Tom Beauling/Chapter 13
THERE is no large body of water which can assume the profound smoothness of the Indian Ocean; to every other ocean there is a ground swell, as if it had never settled from the rude measures of the Creation. The Indian Ocean on good behavior is smoother than the sky above it—by day sunnier and bluer, starrier by night. It is so warm that the sun goes to bed naked, with an unperverted smile; so sweet that you hate to breathe out, so even tempered that ports swing wide around the clock, so unhurried that the restless abandon haste. But that voyage there were days of impatience for Beauling. He had received a letter which on the face of it was merely trying to slander him into good behavior; he thought he read a different and happier meaning between the lines—there was space enough for any meaning, for she wrote a hand that laughed at pages—and he wondered if he had read right. Right or wrong, an interest had been expressed, and he must make good. He saw himself discounting his birthright by hard work and clean living. "I will be a good man," he said humbly—at that time there was no better man in the world—"and that is worth many fathers."
They left Aden, with its Pullman-car-like buildings and scorched rocks, broiling to starboard and turned the corner into the Red Sea. It was most like sailing down a long sapphire set in raw red gold. The wind followed, so that the heat was no longer swept astern. And the wicked were punished together with the good. The former grew puffy and proud, for it was brought home to them that hell could be no worse. The latter resolved to be bad. Divine justice had been deceived. It is pleasanter to sin and roast, than to be good and roast. It is also easier.
The second day of it, in the evening, the old mutiny relic prattled to Beauling of England's green fields. And the same night the air stopped vitalizing his aged works, and of all that ship's company he was the first to reach home. They sank him quickly, with none to weep. The minister who read the sentences of committal looked, when he had done, like one recently drawn out of the water. People did not weep out of their eyes, but all over, like Niobe.
They made the canal at night, shipped a canal rudder, and steamed on slowly—a ship lost in a desert. The moon struck the sand with all the force of her imagination, paraded armies of monsters, created pinnacled cities, fashioned abandoned women of mountainous size who searched for their betrayers with ophthalmic eyes—an orchard of peach-trees in blossom, the gates of hell. She changed a peaceful village into millions of vermined gray apes that wrestled with vile contortions or became elusive, like a bank of rolling smoke. She whitened a jagged ridge into a host of angels, complete with wings, who played upon soundless harps. She said, "Little Ship, have you a Sculptor, or Painter, or Writer on board? If so, let him jump into the canal and drown muddily, lest he seem too foolish." No one went to bed until the moon had done conjuring.
"I couldn't see all the things she did," said one man to Beauling, "but I saw enough."
"So did I," said Beauling. He had looked this way and that way over the desert, and up, audaciously, into the very eyes of the blue-rimmed moon, and only seen Phylis coming to him across the sands or through the air. And that was enough. His heart was in tune; his imagination no more active than dough.
"Good night," he said.
"Made one feel small, didn't it?" said the man.
"Oh, no," said Beauling; "it couldn't do that. You see—I'm going home."
He changed off at Port Said into the little twin-screw mailer Isis. She tore away for Brindisi at a twenty-two-knot clip, through a smoke of water, rolling, tunneling, throbbing, screaming with her siren, and flaunting her fragility.
"Crack it on, little ship!" said Beauling, heartily. "Make 'em sick—smash that big, green feller! Be a train—be a train!"
The little ship gurgled, lifted, shivered in all her steel nerves, as a short-haired dog shivers in the cold, and struck, and struck again, till the seas roared for the ferocity of her attack.
"Faster, little ship!" said Beauling; "faster—give 'em hell—I'm going home!"—Smash—bang!—"I'm going home!"
Two islands bullied the storm back from a long ribbon of a channel. The Isis flew at the smooth strip, went over it like a skater, and bucked the rage of waters at the other end. Beauling, drenched to the skin, clung to things, and, whenever the whole Mediterranean tried to get down his throat, howled with joy. He was maddened with the exhilaration of the opposing seas. It was so rough that people remained for forty-eight hours in the places where the sickness overtook them. They toiled not, neither did they spin. One steward alone could bear the smell of food; officers went down and out; only the captain, chief engineer, and cook remained whole of the ship's company. Of the passengers, two went to meals—Beauling, because he happened to be going home; and an aged, brandy-drinking judge from Bengal, because he happened to be thinking of something else.
Chiseled Greece rose out of the haze on the weather-beam and smoothed the seas. The dead walked, and the Isis, with a last flirtatious lift of her saucy heels, slipped through the gate of Brindisi Breakwater. The sun struck hot through the superimpending clouds, and the Isis sidled into her pier, looking like a ship carved out of frost.
Beauling went to the hotel, and as he was about to enter, a woman in the street spoke to him, and called him by name.