OUT of the north Atlantic a January storm came down in the night, sweeping the American coast with wind and snow and sleet upon a great oblique front from Nova Scotia to the Delaware capes. The land was storm-bound and the sea possessed with such confusion that nothing seemed less plausible than that human beings should be out among the running hill ranges, and not only alive but still voyaging crazily on their way. Tow ropes parted off the Maine and Massachusetts coasts; barges were swamped and bargemen drowned; schooners drove ashore in half-frozen harbours; and all night on the Georgian Banks fishermen fought dark monstrosities of water. But in the whole area of the storm nowhere was the northeaster more outrageous than upon that ocean path where flopped and shuttled the great "Duumvir," five hours out ward bound from New York.
Thirty thousand tons the "Duumvir" displaced; but, as in reprisal, more weight of water than that every few moments attempted to displace the "Duumvir." The attempt was for a permanent displacement, moreover, there appearing to be in the profundities a conviction that this ship had no rightful place upon the surface and should be reduced to the condition of a submarine. The "Duumvir," sometimes seeming to assent, squatted under the immense smotherings; then, shaped in falling water, rose up into the likeness of a long white cataract dimly symmetrical against a chaotic sky. The upheavals were but momentary and convulsive, however; the great metal creature shook itself thunderously and descended again under fantastic clouds of sea; and in both ascent and descent, sought continually to ease itself by lying first upon one side and then upon the other. Under the same circumstances a peanut shell might have shown a livelier motion; nevertheless, the "Duumvir" did many things that a peanut shell would have done, but, being heavier, did them more impressively.
The impressiveness was greatest in the steamer's interior where there were vivid correspondences to what went on outside. For, indoors and off the howling decks, the "Duumvir" was not so much a ship as an excellent hotel, just now a hotel miraculously intact, though undergoing the extremities of continuous earthquake, and complaining loudly. Great salons and lounging rooms, empty of human life, but still bright with electric light, tilted up cornerwise, staggered and dipped like the halls of a palace in the nightmare of a sleeper attacked by vertigo. Accompanying these fantasies, painted ceilings and panelled walls protested in every voice known to wrenched wood and racked metal; but, for that matter, the whole inner fabric of the ship had become eloquent, squeaking with a high-pitched rancour sharply audible in spite of thunder and roarings without. And within the passengers' cabins, those little hotel apartments that had seemed so pleasant when the ship was at her dock, there were complaints and disturbances not lacking in a painful kind of harmony with the protests of the ship and the contortions of the elements that beset her.
Throughout the long ranges of staterooms there was anguish; but nowhere in the whole vastness of the "Duumvir" did it become more acute than in the prettily decorated double cabin where ceaselessly lurched to and fro upon his active bed that newly prosperous young playwright, Laurence Ogle. His lurching was in spite of him, his passionate desire being for motionlessness; and to secure even a few moments of this he would have given recklessly out of the royalties his play was to send him by post from Forty-second Street. More still he would have given to abandon this first sea voyage of his and to be back upon the unmoving pavement of that street, or to be upon any street or road, or in any alley, or to stand upon a bit of earth anywhere, mountain or plain, or to be in a tree rooted in earth. Nothing had value in his mind now save fixity.
His trunk had been opened and then lashed upright against the wall of his bathroom; but something had gone amiss with the lashings, so that at intervals the trunk presented itself in the intervening doorway, tilted drunkenly to eject sometimes a drawer or a limp garment upon the threshold, and then withdrew into the bathroom, where it produced crashing noises of breakage, to which Ogle was indifferent. Earlier in his retirement he had summoned a steward who proved so unseasoned as to be suffering himself, much too obviously. Ogle wished never to see this man again, and, even if he had cared for his society or assistance, would have had to lift a hand to reach the bell-button. He did not wish to lift his hand; it was already being lifted for him in company with the rest of his person; and the lifting at its climax brought on his worst moments.
He ascended spirally, meanwhile being rocked laterally, and this curving ascent was a long one, both in time and space; then, at the crest of it, there was a moment of poising followed by a descent like a two or three story drop in a swift elevator. The bed sank too rapidly beneath him, going down a little faster than he did, so that until the fall was completed he had no weight; whereas at the bottom he was too heavy, having already begun to be urged upward again. His whole being seemed to consist of nausea and of motion in undesirable directions; and yet, in addition to his poignant sensations, he still had thoughts and emotions.
The emotions were all bitter and the thoughts all upon one subject. He had supposed that when a reputable marine corporation engaged to take him to the Mediterranean it would take him there with some manner of straightforwardness and not upon all these spiral excursions to which his nervous system was by no means adapted. Therefore he hated the ship, not only for what it was doing to him, but for what appeared to be its personal malevolence in deceiving him. This incessant vertical and lateral voyaging, then, was that "luxury of ocean travel" to which the "Duumvir" had invited him in its little pamphlets illustrated by photographs of smiling ladies reading in steamer chairs, placid stewards offering cups of tea or broth, and even of lively couples dancing upon a horizontal ballroom floor—lying photographs which he was now convinced had been taken when the ship lay in harbour.
But even thus betrayed, he was not able to understand how he could have been so gullible as to place himself in his present horrible situation;—"horrible" was his own half-stifled word for it. "Voluntarily!" This was another of his words. "Voluntarily I put myself into this horrible condition—voluntarily!" For he remembered with amazement that he had been not merely willing, he had been eager. He had looked forward not only to other continents, but to the ocean voyage. Chuckling and gloating, how he had bragged of it to unfortunate friends unable to leave their bleak customary work in wintry New York; and only that very afternoon he had taken leave of some of them with what jolly superiority!
That afternoon now seemed to have been an afternoon of the long, long ago; he had undergone so many mortifying experiences and had been through so much trouble since then. His first suspicion that the journey was one of ill omen had come to him when he sat down at his table in the great dining salon; and the suspicion became stronger as his table steward offered him a green turtle soup, for the "Duumvir" was just then riding into tumult and darkness off Sandy Hook. The table was one arranged for four persons, and Ogle had felt some curiosity about the other three, wondering if he would prove fortunate in his table mates; but this interest did not detain him. Indeed, the only mitigation of the ignominy of his flight from the green turtle lay in the fact that the other chairs were not yet occupied. What he needed, he knew instinctively, was neither food nor new acquaintances, but air, fresh air, and a great deal of it. He sought it, and finding it, tried to believe that a few moments on deck would be restorative; but they were not, and neither was the icy spray that drenched him there. He descended apprehensively to his own quarters which were greatly changed since he had taken possession of them in the sweet placidity of the Hudson River. They had become animated, possessed by a demon of animation; and the animation had increased hour by hour, until now, as his blurred eyes half opened from time to time to give him glimpses of whirling walls, ceiling, curtains, and mirrors, the happy pride he had felt upon his first sight of this cell of misery bore the aspect of lunacy.
But his most dreadful thought was that he had committed himself to twelve days of what he now endured. Twelve years would have seemed little longer, for already he was flaccid with the interminable passage of time, and no more than a quarter of the first day of the twelve, each composed of twenty-four unbearable hours, had gone by. Why had nobody warned him not to embark on a twelve-day voyage? Had he no friends possessed of even sight intelligence? He thought of them, driving home a beautiful, peaceful taxicabs from theatres, or loung, ing in health beside the wood fire in the solid restfulness of the club, and his envy of them was like hatred. "Eleven days!" he gasped, in a wretchedness that foresaw no mitigation forever. "Eleven days and three quarters!"
He had always thought himself a resourceful young man; but he understood that under the circumstances resourcefulness was a quality of little practical value. The captain of the "Duumvir" would not be amenable to bribery, nor might all the arts of persuasion induce him to return to New York harbour; and the unhappy passenger had to go wherever this brutal mariner went. It would be useless to offer a resignation; one cannot resign from a boat.
There are people who bear their pains with a better grace when they think of greater sufferings on the part of other people, and so, in a dentist's chair, they keep their minds upon hospitals; but seasickness is a human ill that does not profit by such alleviations. Ogle was aware that other people were as wretched as he; for not far from the head of his bed there was a locked door, which, upon occasion, permitted his room to form part of a suite, and from the other side of this door came vocal sounds of lamentation and rebellion; but whenever he heard them his own misery was automatically increased. Two prostrate ladies occupied the adjoining cabin, he became aware, and although one of them seemed to be helplessly silent, the other was but too frequently audible.
Naturally, he was resentful; and when she moaned aloud, "I will die! I will die!" as she often did, he felt no anxiety to avert the calamity she predicted.
"Do!" he muttered thickly. "Do die! Do!"
Even if he lived through the next eleven days and three quarters, he would never in his life dislike anybody more than he did that suffering woman, he thought, but presently discovered that he was capable of a deeper antipathy. This was for a visitor who came to cheer the prostrate ladies; a man with a hearty voice of a kind that Ogle detested even when he was well. It was a husky voice, but free, easy, and loud; an untrained voice whose owner had never become conscious of the sound of it in other people's ears. Moreover, it was a voice that burred its r's, shortened its a's, and slurred and buried syllables in the Midland manner. "Middle West people!" Ogle moaned to himself. "Right in the next cabin to me! I've got to listen to them all the way over! That on top of this!" Feebly he called upon his Maker.
"Hah, but it's a great night!" the hearty voice exclaimed; and into Ogle's poisoned heart there came a profound animosity; for obviously here was a man undamaged, in perfect health. "Reg'lar January ocean weather, they tell me," this impervious man said cheerily. "'Honey, how's Baby?'"
The inquiry was bad for Ogle; he was a fastidious young man, sensitive to language, and the words upset him, though he was brave enough to repeat them. "'Honey, how's Baby?'" he whispered loathingly. "'Honey, how's Baby?'" A slight convulsion resulted, and again he called upon a higher power.
"You feelin' any better, Baby?" the terrible Midlander in the next room inquired.
But the voice of the objectionably suffering woman rebuked him faintly. "Let Libby alone. Don't lean over her. You're letting drops of water drip down on her off your overcoat. How'd you get so wet?"
"On deck. I found a door I guess they forgot to dock and went out there. Got tired sittin' around that smokin'-room upstairs; there aren't but two other men up there; all the rest of the passengers seasick, every last one of 'em, the barkeeper says; and those two that weren't didn't show much signs of sociability—Easterners, I expect; scared to talk to anybody. So I hunted around till I found this door that hadn't been locked; and my, my, but there's big doin's goin' on outdoors up there! It's a pity you and Baby got to miss it."
Upon this a third voice spoke unexpectedly, a girl's: "Quit calling me 'Baby'!"
It was a sweet and peevish voice; sweet musically, but peevish in what it expressed; and the bitter young playwright liked it no more than he did the others, especially as it brought a noisy burst of laughter from the visitor. "That's the ticket!" he cried, delighted. "Showin' some spunk to the old man! I guess you aren't so seasick but what you're still able to fight, Baby."
"I told you to quit calling me 'Baby'," the girl's voice said, and there was more than peevishness in it now; it held the resentment that springs from a hatred freshly roused. "I've thought once or twice about jumping off this ship before you get me over there," it continued. "If you don't quit calling me 'Baby,' I will. I mean it. You'll find out!"
"Now, now!" the man said soothingly. "I just came in to see if I couldn't do something or other for you or Mamma; you oughtn't to get so mad, Libby. Don't you want me to go bring you something?"
"No, I don't. If you want to do anything for me, keep out of my sight."
The hearty person seemed to be a little grieved by this, though after a moment or so he was able to produce some sounds of approving laughter. "Well, well! She's got plenty spunk all right, hasn't she, Mamma? Never mind! I'll hop along if you're sure there isn't anything you'll let me do for you. I guess I'll go on back upstairs and sit around awhile some more with those two frozen-faces; I'm not sleepy yet."
"Oh, dear!" the girl moaned. "Can't you stop talking about it and go? Go wherever you want to, so you go! For pity's sake, go and get seasick!"
"Me?" He shouted with inconsiderate laughter. "I never felt better in my life. Never even had a good look at the Atlantic Ocean before, let alone takin' a trip on it; never set my foot in anything bigger'n a rowboat, except a lake excursion steamer once or twice, twenty years ago, and yet I'm one o' the only three well passengers out of the whole shipload! Me seasick? You got to wish worse than that on me before you get me down, Baby!"
"I told you if you ever called me that again"
"There! There!" he said.
But he was interrupted by the querulous voice of the woman who had so frequently threatened to die. "Let the child alone, can't you, Papa? Can't you see you're only getting her more and more upset with you?"
"Oh, now, come!" he said. "Libby isn't goin' to let a little seasickness make her hate her old papa!"
"You know it isn't seasickness that makes me hate you," the girl said fiercely; and Ogle had an impression that she lifted herself and made an angry gesture toward the door. "Aren't you ever going to get out of here?"
"All right! All right! It wasn't me that wanted to leave God's country and go scramblin' around over the globe; you got to blame Mamma for that. Never mind; I'm goin'." Then, before the door closed, Ogle heard the husky, hearty voice in a final solicitation. "Honey, you do your best for Baby!"
The miserable young man groaned from the depths. His neighbours were a mother and a daughter, evidently; the daughter engaged in some sort of war with her father, and the three of them outlanders of that particular type to which, of all types in the world, his own fastidiousness found the greatest objection. Before him, if the ship did not sink, he foresaw eleven days and three quarters of physical agony accompanied by the beating upon his ears of family quarrellings in the odious accent to which he was most shudderingly sensitive.
"Rotarians!" he whispered. "'Honey, how's Baby?'" But he was unwise to repeat this paternal inquiry, for immediately he became deathly sick,