Fate Knocks at the Door | Page 3

to touch the book again.
One reading had burned out his entire interest. It was not Life nor
Death nor Ocean, as he had seen them in ten solid years at sea. He had
given the book his every emotion, and discovered it gave nothing back;
but had shaken, terrified, played furious tarantellas upon his
feelings--and replenished naught. So he turned for unguent to his Book
of Books. Here was the strong steady light in contrast to which the
other was an "angled spar." True, here crawled hate, avarice, lust, flesh
and its myriad forms of death--not in their own elemental darkness--but
as scurrying vermin forms suddenly drenched with light.... There were
other and really wonderful books in Captain Carreras' chest--a bashful
welcome to his cabin, and such eager lending from the Captain himself!
This had become a pleasant feature in the young man's life--the queer
kindly heart of the Captain. There were few confidences between them,
but a fine unspoken regard, pleasing and permanent like the Carreras
perfume. Bedient's desire to show his gratitude and admiration was
expressed in ways that could not possibly shock the Captain's
delicacy--in the small excellences of his art, for instance. To say that
the boy was consummate in the limited way of a ship's cook does not
overstate his effectiveness. He did unheard-of things--even fruit and
berry-pies, from preserves two years, at least, remote from vine and
orchard. The two mates and boatswain, who also messed aft, bolted
without speech, but marvelled between meals. To these three, the
tension of the Captain's embarrassment became insupportable, beyond

four or five minutes; so that Carreras, a discriminating, though not a
valiant trencherman, was always the last to leave the table.
And once after a first supper at sea out of Singapore (there had been a
green salad, a fish baked whole, a cut of ham with new potatoes, and a
peach-preserve tart), the Captain put down his napkin and coffee-cup,
drank a liqueur, reached for his pipe and handkerchief, and suddenly
encountering the eyes of Andrew, who lit a flare for him, jerked up
decisively, as one encountering a crisis. His face became hectic, and the
desperate sentence he uttered was almost lost in the frantic clearing of
his throat:
"You're a very prime and wonderful chap, sir!"
Moreover, Bedient's arm had been pressed for an instant by the softest,
plumpest hand seaman ever carried. Coughing alarmingly in the first
fragrant cloud from his Latakia and Virginia leaf, the Captain beat forth
to recover himself on deck.
* * * * *
The Truxton was now six days out of Manila. For the past thirty-six
hours, she might as well have been sunk in pitch, for any progress she
made.... The ship's bell had just struck four. Bedient had finished
clearing away tiffin things, and stepped on deck. The planking was like
the galley-range he had left, and the fresh white paint of the three boats
raised in blisters. The sea had an ugly look, yellow-green and dead,
save where a shark's fin knifed the surface. The crew was lying forward
under the awnings--a fiend-tempered outfit of Laskars and Chinese.
Captain Carreras appeared on deck through the companion-way still
farther aft and nodded to Bedient. Then both men looked at the sky,
which was brassy above, but thickening in the North. It augmented
darkly and streakily--like a tub of water into which bluing is added
drop by drop.... A Chinese arose and tossed a handful of joss-tatters
into the still air. And now the voice of the Captain brought the rest of
the crew to its feet.
The China Sea can generate much deviltry to a square mile. The calm

of death and the burn of perdition are in its bosom. Cholera, glutted
with victims, steals to his couch in the China Sea; and since it is the
pool of a thousand unclean rivers, the sins of Asia find a hiding-place
there. It has ended for all time the voyages of brave mariners and
mighty ships, and become a vault for the cargoes, and a tomb for the
bones of men. The China Sea fostered the pirate, aided him in his
bloody ways, and dragged him down, riches and all. Bed of disease,
secret-place of the unclean, and graveyard of the seas; yet, this
yellow-breasted fiend, ancient in devil-lore, can smile innocently as a
child at the morning sun, and beguile the torrid stars to twinkling.
It was in this black heart that was first conceived the Tai Fung
(typhoon), and there the great wind has its being to-day, resting and
rising.
The Captain's eyes were deep in the North. Bedient's soul seemed to
sense the awful solemnity on the face of the waters. He was unable
afterward to describe his varying states of consciousness, from that