Wilderness of Spring Part 60

He could, and with astonis.h.i.+ng ease. A limp stick, nothing more, a stick with hanging legs and spiritless head and a bad smell. Needlessly he crossed with it back to the starboard side. "The fish will be hungry,"

he said, and heaved it over. He gripped the rail with both hands, and watched.

They were hungry. Ben watched, thinking not of Jan Dyckman nor of justice nor of the long year ending; thinking only that quiet must presently arrive when this was over, and that in his home country it would be spring. The young apple tree by the kitchen garden--might that be in bloom this morning, and Reuben there to see it? The water briefly boiled in muddy red, and sent its diminis.h.i.+ng ripples to infinity, and was still.

Ledyard was tugging at his hand, which could now release its grip on the rail, and urgently shoving something into it--the handle of Ben's knife.

"Look to yourself--he's coming!"

Daniel Shawn was framed in the cabin doorway, blankly staring. He could certainly see them all--Joey and Ledyard now by the open forward hatch, Dummy squatting in the shadow of the mainmast cheris.h.i.+ng his dying companion, Ben naked at the rail, the knife his father gave him unsheathed and brilliant in the sun. Shawn closed the cabin door and came a step away from it. He remembered; drew out the key from under his s.h.i.+rt and turned his back on all of them, carefully locking the cabin.

Then he was advancing, astonishment giving way to some partial understanding, savage and cold. He glanced aloft.

Ben did so too, having almost forgotten Manuel. Manuel was frozen at the masthead, gazing down. Manuel must have seen it all. Ben guessed that not even a roar from Shawn would bring him down at this moment, and Ben was aware of having laughed.

"Well?" Shawn came forward another step or two. "Well? What's this disorder, and thou naked and shameless?"

"Why," said Ben, "this is the garment and s.h.i.+eld I wore when I came into the world, as they say, and one day I'll die wearing it, maybe not today. It's my intention to live a long while, after this ketch is returned to Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury."

"Mutiny," said Shawn quietly. His head canted to one side, a danger sign. He had stood so, without a word, when the body of Cornelius Barentsz was cut in quarters and tossed to the sharks. Then as now, the copper farthing had appeared in his left hand, twisting and sparkling.

It caught the sun this morning, sending lances of sharp light at Ben's eyes, and Ben turned his knife until it shot the same small cruel messages to Shawn, who winced and briefly turned his face away.

"_Judah!_"

"He can't run any more of your errands. He's sharks' meat, five minutes past. Don't be calling the others and disturbing their breakfast."

"This from you.... Ben, you shall have part of your wish. You shall go in the cabin, immediate. I order you to go there, and here is the key."

He took it from under his s.h.i.+rt and tossed it across the deck.

Ben made no motion for it, watching its fall with the corner of his eye.

"Joey," he said, "take that key and open the cabin. Tell Captain Jenks that if fortune favors me I'll come to him presently with the key to his leg irons. Tell him, Joey, I am hoping to redeem a year of my life that in folly and weakness I threw away. Tell him that, and return here at once to me."

The key had fallen near to Ben. Joey Mills did not need to pa.s.s close to Shawn in order to retrieve it. Small, old and terrified, he was sidling for it when Shawn bellowed: "Joey Mills, do you take orders from a bare-naked child and not from your captain?"

Mills leaped and fluttered like a hurt sparrow. But he had the key, and scuttled to larboard, intending a quick rush aft along by the larboard rail as far from Shawn as he could get. Shawn was wearing no pistols, only his short knife. Ben said: "He won't harm you, Joey. His business is with me, not with you. If he tries to stop you, Ledyard and I will both help you."

"Dummy!" Shawn called that name not in command but in pleading. But even as he spoke, Dummy sobbed once, wetly and loudly, and shambled away up to the bow. Ben glimpsed the monkey's head flopping limp, and the spidery arms. She must have died, and Dummy must have known the moment--yet up there at the bow Dummy was still trying to support her head and make it live.

"Shawn, you spoke of these men as phantoms. Only some of them are that.

I think your Judah Marsh was a phantom, and so likely he made a thin meal for the fish. Mills there is a man, and Matthew Ledyard, and Dummy.

Men are creatures you've never understood, never. I can see that now.

Myself, I begin, just a little, to understand them.... Joey has opened the cabin. Needn't trouble to look behind you. Take my word for it, and now give me that other key."

Shawn did not look behind him. He drew his own knife, slowly, without threat, and leaned his back against the mainmast. "Compa.s.sed about....

Ben--why, why? Why must it be so?... And if I do not give you that other key?"

"Then I must take it."

"With that knife. You'll use that knife against the man who would have given you the key to a whole new world."

"Yes."

"Were we not to go there together, Ben?"

"Certainly I dreamed that once myself, before Jan Dyckman was found dying in a dirty alley. And afterwards too, until I learned why he had to lie there."

"Did I not give you the vision?"

"Yes."

"And see it strike fire in you?"

"Yes."

"As I never saw it in any other.... Have I not been kind?"

"Yes."

"Forbearing too? Forgiving a thousand things I'd never take from any other man?"

"Yes."

"But you will use the knife. Have we not spoke together a thousand times like friends? Haven't I made you laugh?"

"Yes."

"But you will use it.... Why?"

"Shawn, do you think I could walk into Heaven across the flesh of Jan Dyckman? Dyckman and others--how many? The men of the _Schouven_--how many, Shawn? And how many more, before we ever saw the new lands?"

"Does it matter? The vision is greater than the man."

"Nay, I think not, but even let that be so if you wish. But if you follow the vision through blood and deceit, in mad denial of what your senses tell you, then you lose it. Maybe the vision is there yet, but you're mired down in your own folly. You're lost.... Shawn, you're truly compa.s.sed about, as you say." Ben raised his voice, knowing that in this windless air it must reach into the open cabin, if Jenks was in any condition to hear it. "Mills and Ledyard and Dummy are with me. Manuel won't fight for you. If Jack or Tom Ball would come on deck, they must pa.s.s my friends there at the hatch. I don't wish to fight you, Shawn, nor to harm you. We were friends. I know what you gave me and I value it. But you're lost. You're mired, and I will not go down with you. Now hear the alternatives. If you----"

"I see," said Shawn, perhaps to himself. "I see you will not go with me, the way I should have known it all the while."

"Shawn"--Ben understood that he himself was pleading--"Shawn, there are those who love me, or there were. My life is more to them than ever it was to you. You never knew me. You never saw me. You saw the image of a follower, and that you may have loved, but me you never saw. Now then--my life is all I own. I'm naked in every way. And if you'd take that from me I'll fight you to the last breath, and I'll win. Now hear the alternatives. Throw your knife away and give me that other key.

Then, sir, I will not release Captain Jenks until he gives me his word that he will take you unharmed to Boston."

"To man's justice!" said Shawn, and laughed. "No hearing. The short gasp on the tricing line and all vision dead!"

"Men know little enough about justice, that's true. And so I'll give you another alternative. If you will yield, I'll even set you free in a boat when we raise the Cape--as you could have done for me a year ago when I told you plain I'd have no part of your venture."

In dark astonishment, Shawn appeared to be considering that a while. His gaze wandered over the deck. Certainly he would be understanding the open cabin behind him, and whatever Mills and Ledyard were doing at the hatch--Ben could not turn his head to look--and Dummy up there at the bow, shut away in a private world of grief. "Your friend Peter Jenks would never be consenting to such a thing at all."

"He would. His first duty is to Mr. Kenny and to the _Artemis_. To carry out that duty he must be free of the leg irons. If I say he cannot be free until he gives me his word to let you go, he will give it, and he will keep his word."

"He will not. I know his kind."

"You know nothing of him. You see all men, including me, through your fog of ambition and vanity--and visions.... Well, a third alternative--nay, I can't put that in words."

"To turn this knife against myself?" Shawn's eyes were all black. The copper farthing had been put away. He was s.h.i.+fting lightly from one foot to the other. Ben caught some blurred noise from the forward companionway, but could not turn to look. "I might even do it, Beneen, now that's no lie--if so be the voyage is ended, and wouldn't it be the lightest demand your tender heart has made of me? But Mother of G.o.d, I wonder a little what you can do with the pretty ketch, and I not here.

Will you look to the northeast?"