Fate Knocks at the Door | Page 4

yeasty look. The changes were very rapid. Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often followed his gaze into the churning, blackening North.
A chill came into the deathly heat, but it was the cold of caverns, not of the vital open. The heat did not mix with it, but passed by in layers--a novel movement of the atmospheres. Had the coolness been clean and normal, the sailors would have sprung to the rigging to breathe it, and to bare their bodies to the rain--after two days of hell-pervading calm--but they only murmured now and fell to work.
An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in brilliant expectation.... In some hall-way when Bedient was a little boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been a long narrow pane of yellow-green glass over the front door. The light used to come through that in the afternoon and fill the hall and frighten him. It was so on deck now.
The voices of the sailors had that same unearthly quality as the light--ineffectual, remote. Out of the hold of the Truxton came a ghostly sigh. Bedient couldn't explain, unless it was some new and mighty strain upon the keel and ribs.
A moment more and the Destroyer itself was visible in the changing North. It was sharp-lined--a great wedge of absolute night--and from it, the last vestiges of day dropped back affrighted. And Bedient heard the voice of It; all that the human ear could respond to of the awful dissonances of storm; yet he knew there were ranges of sound above and below the human register--for they awed and preyed upon his soul.... He thought of some papers dear to him, and dropped below for them. The ship smelled old--as if the life were gone from her timbers.
Above once more, he saw a hideous turmoil in the black fabric--just wind--an avalanche of wind that gouged the sea, that could have shaken mountains.... The poor little Truxton stared into the End--a puppy cowering on the track of a train.
And then It struck. Bedient was sprawled upon the deck. Blood broke from his nostrils and ears; from the little veins in his eyes and forehead. Parts of his body turned black afterward from the mysterious pressure at this moment. He felt he was being born again into another world.... The core of that Thing made of wind smashed the _Truxton_--a smash of air. It was like a thick sodden cushion, large as a battle-ship--hurled out of the North. The men had to breathe it--that seething havoc which tried to twist their souls free. When passages to the lungs were opened, the dreadful compression of the air crushed through, tearing the membrane of throat and nostril.
Water now came over the ship in huge tumbling walls. Bedient slid over the deck, like a bar of soap from an overturned pail--clutching, torn loose, clutching again.... Then the Thing eased to a common hurricane such as men know. Gray flicked into the blackness, a corpse-gray sky, and the ocean seemed shaken in a bottle.
Laskars and Chinese, their faces and hands dripping red, were trying to get a boat overside when Bedient regained a sort of consciousness. The Truxton was wallowing underfoot--as one in the saddle feels the tendons of his mount give way after a race. The Captain helped a huge Chinese to hold the wheel. The sea was insane.... They got the boat over and tumbled in--a dozen men. A big sea broke them and the little boat like a basket of eggs against the side of the ship.
Another boat was put over and filled with men. Another sea flattened them out and carried the stains away on the surge. There were only nine men left and a small boat that would hold but seven. Bedient helped to make a rigging to launch this over the stern. He saw that the thing might be done if the small craft were not broken in two against the rudder.
The Captain made no movement, had no thought to join these stragglers. He was alone at the wheel, which played with his strength. His face was calm, but a little dazed. It did not occur to him other than to go down with his ship--the old tradition. The fatuousness of this appealed suddenly to Bedient. Carreras was his friend--the only other white man left. The two mates and boatswain had tried out the first two boats--eagerly.
Bedient ran to the wheel, tore the Captain from it and carried him in his arms toward the stern. A Chinese tried to knife him, but the man died, as if struck by a flying bit of tackle. Bedient recaptured the Captain,