Chapter I: On London River (2)

And thus among the Red Indians he became an eminent Fairyologist. Nobody else but an eminent Fairyologist would have been so utterly unpractical as to go hunting Fairies in the driest corners of the Great American Desert. Everybody knows that Fairies like a moist climate, superstitious inhabitants, and Mozart or Greig to play their own tunes.

In Death Valley he found no moisture at all, no people whatsoever, or any music except when the snakes played their rattles. There he became very thirsty, lonely, and frightened, so altogether miserable that one of the rattlesnakes gave him a bite just to cheer him up.

... And he came here to be the Chaplain in Fairyland. Here, you see, no matter how badly he preached--and he preached badly even for a clergyman--he could not possibly do any harm because nobody would ever take the slightest notice of what he said except when he was cross. Then the fountain chuckled.

He built his little adobe house beside the crooning spring, and that was all right until a female Griffin, eighteen feet long, became his lady companion for lessons in deportment. Whenever she was pleased she wagged her tail, and when she wagged her tail the house came down. That is why the new walls are unusually thick, and the inside so small that the Griffin has to wag her tail outside. She has got so far with her lessons that now she puts her paw before her crocodile mouth before she sneezes--and then the clergyman is not blown through the window.

She was out mousing when Storm paid his call. That is, the boy crept in on all fours while the Padre was busy writing his book, which nobody will ever read, on Fairyology. Storm got under the stool and tickled the Padre's bare ankles with a feather.

"Bless the mosquitos!" said the holy man, "and send them a nourishing maiden."

Storm tickled again, and the Padre stooped down to slap the mosquitos, saying "Pax vobiscum."

Storm laughed, the fountain chuckled, and the Padre looked under the stool.

"Hello!" said he. "That you?"

"No," answered Storm, "I'm not."

So of course as it wasn't he, the holy man went on with his writing.

Since Rain had warned him of his mother's death, Storm was uneasy, and in his dream-life frightened of being alone. So as the Padre could not be bothered with him he crept into a corner of the cabin, where it was nearly dark, to brood upon this matter of his mother's passing.

"When my meat-body," so ran his thought, "is tired out after a long day's work, and can't be rode any longer, I turns it in for a watch below. Sometimes I stays all night in my meat-body, and has funny mixed-up dreams, the ones which I remembers afterwards. Sometimes I gets out of the meat-body and comes straight into this here world which Rain calls Dreamland. I've got my dream-body for life in the dream-world--so that's all clear.

"But suppose my animal-body gets wore out, or dies, or happens to get killed, so as I'm drove out, and can't get in again--that's what they calls Death. It's bound to happen sooner or later, and it doesn't matter anyway. The animal body won't be needed any longer, and so it can be took away, and buried, or burned, or drowned, and there's an end of that.

"I've got this dream-body, which is just as solid, and comfy. It looks just the same, and is a deal more useful. If I've been good on earth I'll have a fine time in this dream-world. If I've been bad I'll have a rotten time, and it will serve me right. But as I've promised mother to be good, and means to be good always, there's nothing to be afraid of. So that's all clear.

"The next part ain't so clear. Rain knows all about everything, and she says this: On Earth and in Dreamland we have a job, one job, to grow a soul. That soul is another body made of thoughts and feelings. It's called the spiritual body. It may be made of good thoughts and good feelings like mother's, or of bad thoughts and bad feelings like father's. When it is grown up, and all ready to sail, it clears for the port where it belongs. It leaves this dream-body, crumbled away into dust or gas, and it goes to the place where it will be at home. It is spiritual. It goes to the home of bad people in Hell, until it learns to pray, or of good people in Heaven. Mother is going there, and I'm to be awful lonesome, because I can't go with her, and I can't follow her there until I've growed a spiritual body fit to be seen in Heaven by the angels.

"All that is what the Bible means, if we could only understand things better. It's what Religion means. Mother's a Christian, and Rain's a heathen, but whatever sort of lamp we has to light the way, it's the same voyage. If we're good it's fine weather, if we're bad it's storms, so if a fellow has any sense at all, he'll jolly well do his best.

"That seems to be all clear."

"Have you quite finished?" asked the Padre. To look more impressive, he put horn spectacles upon his thin, high nose, but in order to see he had to glance over the top of them as he turned to bend his vision upon Storm, like a reproachful rabbit surveying a rotten turnip. "Because," he said peevishly, "if you had any sense at all, you'd know that your loud thoughts disturb me at my work."

Storm had forgotten that here in Dreamland no thoughts can be hidden, but all are heard by everybody who listens.

"I wants to go with mother," he answered sadly. "I comes to you for help 'cause you're a parson."

"Can't be done," said the Padre. "You haven't got a spirit-body yet. You're busy growing one and so am I. That's what we're here for."

"I see."

"I wish I could," sighed the Padre, taking off his spectacles. "Ah! That's better. Well, young man, and how is your temporal body? Well, I hope?"

"It's having its watch below."

"I mislaid mine"--the Padre seemed to be very unhappy about it--"down in the southern desert. The eagles had it. Poor things! It was mere skin and bone, not enough food for a mouse. And yet I sat on a rock and watched them squabbling over it. Poor dears! I can't think how they manage to get a meal."

"Ahem!" There came an affected cough, "Ahem!" outside the doorway. "Ahem!" A colossal head appeared, like that of a crocodile, looked in, and filled the door place. A red rag of a tongue lolled out on the starboard side, while the port eye was cocked up, meekly appealing to the Padre.

"May I come in?"

"No!" said the Padre. "Go, Julia, and practice deportment, or catch mice."

"He called me Julia!" This with both eyes to heaven. Then the creature wriggled in a few feet farther, and holding one paw bashfully to her mouth, "Ahem! ahem! Deportment is so fatiguing, and as to mice, you know they are so small. Oh!" Her snuff blew Storm against the wall, and then she sniffed. "Ah! Do you know, I think I could sit up and take a little boy." She smacked her lips. "Come here, little boy! Come to its Julia, then."

"If she swallers this good little bo-hoy," said Storm, deriding her, "I'll wager my sheath knife makes tripe of her blanked guts."

"G-o-o-od 'ittle b-o-oy, then ... Goo-oo----"

"Julia, shut up," said the Padre. "Boys are out of season. Surely you must know there's an V in the month. For shame! Go away and powder your face."

The Griffin retreated sobbing. "Nobody loves me!" Sniff! "No-body loves me!"

"But all the same, young man," said the Padre, "if I were you, Storm, I'd disappear. You'd really better go and look after your mother. I think she may be needing you, at once."

Storm willed himself back to Earth, and he was there. He willed back to the after cabin of the barge, and he was there.

VII

Still in his dream, Storm stood in the after cabin. He saw his father held by evil men, struggling to escape, screaming for mercy. The curved wall of the cabin, the bulkhead forward shutting off the cargo hold, were like dark mist, form without substance, and through them and within obscene and awful beasts crowded the air, their red eyes gloating upon James Fright, who writhed and shrieked, trying to get back to his body. That body of his lay sprawled upon the table, face downwards, arms outstretched. Uncle Joey was riding father's body, his legs locked round the loins, his arms with a strangle hold about the throat, while he looked up at Storm as though disturbed by his coming.

"Hello! mammie's darling!" he jeered. "Come to see the fun? And then you'll go sneaking to mammie? Now you watch--all done by kindness. One--two--three! There!"

Uncle Joey entered the vacant body, and father, held by his captors, was shrieking blasphemies, calling Storm a coward because he did not come instantly to the rescue.

Storm was not concerned for his father's worries. He knew that Uncle Joey was returned from the dead to earth for no good purpose, that he was dangerous, and that his own mother lay there asleep, helpless at this demon's mercy. He sprang to the bunk to guard her, to save her, but when he looked at the sleeping body he breathed most fervent thanks to Heaven. Mother was away in Dreamland. Only her body lay there tenantless. Should he call her? Nay, not into mortal peril. He put forth the whole power of his will to keep his mother away, then turned to fight the demon.

Uncle Joey, clad in the stolen body, rose from the table stiffly, groping at the air, unable now to see the astral world, to descry Storm on guard beside the bunk, or James Fright struggling in the clutches of the men who held him, or the awful monsters of the Pit which crowded in upon the nightmare scene. Only he whipped the sheath knife from his belt and reeled across to the bunk where he saw Mrs. Fright asleep. Storm tried to seize Uncle Joey, but his arms clutched thin air. The re-embodied demon sprang straight through him as though through mist, and yelling exultation, shouting with laughter, he plunged the blade again and again into the woman's body. Storm could do nothing. Sick with horror, he leaned against the panels, but his arm went through them as though they were but mist.

Uncle Joey drew back, still laughing. "Can you hear?" he shouted. "Did ye see that, Brother James, as I done your vife in? You as brought me to the gallows! You as peached, and got me hanged. And do you think as 'ow you're going to get back into this yere body what I've stole? No! Damn you! No!"

He drove the knife straight at his own breast, the breast of the stolen body, struck bone, and lunged again between the ribs.

The rigor of death clutching the hand to the hilt, the body reeling towards the blow, the stained yellow eyeballs rolling up--that which had been the living earthly habitation of James Fright went crashing down.

And there was Uncle Joey, again discarnate, leering in Storm's face beside the bunk.

"'Ow's that, umpire? 'Ow's that, Mollycoddle? Hain't that a proper vengeance worth giving of one's life for? Hain't I got my own back for being hanged, and damned before my time?"

But while he spoke, the fear grew in his eyes, the dawning sense of a most awful doom, for the dense astral matter which encrusted his spiritual body was crumbling to dust.

Storm watched, appalled, for now the man stood naked, black as coal, but with a dull red glow of rage, of hate, demoniac, horrible, doomed to perdition in the act of murder. But rage changed to terror, for he was falling, falling down through space, lost in the bottomless abyss upon whose overhanging, rocky verge Storm knelt, forgetting his own peril in an agony of prayer for a fellow creature drawn shrieking down to Hell.

"Mother!" he screamed--"help!"

Across the illimitable deeps of space Storm saw a white light like a little star, grow nearer, brighter, human in form, gigantic in stature, shining like the sun, filling the whole night with radiance, blinding. He covered his face in awe in terrified reverence.

Beaten to earth by the tremendous rays, his eyes burned by the splendor, he dared to look at the Angel, and saw his mother at rest in the strong arms, sheltered against the breast.

Then he felt a hand extended over him; and a sense of blessedness, of divine love, soothed all his fears, gave him to rest, to sleep.

VIII

In the fore cabin Bill sat up dazed, haunted, terrified by the sense of something awful. He shoved the hatch aside, letting the starlight into the dark forecastle of the barge, then pulled on his boots, and scrambled up upon the white, dimly glittering frost of the deck. Stiff with cold, he flogged his arms about his body until his fingers tingled with pain, and stamped until he felt the blood returning into his numb feet. Then he went aft, and opened the cabin hatch. He took the flint and steel from his pocket, struck a brisk shower of sparks into the tinder, kindled a sulphur match, and held the blue light down. His mother lay in the bunk, stone dead. His father's body lay stretched on the deck, a bloody sheath knife clutched in the stiff right hand.

Now, of a sudden, the whole memory of the dream glowed in his brain, and ghastly pale, sweating at the palms of the hands, and at his neck, he realized the truth. He dared not go down into that place. Even as Rain had warned him, he knew that his mother was dead. Shuddering even at the touch of the woodwork which enclosed the tomb, he closed the hatchway, then found the dinghy's painter, hauled in, and dropped into the boat.

The flood tide swept him up the estuary, and the faint shadow of the barge melted away in the mist under the frosty starlight.

IX

Mr. James Watt, a canny Scots body, ye ken, was the man who changed the steam engine from a capricious plaything into a working servant of mankind. He did not believe in railway locomotives, but his marine engines were the pride and glory of Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of Birmingham. Mr. Fulton, of New York, bought one of them, you may remember, and used it to run a barge on Hudson River, the first to ply with passengers, they say. Mr. Watt did not live to see the little brigantine _Beaver_ engined at Blackwall yard in 1835, but that was as good a job as any done by the famous firm. The boiler had a steam pressure of seven pounds, and when in later years it rusted through, the engineer would plug the holes with a pointed stick and a rag. And yet that engine lasted and worked well for fifty-two years, until the warship became a neglected tug and in 1889 was cast away in the cliffs of Stanley Park within the city limits of Vancouver in British Columbia.

The _Beaver's_ registered tonnage was 110, so her size was that of a second-rate wooden steam trawler in our modern fishing. She carried four brass six-pounder guns, each small enough for a man to lift by the trunnions. When she had business with savage tribes, to trade with them or bombard their villages, she set out boarding nettings, so she could not be rushed. The crew numbered thirty, sufficient for the methods of lick, spit, and polish to which her lickspittle bully of a Captain, Mr. David Home, devoted his whole soul.

A real live duchess christened the _Beaver_, and if I remember rightly Mr. Brunel, the engineer, left his work, hard by in the Thames Tunnel, to witness the cracking of the bottle. The owners attended in force, the Governor and Company of Merchant Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay, all in top hats, white chokers, and swallow-tails. Most likely they cracked quite a lot of bottles.

The engine was in position, but the sponsons, paddle boxes, and paddles were stored in the forehold for the voyage under sail round Cape Horn.

At Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, the capital of Oregon, the vessel was to be completed by her carpenters, and to be the first steamer on the Pacific Ocean.

Long afterwards it was, in 1842, that the _Beaver_ carried the great Sir George Simpson to the founding of Fort Camosun on Vancouver Island. When, many years later, the _Beaver_ was sold to become a tug, her log books were pitched into the loft of an old log barn, the last remnant of Fort Camosun, hid in a backyard of the city of Victoria, capital of British Columbia. I found the rat-eaten log books there in 1889, and begged the Hudson's Bay Company to preserve these precious annals. The memory of them helps my story-telling.

X

The flood tide swept Bill's dinghy up past the Roman fortress of Reculver, on by Whitstable where oyster smacks lay moored, and thence towards the Isle of Sheppey and the Thames. It was only to keep warm that sometimes he would scull, oar over stern, athwart the stream, northward to channels with a stronger tide. Numb with cold, his heart like lead, not caring where he went, hour by hour he sculled until he was tired, or rested until he froze, not caring at all what happened. The new police would catch him if he went ashore, to charge him with murdering his parents, and send him to the gallows; or Uncle Thomas, his owner, would curse him for leaving the barge derelict, the property in law of the first man who went on board. Bill did not care now for Uncle Thomas, or anybody alive, but only in a hard, dry, gnawing grief mourned and was silent. He did not believe any more in God, who had allowed his mother to be murdered; and as to spirits, they were only phantasms of nightmare. A sullen hatred of the world, of men, of everything, of life itself, filled the north wind, the dark spaces of seething water, and the indifferent stars. And on towards dawn he sank down on his knees, his face in his hands, hoping for death, an end of everything. Yet, as he afterwards confessed, when the _Beaver's_ dolphin striker knocked his cap off, and her clipper bows hove the boat's gunwale under, so that she filled and sank beneath his feet, he fought for life as keenly as anybody who enjoyed the same. Groping, so he said, in the dark for hand and foot holds in the hanging wall, he found the anchor astrip, and jumped upon the fluke, swarmed up the shank and chain, then, getting a purchase with one toe in the hawse hole, vaulted across the bulwark.

The lad on lookout squeaked, and ran for all he was worth, reporting a ghost up on the starboard bow.