Fate Knocks at the Door | Page 4

first
moment. He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain
was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder was
brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged
appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the
Godivari--a thick, whipped, 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