Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (307 page)

Abel
Keeling
was
muttering
fretfully
to
himself.
It
annoyed
him that
words
in
his
own
vision
should
have
no
meaning
for
him.
How did
words
come
to
him
in
a
dream
that
he
had
no
knowledge
of when
wide
awake?
The
Seapink—that
was
the
name
of
this
ship; but
a
pink
was
long
and
narrow,
low-carged
and
square-built
aft.
.
.
.

"And
as
for
our
armament,"
the
voice
with
the
tones
that
so profoundly
troubled
Abel
Keeling's
memory
continued,
"we've
two revolving
Whitehead
torpedo-tubes,
three
six-pounders
on
the
upper deck,
and
that's
a
twelve-pounder
forward
there
by
the
conning-tower.
I
forgot
to
mention
that
we're
nickel
steel,
with a coal capacity
of sixty
tons
in
most
damnably
placed
bunkers,
and
that
thirty
and
a quarter
knots is about
our
top.
Care
to
come
aboard?"

But
the
voice
was
speaking
still
more
rapidly
and
feverishly,
as if
to
fill
a
silence
with
no
matter
what,
and
the
shape
that
was uttering
it
was
straining
forward
anxiously
over
the
rail.

"Ugh! But I'm glad this
happened
in
the
daylight,"
another
voice was
muttering.

"I wish I was
sure
it
was
happening
at
all.
.
.
.
Poor
old
spook/"
"I
suppose
it
would
keep
its feet
if
her
deck
was
quite
vertical. Think
she'll
go
down,
or
just
melt?" "Kind
of
go
down
.
.
.
without
wash . .
."

"Listen
—here's
the other one now
---------
"

For
Bligh
was
singing
again:

"For,
Lord,
Thou
know'st
our
nature
such

If
we
great
things
obtain And
in
the
getting
of
the
same

Do
feel
no
grief
or
pain, We
little
do
esteem
thereof;

But,
hardly
brought
to
pass, A
thousand
times
we
do
esteem

More
than
the
other
was
—"

"But
oh,
look—look—look
at
the other!
.
.
.
Oh,
I
say,
wasn't he
a
grand
old
boy.'
Look!"

For,
transfiguring
Abel
Keeling's
form
as
a
prophet's
form
is transfigured
in
the
instant
of
his
rapture,
flooding
his
brain
with
the white
eureka-light
of
perfect
knowledge,
that
for
which
he
and
his dream
had
been
at
a
standstill
had
come.
He
knew
her,
this
ship
of the
future,
as
if
God's
Finger
had
bitten
her
lines
into
his
brain. He
knew
her
as
those
already
sinking
into
the
grave
know
things, miraculously,
completely,
accepting
Life's
impossibilities
with
a nodded
"Of
course."
From
the
ardent
mouths
of
her
eight
furnaces to
the
last
drip
from
her
lubricators,
from
her
bed-plates
to
the breeches
of
her
quick-firers,
he
knew
her—read
her
gauges,
thumbed her
bearings,
gave
the
ranges
from
her
range-finders,
and
lived
the life
he
lived
who
was
in
command
of
her.
And
he
would
not
forget on
the
morrow,
as
he
had
forgotten
on
many
morrows,
for
at
last he
had
seen
the
water
about
his
feet,
and
knew
that
there
would
be no
morrow
for
him
in
this
world.
.
.
.