Part 13 (2/2)
And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:
_”Ahoy there! What s.h.i.+p's that? Are you a s.h.i.+p?... Here, give me that trumpet--”_ Then a metallic barking. _”Ahoy there! What the devil are you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something, and go dead slow!”_
All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.
”Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want to know if I'm awake.”
”See where?”
”There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that d.a.m.ned Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell, didn't you?”
”Shut up a minute--listen--”
Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.
_”This is the cov'nant that I make: From henceforth nevermore Will I again the world destroy With water, as before.”_
Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.
”_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_” the voice that seemed to come from between sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. ”_I say,_” it began with careful politeness, ”_if you are a s.h.i.+p, do you mind telling us where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please, please tell us what the h.e.l.l you are!_”
Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still and br.i.m.m.i.n.g sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved bal.u.s.trade of the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark bal.u.s.ter, and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken the form of a pyramid before his eyeb.a.l.l.s.
”_Of course_,” a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, ”_we can't turn a four-inch on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This might interest His Scientific Skippers.h.i.+p...._”
”Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--”
”Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed....”
Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was the shape of a s.h.i.+p. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on s.h.i.+ps of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed the form of a s.h.i.+p with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean of his own mind....
_”And I will not unmindful be Of this, My covenant, pa.s.sed Twixt Me and you and every flesh Whiles that the world should last,”_
sang Bligh, rapt....
But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there, uttering great pa.s.sionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would be the Amen of his life to have praised G.o.d, not upon a harp, but upon a s.h.i.+p that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and subordinated to Abel Keeling's will.... And there she was, that s.h.i.+p-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew of that s.h.i.+p were speaking again....
The interrupted silver chain by the quarterdeck bal.u.s.trade had now become continuous, and the bal.u.s.ters made a herring-bone over their own motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect as G.o.d made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He waited for the s.p.a.ce of a minute, and then cried:
”Ahoy!... s.h.i.+p ahoy!... What s.h.i.+p's that?”
III
We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a voice replied:
”_Hallo, it's found its tongue.... Ahoy there! What are you?_”
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