The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife (47 page)

Mr. Darby enveloped him in a radiant smile, but his reply was evasive. Mr. Amberley's attitude towards Mandratia, as he had already discovered, was not propitious, and he would suffer no profane person to intrude upon his ecstacy. ‘No doubt,' he said, ‘it's due to the … ah … ameliority of the weather.'

Mr. Amberley shook his head. ‘I don't believe it,' he said. ‘But isn't it time for our Collins? Perhaps a Collins will enable you to be more frank.
In vino,
Darby, and therefore
ex fortiori
in gin,
Veritas.'

But even gin could not wring the truth from Mr. Darby. He gloated and held his tongue. To Punnett, of course, he spoke freely.

‘I have been considering the advisability of sitting up all night, Punnett.'

‘But you said six a.m. was the hour, sir.'

‘Quite so, Punnett, but the ship might gain time. It might be five-thirty, possibly even five-fifteen, and I should never forgive myself if I were too late.'

‘Then you had better let me call you at five, sir. You can rely on me. I will call you at five without fail. Then, if I might suggest that you went to bed a little early, you would get a whole night's sleep.'

Mr. Darby allowed himself to be persuaded and went to bed at half-past nine. Before doing so, however, he made a careful examination of the weather. It was not very promising. A low mist hung over the sea, through which the stars were perceptible only as faint phosphorescent blurs overhead. What if the mist should obscure his peep at Mandratia? But that was too awful to contemplate. He retired to his cabin, undressed, laid the great telescope ready on a chair and got into bed. But not to sleep. It was all very well for the imperturbable Punnett to talk of a whole night's sleep: he, no doubt, would sleep precisely as if he were bound for a destination no more moving than Clapham. With Mr. Darby, the poet, the romantic, the man of imagination, sleep was for long impossible. His mind, humming like a vast factory, was furiously constructing a Mandratia wonderful, exotic, fantastic beyond the dreams of opium-eaters. But at last, wearied out by these dizzy imaginative flights, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

From this he was roused by Punnett, fully dressed, at what seemed to him a far too early hour.

‘But why now, Punnett?' he asked, querulous and sleepy.

‘It's just five, sir,' said Punnett, ‘and if you wish to try for a sight of Mandratia, sir …!'

‘Bother Mandratia!' thought Mr. Darby, in his desperate desire to remain in bed; but in five minutes his deadly lethargy had passed away and he flung back the bedclothes, eager for the miraculous moment, and with his legs dangling over the edge, assumed his spectacles.

‘Bring the telescope, Punnett,' he said, throwing on a crimson silk dressing-gown and making for the door.

It was very warm on deck: a pallid twilight silvered the
eastward face of every object, and Mr. Darby discovered, to his concern, that the
Utopia,
like a pip in a vast melon, was ensphered in a fine, silvery mist. The sea was very calm, but its surface was clearly visible only for a short distance about the ship, a disc of shimmering grey and silver whose rim dissolved imperceptibly into vagueness. Mr. Darby, grasping the rail with both hands stared into the haze.

‘What time is it, Punnett?' he asked, turning to the tall, formal, melancholy figure that stood beside him with the heavy telescope under its arm.

‘Ten past five, sir. There's fifty minutes yet, sir, for it to clear, unless we're ahead of time.'

‘Most tiresome!' said Mr. Darby disapprovingly. ‘Excessively tiresome, Punnett! Who would have supposed we should have a fog.'

‘Well, sir,' said Punnett, ‘these early mists are pretty common in these parts. More often than not, sir, the early mornings in Mandratia were so thick you couldn't see a thing two yards from your face; a thick mist like milk, sir. But by the time I was putting Professor Harrington's breakfast on the table the sun began to come through and the mist broke up before he'd begun his second cup of coffee. A very remarkable sight it was, sir.'

Mr. Darby paid little attention to these remarks of Punnett's: his spectacles were staring north-east with a fury of concentration enough, it might have been supposed, to dissolve a London fog. And so he continued for a long time, while Punnett stood gaunt and silent at his side.

‘It's thinning a bit, if you'll excuse me, sir,' Punnett remarked after what seemed hours of silent tension.

Mr. Darby turned his head. ‘You're right, Punnett,' he said, ‘it's … ah … what I should call disseminating. What time is it now?'

‘Twenty-five to six, sir.'

‘And when did you say the sun rose?'

‘About six-thirty, sir.'

Mr. Darby pursed his lips anxiously. ‘It's a matter of … ah … touch and go, Punnett.'

The minutes passed. Mr. Darby became fidgety. He leaned his arms on the wooden handrail and stared still more passionately into the mist. At last a vague shape loomed through the mist in response to his stare.

‘Punnett,' he said in a loud, excited whisper, ‘I see … ah … what I should call a
something.'
He turned feverish spectacles upon Punnett and pointed dramatically into the void. ‘There!'

Punnett glanced sadly at the mist and shook his head. ‘No, sir! Nothing there, sir!'

Mr. Darby accepted Punnett's ruling and resumed his watch. At a quarter to six he lifted his right foot to the bottom bar of the rail and stared again, and again his powerful imagination called, as it had so often called before, a visionary Mandratia out of the void.

‘Upon my soul, Punnett,'—Mr. Darby's whisper had the fervour of escaping steam—' there
is
a something, a vague … ah …!' With a turn of the left wrist he sketched a domeshaped mountain.

Again Punnett applied a sad scrutiny to the mist and again he shook his head. ‘No, sir. Nothing yet, sir. You can rely on me, sir.'

At five minutes to six Mr. Darby lowered his right foot to the deck and replaced it on the rail by the left. The excitement seething inside him was almost more than he could bear. ‘The mist's thinning, Punnett,' he hissed. ‘It's … ah … it's …!' The intensity of his gaze deprived him of the power of speech.

At six o'clock, in an agony of anxiety, he set both feet on the bottom bar and hoisted himself up so that his chest leaned on the rail. The sweat was pouring from his face.

And at six o'clock Punnett's voice, transformed by a perceptible tinge of eagerness, spoke at his elbow. ‘There, sir! Straight ahead, sir!'

‘Where, Punnett? Where?' Mr. Darby's voice was almost a scream.

‘There, sir!'

Mr. Darby skipped from his perch on the rail and followed
with his eyes the direction of Punnett's long, bony finger. Hanging in the mist with no apparent roots in sea or earth Mr. Darby saw an object like a huge ghostly, pale-pink cowrie shell.

‘That's the top of Umfo, sir!' said Punnett.

Like a man about to attack another, Mr. Darby ripped off his crimson silk dressing-gown, bundled it into a ball and flung it into the sea. ‘Give me the telescope, Punnett,' he shouted.

Punnett handed him the telescope, ready open. Mr. Darby leaned over the rail, stretched his right arm to its full extent, supporting the telescope over the
Utopia's
side, and set his eye to it. It was so heavy and swayed so uncontrollably in his grasp that at first he saw nothing. Then a cloud of luminous pink swept across his view. With a supreme effort Mr. Darby steadied the thing. Again the pink cloud came into his field of vision. If only he could lean his right elbow on the top of the rail! Without removing his eye from the telescope he cautiously raised first one foot, then the other, to the bottom bar of the rail. Then, with equal care, he hoisted himself up till his right elbow was securely based.

Even through the powerful telescope the view was vague, but now, under the great pink cowrie he could see grey ghosts of treetops stepping one above the other towards the luminous summit. In a desperate attempt to thrust the telescope and himself a little nearer to the elusive Mandratia Mr. Darby pushed himself even further over the rail. His stomach, not his chest, was leaning on it now.

And then something happened to his extended right arm, a brief failure of tension, and the telescope gave an appalling lurch. Mr. Darby gripped it spasmodically at the narrow end with his other hand and at the same time put all his available strength into his failing right. The telescope lurched again, there was a loud metallic clang as Mr. Darby's slippers came off the rail. Punnett shot out a hand, but too late. The telescope plunged headlong over the side and Mr. Darby immediately followed it.

The interval between Mr. Darby's leaving the promenade deck of the
Utopia
and his landing, if we may be allowed the paradox, in the sea was so packed with experiences that he had no time for thought. Immediately after the awful discovery that he had hopelessly lost his balance, he saw the grey side of the ship shoot past him at a prodigious speed and flick out of sight clean under his feet. The fact was that Mr. Darby had been fortunate enough to turn a complete somersault in the air. Fortunate, for next moment he struck the sea in a sitting position, backside foremost, and so took the full shattering crash of it in that least vulnerable part of his person. There followed a dim twilight, a smarting of the eyes and nose, and a soft, singing, titillating invasion of the ears. He was sinking, sinking: the water was rushing upwards all round him. He gasped for breath and took in a huge, stifling draft of sea-water. An excruciating tightness constricted his chest: he felt that he was going to burst and flung out his arms in a desperate struggle. The water thinned, grew lighter, air and pale daylight burst upon him: he took a sobbing gulp of air. But at that moment something fell out of the sky and hit him a stunning blow on the shoulder, and he went under again. Again he flung out his arms and the top of his head bumped against something floating above him. The thought shot through his mind that the
Utopia
was passing over him; but at the same moment his head rose into light and air again. Something was floating beside him. He made a frantic grab, missed it, made another and caught hold of it. It was a life-buoy. With both hands Mr. Darby held on to it for dear life, while he coughed and gasped and retched till he felt that his eyes would burst from his head. When he had enough
breath to think of something other than breathing he looked about him. The water seemed to be flowing past him as if it were a river. With his hands he pulled himself up an inch or two and saw far ahead of him and already growing blurred with mist a vast grey floating bucket with a white rim round the top of it and a short stout scarlet post sticking out of it. From the top of the post a long streamer of grey gauze drooped lazily to the water level. It was Mr. Darby's last view of the
Utopia,
and also the first stern-on view of her he had had. He was so exhausted by his desperate struggle and so relieved by the respite provided by the life-buoy that he had not yet had time to realize the hopelessness of his plight. But now, at the spectacle of the fast-receding
Utopia,
the appalling truth began slowly to dawn on him. The full horror of the accident which had befallen him, so far from being over, was, he now realized, yet to come. The discovery struck a chill to his heart so overpowering that for a moment he almost lost consciousness. He gripped the life-buoy in an agony of fear, still gazing with a growing despair at the diminishing silhouette of his recent home. An absurd impulse prompted him to call Punnett. ‘Punnett … ah … Punnett!' he shouted; but the shout was no more than the thin, reedy croak of a frog.

A voice close behind him made him start so violently that he very nearly lost his hold on the life-buoy. ‘All right, sir. Hold on, sir. I'll be there in a moment.'

Mr. Darby looked behind him and discovered Punnett gravely seated in a life-buoy similar to the one he himself was grasping. ‘But … but … but … my … my dear Punn …!' A violent attack of coughing interrupted Mr. Darby, and during the time it took him to recover, Punnett, using his hands as paddles, approached him and laid a hand on his life-buoy.

‘Look out, Punnett, look out!' Mr. Darby bubbled anxiously. ‘Don't … ah … don't tip it up.'

‘All right, sir,' replied Punnett reassuringly. ‘You can rely on me, sir. You'll find it much more comfortable, if I might suggest it, sitting in the buoy as I am. Just pull
yourself up and slip into it. I'll hold on to it: there's no occasion for alarm, sir.'

Instructed by the invaluable Punnett, Mr. Darby with some difficulty hauled himself up, got his knees on to the buoy and, by a startling manoeuvre which was largely accident, found himself suddenly seated as if on an unusually comfortable commode.

‘That's better, isn't it, sir?' Punnett enquired.

Mr. Darby heaved a profound sigh. ‘Much better!' he said in the voice of a very old man. ‘It's wonderful. But it's cold, Punnett, fearfully cold.'

The little man's face was pinched and blue: his teeth chattered feebly.

‘Don't worry about that, sir,' Punnett replied. ‘You'll be complaining of the heat in an hour.'

By degrees Mr. Darby sank into a stupor and for half an hour or so he and Punnett sat silent in their life-buoys like a pair of halcyons, brooding, as those fabulous birds are said to do, on their floating nests. So sunk was Mr. Darby in his stupor that the gradual brightening and thinning of the mist to a gauze of diaphanous gold totally escaped him, and even when the sun rose from the sea and stared him full in the face he failed to remark upon it. But at length the sun's invigorating warmth did what its light had failed to do: Mr. Darby awoke and began once more to look about him. He felt weak and hungry, but his teeth were no longer chattering. He was slowly recovering.