. I had been asked it very [begin page 107] confidentially by my captain, long ago, and had been able to state that I didn't know; and had been discreet enough not to go into any particulars; but this was the first time that any officer of the ship had approached me with the matter. I said—

“Well, no, I'm not a sailor, but I am surprised to hear you say you don't know where we are.”

He was caught. It was his turn to be embarrassed. First he began to hedge, and vaguely let on that perhaps he did know, after all; but he made a lame fist of it, and presently gave it up and concluded to be frank and take me into his confidence.

“I'm going to be honest with you, sir—and don't give me away.” He put his mouth close to my ear and sheltered it against the howling wind with his hand to keep from having to shout, and said impressively, “Not only I don't know where we are, sir, but by God the captain himself don't know!”

I had met the captain's confession by pretending to be frightened and distressed at having engaged a man who was ignorant of his business; and then he had changed his note and told me he had only meant that he had lost his bearings in the thick weather—a thing which would rectify itself as soon as he could get a glimpse of the sun. But I was willing to let the mate tell me all he would, so long as I was not to “give it away.”

“No, sir, he don't know where he is; lets on to, but he don't. I mean, he lets on to the crew, and his daughters, and young Phillips the purser, and of course to you and your family, but here lately he don't let on any more to the chief mate and me. And worried? I tell you he's worried plumb to his vitals.”

“I must say I don't much like the look of this, Mr. Turner.”

“Well, don't let on, sir; keep it to yourself—maybe it'll come out all right; hope it will. But you look at the facts—just look at the facts. We sail north—see? North-and-by-east-half-east, to be exact. Noon the fourth day out, heading for Sable island—ought to see it, weather rather thin for this voyage. Don't see it. Think the dead reckoning ain't right, maybe. We bang straight along, all the afternoon. No Sable island. Damned if we didn't run straight over it! It warn't there. What do you think of that?”

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“Dear me, it is awful—awful—if true.”

“If true. Well, it is true. True as anything that ever was, I take my oath on it. And then Greenland. We three banked our hopes on Greenland. Night before last we couldn't sleep for uneasiness; just anxiety, you know, to see if Greenland was going to be there. By the dead reckoning she was due to be in sight along anywhere from five to seven in the morning, if clear enough. But we staid on deck all night. Of course two of us had no business there, and had to scuttle out of the way whenever a man came along, or they would have been suspicious. But five o'clock came, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, ten o'clock, and at last twelve—and then the captain groaned and gave in! He knew well enough that if there had been any Greenland left we'd have knocked a corner off of it long before that.”

“This is appalling!”

“You may hunt out a bigger word than that and it won't cover it, sir. And Lord, to see the captain, gray as ashes, sweating and worrying over his chart all day yesterday and all day to-day, and spreading his compasses here and spreading them there, and getting suspicious of his chronometer, and damning the dead-reckoning—just suffering death and taxes, you know, and me and the chief mate helping and suffering, and that purser and the captain's oldest girl spooning and cackling around, just in heaven! I'm a poor man, sir, but if I could buy out half of each of 'em's ignorance and put it together and make it a whole, blamed if I wouldn't put up my last nickel to do it, you hear me. Now—”

A wild gust of wind drowned the rest of his remark and smothered us in a fierce flurry of snow and sleet. He darted away and disappeared in the gloom, but first I heard his voice hoarsely shouting—

“Turn out, all hands, shorten sail!”

There was a rush of feet along the deck, and then the gale brought the dimmed sound of far-off commands—

“Mizzen foretop halyards there—all clue-garnets heave and away—now then, with a will—sheet home!”

And then the plaintive notes that told that the men were handling the kites—

[begin page 109] “If you get there, before I do—
Hi-ho-o-o, roll a man down;
If you get there before I do,
O, give a man time to roll a man down!”

By and by all was still again. Meantime I had shifted to the other side of the galley to get out of the storm, and there Mr. Turner presently found me.

“That's a specimen,” said he. “I've never struck any such weather anywheres. You are bowling along on a wind that's as steady as a sermon, and just as likely to last, and before you can say Jack Robinson the wind whips around from weather to lee, and if you don't jump for it you'll have your canvas blown out of the cat-heads and sailing for heaven in rags and tatters. I've never seen anything to begin with it. But then I've never been in the middle of Greenland before—in a ship—middle of where it used to be, I mean. Would it worry you if I was to tell you something, sir?”

“Why, no, I think not. What is it?”

“Let me take a turn up and down, first, to see if anybody's in earshot.” When he came back he said, “What should you think if you was to see a whale with hairy spider-legs to it as long as the foretogallant backstay and as big around as the mainmast?”

I recognized the creature; I had seen it in the microscope. But I didn't say so. I said—

“I should think I had a little touch of the jimjams.”

“The very thing I thought, so help me! It was the third day out, at a quarter to five in the morning. I was out astraddle of the bowsprit in the drizzle, bending on a scuttle-butt, for I don't trust that kind of a job to a common sailor, when all of a sudden that creature plunged up out of the sea the way a porpoise does, not a hundred yards away—I saw two hundred and fifty feet of him and his fringes—and then he turned in the air like a triumphal arch, shedding Niagaras of water, and plunged head first under the sea with an awful swash of sound, and by that time we were close aboard him and in another ten yards we'd have hit him. It was my belief that he tried to hit us, but by the mercy of God he was out of practice. The lookout on the foc'sle was the only man around, and thankful I was, or there could have been a mutiny. He was asleep [begin page 110] on the binnacle—they always sleep on the binnacle, it's the best place to see from—and it woke him up and he said, “Good land, what's that, sir?” and I said, “It's nothing, but it might have been, for any good a stump like you is for a lookout.” I was pretty far gone, and said I was sick, and made him help me onto the foc'sle; and then I went straight off and took the pledge; for I had been going it pretty high for a week before we sailed, and I made up my mind that I'd rather go dry the rest of my life than see the like of that thing again.”

“Well, I'm glad it was only the jimjams.”

“Wait a minute, I ain't done. Of course I didn't enter it on the log—”

“Of course not—”

“For a man in his right mind don't put nightmares in the log. He only puts the word ‘pledge’ in, and takes credit for it if anybody inquires; and knows it will please the captain, and hopes it'll get to the owners. Well, two days later the chief mate took the pledge!”

“You don't mean it!”

“Sure as I'm standing here. I saw the word on the book. I didn't say anything, but I felt encouraged. Now then, listen to this: day before yesterday I'm dumm'd if the captain didn't take the pledge!”

“Oh, come!”

“It's a true bill—I take my oath. There was the word. Then we begun to put this and that together, and next we began to look at each other kind of significant and willing, you know; and of course giving the captain the preceedence, for it wouldn't become us to begin, and we nothing but mates. And so yesterday, sure enough, out comes the captain—and we called his hand. Said he was out astern in a snow-flurry about dawn, and saw a creature shaped like a wood-louse and as big as a turreted monitor, go racing by and tearing up the foam, in chase of a fat animal the size of an elephant and creased like a caterpillar—and saw it dive after it and disappear; and so he begun to prepare his soul for the pledge and break it to his entrails.”

“It's terrible!”

“The pledge?—you bet your bottom dollar. If I—”

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“No, I don't mean the pledge; I mean it is terrible to be lost at sea among such strange, uncanny brutes.”

“Yes, there's something in that, too, I don't deny it. Well, the thing that the mate saw was like one of these big long lubberly canal boats, and it was ripping along like the Empire Express; and the look of it gave him the cold shivers, and so he begun to arrange his earthly affairs and go for the pledge.”

“Turner, it is dreadful—dreadful. Still, good has been done; for these pledges—”

“Oh, they're off!”

“Off?”

“Cert'nly. Can't be jimjams; couldn't all three of us have them at once, it ain't likely. What do you want with a pledge when there ain't any occasion for it? There he goes!”

He was gone like a shot, and the night swallowed him up. Now all of a sudden, with the wind still blowing hard, the seas went down and the deck became as level as a billiard table! Were all the laws of Nature suspended? It made my flesh creep; it was like being in a haunted ship. Pretty soon the mate came back panting, and sank down on a cable-tier, and said—

“Oh, this is an awful life; I don't think we can stand it long. There's too many horribles in it. Let me pant a little, I'm in a kind of a collapse.”

“What's the trouble?”

“Drop down by me, sir—I mustn't shout. There—now you're all right.” Then he said sorrowfully, “I reckon we've got to take it again.”

“Take what?”

“The pledge.”

“Why?”

“Did you see that thing go by?”

“What thing?”

“A man.”

“No. What of it?”

“This is four times that I've seen it; and the mate has seen it, and so has the captain. Haven't you ever seen it?”

“I suppose not. Is there anything extraordinary about it?”

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“Extra-ordinary? Well, I should say!”

“How is it extraordinary?”

He said in an awed voice that was almost like a groan—

“Like this, for instance: you put your hand on him and he ain't there.”

“What do you mean, Turner?”

“It's as true as I'm sitting here, I wish I may never stir. The captain's getting morbid and religious over it, and says he wouldn't give a damn for ship and crew if that thing stays aboard.”

“You curdle my blood. What is the man like? Isn't it just one of the crew, that you glimpse and lose in the dark?”

“You take note of this: it wears a broad slouch hat and a long cloak. Is that a whaler outfit, I'll ask you? A minute ago I was as close to him as I am to you; and I made a grab for him, and what did I get? A handful of air, that's all. There warn't a sign of him left.”

“I do hope the pledge will dispose of it. It must be a work of the imagination, or the crew would have seen it.”

“We're afraid they have. There was a deal of whispering going on last night in the middle watch. The captain dealt out grog, and got their minds on something else; but he is mighty uneasy, because of course he don't want you or your family to hear about that man, and would take my scalp if he knew what I'm doing now; and besides, if such a thing got a start with the crew, there'd be a mutiny, sure.”

“I'll keep quiet, of course; still, I think it must be an output of imaginations overstrung by the strange fishes you think you saw; and I am hoping that the pledge—”

“I want to take it now. And I will.”

“I'm witness to it. Now come to my parlor and I'll give you a cup of hot coffee and—”

“Oh, my goodness, there it is again! . . . It's gone. . . . Lord, it takes a body's breath . . . It's the jimjams I've got—I know it for sure. I want the coffee; it'll do me good. If you could help me a little, sir—I feel as weak as Sabbath grog.”

We groped along the sleety deck to my door and entered, and there in the bright glare of the lamps sat (as I was half expecting) [begin page 113] the man of the long cloak and the slouch hat, on the sofa,—my friend the Superintendent of Dreams.3 I was annoyed, for a moment, for of course I expected Turner to make a jump at him, get nothing, and be at once in a more miserable state than he already was. I reached for my cabin door and closed it, so that Alice might not hear the scuffle and get a fright. But there wasn't any. Turner went on talking, and took no notice of the Superintendent. I gave the Superintendent a grateful look; and it was an honest one, for this thing of making himself visible and scaring people could do harm.

“Lord, it's good to be in the light, sir,” said Turner, rustling comfortably in his yellow oilskins, “it lifts a person's spirits right up. I've noticed that these cussed jimjam blatherskites ain't as apt to show up in the light as they are in the dark, except when you've got the trouble in your attic pretty bad.” Meantime we were dusting the snow off each other with towels. “You're mighty well fixed here, sir—chairs and carpets and rugs and tables and lamps and books and everything lovely, and so warm and comfortable and homy; and the roomiest parlor I ever struck in a ship, too. Land, hear the wind, don't she sing! And not a sign of motion!—rip goes the sleet again!—ugly, you bet!—and here? why here it's only just the more cosier on account of it. Dern that jimjam, if I had him in here once I bet you I'd sweat him. Because I don't mind saying that I don't grab at him as earnest as I want to, outside there, and ain't as disappointed as I ought to be when I don't get him; but here in the light I ain't afraid of no jimjam.”

It made the Superintendent of Dreams smile a smile that was full of pious satisfaction to hear him. I poured a steaming cup of coffee and handed it to Turner and told him to sit where he pleased and make himself comfortable and at home; and before I could interfere he had sat down in the Superintendent of Dreams' lap!—no, sat down through him. It cost me a gasp, but only that, nothing more. The Superintendent of Dreams' head was larger than Turner's, and surrounded it, and was a transparent spirit-head [begin page 114] fronted with a transparent spirit-face; and this latter smiled at me as much as to say give myself no uneasiness, it is all right. Turner was smiling comfort and contentment at me at the same time, and the double result was very curious, but I could tell the smiles apart without trouble. The Superintendent of Dreams' body enclosed Turner's, but I could see Turner through it, just as one sees objects through thin smoke. It was interesting and pretty. Turner tasted his coffee and set the cup down in front of him with a hearty—

“Now I call that prime! 'George, it makes me feel the way old Cap'n Jimmy Starkweather did, I reckon, the first time he tasted grog after he'd been off his allowance three years. The way of it was this. It was there in Fairhaven by New Bedford, away back in the old early whaling days before I was born; but I heard about it the first day I was born, and it was a ripe old tale then, because they keep only the one fleet of yarns in commission down New Bedford-way, and don't ever re-stock and don't ever repair. And I came near hearing it in old Cap'n Jimmy's own presence once, when I was ten years old and he was ninety-two; but I didn't, because the man that asked Cap'n Jimmy to tell about it got crippled and the thing didn't materialize. It was Cap'n Jimmy that crippled him. Land, I thought I sh'd die! The very recollection of it—”

The very recollection of it so powerfully affected him that it shut off his speech and he put his head back and spread his jaws and laughed himself purple in the face. And while he was doing it the Superintendent of Dreams emptied the coffee into the slop bowl and set the cup back where it was before. When the explosion had spent itself Turner swabbed his face with his handkerchief and said—

“There—that laugh has scoured me out and done me good; I hain't had such another one—well, not since I struck this ship, now that's sure. I'll whet up and start over.”

He took up his cup, glanced into it, and it was curious to observe the two faces that were framed in the front of his head. Turner's was long and distressed; the Superintendent of Dreams' was wide, and broken out of all shape with a convulsion of silent laughter. After a little, Turner said in a troubled way—

[begin page 115]

“I'm dumm'd if I recollect drinking that.”

I didn't say anything, though I knew he must be expecting me to say something. He continued to gaze into the cup a while, then looked up wistfully and said—

“Of course I must have drunk it, but I'm blest if I can recollect whether I did or not. Lemme see. First you poured it out, then I set down and put it before me here; next I took a sup and said it was good, and set it down and begun about old Cap'n Jimmy—and then—and then—” He was silent a moment, then said, “It's as far as I can get. It beats me. I reckon that after that I was so kind of full of my story that I didn't notice whether I—.” He stopped again, and there was something almost pathetic about the appealing way in which he added, “But I did drink it, didn't I? You see me do it—didn't you?”

I hadn't the heart to say no.

“Why, yes, I think I did. I wasn't noticing particularly, but it seems to me that I saw you drink it—in fact, I am about certain of it.”

I was glad I told the lie, it did him so much good, and so lightened his spirits, poor old fellow.

“Of course I done it! I'm such a fool. As a general thing I wouldn't care, and I wouldn't bother anything about it; but when there's jimjams around the least little thing makes a person suspicious, you know. If you don't mind, sir—thanks, ever so much.” He took a large sup of the new supply, praised it, set the cup down—leaning forward and fencing it around with his arms, with a labored pretense of not noticing that he was doing that—then said—

“Lemme see—where was I? Yes. Well, it happened like this. The Washingtonian Movement started up in those old times, you know, and it was Father Matthew here and Father Matthew there and Father Matthew yonder—nothing but Father Matthew and temperance all over everywheres. And temperance societies? There was millions of them, and everybody joined and took the pledge. We had one in New Bedford. Every last whaler joined—captain, crew and all. All, down to old Cap'n Jimmy. He was an old bach, his grog was his darling, he owned his ship and sailed her himself, [begin page 116] he was independent, and he wouldn't give in. So at last they gave it up and quit pestering him. Time rolled along, and he got awful lonesome. There wasn't anybody to drink with, you see, and it got unbearable. So finally the day he sailed for Bering Strait he caved, and sent in his name to the society. Just as he was starting, his mate broke his leg and stopped ashore and he shipped a stranger in his place from down New York way. This fellow didn't belong to any society, and he went aboard fixed for the voyage. Cap'n Jimmy was out three solid years; and all the whole time he had the spectacle of that mate whetting up every day and leading a life that was worth the trouble; and it nearly killed him for envy to see it. Made his mouth water, you know, in a way that was pitiful. Well, he used to get out on the peak of the bowsprit where it was private, and set there and cuss. It was his only relief from his sufferings. Mainly he cussed himself; but when he had used up all his words and couldn't think of any new rotten things to call himself, he would turn his vocabulary over and start fresh and lay into Father Matthew and give him down the banks; and then the society; and so put in his watch as satisfactory as he could. Then he would count the days he was out, and try to reckon up about when he could hope to get home and resign from the society and start in on an all-compensating drunk that would make up for lost time. Well, when he was out three thousand years—which was his estimate, you know, though really it was only three years—he came rolling down the home-stretch with every rag stretched on his poles. Middle of winter, it was, and terrible cold and stormy. He made the landfall just at sundown and had to stand watch on deck all night of course, and the rigging was caked with ice three inches thick, and the yards was bearded with icicles five foot long, and the snow laid nine inches deep on the deck and hurricanes more of it being shoveled down onto him out of the skies. And so he plowed up and down all night, cussing himself and Father Matthew and the society, and doing it better than he ever done before; and his mouth was watering so, on account of the mate whetting up right in his sight all the time, that every cuss-word come out damp, and froze solid as it fell, and in his insufferable indignation he would hit it a whack with his cane and knock it a hundred yards, and one of them took [begin page 117] the mate in the mouth and fetched away a rank of teeth and lowered his spirits considerable. He made the dock just at early breakfast time and never waited to tie up, but jumped ashore with his jug in his hand and rushed for the society's quarters like a deer. He met the seckatary coming out and yelled at him—

“ ‘I've resigned my membership!—I give you just two minutes to scrape my name off your log, d'ye hear?’

“And then the seckatary told him he'd been black-balled three years before—hadn't ever been a member! Land, I can't hold in, it's coming again!”

He flung up his arms, threw his head back, spread his jaws, and made the ship quake with the thunder of his laughter, while the Superintendent of Dreams emptied the cup again and set it back in its place. When Turner came out of his fit at last he was limp and exhausted, and sat mopping his tears away and breaking at times into little feebler and feebler barks and catches of expiring laughter. Finally he fetched a deep sigh of comfort and satisfaction, and said—

“Well, it does do a person good, no mistake—on a voyage like this. I reckon—”

His eye fell on the cup. His face turned a ghastly white—

“By God she's empty again!”

He jumped up and made a sprawling break for the door. I was frightened; I didn't know what he might do—jump overboard, maybe. I sprang in front of him and barred the way, saying, “Come, Turner, be a man, be a man! don't let your imagination run away with you like this”; and over his shoulder I threw a pleading look at the Superintendent of Dreams, who answered my prayer and refilled the cup from the coffee urn.

“Imagination you call it, sir! Can't I see?—with my own eyes? Let me go—don't stop me—I can't stand it, I can't stand it!”

“Turner, be reasonable—you know perfectly well your cup isn't empty, and hasn't been.”

That hit him. A dim light of hope and gratitude shone in his eye, and he said in a quivery voice—

“Say it again—and say it's true. Is it true? Honor bright—you wouldn't deceive a poor devil that's—”

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“Honor bright, man, I'm not deceiving you—look for yourself.”

Gradually he turned a timid and wary glance toward the table; then the terror went out of his face, and he said humbly—

“Well, you see I reckon I hadn't quite got over thinking it happened the first time, and so maybe without me knowing it, that made me kind of suspicious that it would happen again, because the jimjams make you untrustful that way; and so, sure enough, I didn't half look at the cup, and just jumped to the conclusion it had happened.” And talking so, he moved toward the sofa, hesitated a moment, and then sat down in that figure's body again. “But I'm all right, now, and I'll just shake these feelings off and be a man, as you say.”

The Superintendent of Dreams separated himself and moved along the sofa a foot or two away from Turner. I was glad of that; it looked like a truce. Turner swallowed his cup of coffee; I poured another; he began to sip it, the pleasant influence worked a change, and soon he was a rational man again, and comfortable. Now a sea came aboard, hit our deck-house a stunning thump, and went hissing and seething aft.

“Oh, that's the ticket,” said Turner, “the dummdest weather that ever I went pleasure-excursioning in. And how did it get aboard?—You answer me that: there ain't any motion to the ship. These mysteriousnesses—well, they just give me the cold shudders. And that reminds me. Do you mind my calling your attention to another peculiar thing or two?—on conditions as before—solid secrecy, you know.”

“I'll keep it to myself. Go on.”

“The Gulf Stream's gone to the devil!”

“What do you mean?”

“It's the fact, I wish I may never die. From the day we sailed till now, the water's been the same temperature right along, I'll take my oath. The Gulf Stream don't exist any more; she's gone to the devil.”

“It's incredible, Turner! You make me gasp.”

“Gasp away, if you want to; if things go on so, you ain't going to [begin page 119] forget how for want of practice. It's the wooliest voyage, take it by and large—why, look here! You are a landsman, and there's no telling what a landsman can't overlook if he tries. For instance, have you noticed that the nights and days are exactly alike, and you can't tell one from tother except by keeping tally?”

“Why, yes, I have noticed it in a sort of indifferent general way, but—”

“Have you kept a tally, sir?”

“No, it didn't occur to me to do it.”

“I thought so. Now you know, you couldn't keep it in your head, because you and your family are free to sleep as much as you like, and as it's always dark, you sleep a good deal, and you are pretty irregular, naturally. You've all been a little seasick from the start—tea and toast in your own parlor here—no regular time—order it as each of you pleases. You see? You don't go down to meals—they would keep tally for you. So you've lost your reckoning. I noticed it an hour ago.”

“How?”

“Well, you spoke of to-night. It ain't to-night at all; it's just noon, now.”

“The fact is, I don't believe I have often thought of its being day, since we left. I've got into the habit of considering it night all the time; it's the same with my wife and the children.”

“There it is, you see. Mr. Edwards, it's perfectly awful; now ain't it, when you come to look at it? Always night—and such dismal nights, too. It's like being up at the pole in the winter time. And I'll ask you to notice another thing: this sky is as empty as my sou-wester there.”

“Empty?”

“Yes, sir. I know it. You can't get up a day, in a Christian country, that's so solid black the sun can't make a blurry glow of some kind in the sky at high noon—now can you?”

“No, you can't.”

“Have you ever seen a suspicion of any such a glow in this sky?”

“Now that you mention it, I haven't.”

[begin page 120]

He dropped his voice and said impressively—

“Because there ain't any sun. She's gone where the Gulf Stream twineth.”

“Turner! Don't talk like that.”

“It's confidential, or I wouldn't. And the moon. She's at the full—by the almanac she is. Why don't she make a blur? Because there ain't any moon. And moreover—you might rake this on-completed sky a hundred year with a drag-net and you'd never scoop a star! Why? Because there ain't any. Now then, what is your opinion about all this?”

“Turner, it's so gruesome and creepy that I don't like to think about it—and I haven't any. What is yours?”

He said, dismally—

“That the world has come to an end. Look at it yourself. Just look at the facts. Put them together and add them up, and what have you got? No Sable island; no Greenland; no Gulf Stream; no day, no proper night; weather that don't jibe with any sample known to the Bureau; animals that would start a panic in any menagerie, chart no more use than a horse-blanket, and the heavenly bodies gone to hell! And on top of it all, that jimjam that I've put my hand on more than once and he warn't there—I'll swear it. The ship's bewitched. You don't believe in the jim, and I've sort of lost faith myself, here in the bright light; but if this cup of coffee was to—”

The cup began to glide slowly away, along the table. The hand that moved it was not visible to him. He rose slowly to his feet and stood trembling as if with an ague, his teeth knocking together and his glassy eyes staring at the cup. It slid on and on, noiseless; then it rose in the air, gradually reversed itself, poured its contents down the Superintendent's throat—I saw the dark stream trickling its way down through his hazy breast—then it returned to the table, and without sound of contact, rested there. The mate continued to stare at it for as much as a minute; then he drew a deep breath, took up his sou-wester, and without looking to the right or the left, walked slowly out of the room like one in a trance, muttering—

“I've got them—I've had the proof.”

[begin page 121]

I said, reproachfully—

“Superintendent, why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Play these tricks.”

“What harm is it?”

“Harm? It could make that poor devil jump overboard.”

“No, he's not as far gone as that.”

“For a while he was. He is a good fellow, and it was a pity to scare him so. However there are other matters that I am more concerned about just now.”

“Can I help?”

“Why yes, you can; and I don't know any one else that can.”

“Very well, go on.”

“By the dead-reckoning we have come twenty-three hundred miles.”

“The actual distance is twenty-three-fifty.”

“Straight as a dart in the one direction—mainly.”

“Apparently.”

“Why do you say apparently? Haven't we come straight?”

“Go on with the rest. What were you going to say?”

“This. Doesn't it strike you that this is a pretty large drop of water?”

“No. It is about the usual size—six thousand miles across.”

“Six thousand miles!”

“Yes.”

“Twice as far as from New York to Liverpool?”

“Yes.”

“I must say it is more of a voyage than I counted on. And we are not a great deal more than halfway across, yet. When shall we get in?”

“It will be some time yet.”

“That is not very definite. Two weeks?”

“More than that.”

I was getting a little uneasy.

“But how much more? A week?”

“All of that. More, perhaps.”

[begin page 122]

“Why don't you tell me? A month more, do you think?”

“I am afraid so. Possibly two—possibly longer, even.”

I was getting seriously disturbed by now.

“Why, we are sure to run out of provisions and water.”

“No you'll not. I've looked out for that. It is what you are loaded with.”

“Is that so? How does that come?”

“Because the ship is chartered for a voyage of discovery. Ostensibly she goes to England, takes aboard some scientists, then sails for the South pole.”

“I see. You are deep.”

“I understand my business.”

I turned the matter over in my mind a moment, then said—

“It is more of a voyage than I was expecting, but I am not of a worrying disposition, so I do not care, so long as we are not going to suffer hunger and thirst.”

“Make yourself easy, as to that. Let the trip last as long as it may, you will not run short of food and water, I go bail for that.”

“All right, then. Now explain this riddle to me. Why is it always night?”

“That is easy. All of the drop of water is outside the luminous circle of the microscope except one thin and delicate rim of it. We are in the shadow; consequently in the dark.”

“In the shadow of what?”

“Of the brazen end of the lens-holder.”

“How can it cover such a spread with its shadow?”

“Because it is several thousand miles in diameter. For dimensions, that is nothing. The glass slide which it is pressing against, and which forms the bottom of the ocean we are sailing upon, is thirty thousand miles long, and the length of the microscope barrel is a hundred and twenty thousand. Now then, if—”

“You make me dizzy. I—”

“If you should thrust that glass slide through what you call the ‘great’ globe, eleven thousand miles of it would stand out on each side—it would be like impaling an orange on a table-knife. And so—”

“It gives me the head-ache. Are these the fictitious proportions [begin page 123] which we and our surroundings and belongings have acquired by being reduced to microscopic objects?”

“They are the proportions, yes—but they are not fictitious. You do not notice that you yourself are in any way diminished in size, do you?”

“No, I am my usual size, so far as I can see.”

“The same with the men, the ship and everything?”

“Yes—all natural.”

“Very good; nothing but the laws and conditions have undergone a change. You came from a small and very insignificant world. The one you are in now is proportioned according to microscopic standards—that is to say, it is inconceivably stupendous and imposing.”

It was food for thought. There was something overpowering in the situation, something sublime. It took me a while to shake off the spell and drag myself back to speech. Presently I said—

“I am content; I do not regret the voyage—far from it. I would not change places with any man in that cramped little world. But tell me—is it always going to be dark?”

“Not if you ever come into the luminous circle under the lens. Indeed you will not find that dark!”

“If we ever. What do you mean by that? We are making steady good time; we are cutting across this sea on a straight course.”

“Apparently.”

“There is no apparently about it.”

“You might be going around in a small and not rapidly widening circle.”

“Nothing of the kind. Look at the tell-tale compass over your head.”

“I see it.”

“We changed to this easterly course to satisfy—well, to satisfy everybody but me. It is a pretense of aiming for England—in a drop of water! Have you noticed that needle before?”

“Yes, a number of times.”

“To-day, for instance?”

“Yes—often.”

“Has it varied a jot?”

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“Not a jot.”

“Hasn't it always kept the place appointed for it—from the start?”

“Yes, always.”

“Very well. First we sailed a northerly course; then tilted easterly; and now it is more so. How is that going around in a circle?”

He was silent. I put it at him again. He answered with lazy indifference—

“I merely threw out the suggestion.”

“All right, then; cornered; let it stand at that. Whenever you happen to think of an argument in support of it, I shall be glad to hear about it.”

He did not like that very well, and muttered something about my being a trifle airy. I retorted a little sharply, and followed it up by finding fault with him again for playing tricks on Turner. He said Turner called him a blatherskite. I said—

“No matter; you let him alone, from this out. And moreover, stop appearing to people—stop it entirely.”

His face darkened. He said—

“I would advise you to moderate your manner. I am not used to it, and I am not pleased with it.”

The rest of my temper went, then. I said, angrily—

“You may like it or not, just as you choose. And moreover, if my style doesn't suit you, you can end the dream as soon as you please—right now, if you like.”

He looked me steadily in the eye for a moment, then said, with deliberation—

“The dream? Are you quite sure it is a dream?”

It took my breath away.

“What do you mean? Isn't it a dream?”

He looked at me in that same way again; and it made my blood chilly, this time. Then he said—

“You have spent your whole life in this ship. And this is real life. Your other life was the dream!”4

[begin page 125]

It was as if he had hit me, it stunned me so. Still looking at me, his lip curled itself into a mocking smile, and he wasted away like a mist and disappeared.

I sat a long time thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

We are strangely made. We think we are wonderful creatures. Part of the time we think that, at any rate. And during that interval we consider with pride our mental equipment, with its penetration, its power of analysis, its ability to reason out clear conclusions from confused facts, and all the lordly rest of it; and then comes a rational interval and disenchants us. Disenchants us and lays us bare to ourselves, and we see that intellectually we are really no great things; that we seldom really know the thing we think we know; that our best-built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

So little a time before, I knew that this voyage was a dream, and nothing more; a wee little puff or two of doubt had blown against that certainty, unhelped by fact or argument, and already it was dissolving away. It seemed an incredible thing, and it hurt my pride of intellect, but it had to be confessed.

When I came to consider it, these ten days had been such intense realities!—so intense that by comparison the life I had lived before them seemed distant, indistinct, slipping away and fading out in a far perspective—exactly as a dream does when you sit at breakfast trying to call back its details. I grew steadily more and more nervous and uncomfortable—and a little frightened, though I would not quite acknowledge this to myself.5

[begin page 126]

Then came this disturbing thought: if this transformation goes on, how am I going to conceal it from my wife? Suppose she should say to me, “Henry, there is something the matter with you, you are acting strangely; something is on your mind that you are concealing from me; tell me about it, let me help you”—what answer could I make?

I was bound to act strangely if this went on—bound to bury myself in deeps of troubled thought; I should not be able to help it. She had a swift eye to notice, where her heart was concerned, and a sharp intuition, and I was an impotent poor thing in her hands when I had things to hide and she had struck the trail.

I have no large amount of fortitude, staying power. When there is a fate before me I cannot rest easy until I know what it is. I am not able to wait. I want to know, right away. So, I would call Alice, now, and take the consequences. If she drove me into a corner and I found I could not escape, I would act according to my custom—come out and tell her the truth. She had a better head than mine, and a surer instinct in grouping facts and getting their meaning out of them. If I was drifting into dangerous waters, now, she would be sure to detect it and as sure to set me right and save me. I would call her, and keep out of the corner if I could; if I couldn't, why—I couldn't, that is all.

She came, refreshed with sleep, and looking her best self: that is to say, looking like a girl of nineteen, not a matron of twenty-five; she wore a becoming wrapper, or tea gown, or whatever it is called, and it was trimmed with ribbons and limp stuff—lace, I suppose; and she had her hair balled up and nailed to its place with a four-pronged tortoise-shell comb. She brought a basket of pink and gray crewels with her, for she was crocheting a jacket—for the cat, probably, judging by the size of it. She sat down on the sofa and set the basket on the table, expecting to have a chance to get to work by and by; not right away, because a kitten was curled up in it asleep, fitting its circle snugly, and the repose of the children's kittens was a sacred thing and not to be disturbed. She said—

“I noticed that there was no motion—it was what waked me, I think—and I got up to enjoy it, it is such a rare thing.”

[begin page 127]

“Yes, rare enough, dear: we do have the most unaccountably strange weather.”

“Do you think so, Henry? Does it seem strange weather to you?”

She looked so earnest and innocent that I was rather startled, and a little in doubt as to what to say. Any sane person could see that it was perfectly devilish weather and crazy beyond imagination, and so how could she feel uncertain about it?

“Well, Alice, I may be putting it too strong, but I don't think so; I think a person may call our weather by any hard name he pleases and be justified.”

“Perhaps you are right, Henry. I have heard the sailors talk the same way about it, but I did not think that that meant much, they speak so extravagantly about everything. You are not always extravagant in your speech—often you are, but not always—and so it surprised me a little to hear you.” Then she added tranquilly and musingly, “I don't remember any different weather.”

It was not quite definite.

“You mean on this voyage, Alice.”

“Yes, of course. Naturally. I haven't made any other.”

She was softly stroking the kitten—and apparently in her right mind. I said cautiously, and with seeming indifference—

“You mean you haven't made any other this year. But the time we went to Europe—well, that was very different weather.”

“The time we went to Europe, Henry?”

“Certainly, certainly—when Jessie was a year old.”

She stopped stroking the kitty, and looked at me inquiringly.

“I don't understand you, Henry.”

She was not a joker, and she was always truthful. Her remark blew another wind of doubt upon my wasting sand-edifice of certainty. Had I only dreamed that we went to Europe? It seemed a good idea to put this thought into words.

“Come, Alice, the first thing you know you will be imagining that we went to Europe in a dream.”

She smiled, and said—

“Don't let me spoil it, Henry, if it is pleasant to you to think we went. I will consider that we did go, and that I have forgotten it.”

[begin page 128]

“But Alice dear we did go!”

“But Henry dear we didn't go!”

She had a good head and a good memory, and she was always truthful. My head had been injured by a fall when I was a boy, and the physicians had said at the time that there could be ill effects from it some day. A cold wave struck me, now; perhaps the effects had come. I was losing confidence in the European trip. However, I thought I would make another try.

“Alice, I will give you a detail or two; then maybe you will remember.”

“A detail or two from the dream?”

“I am not at all sure that it was a dream; and five minutes ago I was sure that it wasn't. It was seven years ago. We went over in the Batavia. Do you remember the Batavia?”

“I don't, Henry.”

“Captain Moreland.6 Don't you remember him?”

“To me he is a myth, Henry.”

“Well, it beats anything. We lived two or three months in London, then six weeks in a private hotel in George Street, Edinburgh—Veitch's. Come!”

“It sounds pleasant, but I have never heard of these things before, Henry.”

“And Doctor John Brown, of Rab and His Friends—you were ill, and he came every day; and when you were well again he still came every day and took us all around while he paid his visits, and we waited in his carriage while he prescribed for his patients. And he was so dear and lovely. You must remember all that, Alice.”

“None of it, dear; it is only a dream.”

“Why, Alice, have you ever had a dream that remained as distinct as that, and which you could remember so long?”

“So long? It is more than likely that you dreamed it last night.”

“No indeed! It has been in my memory seven years.”

“Seven years in a dream, yes—it is the way of dreams. They put seven years into two minutes, without any trouble—isn't it so?”

[begin page 129]

I had to acknowledge that it was.

“It seems almost as if it couldn't have been a dream, Alice; it seems as if you ought to remember it.”7

“Wait! It begins to come back to me.” She sat thinking a while, nodding her head with satisfaction from time to time. At last she said, joyfully, “I remember almost the whole of it, now.”

“Good!”

“I am glad I got it back. Ordinarily I remember my dreams very well; but for some reason this one—”

“This one, Alice? Do you really consider it a dream, yet?”

“I don't consider anything about it, Henry, I know it; I know it positively.”

The conviction stole through me that she must be right, since she felt so sure. Indeed I almost knew she was. I was privately becoming ashamed of myself now, for mistaking a clever illusion for a fact. So I gave it up, then, and said I would let it stand as a dream. Then I added—

“It puzzles me; even now it seems almost as distinct as the microscope.”

“Which microscope?”

“Well, Alice, there's only the one.”

“Very well, which one is that?”

“Bother it all, the one we examined this ocean in, the other day.”

“Where?”

“Why, at home—of course.”

“What home?”

“Alice, it's provoking—why, our home. In Springport.”

[begin page 130]

“Dreaming again. I've never heard of it.”

That was stupefying. There was no need of further beating about the bush; I threw caution aside, and came out frankly.

“Alice, what do you call the life we are leading in this ship? Isn't it a dream?”

She looked at me in a puzzled way and said—

“A dream, Henry? Why should I think that?”

“Oh, dear me, I don't know! I thought I did, but I don't. Alice, haven't we ever had a home? Don't you remember one?”

“Why, yes—three. That is, dream-homes, not real ones. I have never regarded them as realities.”

“Describe them.”

She did it, and in detail; also our life in them. Pleasant enough homes, and easily recognizable by me. I could also recognize an average of 2 out of 7 of the episodes and incidents which she threw in. Then I described the home and the life which (as it appeared to me) we had so recently left. She recognized it—but only as a dream-home. She remembered nothing about the microscope and the children's party. I was in a corner; but it was not the one which I had arranged for.

“Alice, if those were dream-homes, how long have you been in this ship?—you say this is the only voyage you have ever made.”

“I don't know. I don't remember. It is the only voyage we have made—unless breaking it to pick up this crew of strangers in place of the friendly dear men and officers we had sailed with so many years makes two voyages of it. How I do miss them—Captain Hall, and Williams the sail-maker, and Storrs the chief mate, and—”

She choked up, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Soon she had her handkerchief out and was sobbing.

I realized that I remembered those people perfectly well. Damnation! I said to myself, are we real creatures in a real world, all of a sudden, and have we been feeding on dreams in an imaginary one since nobody knows when—or how is it? My head was swimming.

“Alice! Answer me this. Do you know the Superintendent of Dreams?”

“Certainly.”

[begin page 131]

“Have you seen him often?”

“Not often, but several times.”

“When did you see him first?”

“The time that Robert the captain's boy was eaten.”8

“Eaten?”

“Yes. Surely you haven't forgotten that?”

“But I have, though. I never heard of it before.” (I spoke the truth. For the moment I could not recal the incident.)

Her face was full of reproach.

“I am sorry, if that is so. He was always good to you. If you are jesting, I do not think it is in good taste.”

“Now don't treat me like that, Alice, I don't deserve it. I am not jesting, I am in earnest. I mean the boy's memory no offence, but although I remember him I do not remember the circumstance—I swear it. Who ate him?”

“Do not be irreverent, Henry, it is out of place. It was not a who, at all.”

“What then—a which?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of a which?”

“A spider-squid. Now you remember it I hope.”

“Indeed and deed and double-deed I don't, Alice, and it is the real truth. Tell me about it, please.”

“I suppose you see, now, Henry, what your memory is worth. You can remember dream-trips to Europe well enough, but things in real life—even the most memorable and horrible things—pass out of your memory in twelve years. There is something the matter with your mind.”

It was very curious. How could I have forgotten that tragedy? It must have happened; she was never mistaken in her facts, and she [begin page 132] never spoke with positiveness of a thing which she was in any degree uncertain about. And this tragedy—twelve years ago—

“Alice, how long have we been in this ship?”

“Now how can I know, Henry? It goes too far back. Always, for all I know. The earliest thing I can call to mind was papa's death by the sun-heat and mamma's suicide the same day. I was four years old, then. Surely you must remember that, Henry.”

“Yes. . . . Yes. But it is so dim. Tell me about it—refresh my memory.”

“Why, you must remember that we were in the edge of a great white glare once for a little while—a day, or maybe two days,—only a little while, I think, but I remember it, because it was the only time I was ever out of the dark, and there was a great deal of talk of it for long afterwards—why, Henry, you must remember a wonderful thing like that.”

“Wait. Let me think.” Gradually, detail by detail the whole thing came back to me; and with it the boy's adventure with the spider-squid; and then I recalled a dozen other incidents, which Alice verified as incidents of our ship-life, and said I had set them forth correctly.

It was a puzzling thing—my freaks of memory; Alice's, too. By testing, it was presently manifest that the vacancies in my ship-life memories were only apparent, not real; a few words by way of reminder enabled me to fill them up, in almost all cases, and give them clarity and vividness. What had caused these temporary lapses? Didn't these very lapses indicate that the ship-life was a dream, and not real?

It made Alice laugh.

I did not see anything foolish in it, or anything to laugh at, and I told her so. And I reminded her that her own memory was as bad as mine, since many and many a conspicuous episode of our land-life was gone from her, even so striking an incident as the water-drop exploration with the microscope—

It made her shout.

I was wounded; and said that if I could not be treated with respect I would spare her the burden of my presence and conversation. She stopped laughing, at once, and threw her arms [begin page 133] about my neck. She said she would not have hurt me for the world, but she supposed I was joking; it was quite natural to think I was not in earnest in talking gravely about this and that and the other dream-phantom as if it were a reality.

“But Alice I was in earnest, and I am in earnest. Look at it—examine it. If the land-life was a dream-life, how is it that you remember so much of it exactly as I remember it?”

She was amused again, inside—I could feel the quiver; but there was no exterior expression of it, for she did not want to hurt me again.

“Dear heart, throw the whole matter aside! Stop puzzling over it; it isn't worth it. It is perfectly simple. It is true that I remember a little of that dream-life just as you remember it—but that is an accident; the rest of it—and by far the largest part—does not correspond with your recollections. And how could it? People can't be expected to remember each other's dreams, but only their own. You have put me into your land-dreams a thousand times, but I didn't always know I was there; so how could I remember it? Also I have put you into my land-dreams a thousand times when you didn't know it—and the natural result is that when I name the circumstances you don't always recal them. But how different it is with this real life, this genuine life in the ship! Our recollections of it are just alike. You have been forgetting episodes of it to-day—I don't know why; it has surprised me and puzzled me—but the lapse was only temporary; your memory soon rallied again. Now it hasn't rallied in the case of land-dreams of mine—in most cases it hasn't. And it's not going to, Henry. You can be sure of that.”

She stopped, and tilted her head up in a thinking attitude and began to unconsciously tap her teeth with the ivory knob of a crochet needle. Presently she said, “I think I know what is the matter. I have been neglecting you for ten days while I have been grieving for our old shipmates and pretending to be seasick so that I might indulge myself with solitude; and here is the result—you haven't been taking exercise enough.”

I was glad to have a reason—any reason that would excuse my memory—and I accepted this one, and made confession. There was no truth in the confession, but I was already getting handy with [begin page 134] these evasions. I was a little sorry for this, for she had always trusted my word, and I had honored this trust by telling her the truth many a time when it was a sharp sacrifice to me to do it. She looked me over with gentle reproach in her eye, and said—

“Henry, how can you be so naughty? I watch you so faithfully and make you take such good care of your health that you owe me the grace to do my office for me when for any fair reason I am for a while not on guard. When have you boxed with George last?”

What an idea it was! It was a good place to make a mistake, and I came near to doing it. It was on my tongue's end to say that I had never boxed with anyone; and as for boxing with a colored man-servant—and so on; but I kept back my remark, and in place of it tried to look like a person who didn't know what to say. It was easy to do, and I probably did it very well.

“You do not say anything, Henry. I think it is because you have a good reason. When have you fenced with him? Henry, you are avoiding my eye. Look up. Tell me the truth: have you fenced with him a single time in the last ten days?”

So far as I was aware I knew nothing about foils, and had never handled them; so I was able to answer—

“I will be frank with you, Alice—I haven't.”

“I suspected it. Now, Henry, what can you say?”

I was getting some of my wits back, now, and was not altogether unprepared, this time.

“Well, Alice, there hasn't been much fencing weather, and when there was any, I—well, I was lazy, and that is the shameful truth.”

“There's a chance now, anyway, and you mustn't waste it. Take off your coat and things.”

She rang for George, then she got up and raised the sofa-seat and began to fish out boxing-gloves, and foils and masks from the locker under it, softly scolding me all the while. George put his head in, noted the preparations, then entered and put himself in boxing trim. It was his turn to take the witness stand, now.

“George, didn't I tell you to keep up Mr. Henry's exercises just the same as if I were about?”

“Yes, madam, you did.”

[begin page 135]

“Why haven't you done it?”

George chuckled, and showed his white teeth and said—

“Bless yo' soul, honey, I dasn't.”

“Why?”

“Because the first time I went to him—it was that Tuesday, you know, when it was ca'm—he wouldn't hear to it, and said he didn't want no exercise and warn't going to take any, and tole me to go 'long. Well, I didn't stop there, of course, but went to him agin, every now and then, trying to persuade him, tell at last he let into me” (he stopped and comforted himself with an unhurried laugh over the recollection of it,) “and give me a most solid good cussing, and tole me if I come agin he'd take and thow me overboard—there, ain't that so, Mr. Henry?”

My wife was looking at me pretty severely.

“Henry, what have you to say to that?”

It was my belief that it hadn't happened, but I was steadily losing confidence in my memory; and moreover my new policy of recollecting whatever anybody required me to recollect seemed the safest course to pursue in my strange and trying circumstances; so I said—

“Nothing, Alice—I did refuse.”

“Oh, I'm not talking about that; of course you refused—George had already said so.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Well, why do you stop?”

“Why do I stop?”

“Yes. Why don't you answer my question?”

“Why, Alice, I've answered it. You asked me—you asked me—What is it I haven't answered?”

“Henry, you know very well. You broke a promise; and you are trying to talk around it and get me away from it; but I am not going to let you. You know quite well you promised me you wouldn't swear any more in calm weather. And it is such a little thing to do. It is hardly ever calm, and—”

“Alice, dear, I beg ever so many pardons! I had clear forgotten it; but I won't offend again, I give you my word. Be good to me, and forgive.”

[begin page 136]

She was always ready to forgive, and glad to do it, whatever my crime might be; so things were pleasant again, now, and smooth and happy. George was gloved and skipping about in an imaginary fight, by this time, and Alice told me to get to work with him. She took pencil and paper and got ready to keep game. I stepped forward to position—then a curious thing happened: I seemed to remember a thousand boxing-bouts with George, the whole boxing art came flooding in upon me, and I knew just what to do! I was a prey to no indecisions, I had no trouble. We fought six rounds, I held my own all through, and I finally knocked George out. I was not astonished; it seemed a familiar experience. Alice showed no surprise, George showed none; apparently it was an old story to them.

The same thing happened with the fencing. I suddenly knew that I was an experienced old fencer; I expected to get the victory, and when I got it, it seemed but a repetition of something which had happened numberless times before.

We decided to go down to the main saloon and take a regular meal in the regular way—the evening meal. Alice went away to dress. Just as I had finished dressing, the children came romping in, warmly and prettily clad, and nestled up to me, one on each side, on the sofa, and began to chatter. Not about a former home; no, not a word of that, but only about this ship-home and its concerns and its people. After a little I threw out some questions—feelers. They did not understand. Finally I asked them if they had known no home but this one. Jessie said, with some little enthusiasm—

“Oh, yes, dream-homes. They are pretty—some of them.” Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, “But they are so queer!”

“How, Jessie?”

“Well, you know, they have such curious things in them; and they fade, and don't stay. Bessie doesn't like them at all.”

“Why don't you, Bessie?”

“Because they scare me so.”

“What is it that scares you?”

“Oh, everything, papa. Sometimes it is so light. That hurts my [begin page 137] eyes. And it's too many lamps—little sparkles all over, up high, and large ones that are dreadful. They could fall on me, you know.”

“But I am not much afraid,” said Jessie, “because mamma says they are not real, and if they did fall they wouldn't hurt.”

“What else do you see there besides the lights, Bessie?”

“Ugly things that go on four legs like our cat, but bigger.”

“Horses?”

“I forget names.”

“Describe them, dear.”

“I can't, papa. They are not alike; they are different kinds; and when I wake up I can't just remember the shape of them, they are so dim.”

“And I wouldn't wish to remember them,” said Jessie, “they make me feel creepy. Don't let's talk about them, papa, let's talk about something else.”

“That's what I say, too,” said Bessie.

So then we talked about our ship. That interested them. They cared for no other home, real or unreal, and wanted no better one. They were innocent witnesses and free from prejudice.

When we went below we found the roomy saloon well lighted and brightly and prettily furnished, and a very comfortable and inviting place altogether. Everything seemed substantial and genuine, there was nothing to suggest that it might be a work of the imagination.

At table the captain (Davis) sat at the head, my wife at his right with the children, I at his left, a stranger at my left. The rest of the company consisted of Rush Phillips, purser, aged 27; his sweetheart the Captain's daughter Lucy, aged 22; her sister Connie (short for Connecticut), aged 10; Arnold Blake, surgeon, 25; Harvey Pratt, naturalist, 36; at the foot sat Sturgis the chief mate, aged 35, and completed the snug assemblage. Stewards waited upon the general company, and George and our nurse Germania had charge of our family. Germania was not the nurse's name, but that was our name for her because it was shorter than her own. She was 28 years old, and had always been with us; and so had George. George was 30, and had once been a slave, according to my record, but I was losing [begin page 138] my grip upon that, now, and was indeed getting shadowy and uncertain about all my traditions.

The talk and the feeding went along in a natural way, I could find nothing unusual about it anywhere. The captain was pale, and had a jaded and harassed look, and was subject to little fits of absence of mind; and these things could be said of the mate, also, but this was all natural enough considering the grisly time they had been having, and certainly there was nothing about it to suggest that they were dream-creatures or that their troubles were unreal.

The stranger at my side was about 45 years old, and he had the half-subdued, half-resigned look of a man who had been under a burden of trouble a long time. He was tall and thin; he had a bushy black head, and black eyes which burned when he was interested, but were dull and expressionless when his thoughts were far away—and that happened every time he dropped out of the conversation. He forgot to eat, then, his hands became idle, his dull eye fixed itself upon his plate or upon vacancy, and now and then he would draw a heavy sigh out of the depths of his breast.

These three were exceptions; the others were chatty and cheerful, and they were like a pleasant little family party together. Phillips and Lucy were full of life, and quite happy, as became engaged people; and their furtive love-passages had everybody's sympathy and approval. Lucy was a pretty creature, and simple in her ways and kindly, and Phillips was a blithesome and attractive young fellow. I seemed to be familiarly acquainted with everybody, I didn't quite know why. That is, with everybody except the stranger at my side; and as he seemed to know me well, I had to let on to know him, lest I cause remark by exposing the fact that I didn't know him. I was already tired of being caught up for ignorance at every turn.

The captain and the mate managed to seem comfortable enough until Phillips raised the subject of the day's run, the position of the ship, distance out, and so on; then they became irritable, and sharp of speech, and were unkinder to the young fellow than the case seemed to call for. His sweetheart was distressed to see him so treated before all the company, and she spoke up bravely in his defence and reproached her father for making an offence out of so [begin page 139] harmless a thing. This only brought her into trouble, and procured for her so rude a retort that she was consumed with shame, and left the table crying.

The pleasure was all gone, now; everybody felt personally affronted and wantonly abused. Conversation ceased and an uncomfortable silence fell upon the company; through it one could hear the wailing of the wind and the dull tramp of the sailors and the muffled words of command overhead, and this made the silence all the more dismal. The dinner was a failure. While it was still unfinished the company began to break up and slip out, one after another; and presently none was left but me.9

I sat long, sipping black coffee and smoking. And thinking; groping about in my dimming land-past. An incident of my American life would rise upon me, vague at first, then grow more distinct and articulate, then sharp and clear; then in a moment it was gone, and in its place was a dull and distant image of some long-past episode whose theatre was this ship—and then it would develop, and clarify, and become strong and real. It was fascinating, enchanting, this spying among the elusive mysteries of my bewitched memory, and I went up to my parlor and continued it, with the help of punch and pipe, hour after hour, as long as I could keep awake. With this curious result: that the main incidents of both my lives were now recovered, but only those of one of them persistently gathered strength and vividness—our life in the ship! Those of our land-life were good enough, plain enough, but in minuteness of detail they fell perceptibly short of those others; and in matters of feeling—joy, grief, physical pain, physical pleasure—immeasurably short!

Some mellow notes floated to my ear, muffled by the moaning wind—six bells in the morning watch. So late! I went to bed. When I woke in the middle of the so-called day the first thing I thought of was my night's experience. Already my land-life had faded a little—but not the other.

[begin page 140]

I have long ago lost Book I, but it is no matter. It served its purpose—writing it was an entertainment to me. We found out that our little boy set it adrift on the wind, sheet by sheet, to see if it would fly. It did. And so two of us got entertainment out of it. I have often been minded to begin Book II, but natural indolence and the pleasant life of the ship interfered.

There have been little happenings, from time to time. The principal one, for us of the family, was the birth of our Harry, which stands recorded in the log under the date of June 8, and happened about three months after we shipped the present crew, poor devils! They still think we are bound for the South Pole, and that we are a long time on the way. It is pathetic, after a fashion. They regard their former life in the World as their real life and this present one as—well, they hardly know what; but sometimes they get pretty tired of it, even at this late day. We hear of it now and then through the officers—mainly Turner, who is a puzzled man.

During the first four years we had several mutinies, but things have been reasonably quiet during the past two. One of them had really a serious look. It occurred when Harry was a month old, and at an anxious time, for both he and his mother were weak and ill. The master spirit of it was Stephen Bradshaw the carpenter, of course—a hard lot I know, and a born mutineer I think.

In those days I was greatly troubled, for a time, because my wife's memories still refused to correspond with mine. It had been an ideal life, and naturally it was a distress not to be able to live it over again in its entirety with her in our talks. At first she did not feel about it as I did, and said she could not understand my interest in those dreams, but when she found how much I took the matter to heart, and that to me the dreams had come to have a seeming of [begin page 141] reality and were freighted with tender and affectionate impressions besides, she began to change her mind and wish she could go back in spirit with me to that mysterious land. And so she tried to get back that forgotten life. By my help, and by patient probing and searching of her memory she succeeded. Gradually it all came back, and her reward was sufficient. We now had the recollections of two lives to draw upon, and the result was a double measure of happiness for us. We even got the children's former lives back for them—with a good deal of difficulty—next the servants'. It made a new world for us all, and an entertaining one to explore. In the beginning George the colored man was an unwilling subject, because by heredity he was superstitious, and believed that no good could come of meddling with dreams; but when he presently found that no harm came of it his disfavor dissolved away.

Talking over our double-past—particularly our dream-past—became our most pleasant and satisfying amusement, and the search for missing details of it our most profitable labor. One day when the baby was about a month old, we were at this pastime in our parlor. Alice was lying on the sofa, propped with pillows—she was by no means well. It was a still and solemn black day, and cold; but the lamps made the place cheerful, and as for comfort, Turner had taken care of that; for he had found a kerosene stove with an ising-glass front among the freight, and had brought it up and lashed it fast and fired it up, and the warmth it gave and the red glow it made took away all chill and cheerlessness from the parlor and made it homelike. The little girls were out somewhere with George and Delia (the maid).10

Alice and I were talking about the time, twelve years before, when Captain Hall's boy had his tragic adventure with the spider-squid, and I was reminding her that she had misstated the case when she mentioned it to me, once. She had said the squid ate the boy. Out of my memory I could call back all the details, now, and I remembered that the boy was only badly hurt, not eaten.

[begin page 142]

For a month or two the ship's company had been glimpsing vast animals at intervals of a few days, and at first the general terror was so great that the men openly threatened, on two occasions, to seize the ship unless the captain turned back; but by a resolute bearing he tided over the difficulty; and by pointing out to the men that the animals had shown no disposition to attack the ship and might therefore be considered harmless, he quieted them down and restored order. It was good grit in the captain, for privately he was very much afraid of the animals himself and had but a shady opinion of their innocence. He kept his gatlings in order, and had gun-watches, which he changed with the other watches.

I had just finished correcting Alice's history of the boy's adventure with the squid when the ship, plowing through a perfectly smooth sea, went heeling away down to starboard and stayed there! The floor slanted like a roof, and every loose thing in the room slid to the floor and glided down against the bulkhead. We were greatly alarmed, of course. Next we heard a rush of feet along the deck and an uproar of cries and shoutings, then the rush of feet coming back, with a wilder riot of cries. Alice exclaimed—

“Go find the children—quick!”

I sprang out and started to run aft through the gloom, and then I saw the fearful sight which I had seen twelve years before when that boy had had his shocking misadventure. For the moment I turned the corner of the deck-house and had an unobstructed view astern, there it was—apparently two full moons rising close over the stern of the ship and lighting the decks and rigging with a sickly yellow glow—the eyes of the colossal squid. His vast beak and head were plain to be seen, swelling up like a hill above our stern; he had flung one tentacle forward and gripped it around the peak of the main-mast and was pulling the ship over; he had gripped the mizzen-mast with another, and a couple more were writhing about dimly away above our heads searching for something to take hold of. The stench of his breath was suffocating everybody.

I was like the most of the crew, helpless with fright; but the captain and the officers kept their wits and courage. The gatlings on the starboard side could not be used, but the four on the port [begin page 143] side were brought to bear, and inside of a minute they had poured more than two thousand bullets into those moons. That blinded the creature, and he let go; and by squirting a violent Niagara of water out of his mouth which tore the sea into a tempest of foam he shot himself backward three hundred yards and the ship forward as far, drowning the deck with a racing flood which swept many of the men off their feet and crippled some, and washed all loose deck-plunder overboard. For five minutes we could hear him thrashing about, there in the dark, and lashing the sea with his giant tentacles in his pain; and now and then his moons showed, then vanished again; and all the while we were rocking and plunging in the booming seas he made. Then he quieted down. We took a thankful full breath, believing him dead.

Now I thought of the children, and ran all about inquiring for them, but no one had seen them. I thought they must have been washed overboard, and for a moment my heart stopped beating. Then the hope came that they had taken refuge with their mother; so I ran there; and almost swooned when I entered the place, for it was vacant. I ran out shouting the alarm, and after a dozen steps almost ran over her. She was lying against the bulwarks drenched and insensible. The surgeon and young Phillips helped me carry her in; then the surgeon and I began to work over her and Phillips rushed away to start the hunt for the children. It was all of half an hour before she showed any sign of life; then her eyes opened with a dazed and wondering look in them, then they recognized me and into them shot a ghastly terror.

“The children! the children!” she gasped; and I, with the heart all gone out of me, answered with such air of truth as I could assume—

“They are safe.”

I could never deceive her. I was transparent to her.

“It is not true! The truth speaks out all over you—they are lost, oh they are lost, they are lost!”

We were strong, but we could not hold her. She tore loose from us and was gone in a moment, flying along the dark decks and shrieking the children's names with a despairing pathos that broke one's heart to hear it. We fled after her, and urged that the flitting [begin page 144] lanterns meant that all were searching, and begged her for the children's sake and mine if not for her own to go to bed and save her life. But it went for nothing, she would not listen. For she was a mother, and her children were lost. That says it all. She would hunt for them as long as she had strength to move. And that is what she did, hour after hour, wailing and mourning, and touching the hardest hearts with her grief, until she was exhausted and fell in a swoon. Then the stewardess and I put her to bed, and as soon as she came to and was going to creep out of her bed and take up her search again the doctor encouraged her in it and gave her a draught to restore her strength; and it put her into a deep sleep, which was what he expected.

We left the stewardess on watch and went away to join the searchers. Not a lantern was twinkling anywhere, and every figure that emerged from the gloom moved upon tip-toe. I collared one of them and said angrily—

“What does this mean? Is the search stopped?”

Turner's voice answered—very low: “—'sh! Captain's orders. The beast ain't dead—it's hunting for us.”

It made me sick with fear.

“Do you mean it, Turner? How do you know?”

“Listen.”

There was a muffled swashing sound out there somewhere, and then the two moons appeared for a moment, then turned slowly away and were invisible again.

“He's been within a hundred yards of us, feeling around for us with his arms. He could reach us, but he couldn't locate us because he's blind. Once he mighty near had us; one of his arms that was squirming around up there in the dark just missed the foremast, and he hauled in the slack of it without suspecting anything. It made my lungs come up into my throat. He has edged away, you see, but he ain't done laying for us.” Pause. Then in a whisper, “He's wallowing around closer to us again, by gracious. Look—look at that. See it? Away up in the air—writhing around like a crooked mainmast. Dim, but—there, now don't you see it?”

We stood dead still, hardly breathing. Here and there at little distances the men were gathering silently together and watching [begin page 145] and pointing. The deep hush lay like a weight upon one's spirit. Even the faintest quiver of air that went idling by gave out a ghost of sound. A couple of mellow notes floated lingering and fading down from forward:

Booooom———booooom. (Two bells in the middle watch.)

A hoarse low voice—the captain's:

“Silence that damned bell!”

Instantly there was a thrashing commotion out there, with a thundering rush of discharged water, and the monster came charging for us. I caught my breath, and had to seize Turner or I should have fallen, so suddenly my strength collapsed. Then vaguely we saw the creature, waving its arms aloft, tear past the ship stern first, pushing a vast swell ahead and trailing a tumultuous wake behind, and the next moment it was far away and we were plunging and tossing in the sea it made.

“Thank God, he's out of practice!” said Turner, with emotion.

The majestic blind devil stopped out there with its moons toward us, and we were miserable again. We had so hoped it would go home.

I resumed my search. Below I found Phillips and Lucy Davis and a number of others searching, but with no hope. They said they had been everywhere, and were merely going over the ground again and again because they could not bear to have it reported to the mother that the search had ceased. She must be told that they were her friends and that she could depend upon them.

Four hours later I gave it up, wearied to exhaustion, and went and sat down by Alice's bed, to be at hand and support her when she should wake and have to hear my desolate story. After a while she stirred, then opened her eyes and smiled brightly and said—

“Oh, what bliss it is! I dreamed that the children—” She flung her arms about me in a transport of grief. “I remember—oh, my God it is true!”

And so, with sobs and lamentations and frantic self-reproaches she poured out her bitter sorrow, and I clasped her close to me, and could not find one comforting word to say.

“Oh, Henry, Henry, your silence means—oh, we cannot live, we cannot bear it!”

[begin page 146]

There was a flurry of feet along the deck, the door was burst in, and Turner's voice shouted—

“They're found, by God they're found!”

A joy like that brings the shock of a thunderbolt, and for a little while we thought Alice was gone; but then she rallied, and by that time the children were come, and were clasped to her breast, and she was steeped in a happiness for which there were no words. And she said she never dreamed that profanity could sound so dear and sweet, and she asked the mate to say it again; and he did, but left out the profanity and spoiled it.

The children and George and Delia had seen the squid come and lift its moons above our stern and reach its vast tentacles aloft; and they had not waited, but had fled below, and had not stopped till they were deep down in the hold and hidden in a tunnel among the freight. When found, they had had several hours' sleep and were much refreshed.

Between seeing the squid, and getting washed off her feet, and losing the children, the day was a costly one for Alice. It marks the date of her first gray hairs. They were few, but they were to have company.

We lay in a dead calm, and helpless. We could not get away from the squid's neighborhood. But I was obliged to have some sleep, and I took it. I took all I could get, which was six hours.11 Then young Phillips came and turned me out and said there were signs that the spirit of mutiny was abroad again and that the captain was going to call the men aft and talk to them. Phillips thought I would not want to miss it.

He was right. We had private theatricals, we had concerts, and the other usual time-passers customary on long voyages; but a speech from the captain was the best entertainment the ship's talent could furnish. There was character back of his oratory. He was all sailor. He was sixty years old, and had known no life but sea life. He had no gray hairs, his beard was full and black and shiny; he wore no mustache, therefore his lips were exposed to view; they [begin page 147] fitted together like box and lid, and expressed the pluck and resolution that were in him. He had bright black eyes in his old bronze face and they eloquently interpreted all his moods, and his moods were many: for at times he was the youngest man in the ship, and the most cheerful and vivacious and skittish; at times he was the best-natured man in the ship, and he was always the most lovable; sometimes he was sarcastic, sometimes he was serious even to solemnity, sometimes he was stern, sometimes he was as sentimental as a school-girl; sometimes he was silent, quiet, withdrawn within himself, sometimes he was talkative and argumentative; he was remarkably and sincerely and persistently pious, and marvelously and scientifically profane; he was much the strongest man in the ship, and he was also the largest, excepting that plotting, malicious and fearless devil, Stephen Bradshaw the carpenter; he could smile as sweetly as a girl, and it was a pleasure to see him do it. He was entirely self-educated, and had made a vast and picturesque job of it. He was an affectionate creature, and in his family relations he was beautiful; in the eyes of his daughters he was omniscient, omnipotent, a mixed sun-god and storm-god, and they feared him and adored him accordingly. He was fond of oratory, and thought he had the gift of it; and so he practiced it now and then, upon occasion, and did it with easy confidence. He was a charming man and a manly man, with a right heart and a fine and daring spirit.

Phillips and I slipped out and moved aft. Things had an unusual and startling aspect. There were flushes of light here and there and yonder; the captain stood in one of them, the officers stood a little way back of him.

“How do matters stand, Phillips?”

“You notice that the battle-lanterns are lit, all the way forward?”

“Yes. The gun-watches are at their posts; I see that. The captain means business, I reckon.”

“The gun-watches are mutineers!”

I steadied my voice as well as I could, but there was still a quaver in it when I said—

“Then they've sprung a trap on us, and we are at their mercy, of course.”

[begin page 148]

“It has the look of it. They've caught the old man napping, and we are in a close place this time.”

We joined the officers, and just then we heard the measured tramp of the men in the distance. They were coming down from forward. Soon they came into view and moved toward us until they were within three or four paces of the captain.

“Halt!”

They had a leader this time, and it was he that gave the command—Stephen Bradshaw, the carpenter. He had a revolver in his hand. There was a pause, then the captain drew himself up, put on his dignity, and prepared to transact business in a properly impressive and theatrical way. He cleared his voice and said, in a fatherly tone—

“Men, this is your spokesman, duly appointed by you?”

Several responded timidly—

“Yes, sir.”

“You have a grievance, and you desire to have it redressed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He is not here to represent himself, lads, but only you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Your complaint shall be heard, and treated with justice.” (Murmur of approbation from the men.) Then the captain's soft manner hardened a little, and he said to the carpenter, “Go on.”

Bradshaw was eager to begin, and he flung out his words with aggressive confidence—

“Captain Davis, in the first place this crew wants to know where they are. Next, they want this ship put about and pointed for home—straight off, and no fooling. They are tired of this blind voyage, and they ain't going to have any more of it—and that's the word with the bark on it.” He paused a moment, for his temper was rising and obstructing his breath; then he continued in a raised and insolent voice and with a showy flourish of his revolver. “Before, they've had no leader, and you talked them down and cowed them; but that ain't going to happen this time. And they hadn't any plans, and warn't fixed for business; but it's different, now.” He grew exultant. “Do you see this?”—his revolver. “And do you see that?” [begin page 149] He pointed to the gatlings. “We've got the guns; we are boss of the ship. Put her about! That's the order, and it's going to be obeyed.”

There was an admiring murmur from the men. After a pause the captain said, with dignity—

“Apparently you are through. Stand aside.”

“Stand aside, is it? Not till I have heard what answer you—”

The captain's face darkened and an evil light began to flicker in his eyes, and his hands to twitch. The carpenter glanced at him, then stepped a pace aside, shaking his head and grumbling. “Say your say, then, and cut it short, for I've got something more to say when you're done, if it ain't satisfactory.”

The captain's manner at once grew sweet, and even tender, and he turned toward the men with his most genial and winning smile on his face, and proceeded to take them into his confidence.

“You want to know where you are, boys. It is reasonable; it is natural. If we don't know where we are—if we are lost—who is worst off, you or me? You have no children in this ship—I have. If we are in danger have I put us there intentionally? Would I have done it purposely—with my children aboard? Come, what do you think?”

There was a stir among the men, and an approving nodding of heads which conceded that the point was well taken.

“Don't I know my trade, or am I only an apprentice to it? Have I sailed the seas for sixty years and commanded ships for thirty to be taught what to do in a difficulty by—by a damned carpenter?”

He was talking in such a pleading way, such an earnest, and moving and appealing way that the men were not prepared for the close of his remark, and it caught them out and made some of them laugh. He had scored one—and he knew it. The carpenter's back was turned—he was playing indifference. He whirled around and covered the captain with his revolver. Everybody shrank together and caught his breath, except the captain, who said gently—

“Don't be afraid—pull the trigger; it isn't loaded.”

The carpenter pulled—twice, thrice, and threw the pistol away. Then he shouted—

“Fall back, men—out of the way!” They surged apart, and he fell back himself. The captain and the officers stood alone in the [begin page 150] circle of light. “Gun 4, fire!” The officers threw themselves on their faces on the deck, but the captain remained in his place. The gunner spun the windlass around—there was no result. “Gun 3, fire!” The same thing happened again. The captain said—

“Come back to your places, men.” They obeyed, looking puzzled, surprised, and a good deal demoralized. The officers got up, looking astonished and rather ashamed. “Carpenter, come back to your place.” He did it, but reluctantly, and swearing to himself. It was easy to see that the captain was contented with his dramatic effects. He resumed his speech, in his pleasantest manner—

“You have mutinied two or three times, boys. It is all right—up to now. I would have done it myself in my common-seaman days, I reckon, if my ship was bewitched and I didn't know where I was. Now then, can you be trusted with the facts? Are we rational men, manly men, men who can stand up and face hard luck and a big difficulty that has been brought about by nobody's fault, and say live or die, survive or perish, we are in for it, for good or bad, and we'll stand by the ship if she goes to hell!” (The men let go a tolerably hearty cheer.) “Are we men—grown men—salt-sea men—men nursed upon dangers and cradled in storms—men made in the image of God and ready to do when He commands and die when He calls—or are we just sneaks and curs and carpenters!” (This brought both cheers and laughter, and the captain was happy.) “There—that's the kind. And so I'll tell you how the thing stands. I don't know where this ship is, but she's in the hands of God, and that's enough for me, it's enough for you, and it's enough for anybody but a carpenter. If it is God's will that we pull through, we pull through—otherwise not. We haven't had an observation for four months, but we are going ahead, and do our best to fetch up somewhere.”