The First Algernon Blackwood MEGAPACK ®. Algernon Blackwood

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СКАЧАТЬ fierce as lightning, flashed outwards from its hidden prison where it lay choked and smothered by the weights and measures of modern life. For the beauty and splendor of that far voice wrung his very heart and set it free. He knew a quasi-physical wrench of detachment. A wild and tameless glory fused the fastenings of ages.

      Only the motionless solidity of the great figure beside him prevented somehow the complete escape, and made him understand that the Call just then was not for all three of them, especially not for himself. the parent rose beside him, massive and stable, secure as the hills which were his true home, and the boy broke suddenly into happy speech which was wild and singing.

      He looked up swiftly into his parent’s steady visage.

      “Father!” he cried in tones that merged half with the wind, half with the sea, “it is his voice! Chiron calls—!” His eyes shone like stars, his young face was alight with joy and passion.—“Go, father, you, or—”

      He stopped an instant, catching the Irishman’s eyes upon his own across the form between them.

      “—or you!” he added with a laughter of delight; “you go!”

      The big figure straightened up, standing back a pace from the rails. A low sound rolled from him that was like an echo of thunder among hills. With slow, laborious distinctness it broke off into fragments that were words, with great difficulty uttered, but with a final authority that rendered them command.

      “No,” O’Malley heard, “you—first. And—carry word—that we—are—on the way.” Staring out across the sea and sky he boomed it deeply. “You—first. We—follow—!” And the speech seemed to flow from the entire surface of his body rather than from the lips alone. the sea and air mothered the syllables. Thus might the Night herself have spoken.

      Chiron! the word, with its clue of explanation, flamed about him with a roar. Was this, then, the type of cosmic life to which his companions, and himself with them, inwardly approximated…?

      The same instant, before O’Malley could move a muscle to prevent it, the boy climbed the rails with an easy, vaulting motion that was swift yet oddly spread, and dropped straight down into the sea. He fell; and as he fell it was as if the passage through the air drew out a part of him again like smoke. Whether it was due to the flying cloak, or to some dim wizardry of the shadows, there grew over him an instantaneous transformation of outline that was far more marked than anything before. For as the steamer drew onwards, and the body thus passed in its downward flight close beneath O’Malley’s eyes, he saw that the boy was making the first preparatory motions of swimming,—movements, however, that were not the horizontal sweep of a pair of human arms, but rather the vertical strokes of a swimming animal. He pawed the air.

      The surprise of the whole unexpected thing came upon him with a crash that brought him back effectually again into himself. That part of him, already half emerged in similar escape, now flashed back sheath-like within him. the inner catastrophe he dreaded while desiring it, had not yet completed itself.

      He heard no splash, for the ship was high out of the water, and the place where the body met the sea already lay far astern; but when the momentary arrest of his faculties had passed and he found his voice to cry for help, the father turned upon him like a lion and clapped a great, encompassing hand upon his mouth.

      “Quiet!” his deep voice boomed. “It is well—and he—is—safe.”

      And across the huge and simple visage ran an expression of such supreme happiness, while in his act and gesture lay such convincing power, that the Irishman felt himself overborne and forced to acknowledge another standard of authority that somehow made the whole thing right. To cry “man overboard,” to stop the ship, throw life-buoys and the rest, was not only unnecessary, but foolish. the boy was safe; it was well with him; he was not “lost”…

      “See,” said the parent’s deep voice, breaking in upon his thoughts as he drew him to one side with a certain vehemence, “See!”

      He pointed downwards. And there, between them, half in the scuppers, against their very feet, lay the huddled body upon the deck, the arms outstretched, the face turned upwards to the stars.

      * * * *

      The bewilderment that followed was like the confusion which exists between two states of consciousness when the mind passes from sleep to waking, or vice versa. O’Malley lost that power of attention which enables a man to concentrate on details sufficiently to recall their exact sequence afterwards with certainty.

      Two things, however, stood out and he tells them briefly enough: first, that the joy upon the father’s face rendered an offer of sympathy ludicrous; secondly, that Dr. Stahl was again upon the scene with a promptness which proved him to have been close at hand all the time.

      It was between two and three in the morning, the rest of the passengers asleep still, but Captain Burgenfelder and the first officer appeared soon after and an orderly record of the affair was drawn up formally. the depositions of the father and of himself were duly taken down in writing, witnessed, and all the rest.

      The scene in the doctor’s cabin remains vividly in his mind: the huge Russian standing by the door—for he refused a seat—incongruously smiling in contrast to the general gravity, his mind obviously brought by an effort of concentration to each question; the others seated round the desk some distance away, leaving him in a space by himself; the scratching of the doctor’s pointed pen; the still, young outline underneath the canvas all through the long pantomime, lying upon a couch at the back where the shadows gathered thickly. And then the gust of fresh wind that came in with a little song as they opened the door at the end, and saw the crimson dawn reflected in the dewy, shining boards of the deck. the father, throwing the Irishman a significant and curious glance, was out to join it on the instant.

      Syncope, produced by excitement, cause unknown, was the scientific verdict, and an immediate burial at sea the parent’s wish. As the sun rose over the highlands of Asia Minor it was carried into effect.

      But the father’s eyes followed not the drop. They gazed with rapt, intent expression in another direction where the shafts of sunrise sped across the sea toward the glens and dales of distant Pelion. At the sound of the plunge he did not even turn his eyes. He pointed, gathering O’Malley somehow into the gesture, across the Ægean Sea to where the shores of north-western Arcadia lay below the horizon, raised his arms with a huge sweep of welcome to the brightening sky, then turned and went below without a single word.

      For a few minutes, puzzled and perhaps a little awed, the group of sailors and ship’s officers remained standing with bared heads, then disappeared silently in their turn, leaving the decks to the sunrise and the wind.

      XXIII

      But O’Malley did not immediately return to his own cabin; he yielded to Dr. Stahl’s persuasion and dropped into the armchair he had already occupied more than once, watching his companion’s preparations with the lamp and coffeepot.

      With his eyes, that is, he watched, staring, as men say, absent-mindedly; for the fact was, only a little bit of him hovered there about his weary physical frame. the rest of him was off somewhere else across the threshold—subliminal: below, with the Russian, beyond with the traveling spirit of the boy; but the major portion, out deep in space, reclaimed by the Earth.

      So, at least, it felt; for the circulation of blood in his brain ran low and physical sensation there was almost none. the driving impulse upon the outlying tracts of consciousness usually submerged had been tremendous.

      “That СКАЧАТЬ