The Sot-Weed Factor (94 page)

"Let's scour the island," he proposed. "If we hit on naught better, why, we'll claw out a trench and bury ourselves together under evergreen boughs. Methinks we must prance and swing our arms about."

They decided to search together, in order to utilize the sooner anything they might come across. One man on the beach, one on the brush line, and one at the edge of the heavier growth, they proceeded northwards up the lee shore of the island. But their search seemed vain: every stick of wood was wet, and no one yet had proposed any means of ignition should it have proved dry. Moreover, the growth thinned out as they approached the northern end of the island, which appeared to be half a mile or so in length.

Not far from the point, Bertrand, who had been patrolling the brush lines, called for them to come at once and behold another miracle. "Lookee here, what I came nigh to breaking my toes on!"

At his feet they saw a longish black shape, which on closer approach they recognized as a stranded dinghy.

"I'faith!" cried McEvoy, scrabbling inside to examine it. "There's even an oar! She must have blown hither in a storm!"

"I doubt she's seaworthy," Ebenezer warned, observing that several inches of water stood in the bilge. "But we might use her for a shelter."

"Nay," McEvoy protested. "She might be tight, Eben, else the water would have leaked out, would it not? I say let's make a try at yonder light! But stay -- we've only one oar."

"There's a trick called
sculling. . ."
Ebenezer offered doubtfully. "But i'Christ, John, listen to that chop -- 'tis like the ocean! We'd drown in five minutes!"

"But if we manage it, we're safe," McEvoy reminded him. "If we stay here, belike we'll freeze to death ere sunrise, and e'en if we do not, who's to say we'll be rescued in the morning?"

They pondered the alternatives briefly, and the third course of sending one of their number to bring assistance to the others.

" 'Twill take one man to scull and another to bail," Bertrand ventured. "We'd as lief die together, as apart, hadn't we, sirs?"

"Then I say let's drown together instead o' freezing," said McEvoy.
"What say ye, Eben?"

The poet started, and saw by his companion's grim smile that McEvoy had formed the question deliberately. For an instant he forgot the frightful cold: he was at table in Locket's, where the eyes of Ben Oliver, Dick Merriweather, Tom Trent, and Joan Toast had joined McEvoy's to render him immobile; again, as then, he felt the weight of choice devolve upon him, peg him out like a tan yard hide in all directions. It was a queer moment: he felt as must a seasoned Alpinist brought back to a crag whence he fell of old and barely survived; many another and more formidable he has scaled since without a tremor, but this one turns his blood to water. . .

With some effort, Ebenezer threw off the memory. "I say we try for the house. Wind and waves are behind us, and for better or worse we'll have done with't in an hour."

However chilling this final observation, it spurred them to action. They overturned the dinghy to empty the bilge, dragged it down to the water, and launched it. McEvoy's reasoning proved correct: the water standing in the bilge had kept the chine-and keelson-seams tight. At Ebenezer's suggestion, who had learned something of rowing from Burlingame, Bertrand and McEvoy each equipped himself with half of a shingle discovered on the beach, both to assist in freeing out the water they were certain to ship and to help prevent the little boat from broaching to in the following seas.

Though he truly cared little now for his own safety, the burden of responsibility weighed heavy on the poet's heart. He knew so little about what he was doing, and they carried out his suggestions, on which their lives depended, as if he were Captain Cairn! But however meager his seamanship, it was apparently superior to Bertrand's and McEvoy's. And however great the burden, it was no longer an unfamiliar one: he grappled with it calmly, as with an old, well-known opponent, and wondered whether his sensibility had perhaps of late been toughened like the hands of an apprentice mason, by frequent laceration.

"Methinks 'twere best the twain of you sit forward, to keep the stern high. If sculling fails us, we'll paddle like salvages."

They clambered aboard, shivering violently from their new wetting; Ebenezer was able to pole out a hundred yards or so through shoal water before it became necessary to fit his oar between the transom tholes and commence sculling. Fortunately, the first mile or so was in the lee of the island; the relative stillness of the water gave him opportunity to get the knack of pitching the blade properly for thrust without losing his oar. But soon the island was too far behind to shelter them: the hissing seas rolled in astern -- three, four, and five feet from trough to crest; as each overtook them the dinghy seemed to falter, intimidated, and then actually to be drawn backwards as if by undertow. Ebenezer would hold his breath -- surely they would be pooped! But at the last instant the stern would be flung high and the dinghy thrust forward on the crest; the scanty freeboard disappeared; water sluiced over both gunwales; Bertrand and McEvoy bailed madly to keep afloat. Then the sea rushed on, and the dinghy would seem to slide backwards into the maw of the one behind. Each wave was a fresh terror; it seemed unthinkable that they should survive it, and even more that managing by some miracle to do so earned them not a second's respite. The helmsman's job was especially arduous and tricky: though the net motion of the dinghy was actually always forward, the approach of each new sea had the effect of sternway; instead of sculling, Ebenezer would be obliged to use the oar for a rudder to keep the boat from broaching to, and moreover would have to steer backwards, since the water was moving faster than the boat. Only at the crest could he scull for a stroke or two -- but not a moment too long, or the dinghy would yaw in the next trough. The men were rapidly demoralized past speech; they toiled as if possessed, and when the moon broke the scud it lit three shocked faces staring wide-eyed at the monster overtaking them.

To turn back was out of the question, since even if some god should turn them around, they could make no windward headway. Yet after what seemed an hour of frantic labor and hairsbreadth escapes -- perhaps actually no more than twenty minutes -- the light ahead appeared no closer than before. What was worse, it seemed to have moved distinctly northward. It was Bertrand who first observed this distressing fact, and it moved him to speak for the first time in many minutes.

"Dear Father! What if it's a ship, and there's no land for miles?"

McEvoy offered an alternative hypothesis. "Belike the wind hath swung round a bit to the northwest. We may have to hike a few miles up the shore."

"There's e'en a happier possibility," Ebenezer said. "I scarce dare hope -- But stay! Do you hear a sound?"

They paused in their work to listen and were nearly taken under by the next wave.

"Aye, 'tis a surf!" Ebenezer cried joyously. "Neither we nor the light have changed course; 'tis that we're almost upon it!" What he wanted to explain was that though from the island they had steered as directly for the light as they were able, their actual course was somewhat to the south of it; from four or five miles distance the error (perhaps a few hundred feet) had been too small to notice, but as they drew very near, the angle between their course and the light tended to increase towards ninety degrees. Before he could elaborate, however, a wave greater than usual tossed the stern high and to larboard and lifted the oar from its tholes.

"She's broaching to!" he warned.

The others paddled to no purpose with their shingles. Ebenezer slammed the oar back between the pins and attempted to bring the stern into the seas by putting the "tiller" end hard over to larboard, as he had grown used to doing under sternway. But his action was out of phase, for the crest had passed and left the dinghy momentarily wayless in the trough: the motion of the oar was in fact a sculling stroke, and had the effect of bringing the stern even farther around. The next wave struck them fair on the starboard quarter, broached them to, and filled the boat ankle deep with water; the one after that, a whitecapped five-footer, took them square abeam, and they were flailing once more in the icy Chesapeake. This time, however, their ordeal was brief: their feet struck seaweed and mud at once, and they found themselves less than a dozen yards from shore. They scrambled in, knocked down time and again by the hip-high breakers, and gained the beach at last, scarcely able to stand.

"We must make haste!" McEvoy gasped. "We may freeze yet!"

As fast as they could manage, stumbling and panting, they moved up the shore towards their beacon, now plainly recognizable as the lighted windows of a good-sized house. Not far from it, where the beach met the lawn of the house, stood a tall loblolly pine, at the foot of which they saw a conspicuous white object, like a large vertical stone. Ebenezer's hackles tingled. "Ah God!" he cried and summoned the last of his strength to sprint forward and embrace the grave. The feeble moon sufficed to show the inscription:

Anne Bowyer Cooke

b. 1645 d. 1666

Thus Far Hath the Lord

Helped Us.

The others came up behind. "What is it?"

Ebenezer would not turn his head. "My journey's done," he wept. "I have come full circle. Yonder's Malden; go and save yourselves."

Astonished, they read the gravestone, and when entreaty proved vain, they lifted Ebenezer by main strength from the grave. Once upon his feet, he offered them no resistance, but the last of his spirit seemed gone.

"Had I ne'er been brought to birth," he said, pointing to the stone, "that woman were alive today, and my sister with her, and my father a gentleman sot-weed planter, and the three of them happy in yonder house."

Bertrand was too near freezing to offer a reply, if he had any, but McEvoy -- who likewise shook from head to foot with cold -- led the poet off by the arm and said, "Go to, 'tis like the sin o' Father Adam, that we all have on our heads; we ne'er asked for't, but there it is, and do we choose to live, why, we must needs live with't."

Ebenezer had been used to seeing Malden a-bustle with deplorable activity after dark, but now only the parlor appeared to be occupied; the rest of the house, as well as the grounds and outbuildings -- he peered with awful shame in the direction of the curing-house -- was dark and quiet. As they went up the empty lawn toward the front door, which faced south-westwards to the grave and the Bay beyond, McEvoy, as much to warm himself, no doubt, as to comfort Ebenezer, went on to declare through chattering teeth that the single light was a good sign: without question it meant that Andrew Cooke had put his house in order and was waiting with his daughter-in-law for news of his prodigal son. He would be overjoyed to see them; they would be clothed and fed, and alarms would be dispatched at once to Anne Arundel Town to intercept Long Ben Avery.

"Stay." Ebenezer shook his head. "Such fables hurt too much beside the truth."

McEvoy released his arm angrily. "Still the virgin," he cried, "with no thought for any wight's loss save his own! Run down and die on yonder grave!"

Ebenezer shook his head: he wanted to explain to his injured companion that he suffered not from his loss alone, but from McEvoy's as well, and Anna's, and Andrew's, and even Bertrand's -- from the general condition of things, in sum, for which he saw himself answerable -- and that the pain of loss, however great, was as nothing beside the pain of responsibility for it. The fallen suffer from Adam's fall, he wanted to explain; but in that knowledge -- which the Fall itself vouchsafed him -- how more must Adam have suffered! But he was too gripped by cold and despair to essay such philosophy.

They reached the house.

"We'd best have a look through the window ere we knock," Bertrand said. "I'Christ, what will Master Andrew say to me, that was sent to be your adviser!"

They went to the lighted window of the parlor, from which they heard the sounds of masculine laughter and conversation.

McEvoy got there first. "Some men at cards," he reported, and then a look of sudden pain came into his face. "Dear God! Can that be poor Joan?"

Bertrand hastened up beside him. "Aye, that's the swine-maid, and yonder's Master Andrew in the periwig, but --"

Now he too showed great distress. "God's blood and body, Master Eben! Tis Colonel Robotham!"

But Ebenezer was at the window sill by this time, and beheld for himself these wonders and others by far more marvelous. Joan Toast, so beridden and devoured by her afflictions that she looked a leprous Bedlamite, was hobbling with a pitcher of ale towards a green baize table in the center of the parlor, about whose circumference five gentlemen sat at cards: the lawyer, physician, and minister of the gospel Richard Sowter, who sucked on his pipe and called upon various saints to witness the wretched hand he was being dealt; the cooper (and dealer) William Smith, who smiled grandly at the table and with his pipestem directed Joan to fill Andrew Cooke's glass; Bertrand's portly, sanguine father-in-law from Talbot County, Colonel George Robotham, who seemed preoccupied with something quite other than lanterloo; Andrew Cooke himself, grown thinner and older-looking since Ebenezer had seen him last, but more sharp-eyed than ever, grasping his cards in his good left hand and glancing like an old eagle at the others, as if they were not his adversaries but his prey; and finally, most appalling of all, at Andrew's withered right arm, joking as merrily over his cards as if he were back in Locket's -- Henry Burlingame, still in the character he called Nicholas Lowe of Talbot!

"Very well, gentlemen," the cooper declared, having dealt four hands. "I share the fortunes of Mr. Sowter, I believe."

"Put it the other way about," Burlingame remarked, "and there'll be more truth than poetry in't when we get to court."

Sowter shook his head in mock despair. "St. Dominic's sparrow, neighbors! If our case were half as feeble as this miscarriage, we'd get no farther than the courthouse jakes with't, I swear!"

"As we all know ye shan't in any case," Burlingame taunted amiably, "inasmuch as the only
real
case to argue is the size of your bribe."

"Ah, lads, go to," said Andrew Cooke. "This talk of bribes and miscarriages alarms the Colonel!" He smiled sardonically at Colonel Robotham. "Do forgive my son his over-earnestness, George: 'tis a famous failing of the lad's, as I daresay your daughter hath remarked."

Outside the window, Bertrand gasped. "D'ye hear that, Master Eben? He called that wight his son! An entire stranger!"

"There's something amiss," McEvoy agreed, "but they all seem peaceable enough." Without more ado he began to rap on the windowpanes.
"Hallo! Hallo!
Let us in or we're dead men!"

"Nay, i'Christ!" cried Bertrand, but he was too late; the startled players turned towards the window.

"Januarius's bubbling blood!"

"Look to't, Susan," the cooper ordered calmly, and Joan Toast set her pitcher on the sideboard.

"Ebenezer, my boy," said Andrew Cooke, "fetch thy pistol." Burlingame laid his cards face down on the baize and went to do as he was bid.

Joan Toast opened the door and thrust out a lantern. "Who is't?" she called listlessly.

"Run!" muttered Bertrand, and lit out across the lawn.

McEvoy drew back from the window and bit his underlip nervously. "What say ye, Eben?" he whispered. "Hadn't we best run for't?"

But the poet neither moved nor made reply, for the reason that at first sight of the strange assemblage in the parlor he had been dumfounded, brought back (or around, as the case may be) to that vulnerable condition of his youth which the cuisses of virginity, the cuirass of his laureateship, were donned to shield; and when in addition he had witnessed his father addressing Burlingame -- incredibly! -- as "my son" and "Ebenezer," he had been frozen on the instant where he stood, not by the Bay wind but by the same black breeze that thrice before -- in Magdalene College, in Locket's, and in his room in Pudding Lane -- had sighed from the Pit to ice his bones.

"Who is't?" Joan repeated.

McEvoy stepped from behind Ebenezer so that the light from the parlor window illumined his face.

" 'Tis I, Joan Toast," he said uncertainly. " 'Tis Eben Cooke and John McEvoy. . ."

Joan made a sound and clutched at the doorjamb; the lantern slipped to the ground and was extinguished. A man's voice came from the vestibule behind her. "What the Devil!"

"Haply we'd better flee, after all," McEvoy suggested. But Ebenezer, no longer even shivering, stood transfixed in his original position.