Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
was taking down in a notebook. "I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
the number was," the man was saying. The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six.... Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
cab door. "Right away," he said to the driver. He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
mortuary lay that way. PHANTAS


     _"For, barring all pother,
      With this, or the other,
Still Britons are Lords of the Main._"


THE CHAPTER OF ADMIRALS


I

As Abel Keeling lay on the galleon's deck, held from rolling down it only
by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon
the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung,
jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small
ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast
bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of
cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of
bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel
Keeling's eyes liked. For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only
whiteness--the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying
degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like
salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness
had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild,
disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed. Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes
kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its
shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean
as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for
lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched, had
dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The
sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists
that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and
hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless
rays. The galleon was the _Mary of the Tower_, and she had a frightful list to
starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel
sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more
than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned
over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its
course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that
it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon
had continued to glide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun
to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail
after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea. For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever
sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel
Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her
through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid
at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known
that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due--must
be due--to the absolute deadness of the calm in that silent, sinister,
three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that
loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the
deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past. He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of
parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the
Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would
rise, and the men would run.... But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were
no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was
still alive. He had walked half-way down the quarter-deck steps a little
before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain
for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his
place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward
to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
aft again for water....

At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
make shuffling movements down the slope. To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
beneath it. Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
full of fresh water. Good.