The Ship in the Bottle

by James Hopper

THE SHIP IN THE BOTTLE

By JAMES HOPPER

EARLY in the afternoon a sudden cold fog from the sea had driven the motherless little girl from the garden where she had been playing all alone. Going into the house, she had found her father in the attic of the old adobe, and they had been rummaging companionably together for the better part of an hour, he with heart a bit dolorous, she twittering gaily, among dust-heavy coffers and pieces of old furniture, when she found the little ship in the bottle.

The bottle was an ordinary bottle, of green glass, of narrow mouth, corked and sealed, and within it, miraculously, rode the little ship, with its tall fine spars, its cabin, capstan, shrouds and tiny pulleys, complete in every detail to the belaying-pins, its top sails bellying to some mysterious imprisoned breeze, while the other sails were furled. "Oh, Daddie," she cried, "look at the little ship! Look at the little ship in the bottle! It has sails, it has masts, it has everything! Oh, Daddie, wherever did you get the little ship in the bottle?"

He took the object from her and examined it as she stood poised, eager and a little fearful—fearful that this new, enchanting, and already heart-tugging possession might be taken from her. He peered within the green glass, and could not remember. He knew that sailors, whiling away the hours of long traverses, wrought such toys—carved tall little ships which in some way they managed to introduce within such glass containers, through mouths seemingly ever too narrow to let them enter, or ever let them out—but he could not recall at first how this one had come among the discarded things in the attic. Then a ray pierced the fog of his mind and lit up space of the past. "I remember, Beauty," he cried, "I remember! It was given me long, long ago, when I was a boy, when I was just a boy, Beauty!"

"Oh, Dad," she begged, standing on tip-toe, "tell me, tell me!"

"I had a boat all my own that summer," he said, "and all summer I had been sailing the bays and the roads."

As he said these words, he could see himself clearly as he had been when a boy—the supple muscle, the bronzed smooth face, the shining hair—and a sort of desolate regret pinched his heart.

"There was a ship anchored out near the mouth of the bay by which I often went, Beauty. It was a jolly ship; the crew all wore tam-o'-shanters. They'd lean over the side as I'd slide by, and smile at me, from captain to carpenter. But I liked especially the little apprentice boy. He wore a red sash around his waist. When I passed, he took off his cap and waved it, and made me feel I was going—oh, ever so fast and splendidly!"

"It was that little apprentice boy who gave you the bottle?" the child hazarded.

"No, Beauty. It happened this way. One morning I put off in my boat, meaning to board the jolly ship—the Notre Dame de Nantes, that was its name. I had never boarded it—merely had slid along its sides as the crew nodded and the apprentice waved his tam. But this day I had a jar of good tobacco, and I was going to climb on deck and give it to the jolly crew.

"But I never did. Beauty. It was a strange day, with great wads of fog floating about the bay. I lost my bearings, and when I came to the spot where I thought the Notre Dame de Nantes was anchored, I sailed across and across the place where she should have been, and could not find her. Then a current seized me and took me up against a black ship—a great big brute of a black ship I had never noticed before—and I went up her sides to see if I could get my directions.

"There was only one man on deck, Beauty—on the whole deck just one man. I remember him well: he was all crooked—a crooked nose, crooked teeth, and a crooked smile. And there was something nasty in the way he answered my simple question about the Notre Dame de Nantes. 'The Notre Dame de Nantes?’ he smiled. 'She's not anchored anywhere about here; she's not anchored at all. The Notre Dame de Nantes—you'll never see the Notre Dame de Nantes!’

"I remember I was nettled at the way he spoke, and turned toward the head of the ladder. 'I'm sorry she has sailed away,' I said. 'There were nice people on her—courteous people, who answered courteous questions courteously.'

"But he laughed and called me back. 'To show you we also are polite on this boat,' he said, 'I am going to make you a present.'

"He vanished down the companion-way and was up again in a second, Beauty. He smiled his crooked smile up at me and dangled this bottle before me till my hand reached for it. In spite of the gift, I was in a hurry to go, for somehow I couldn't like him, what with his crooked, smile. So I was on shore before I looked over my new possession carefully. Then it was I saw that the little ship in the bottle was a miniature of the Notre Dame de Nantes. You see, Beauty, the black craft and the Notre Dame must have been lying near each other in the roads, though I had never noticed the black one. And it was a small Notre Dame de Nantes which that sailor of the crooked smile had whittled out for his bottle."

"Even the name, Daddie," the little girl murmured, as she peered through the bottle's green glass. "See there, Daddie, on the stern, in tiny gold letters—Notre Dame de Nantes. And then what happened, Daddie?"

"And then—and then—— Oh, yes, Beauty, great trouble. That very night I found trouble at home, great trouble—my father dead. Then afterward came the rush to the goldfields. So that I never saw the Notre Dame de Nantes again. Beauty, nor the black ship, nor this little model in the bottle. In that box it must have been ever since my mother put it away, probably soon after I had left home on the gold venture; in that box it must have been all these years!"

"Oh," the little girl cried, "how lonely! How lonely and dark they must have felt!"

"Why, who, Beauty?"

"The crew—the captain, and the crew, and the carpenter, and the little apprentice boy, Daddie."

The father paused, and then, not knowing just what might be in the small mind, thought it well to explain. "But they're not in the boat, Beauty. You understand that, don't you, Beauty? The sailor with the crooked smile—he carved only the ship and the things on it—the small boats, the capstan, the dead things on it. But he did not make any people. Look carefully. See, there are no people."

"They're down in the cabin, having dinner," the little girl said, with a shining smile. "And, oh, Daddie, give me the little ship, give me the little ship to be all my own!"

An obscure reluctance was in his heart, but he could find no reason for it. And so, finding no reason, he gave her the little ship in the bottle.

Days followed which found him immersed once more in the sombre abstraction of his bereavement; the existence of the child grew far and dim. Then the insistence of her prattling began to pierce the mournful haze about him and stirred his tenderness.

It was of the little ship that she spoke so constantly.

"Kersedore was very angry last night. He roared and roared with his big voice. He had all the crew on deck in the dark; he made them furl the sails five times——"

"But who is Kersedore, Beauty?"

"Don't you know, Dad? Why, he is the captain, of course—captain of the Notre Dame de Nantes, Captain Kersedore, with the big whiskers and the big voice. You should have seen the crew, Daddie, scampering about, pretending they were afraid, and winking at each other all the time, knowing he would never hurt them. And Michel played to slip and fall, as if out of his big hurry, and then went about limping. He would limp when the captain was looking, and laugh when the captain wasn't."

"Who is Michel?"

"He's the carpenter. Don't you remember? He has the freckled face, and when he smiles his mouth opens from ear to ear. He tells me stories, Daddie, beautiful stories. One is of a city that sank long ago, and is now deep beneath the sea. Once a year, when the moon is bright, it rises slowly to the top, all its bells ringing and all the people in their finest clothes walking about. They stroll about all night in the moonlight, all the bells ringing; then at dawn the city sinks back slowly through the clear waters, and the bells sound fainter and fainter till finally they cease, and the beautiful city sits once more at the bottom of the sea.

"But, Dad, the one I love, the dearest one, that's Ives-Marie. He's the little apprentice boy. He wears a red sash and a blue tam-o'-shanter. But he never speaks, but just looks at me, so gently and sadly—just looks and looks, as though after a while maybe I'll understand what he means and can't say. Oh, Daddie, he's so cute and gentle and so sad!"

The father little by little grew disturbed. She seemed so feverishly absorbed in her new toy; her little mind turned and turned about it so restlessly that he grew a little afraid. "Beauty," he said, "I don't want you to play so much with the ship in the bottle. I want you to run and romp. If you play too much with the little ship, I shall have to take it away from you!"

She smiled up at him. "Oh, Daddie, please don't take it away! I'll be good, you just see. I'll play with it only a little bit of a while every day."

But he now awakened every morning with a sense of having been dimly stirred in his sleep. His room opened on the patio of the old adobe, and the child's also opened on this court, with its murmuring fountain. One night he found himself sitting up, wide awake. A great golden band of light passed athwart his bed, and, looking across the patio, along the path of this light, to Beauty's chamber, he saw its casement brilliantly aglow.

Startled, his heart a-pound, he rose and, a little dizzy with sleep and with the cold of the night, went across to her. But halfway be stopped, reassured. He could hear her speaking in her sweet, swift way, and in her voice there was no plaint and no pain. Then, as he listened, a new fear gradually took the place of that which had been quieted. She was babbling so fast, so fast, so feverishly and so earnestly. And not as if in sleep, or to herself; it was as if she were speaking to people, to several in turn. She was as one conversing with fairies thus in the middle of the night.

Striding forward, he pushed open the door and entered to an abrupt ceasing of her birdlike twittering. For a moment his heart hurt him at the sight of her innocent dismay. In her white nightgown, her hair loose about her head, she turned upon him wide, dilated eyes, and her hands, in an unconscious gesture, pressed against her palpitant small heart. But he had seen her throw, with a quick movement as he came in, a scarf across an object over which she had been bending, and he stiffened himself to severity. "Beauty, Beauty, what in the world are you doing, up thus in the middle of the night?"

Her attitude of fear relaxed to one of sweet trust, and she smiled the little smile reserved especially for him. Her hand snatched away the scarf. "I've been playing with my little ship, Dad," she said confidingly.

She was now peering through the glass into the bottle. "Oh," she cried with mock annoyance, "what a rough, noisy father I have! You've scared them all down below, Daddie! And they were all up on deck, and I was having such a good time with them—Captain Kersedore, and Michel, and the crew, and Ives-Marie. They won't come up again to-night. You have frightened them, Daddie."

"Beauty," he said, "I am going to take the little ship away from you."

A premonition of disaster, of one of those sudden and indefeasible disasters which fall upon children from the capricious and stubborn gods with which they must live, trembled through her small being. "Oh, Daddie, please don't take it away from me!"

"I must take it, Beauty. In the daytime I'll let you have it sometimes——"

She was begging so prettily, with an attitude of supplication so eloquent, it was hard to go on. But he braced himself. "You can have it sometimes in the daytime. At night, though, it must be in my room—in my room every night."

She stopped begging abruptly, and it was with a profound gaze from a still little body that she watched him take up her treasure and with it depart—a look that haunted him as he crossed the court and in relentment almost sent him back. He gained his bed and laid the bottle on the table by his pillow. After a moment the light, which still had been flowing across the court, went out. "She'll forget," he said to himself uncomfortably. "Children forget easily; she'll forget."

The following night, asleep with the little ship on the table close by his head, he dreamed.

He dreamed that he had been awakened by a sound of clanging capstan and running chains, of tugged ropes, shouts and bellyings of sails, and that, sitting up on his elbow, looking through the glass of the bottle, he saw the little ship, all sails set, butting and butting to get out.

It was a recurrent dream: the next night he dreamed it again. Propped on his elbow, he was looking within the bottle, and the little ship, all sails set, was butting and butting to get out, recoiling each time from the collision with the bottle's narrow neck only to charge once more in a stubborn effort to escape.

But the third night the dream changed. He heard in his sleep the tumult of the little ship's endeavour. He dreamed that he woke then and, leaning over, looked into the bottle. But this time, under his eyes, the little ship was no longer striving. Listed to port, sails hanging and aback, small rudder loose, it seemed to have given up; and from it there came to him, somehow, mute speech, a silent passion of supplication which drew down his head and his eyes closer to a more careful scrutiny. And, peering close thus, through the green glass, he saw the apprentice boy, Ives-Marie. The little fellow was kneeling on the hard deck, and his clasped hands and his pale face were raised to the observer, and he was begging, begging from his very heart and entrails.

The pity which now stirred the dreamer as he slept had such a twisting force that it awakened him. He found himself awake, lying on his back, his eyes shut. But in a moment, even with his eyes shut, he knew that he was not in darkness, light was beating against his lids, A sense of a presence completed his alarm; someone was in the room, someone was there, close to him. With an effort he opened his eyes. "Beauty! " he cried, astonished.

The child was standing by the bed. Holding a light above her head, she was looking attentively into the bottle. "Sh-sh-sh!" she hissed gently, and remained peering, her face attentive, tender, and grave.

He would have scolded, had he not been altogether held by the sweet seriousness of her abstraction. Then, before he could seize hold of himself, "Go to sleep, Daddie, go to sleep!" she had said softly, as a mother speaks to her child. "Sh-sh-sh! There, go back to sleep!" and was gone. For a moment her light filtered into the room, became fainter, went out, and the house was once more silent and dark, as he lay wondering if really he had seen, if really he had heard.

But next day she came to him eager with secret enterprise. "Daddie, please walk down to the sea with me. It's a long time since you have walked with me. Please drop your work and walk with me this afternoon!"

So they went out hand in hand across the moors towards the sea. She walked fast, her little skirts billowing to a following wind, and they had reached the cliffs above the sea before he noticed that, under her cape, she had been carrying the little ship in the bottle.

"I'm going to let them go," she answered to his glance. "Oh, Daddie, they are not happy in the bottle! They are not happy; they yearn and grieve. They want to sail out freely into the wide sea. They beg to get out, they beg me so. Little Ives-Marie kneels to me and begs and begs. Oh, Daddie, I must let them go!"

The fear which already had touched him several times laid again on the father's heart its cold hand. But as he stood pondering upon the mystery of the child's play-life, and on the strange communication which had come between them, wondering whether it was his dream which had gone to her, or her dream which had dwelled within him in the night, she, darting to the edge of the cliff and peering below, was already at her plan. "Look, Daddie, look! Here it is too deep."

His hand seized by hers, looking down at her command, he saw at the foot of the cliff a deep blue pool. It rose slowly to the sigh of the sea, then fell as slowly, and far in its depths, across a green and bubbly duskiness, long weeds waved their arms indistinctly. "See!" she said. "There it is too deep. The ship would be still in the bottle. Oh, how terrible, Daddie, to be upon the sea and still in prison in the bottle!

"Come, Daddie. Quick! We must hurry; the fog is coming in."

The fog stood out at sea like a wall solid and motionless; but they, familiar with the land, knew that, immobile as it looked, it was rushing toward the coast in a silent muffled charge. Even as she spoke, a faint advance vapour slid over the pool, dimming it. "Come quick, Daddie; let's find another place before the fog comes in!"

She darted to another edge of the cliff, looked down, was off again. Finally she stopped, and when, having reached her, he bent his head down by her curls, he found her content. "This is a good place, Daddie; this is just the place."

Below, as he looked, the sea, drawing in its breath, left to view a red rock, a rock the colour of red brocade, then swirled over it again in a lacy emerald chaos. "See, this is just right!" her small voice called in the tumult.

She rose upright, the bottle pressed against her breast, torn by a last hesitation, then, with a strange, brilliant smile, tossed it out over the cliff.

Looking downward, the father saw that she had timed her moment perfectly. As the bottle fell whirling, the sea uncovered the red rock. Then, just as the bottle, striking, flew into many shivers, the sea, returning, seized and raised the freed little ship and tossed it high on a wide, smooth surge. The little girl uttered a cry; the father, stirred almost as she, answered it.

The little Notre Dame de Nantes gallantly, all sails set, on a slant with the wind, was making for the open. At times, in the swirl of the retreating sea, it slid vertiginously toward its free goal; then again, backed up, it roared with high spirit almost amid the rattling pebbles at the foot of the cliffs; and the cliffs, to its smallness, looked like stupendous cliffs of the moon, and the waves like catastrophic tidal waves. The two, now stretched face down above, looked on breathless. "It's gaining, it's gaining!" the little girl cried. With a vast, silent swoop, the fog now pounced down upon them and enveloped them hermetically.

The father, straining his eyes in the white smother, could see nothing. But to the child—so it seemed as he watched her—glimpses were being given still. She pressed her little heart, she breathed fast. "How piercing her eyes!" he thought. "How piercing are children's eyes!"

Her hands stretched before her as though between them she were guiding the small ship. Then slowly they parted in an encompassing wider and wider. And when they were as wide could be, turning to her father, she flung them about his neck and buried her face upon his breast, and in a whisper of ecstatic marvelling whispered: "Oh, Daddie, Daddie!"

But as they were crossing a flowery field, on their way back, she threw herself down, and there, amid the cowslips and the blue-eyed grass, wept long, as if her heart were breaking. And the next day, thinking over all this, moved with self-reproach at having left her so much alone, the father decided to take her on a diverting trip to the big cities of men.

On their return, which was not long after—for the heart of both, of the saddened grown man and the child, tugged for the home by the sea—they found Maria, the housekeeper, in a fever of news to tell. While they were gone, a ship had come in to the small port three miles to the north, which for so many years had been empty of all craft.

"Oh, señorita mia, and you too, señor, you have returned just too late, or you would have seen yourself the wonderful happenings. It was a strange vessel, everyone agreed, and a strange crew that spoke neither English nor Spanish, so that they might as well have been deaf and dumb in this land. And they must have been through some great evil in their voyaging, for the first thing they did was to go to the Padre to be shrived. And what the Padre heard from them must have been indeed evil, for the next day they walked in file and bare-footed the whole five miles to the Mission San Juan, and there once more were shrived, to incense smoke and organ music. And then, señorita—if you had been here this morning, you would have seen—they came here.

"I did not know anything about them at the time—nothing about the coming of the ship nor the shriving And here was the patio full of these strange men, some of them with rings in their ears, standing smiling and smiling, turning their heads this way and that, and I so astonished it was some moments before I started to send them on about their business. But when I did, they did not move nor answer—merely stood smiling and smiling. Then one, bolder, went to the door of the señorita's room, which was open to the sun, curtains flying, and before I could stop them, they were all there, standing at the door, peering in in turn, and nodding and smiling, letting their eyes travel over every blessed thing in the señorita's room, then looking at each other, nodding and smiling.

"Never people that seemed so much at home! And even when I had them begone at last, walking away down the road, one came running back. It was the youngest, a mere muchacho. And guess what he wanted! To leave a little flower he had plucked. I have it here, señorita, all pressed for you."

The little girl had been listening with her hands against her heart. She took her small dried flower as it fluttered like a butterfly from the big book, then turned to her father. "Oh, Daddie, come with me to the cliffs, come quickly with me to the cliffs!"

"Beauty!" he chided. "After such a trip! You are tired!"

"Father, please come with me! Please!"

There was in her voice such a pang of desire that he obeyed. Side by side they were soon speeding over the moor. She walked fast, fast, head down, breasting the breeze; he saw that she was making north for the headland of the Wolves, which curved about the small port three miles away. With the breeze, the fog was coming from the sea; dewy pearls formed upon the pale gold of her hair.

The fog, when they had reached the headland and stood poised on its extremity, was like a white night. The father could see nothing of the sea, which he knew stretched ahead, which he knew beat beneath his feet. He watched his small daughter, who, by his side, very still, seemed tensed to some strange vigil. Suddenly, so near as to startle, a desolate blare sounded in the mist. The sound of a bell followed, and a spar creaked. An invisible craft was passing there, close by, in the mist.

The little girl inclined her head. Her eyes, without straining, but rather dreamily, searched the fog. He watched her in strange excitement. "What does she see, what does she see?" he thought. "How piercing are children's eyes!"

Again the horn sadly sounded, and the unseen bell tolled, this time nearer still. A ship was passing in the white smother, passing fast. A third time the horn sounded, and the bell. And as if she now saw, as if most clearly she saw in this fluid density so impenetrable to his eyes, the child stretched full height, smiling a sweet wild smile, and waved her hand.

The horn sounded once more, this time far, and the vibrance of the bell came once more faintly.

And this was the last time. They stood a moment side by side, immobile in the muffled silence. She turned to him in the way of one owing an explanation. "It was Ives-Marie," she said simply.

"Beauty!" he chided.

But she seemed not to understand him. "He was waving his hand. I knew he would be there to bid me good-bye. He is coming back to me, Daddie—coming back to me when he is a big ship-captain."

The father, feeling the realities slipping away from him, and eager to question, yet felt himself held back by something within him—by an invincible scruple, by something like an awe. "A child's play-life is sacred," he thought. "It is white and sacred. And the old, such as I, the soiled and ugly and hardened, must enter only on tip-toe, or far rather not enter at all, but stand on the threshold, yearning but afraid."

And so he asked nothing, and after a little while the two, hand in hand, walked back across the downs toward the light of home.