It was a white morning hour. In the immense forest there was a light mist full of strange visions. An unknown hunter who had just left his camp was moving along the bank of the river. Its clear space shone in the gaps between the trees. But the diligent hunter did not come up to them. He was examining the fresh bear track that led to the mountains.
A sudden sound rang out among the trees with unexpected effect of some uneasy pursuit. It was a clarinet singing. A musician, having come out on the deck, played a fragment of a sorrowful, long-drawn-out reiterative tune. The sound trembled like a voice covering its grief. It grew louder, brightened up with melancholic modulation and stopped suddenly. A distant echo vaguely sang the same tune.
Having marked the track with a broken twig, the hunter made his way to the water. The mist had not cleared away yet. It faded the contours of a huge ship, turning towards the mouth of the river. Its furled sails came alive, hanging down in scallops, getting smoothed out and covering the masts with powerless screens of their great folds. Voices and footsteps were heard. The land breeze, trying to blow, lazily touched the sails. At last the heat of the sun produced the necessary effect. The force of the wind became stronger, dispelled the mist and ran down the yards, taking the shape of light scarlet sails full of rosy reflections. Tints of pink glided over the whiteness of the masts and the rigging. Everything was white except the spread, smoothly moving sails, which had the colour of deep joy.
The hunter, watching from the bank, rubbed his eyes for a long time until he made sure that he saw just what he thought he saw. The ship disappeared round the bend while he still kept standing and watching. Then he shrugged his shoulders silently and went on in search of his bear.
While the Secret sailed along the river-bed, Gray was at the wheel, not entrusting the helm to a sailor, as he was careful not to run aground. Panten sat nearby in a new cloth suit and a new shiny service cap. He was clean-shaven, meek and sulky. He still did not see any connection between the scarlet decoration and Gray’s direct aim.
“Now,” Gray said, “when my sails are glowing, the wind is fine and I have more happiness in my heart than an elephant has at the sight of a small roll, I will try to make you feel what I think, as I’ve promised in Liss. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not consider you a stupid or a stubborn man, not at all. You are a perfect seaman and that is worth much. But you, like most people, listen to the voices of all simple truths through a thick glass of life. They are calling you, but you do not hear. What I am doing exists as an old idea of the unrealizable beautiful, while it is essentially as realizable and possible as a country walk. Soon you will see the girl who cannot and should not get married any other way, except the one I am working out before your eyes.”
He told the seaman briefly the facts that we know well, and concluded his explanation like this: “You can see how closely fate, will and nature of characters are interwoven here. I am coming to her who is waiting and who can wait for me only. And I do not like anybody but her, perhaps just because thanks to her I have understood one simple truth. It consists in making so-called miracles with one’s own hands. When the main thing for a person is to get a five-copeck coin, he values so much, it’s easy to provide him with this coin. But when somebody’s soul conceals the seed of a flaming plant, a miracle, make this miracle for him, if you can. He will get a renewed soul and so will you. If a warden himself released a convict; if a multimillionaire presented a clerk with a villa, an operetta girl and a safe; and if a jockey held his horse back at least once for the sake of another horse which has no luck, then everybody would realize how pleasant and how inexpressibly wonderful it may be. But there are no less important miracles: a smile, joy, forgiveness as well as a necessary word said in time. To possess all that means to possess everything. As for me, our beginning, Asoule’s and mine, will remain for ever in the scarlet gleam of the sails created in the depth of my heart that knows what love is. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, captain.” Panten hemmed, wiping his moustache with a clean handkerchief folded thoroughly. “I’ve understood everything. You have moved me. What if I go down and ask Niks’ pardon for scolding him yesterday for the bucket he had dropped overboard. And I should give him some tobacco, as he lost his at cards.”
Before Gray, rather surprised at such a prompt practical result of his words, had time to say something, Panten already crashed down the ladder and heaved a sigh somewhere in the distance. Gray turned back to look upward. The scarlet sails were silently flying overhead. The sun was shining through the purple haze of their seams. Moving away from the shore, the Secret was sailing to the open sea. There were no doubts whatever in Gray’s sounding soul: there were neither indistinct strokes of anxiety nor fuss of small concerns. He longed for his delightful aim as calmly as a sail longed for wind. He was full of thoughts that passed ahead of words.
Towards noon a puff of smoke of a war cruiser came in sight on the horizon. The cruiser changed its course and at a half a mile’s distance hoisted a signal flag “Heave to!”
“My boys,” Gray said to the sailors, “Don’t worry, we’ll not be fired upon. They simply cannot believe their eyes.”
He ordered to heave to. Shouting like hell, Panten steered the Secret leeward. The ship came to a stop while a steam-launch with a crew and a white-gloved lieutenant darted from the cruiser. Having set foot on the deck, the lieutenant looked about in amazement and passed with Gray into his cabin. An hour later he went out, waved his hand in a strange way and, smiling as if he had got a promotion, made his way back to the blue cruiser. Obviously that time Gray had succeeded more than with simple-hearted Panten, as the cruiser waited a little and fired a powerful salvo of salute into the horizon. Its violent puff of smoke pierced the air in huge sparkling balls and dispersed in scraps over the still water. For the rest of the day a certain half-festive stupefaction reigned on board the cruiser. The atmosphere was not right for service, confused under the badge of love which was being discussed everywhere, from the saloon to the engine-room. Thus the sentry of the mine compartment asked the sailor passing by: “Tom, how did you get married?” – “I caught her by the skirt when she was about to jump out of the window to get away from me,” Tom said and proudly turned up the end of his moustache.
For some time the Secret sailed on the open sea with no coast in sight. Towards noon a coast appeared in the distance. Gray took a spyglass and fixed his eyes on Kaperna. If it were not for the line of roofs he would make out Asoule sitting over a book by the window of one of the houses. She was reading. A greenish little beetle crawled across the page, pausing and raising itself on its forelegs every now and then with an independent and domestic air. It had already been blown off twice without vexation onto the window sill, from where it had come back again trustingly and freely, as if it wanted to tell her something. That time it succeeded in almost reaching the girl’s hand which held the corner of the page. There it stuck on the word “look”, paused in doubt, expecting another squall, and, actually, hardly evaded trouble, since Asoule had already exclaimed: “Here you are again, silly little beetle!..” and was about to blow her guest resolutely off into the grass. But suddenly her gaze shifted by chance from one roof to another and the gap between the houses revealed a dark blue strip of the sea and a white ship with scarlet sails.
She started, leant back and froze. Then she jumped up sharply, with her heart sinking from a dizzy height, bursting into irrepressible tears of an inspired shock. Meantime the Secret was doubling a small cape, keeping close to the shore at an angle with its port side. Low music poured out into the blue day from the white deck beneath the flames of scarlet silk. It was the music of some rhythmical modulations reproduced not quite well with the well-known words: “Let’s fill our goblets, my old friends, and drink to the glory of love...” There was exultant excitement spreading and roaring in its simple tune.
Not remembering how she had left the house, Asoule, caught up by the irresistible wind of the events, already ran towards the sea. At the first corner she stopped, almost unable to go further. She became weak in the knees, her breathing broke and grew faint, her consciousness hung by a thread. Being beside herself with fear of loosing her will, she stamped her foot and pulled herself together. Sometimes a roof or a fence hid the scarlet sails from her view. Then, fearing they might disappear like a mere phantom, she hurried to pass the annoying obstacle and, catching sight of the ship again, stopped to take breath with relief.
Meanwhile there was such confusion, such agitation and such general disturbance in Kaperna that their effect could be compared with the well-known earthquakes. A big ship had never come up to that coast before. And the ship had the very sails that had been mentioned as a mockery. They were glowing clearly and indisputably, innocently disproving all the laws of objective reality and common sense. Men, women and children rushed to the shore in a hurry, whatever they were dressed in. The villagers called to one another from yard to yard, ran into one another, yelled and fell. Soon a crowd formed by the water and into that crowd Asoule ran headlong.
While she was not there, her name was passed on amidst people in nervous, sullen alarm and malicious fright. The men talked more. The dumbfounded women sobbed in constrained voices with a snakelike hissing. But if only one of them started jabbering, the venom rushed to their heads. The moment Asoule appeared, everybody fell into silence and stepped aside from her in awe. And there she stood alone in the emptiness of the hot sand – embarrassed, ashamed, happy, with her cheeks no less scarlet than her miracle, helplessly reaching out her arms towards the lofty ship.
A boat full of sunburnt rowers sailed from it. Among them there was the one whom, as it seemed to her then, she had known and dimly remembered since her childhood. He looked at her with a smile which inspired her and drove her on. But Asoule was seized by thousands of last absurd fears. Being mortally afraid of everything – a mistake, a misunderstanding, a mysterious and harmful obstacle – she ran waist-deep into the warm heaving waves, shouting: “I am here, I am here! It’s me!”
Then Zimmer waved his fiddlestick – and the same melody burst out and struck on the nerves of the crowd, but that time in a full, triumphant chorus. Because of her agitation, the motion of the clowds and the waves, the glitter of the water and the distance, the girl already could hardly make out what was moving: she, the ship or the boat. Everything was moving, whirling and falling.
An oar splashed all of a sudden near her. She raised her head. Gray bent down and she grasped at his waist. Asoule blinked. Then she quickly opened her eyes, smiled freely at his radiant face and said breathlessly: “You’re exactly as I thought”.
“And so are you, my sweetheart,” Gray said, pulling his wet treasure out of the water. “You see, I have come. Do you recognize me?”
She nodded assent, holding on to his waist, with a renovated soul and her eyes closed tight with trepidation. There was a fluffy kitten of happiness inside her. When Asoule ventured to open her eyes, the rocking boat, the sparkling waves, the approaching side of the Secret turning massively – all seemed to be a dream. Light and water rocked and whirled in it like reflections of sunbeams playing on the wall bathed in streams of light. She could not remember how she, held in Gray’s strong arms, climbed up the ladder. The deck, covered and decorated with carpets, all in scarlet splashes of the sails, looked like a heavenly garden. Soon Asoule saw herself standing in a cabin that seemed to be the best room she could ever imagine.
Then the powerful music threw itself anew from above, shaking hearts and burying them into its exultant cry. Once again Asoule closed her eyes, fearing that if she kept on looking all that could disappear. Gray took her hands, and knowing already where she could safely go, she hid her face, wet with tears, on the breast of the friend who had arrived so magically. Carefully, but with a smile, shaken and astonished himself by the fact that the precious minute, which was beyond expression and comprehension, had come, Gray raised the face, that he had dreamt of long long ago, by her chin. At last the girl’s eyes opened wide. In them there was all that was the very best of a human being.
“Will you take my Longren with us?” she asked.
“Yes, I will.” And he kissed her so warmly after his iron “yes” that she laughed.
Now let us leave them alone, as we know that they need to be in private. There are many words in different languages and dialects. But even all of them cannot express, at least approximately, what they said to one another that day.
Meanwhile the whole of the crew had already gathered on the deck, at the mainmast, around the worm-eaten barrel with its bottom knocked out, revealing the centenary dark blessed liquid. Atwood was standing. Panten was sitting ceremoniously, beaming as if he celebrated his birthday. Gray came up on the deck, gave the signal to the orchestra and took off his service cap. He was the first to draw the sacred wine with his cut-glass tumbler to the strains of the golden trumpets.
“Well...” he said when he finished drinking and threw the tumbler down. “Now drink, everybody drink! Those who don’t drink are not my friends any more.”
He did not have to repeat his words. While the Secret moved away at full speed and in full sail from Kaperna, which was awe-stricken for ever, the crush around the barrel exceeded everything of that sort that could ever take place on great festive occasions.
“How did you like it?” Gray asked Wingy.
“Captain!” the sailor said, trying to find proper words. “I don’t know whether it liked me, but I must consider my impressions. It’s a hive and an orchard!”
“What?!”
“I mean that a hive of honey and an orchard seemed to have been stuffed into my mouth. I wish you happiness, captain. And may she, whom I would call the best “freight”, the best prize of the Secret, be happy too!”
When it was dawning the next day, the ship was a great distance away from Kaperna. Some of the crew were still lying on the deck, as they had fallen asleep, overcome by Gray’s wine. Those who kept on their legs were only the helmsman and the watch, and thoughtful, tipsy Zimmer, who was sitting in the stern-part with the finger-board of the cello at his chin. He sat, ran his bow slowly over the strings, making them talk in a magic, celestial voice, and thought about happiness...