The stream of foam, that the Secret, Gray’s ship, left astern, drew a white line across the ocean and faded in the bright evening illumination of Liss. The ship was anchored not far from the lighthouse.
For ten days the Secret crew unshipped tussore silk, coffee and tea. The eleventh day was spent on the shore in relaxation and fumes of wine. On the twelfth day Gray felt an obscure melancholy without the slightest cause and he could not explain it to himself.
It was still in the morning, as he just woke up, when he already felt that the day had broken in the worst light. He dressed dismally, ate his breakfast without appetite, forgot to look through his newspaper and smoked for a long time. He was plunged in the inexpressible world of a pointless strain of his feelings. His unrecognized desires rambled among words, arising vaguely and destroying one another by equal effort. Then he busied himself with his job.
Gray accompanied by the boatswain inspected the ship and ordered the shrouds tightened, the steering rope loosened, the kluises cleaned, the jib changed, the deck tarred, the compass cleaned, the hold opened, ventilated and swept. But Gray’s job failed to distract him. Wholly concentrating his anxious attention on the dreariness of the day, he ran through it irritably and mournfully. It seemed as if somebody had called him, but he had forgotten who it had been and where he had invited him to go.
Towards evening he seated himself in his cabin, took a book and objected to the author for a long time, making marginal notes of paradoxical nature. That game, that dialogue with the man who seemed to speak to him out of his grave, amused him for some time. Then he took his pipe and got lost in blue smoke, living among the phantasmal arabesques that arose in its unsteady puffs.
Tobacco is extremely mighty. Oil poured out into a break in galloping waves pacifies their fury. Tobacco has the same effect. It mollifies disturbed feelings, making them several tones lower, so they sound more smoothly and harmoniously. That was why Gray’s melancholy, after he had smoked three pipes, finally lost its offensive effect and turned into a meditative absent-mindedness. Such a state lasted for about an hour more. When the mist of his emotions had cleared away, Gray came to himself, felt like moving and went out on the deck. It was the dead of night. The black water dreaming overboard reflected the slumbering stars and the lights of the mast lamps. The air, as warm as a cheek, smelt of the sea. Gray raised his head and screwed up his eyes looking at the golden coal of a star. In a moment the sparkling needle of a distant planet penetrated into his eyes through a prodigious number of miles. The hollow rumble of the night town reached his ears from the heart of the bay. At times the wind and the sensitive water carried a phrase from the shore that sounded as if it had been said on the deck. Having been heard distinctly it died away in the squeaking of the rigging. On the forecastle a match flashed out, lighting up somebody’s fingers, round eyes and moustache. Gray gave a whistle. The light of a tobacco-pipe moved and floated towards him. Shortly after in the darkness the captain made out the hands and face of the watchman.
“Go and tell Wingy,” Gray said, “that he will go with me. Let him take fishing-rods.”
He came down into the sloop where he waited for about ten minutes. Wingy, an agile and roguish fellow, passed the oars to Gray, banging them against the side. Then he came down himself, adjusted the rowlocks and thrust a bag of provisions into the stern of the sloop. Gray took the helm.
“Where am I to row, captain?” Wingy asked, turning the boat with the right oar.
The captain kept silent. The sailor knew that one should not put in a word into that sort of silence. And so he fell silent himself and began to row with force.
Gray headed for the open sea, then he kept close to the left shore. He did not care where he boated. The helm murmured indistinctly. The oars tinkled and splashed. Everything else was sea and silence.
During a day a person listens to such a great number of thoughts, impressions, talks and words, that all that could make up more than one thick volume. The face of a day assumes a certain expression. But that day Gray peered into its face in vain. In its dim features there was one of those feelings that are great in number but nameless. However you call them, they remain beyond words and even notions for ever, like a hypnotic effect of an aroma. Gray was swayed by that sort of feeling. True, he could say: “I am waiting for something, I am looking for something, I shall get to know something soon...” But even those words were equivalent to no more than separate drawings compared with an architectural project. There was something else in those tendencies of his spirit: it was the power of some bright agitation.
On the left, where they were boating, a wavy thickening darkness of the seacoast showed through. Sparks from chimneys floated in the air above windows, which reflected their red light. That was Kaperna. Gray heard squabbling and barking. The lights of the village resembled a stove door burnt through and dotted with little holes, through which one could see the burning coal. On the right there was the ocean, as distinct, as the presence of a sleeping man. Having passed Kaperna, Gray turned the boat towards the shore. The waves broke quietly there. He lit his lantern and saw hollows of a brink and its upper overhanging ledges. He liked that place.
“We’ll fish here,” Gray said tapping the rower on the shoulder.
The sailor hemmed indefinitely.
“This is the first time I’ve ever sailed with a captain like him,” he muttered to himself. “The captain is worth-while, but unlike anybody else. He’s a puzzling captain. I like him anyway.”
Having driven the oar in the silt, he tied the boat to it and they both climbed up clambering over stones, which dropped from under their knees and elbows. A thicket stretched away from the brink. There was a sound of an axe cutting down a dry trunk. Having felled the tree, Wingy laid a fire on the brink. Shadows and the flame reflected in the water began to flicker. Grass and branches were lit up in the darkness, which stepped back. The air, intertwined with smoke, trembled and sparkled above the bonfire.
Gray sat down by the fire.
“Now then,” he said offering a bottle, “drink, my friend Wingy, all teetotallers’ health. By the way, you’ve brought ginger vodka instead of cinchona one.”
“I am sorry, captain,” the sailor answered, taking breath. “Do you mind if I have a bit of this?..” He bit off half of a chicken at one go, took a wingbone out of his mouth and went on: “I know, you prefer cinchona vodka. But it was dark and I was in a hurry. Ginger, you see, embitters a man. When I feel like fighting, I drink ginger one.”
While the captain was eating and drinking, the sailor looked askance at him. Finally he could not help inquiring: “Is it true that you are said to be a nobleman by birth?”
“It is not interesting, Wingy. Take a rod and fish if you like.”
“And what about you?”
“Me? I don’t know. Perhaps. But... later on.”
Wingy unwound the fishing-line, making verses at the same time (he was a good hand at that to the great admiration of the crew): “Once I made a fishing-tackle when I took a thin long switch, fit a line, and fixed an angle, and went fishing to the beach.” Then he fumbled in the worm can with his finger and continued: “This worm wandered in the ground and was happy with its fate. It was lucky to be found and a sheat will take the bait.”
At last he went away singing: “Sturgeons, herrings, thrill with horror while the night is young and still. You’ll be eaten till tomorrow, – Wingy’s angling from the hill!”
Gray lay down by the fire, looking at the flame reflected in the water. He was thinking, without making any efforts to direct his thoughts. In that sort of state a person, looking absent-mindedly at everything that happens around, realizes it vaguely. His thoughts rush like a horse when it tears through a packed crowd of people, pressing, pushing them apart and making them stop. In turn they are accompanied by emptiness, disarray and restraint. They ramble in the heart of things. They hurry on from strong excitement to some secret hints. They whirl along the earth and the sky, talk to imaginary persons, as if they were real, suppress or colour recollections. All is vivid and prominent in this cloudy motion and all is incoherent like a delirium. And the relaxed consciousness often brightens, seeing, for instance, an utterly irrelevant image, such as some small twig broken two years ago, suddenly, like a guest, breaking into reflection on destiny. That was Gray’s state of mind while he lay by the fire; meanwhile he was “somewhere else”, not there.
His elbow, on which he leaned, supporting his head with his arm, had become wet and numb. The stars shone dimly. The darkness intensified with an effort that preceded dawn. The captain began to fall asleep but he did not notice that. He felt like having a drink and stretched his hand for the bag, untying it already in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming. The next two hours seemed to last no longer than the few seconds, during which Gray put his head down on his arms. During that time Wingy came to the bonfire twice. He smoked and peeped with curiosity into the mouths of the fish he had caught, wondering what was there. But it goes without saying, there was nothing there.
Having woken up, Gray forgot for a moment how he had got to that place. With amazement he saw the happy splendour of the morning, the brink among bright branches and the glittering dark blue distance. Over the horizon and at the same time over his feet there were the leaves of a nut-tree. The quiet surf rustled below the brink, as though it were just at Gray’s back. Flashing for a moment, a drop of dew fell down from a leaf and its cold plop spread over his sleepy face. He rose to his feet. There was triumph of light everywhere. The dying embers of the fire struggled for life in a thin puff of smoke. Its smell added a charm of wildness to the scent of wood greenery, which he breathed in with pleasure.
Wingy was not there. He had been carried away. Dripping with sweat, he was angling with the enthusiasm of a gambler. Gray went out of the thicket into the shrubbery scattered down the hill. The grass steamed and sparkled. The wet flowers looked like children washed by force with cold water. The green world breathed with its innumerable quantity of tiny mouths, making it difficult for Gray to pass through its exultant density. The captain got out to an open spot overgrown with mixed herbs and there he saw a sleeping young girl.
He drew aside a branch gently with his hand and stood still with a feeling of a dangerous discovery. No further than five steps away there was tired Asoule curled up, with one leg tucked up and the other stretched out, with her head on her arms bent comfortably. Her hair was in slight disorder. The button at her neck had come undone, uncovering a white hollow. Her skirt spread out, baring her knees. Her eyelashes slept on her cheek in the shade of her tender rounded temple half-covered with a dark lock. The little finger of her right hand, which was under her head, was slightly bent. Gray squatted down, peering into the girl’s face from below and not suspecting himself to look like a faun from the picture by Arnold Boecklin.
Perhaps under other circumstances that girl would have been noticed by him only with his eyes, but then he saw her in other way. Everything moved, everything smiled in him. Of course, he knew neither her, nor her name. All the more he could not know why she had fallen asleep on the shore. But he was pleased with all that very much. He liked pictures without explanations or inscriptions. The effect of such a picture is far stronger. Its image, not connected with words, becomes boundless, confirming all conjectures and thoughts.
The shade of the leafage stole up closer to the trunks while Gray had been still sitting in the same uncomfortable position. All was asleep in the girl: her dark hair slept, her dress and its folds slept too. Even the grass around her seemed to doze off out of sympathy. When the impression became complete, Gray went into its warm wave, coming to his soul, and it carried him away. Wingy had long since called out: “Captain, where are you?” But the captain did not hear him.
When at last he stood up, his disposition to the extraordinary took him by surprise with resolution and inspiration of an irritated woman. Yielding to it thoughtfully, he took an old precious ring off his finger. He reflected, not without reason, on the fact, that doing so he might prompt something, as fundamental as orthography, to his life. He put the ring carefully on her little finger, which showed up white from under the back of her head. The finger moved impatiently and drooped. After giving one more glance at that sleeping face, Gray turned and saw the sailor, who stood in the shrubs with his eyebrows raised high up. Wingy, open-mouthed, was looking at Gray’s actions with the same astonishment as Jonah must have displayed looking at the jaws of his “furnished” whale.
“Ah, it’s you, Wingy!” Gray said. “Just look at her. Well, isn’t she beautiful?”
“This is a marvellous work of art!” the sailor, who liked bookish expressions, exclaimed in a whisper. “There is something prepossessing in consideration of the circumstances. I caught four sea-eels and something else as round as a baloon.”
“Hush, Wingy. Let’s get away from here.”
They moved off into the shrubbery. Then they ought to turn to the boat, but Gray hesitated, examining the distant low coast where the morning smoke of Kaperna chimneys flew over the greenery and the sand. In the smoke he seemed to see the girl again.
Then he turned decidedly in that direction and went down along the slope. The sailor followed him without inquiring what the matter was. He felt that it was time for obligatory silence again. They were already near the first buildings when Gray suddenly asked: “Could you determine, Wingy, with your experienced eye, where there is a tavern here?”
“It’s probably that black roof over there,” Wingy made up his mind. “Maybe it is not, though.”
“What on earth is so remarkable about this roof?”
“I don’t really know, captain. It’s nothing more than the voice of my heart.”
They came up to the house. Indeed, that was Menners’ tavern. Through the open window one could see a bottle on the table. Next to it somebody’s dirty hand was twirling wet half grey moustache.
Though it was an early hour, three men had settled down in the main room of the little tavern. By the window there was a coal-heaver, the owner of the “drunk” moustache that we have already noticed. Between the snack bar and the inner door of the room there were two fishermen sitting at fried eggs and beer. Menners, a lank young fellow with a dull freckled face and the particular expression of cunning smartness in his weak-sighted eyes that is so characteristic of tradesmen in general, was wiping dishes behind the counter. The sun drew the window-sash on the dirty floor.
Gray had scarcely entered the zone of smoky light, when Menners, bowing respectfully, went out of his barrier. He recognized a real captain, a sort of guest rarely seen by him, in Gray right away. Gray ordered rum. Having covered a table with a cloth turned yellow in human bustle, Menners brought a bottle after licking and sticking back the tip of the label. Then he came back behind the counter, casting his attentive glance first at Gray and then at the plate he was scraping with his nail.
While Wingy, with a glass clasped in both his hands, had his modest confidential talk with it, looking out of the window from time to time, Gray beckoned Menners. Hin seated himself on the edge of a chair complacently, flattered by the address, just because it was expressed with a simple beckon of Gray’s finger.
“You are sure to know all the villagers living here,” Gray said calmly. “I’d like to know the name of a young girl wearing a kerchief and a dress in little pink flowers, with light brown hair, not very tall, aged from seventeen to twenty. I met her not far from here. What is her name?”
He said that with the firm simplicity of power that did not let an interlocutor get out of replying in the same tone. Inwardly Hin Menners began to fuss about and even slightly grinned to himself, but outwardly he had to submit to the manner he was addressed. Still he paused for a while before answering, only for his vain desire to guess what the matter was.
“H’m,” he said, lifting his eyes up to the ceiling. “It’s probably “Asoule – Sail Ho!”, nobody else but her. She is half-witted.”
“Really?” Gray said indifferently, taking a gulp of rum. “How has it happened?”
“I’ll tell you, if you wish!” And Hin told Gray, how about seven years before the little girl had talked with the collector of folk-songs on the seashore. To be sure, the story, since the beggar set it in circulation in that very tavern, had turned into a gross trivial gossip, but its essence remained pure. “Since then they call her like this,” Menners concluded. “Asoule – Sail Ho!” – that’s how they call her.”
Gray cast a glance automatically at Wingy, who remained quiet and modest, and then he turned his eyes towards the dusty road, that lay by the tavern. He felt as if he were hit in his heart and in his head at the same time. That very “Asoul – Sail Ho!”, about whom Menners had just spoken in a clinical way, was walking, with her face to him, along the road. Her striking features, which resembled a mystery of simple but indelibly exciting words, appeared before him then in the light of her eyes. The sailor and Menners sat with their backs to the window, and to prevent them from turning by chance, Gray mustered up all his courage and shifted his gaze to Hin’s reddish-brown eyes. As soon as he saw Asoule’s eyes, all the effect of Menners’ stagnant story was dispelled.
Meanwhile Hin, suspecting nothing, went on: “I can also inform you that her father is an out-and-out scoundrel. He drowned my dear father as nothing but a kitten, God forgive. He...”
He was interrupted by a sudden wild roar from behind. Rolling his eyes frightfully, the coal-heaver, shook off his torpidity of intoxication and suddenly burst into a song so fiercely that it made everybody start:
“Basket-maker, basket-maker,
Fleece us for your baskets!..”
“You’ve got a load on again, you cursed whale-boat!” Menners shouted. “Get out of here!”
“... But mind you don’t cross our path
For you’re a thorough bastard!”
The coal-heaver howled out and the next moment, as if nothing had happened, dipped his moustache in his glass, spilling some of his drink.
Hin Menners shrugged his shoulders indignantly.
“He’s nothing but a rotter,” he said with expressive self-respect of a miser. “Every time it’s the same old story!”
“Have you got anything else to tell me?” Gray asked.
“Me, eh? That’s what I’ve been telling you: her father is a scoundrel. Because of him, your Worship, I became an orphan and since my infancy had to earn my miserable living on my own...”
“You are a liar,” the coal-heaver said unexpectedly. “You’ve been lying so infamously and falsely that I’ve got sober.” Before Hin had time to open his mouth, the coal-heaver turned to Gray: “He’s a liar. His father was a liar too. And so was his mother. They are just this sort of people. Don’t worry: she is as sane as you and I. I’ve talked to her. She sat on my cart eighty-four times or maybe a little less. When a girl walks back from town and I have sold my charcoal, I am sure to give a lift to the girl. Let her be seated. I say that she has bright spirit. It is clear straight away. Of course, she wouldn’t say even a couple of words to you, Hin Menners. But working in my free coal trade, sir, I despise gossip and rumours. She talks as a grown-up, but her way of talking is queer enough. You listen to her – and it seems to be just the same as we might have said, while it’s not quite the same, though. Well, for instance, once our talk turned to her craft. – “This is what I’ll tell you,” she said, holding on to my shoulder like a fly holds on to a bell tower. “My work is not boring, only I always want to think of something special. I’d like to manage somehow,” she said, “so that my toy boat may seem to sail by itself on its stand, while the rowers may seem to row as real ones. Then they are expected to pull in to the shore, cast the mooring line and, as if they were real, seat themselves on the beach and get a bite in a proper fashion.” Well, I burst out laughing. That is to say, I found it funny. I said: “Well, Asoule, your work is of that peculiar sort, you see, and so is your way of thinking. But look around: everybody works tooth and nail.” – “No,” she said, “I know what I know. When a fisherman goes fishing, he believes, that he will catch a big fish, which nobody has ever caught.” – “Well, and what about me?” – “You?” she laughed. “When you fill your basket with charcoal, you probably think, that it is about to break into bloom.” That’s what she said! To tell you the truth, at the same moment something possessed me to look at my empty basket and it struck me that the wickers were sprouting buds. Those buds broke, burst into full leaf all over the basket and disappeared. I even got sober a bit! And as for Hin Menners, he lies through his teeth. I know him!”
Considering the conversation to have turned into a direct insult, Menners looked daggers at the coal-heaver and retreated behind his counter, from where he inquired bitterly: “Would you like anything else?”
“No,” Gray said, taking out the money, “we are getting up and leaving. Wingy, you stay here, come back towards evening and keep it dark. Tell me whatever you can find out. Do you understand?”
“My dearest captain,” Wingy answered with certain familiarity caused by rum, “only a deaf man can fail to understand that.”
“Very well. Also keep in mind that under no circumstances you may come across you must either talk about me or even mention my name. Goodbye!”
Gray went out. Since that time the feeling of striking discoveries did not leave him already. It was one of those states, when suddenly one’s emotions collapse into pieces and a new sparkling fire shoots up from inside, like a spark shooting up from powder in Berthold’s* mortar. He was seized with spirit of immediate activity. He collected himself and composed his thoughts only when he got into the boat. Laughing, he stretched out his hand, with his palm up towards the burning sun, as he had done once in the wine cellar when he was a boy. Then he pushed off and began to row with speed in the direction of the harbour.
*Berthold Schwarz – one of the first inventors of gunpowder of the 15th century. (Translator’s note.)