FullReads

“But it’s not the least use, John,” she said to him. “I do not love you, and I cannot. You are a gentleman, as they say, and as such I like you well enough; but I never can love you, nor any one like you. I’ve been among men, real men, all my life, and perhaps have ideals that are strange to you. John,”–her eyes were wide open in earnestness,–“you are not a man.”

Writhing under her words, which would have been brutal spoken by another, he cursed, not her, nor himself, but his luck and the fates that had shaped his life. And next she was showing him the opened door, saying that she could tolerate profanity in a man, but not in a gentleman, and that under no circumstances was he to claim her acquaintance again. Then followed the snubbing in the street, when, like a lately whipped dog, he had placed himself in her way, hoping she would notice him; and the long agony of humiliation and despair as his heart and soul followed her over the seas in her father’s ship, until the seed she had planted–the small suspicion that her words were true–developed into a wholesome conviction that she had measured him by a higher standard than any he had known, and found him wanting. So he would go to her school, and learn what she knew.

With lightning-like rapidity his mind rehearsed the details of his tuition: the four long voyages; the brutality of the officers until he had learned his work; their consideration and rough kindness when he had become useful and valuable; the curious, incongruous feeling of self-respect that none but able seamen feel; the growth in him of an aggressive physical courage; the triumphant satisfaction with which he finally knew himself as a complete man, clean in morals and mind, able to look men in the face. And then came the moment when, mustering at the capstan with the new crew of her father’s ship, he had met her surprised eyes with a steady glance, and received no recognition.

And so he pleaded his cause, dumbly, by the life that he lived. Asking nothing by word or look, he proved himself under her eyes–first on deck; first in the rigging; the best man at a weather-earing; the best at the wheel; quick, obedient, intelligent, and respectful, winning the admiration of his mates, the jealous ill will of the officers, but no sign of interest or approval from her until to-night–the ninety-second day of the passage. She had surrendered; he had reached her level, only to die; and he thought this strange.

Facing downward, head inboard now, and nearly horizontal, he was passing the cross-jack yard. Below him was the sea–black and crisp, motionless as though carved in ebony. Neither was there movement of the ship and its rigging; the hanging bights of ropes were rigid, while a breaking sea just abaft the main chains remained poised, curled, its white crest a frozen pillow of foam. “The rapidity of thought,” he mused dreamily; “but I’m falling fast enough–fast enough to kill me when I strike.”

He could not move an eyelid now, nor was he conscious that he breathed; but, being nearly upright, facing aft and inboard, the quarter-deck and its fittings were before his eyes, and he saw what brought him out of eternity to a moment of finite time and emotion. The helmsman stood at the motionless wheel with his right hand poised six inches above a spoke, as though some sudden paralysis gripped him, and his face, illumined by the binnacle light, turned aloft inquiringly. But it was not this. Standing at the taffrail, one hand on a life-buoy, was a girl in yellow looking at him,–unspeakable horror in the look,–and around her waist the arm of the mate, on whose rather handsome face was an evil grin.

A pang of earthly rage and jealousy shot through him, and he wished to live. By a supreme effort of will he brought his legs close together and his arms straight above his head; then the picture before him shot upward, and he was immersed in cold salt water, with blackness all about him. How long he remained under he could not guess. He had struck feet first and suffered no harm, but had gone down like a deep-sea lead. He felt the aching sensation in his lungs coming from suppressed breathing, and swam blindly in the darkness, not knowing in which direction was the surface, until he felt the marlinespike–still fastened to his neck–extending off to the right. Sure that it must hang downward, he turned the other way, and, keeping it parallel with his body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. “Bless her for this,” he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and with a little trouble he shed them.