She
It was Leo. Leo brought back by the wave—back, dead or alive,
from the very jaws of Death.
“Bail out! bail out!” yelled Job, “or we shall founder.”
I seized a large tin bowl with a handle to it, which was fixed
under one of the seats, and the three of us bailed away for dear
life. The furious tempest drove over and round us, flinging the
boat this way and that, the wind and the storm wreaths and the
sheets of stinging spray blinded and bewildered us, but through
it all we worked like demons with the wild exhilaration of
despair, for even despair can exhilarate. One minute! three
minutes! six minutes! The boat began to lighten, and no fresh
wave swamped us. Five minutes more, and she was fairly clear.
Then, suddenly, above the awful shriekings of the hurricane came
a duller, deeper roar. Great Heavens! It was the voice of
breakers!
At that moment the moon began to shine forth again—this time
behind the path of the squall. Out far across the torn bosom of
the ocean shot the ragged arrows of her light, and there, half a
mile ahead of us, was a white line of foam, then a little space
of open-mouthed blackness, and then another line of white. It was
the breakers, and their roar grew clearer and yet more clear as
we sped down upon them like a swallow. There they were, boiling
up in snowy spouts of spray, smiting and gnashing together like
the gleaming teeth of hell.
“Take the tiller, Mahomed!” I roared in Arabic. “We must try and
shoot them.” At the same moment I seized an oar, and got it out,
motioning to Job to do likewise.
Mahomed clambered aft, and got hold of the tiller, and with some
difficulty Job, who had sometimes pulled a tub upon the homely
Cam, got out his oar. In another minute the boat’s head was
straight on to the ever-nearing foam, towards which she plunged
and tore with the speed of a racehorse. Just in front of us the
first line of breakers seemed a little thinner than to the right
or left—there was a cap of rather deeper water. I turned and
pointed to it.
“Steer for your life, Mahomed!” I yelled. He was a skilful
steersman, and well acquainted with the dangers of this most
perilous coast, and I saw him grip the tiller, bend his heavy
frame forward, and stare at the foaming terror till his big round
eyes looked as though they would start out of his head. The send
of the sea was driving the boat’s head round to starboard. If we
struck the line of breakers fifty yards to starboard of the gap
we must sink. It was a great field of twisting, spouting waves.
Mahomed planted his foot against the seat before him, and,
glancing at him, I saw his brown toes spread out like a hand with
the weight he put upon them as he took the strain of the tiller.
She came round a bit, but not enough. I roared to Job to back
water, whilst I dragged and laboured at my oar. She answered now,
and none too soon.
Heavens, we were in them! And then followed a couple of minutes
of heart-breaking excitement such as I cannot hope to describe.
All that I remember is a shrieking sea of foam, out of which the
billows rose here, there, and everywhere like avenging ghosts
from their ocean grave. Once we were turned right round, but
either by chance, or through Mahomed’s skilful steering, the
boat’s head came straight again before a breaker filled us. One
more—a monster. We were through it or over it—more through than
over—and then, with a wild yell of exultation from the Arab, we
shot out into the comparative smooth water of the mouth of sea
between the teeth-like lines of gnashing waves.
But we were nearly full of water again, and not more than half a
mile ahead was the second line of breakers. Again we set to and
bailed furiously. Fortunately the storm had now quite gone by,
and the moon shone brightly, revealing a rocky headland running
half a mile or more out into the sea, of which this second line
of breakers appeared to be a continuation. At any rate, they
boiled around its foot. Probably the ridge that formed the
headland ran out into the ocean, only at a lower level, and made
the reef also. This headland was terminated by a curious peak
that seemed not to be more than a mile away from us. Just as we
got the boat pretty clear for the second time, Leo, to my immense
relief, opened his eyes and remarked that the clothes had tumbled
off the bed, and that he supposed it was time to get up for
chapel. I told him to shut his eyes and keep quiet, which he did
without in the slightest degree realizing the position. As for
myself, his reference to chapel made me reflect, with a sort of
sick longing, on my comfortable rooms at Cambridge. Why had I
been such a fool as to leave them? This is a reflection that has
several times recurred to me since, and with an ever-increasing
force.
But now again we were drifting down on the breakers, though with
lessened speed, for the wind had fallen, and only the current or
the tide (it afterwards turned out to be the tide) was driving
us.
Another minute, and with a sort of howl to Allah from the Arab, a
pious ejaculation from myself, and something that was not pious
from Job, we were in them. And then the whole scene, down to our
final escape, repeated itself, only not quite so violently.
Mahomed’s skilful steering and the air-tight compartments saved
our lives. In five minutes we were through, and drifting—for we
were too exhausted to do anything to help ourselves except keep
her head straight—with the most startling rapidity round the
headland which I have described.
Round we went with the tide, until we got well under the lee of
the point, and then suddenly the speed slackened, we ceased to
make way, and finally appeared to be in dead water. The storm had
entirely passed, leaving a clean-washed sky behind it; the
headland intercepted the heavy sea that had been occasioned by
the squall, and the tide, which had been running so fiercely up
the river (for we were now in the mouth of a river), was sluggish
before it turned, so we floated quietly, and before the moon went
down managed to bail out the boat thoroughly and get her a little
ship-shape. Leo was sleeping profoundly, and on the whole I
thought it wise not to wake him. It was true he was sleeping in
wet clothes, but the night was now so warm that I thought (and so
did Job) that they were not likely to injure a man of his
unusually vigorous constitution. Besides, we had no dry ones at
hand.
Presently the moon went down, and left us floating on the waters,
now only heaving like some troubled woman’s breast, with leisure
to reflect upon all that we had gone through and all that we had
escaped. Job stationed himself at the bow, Mahomed kept his post
at the tiller, and I sat on a seat in the middle of the boat
close to where Leo was lying.
The moon went slowly down in chastened loveliness; she departed
like some sweet bride into her chamber, and long veil-like
shadows crept up the sky through which the stars peeped shyly
out. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in
the east, and then the quivering footsteps of the dawn came
rushing across the new-born blue, and shook the high stars from
their places. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as
the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her
troubling, as the illusive wreaths of sleep brood upon a
pain-racked mind, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east
to the west sped the angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from
mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light with both their
hands. On they sped out of the darkness, perfect, glorious, like
spirits of the just breaking from the tomb; on, over the quiet
sea, over the low coastline, and the swamps beyond, and the
mountains above them; over those who slept in peace and those who
woke in sorrow; over the evil and the good; over the living and
the dead; over the wide world and all that breathes or has
breathed thereon.
It was a wonderfully beautiful sight, and yet sad, perhaps, from
the very excess of its beauty. The arising sun; the setting sun!
There we have the symbol and the type of humanity, and all things
with which humanity has to do. The symbol and the type, yes, and
the earthly beginning, and the end also. And on that morning this
came home to me with a peculiar force. The sun that rose to-day
for us had set last night for eighteen of our
fellow-voyagers!—had set everlastingly for eighteen whom we knew!
The dhow had gone down with them, they were tossing about among
the rocks and seaweed, so much human drift on the great ocean of
Death! And we four were saved. But one day a sunrise will come
when we shall be among those who are lost, and then others will
watch those glorious rays, and grow sad in the midst of beauty,
and dream of Death in the full glow of arising Life!
For this is the lot of man.
V.
THE HEAD OF THE ETHIOPIAN
At length the heralds and forerunners of the royal sun had done
their work, and, searching out the shadows, had caused them to
flee away. Then up he came in glory from his ocean-bed, and
flooded the earth with warmth and light. I sat there in the boat
listening to the gentle lapping of the water and watched him
rise, till presently the slight drift of the boat brought the
odd-shaped rock, or peak, at the end of the promontory which we
had weathered with so much peril, between me and the majestic
sight, and blotted it from my view. I still continued, however,
to stare at the rock, absently enough, till presently it became
edged with the fire of the growing light behind it, and then I
started, as well I might, for I perceived that the top of the
peak, which was about eighty feet high by one hundred and fifty
feet thick at its base, was shaped like a negro’s head and face,
whereon was stamped a most fiendish and terrifying expression.
There was no doubt about it; there were the thick lips, the fat
cheeks, and the squat nose standing out with startling clearness
against the flaming background. There, too, was the round skull,
washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of wind and
weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby
growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked
for all the world like the wool on a colossal negro’s head. It
certainly was very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a
mere freak of nature but a gigantic monument fashioned, like the
well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a forgotten people out of a pile
of rock that lent itself to their design, perhaps as an emblem of
warning and defiance to any enemies who approached the harbour.
Unfortunately we were never able to ascertain whether or not this
was the case, inasmuch as the rock was difficult of access both
from the land and the waterside, and we had other things to