The Grain Ship. Morgan Robertson

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СКАЧАТЬ place, and asked, in a hoarse, broken voice that held nothing of its former plaintiveness:

      "What's this? Was I picked up? What ship is this?"

      "No ship at all. It's a cow camp."

      "Log cabin, isn't it?"—he was staring at the walls. "I never saw one before. I must have been out of my head for a while. Picked up, of course. Was the mate picked up? He was in bad shape."

      "Look here, old man," I said, gently, "are you out of your head now, or were you out of your head before?"

      "I don't know. I must have been out of my head. I can't remember much after tumbling overboard, until just now. What day is this?"

      "Tuesday," I answered.

      "Tuesday? It was Sunday when it happened. Did you have a hand in picking me up? Who was it?"

      "Not me," I said. "I found you on the road out here in a dazed state of mind, and you knew nothing whatever of ships or of sailors, though I took you for a shellback by your walk."

      "That's right. You can always spot one. You're a sailor, I can see, and an American, too. But what are you doing here? This must be the coast of Portugal or Spain."

      "No, this is a cow camp on the Crossbar Range in the middle of Arizona."

      "Arizona? Six thousand miles from there! How long have I been out of my head?"

      "Don't know. I've only known you since sundown. You've just gone through a remarkable change of front."

      "What day of the month is it?"

      "The third day of December."

      "Hell! Six months ago. It happened in June, Of course, six months is time enough for me to get here, but why can't I remember coming? Someone must have brought me."

      "Not necessarily. You were walking along, caring for yourself, but hungry. I brought you here for a feed and a night's sleep."

      "That was kind of you—" He involuntarily raised his hand to his face. "I've grown a beard, I see. Let's see how I look with a beard." He stepped to a looking-glass on the wall, took one look, and sprang back.

      "Why, it isn't me!" he exclaimed, looking around with dilated eyes. "It's someone else."

      "Take another look," I said. He did so, moved his head to the right and left, and then turned to me.

      "It must be me," he said, hoarsely, "for the image in the glass follows my movements. But I've lost my face. I'm another man. I don't know myself."

      "Look at that anchor on your wrist," I suggested. He did so.

      "Yes," he said, "that part of me is left. It was pricked in on my first voyage." He examined his arms and legs. "Changed," he muttered. He rubbed his knees, and passed his hands over his body.

      "What year was it when, as you say, you jumped overboard?" I asked.

      "Eighteen seventy-five."

      "This is eighteen eighty-four. Matey, you have been nine years out of your head," I said.

      "Nine years? Sure? Can you prove that to me? My God, man, think of it! Nine years gone out of my life. You don't know what that means to me."

      I showed him a faded and discolored newspaper.

      "That paper is about six months old," I said, "but it's an eighteen eighty-four paper."

      "Right," he said, sadly and somewhat wildly. "Got a pipe? I want to smoke on this, and think it out. Nine years, and six thousand miles travel! Where have I been, I wonder, and what have I done, to change the very face of me, while I lived with it? It's something like death, I take it."

      I gave him a pipe and tobacco, and he smoked vigorously, trembling with excess of emotion, yet slowly pulling himself together. Finally he steadied, but he could not smoke. He put the pipe down, saying that it sickened him. I knew nothing of psychology at the time, but think now that in his second personality he had given up smoking.

      I forbore questioning him, knowing that I could not help him in his problem—that he must work it out himself. He did not sleep that night, and kept me awake most of the time with his twitchings and turnings. Once he was up, examining his face in the glass by the light of a match, but in the morning, after a doze of an hour or so, I found him outside, looking at the sunrise and smoking.

      "I'm getting used to my new face," he said, "and I'm getting used to smoking again. Got to. Nothing but a smoke will help a fellow at times. What business is this you're in here?"

      "Cow-punching—riding out after cattle."

      "Hard to learn?"

      "Easy for a sailor. I'm only hanging on until pay-day, then I make for 'Frisco to ship."

      "And someone will take your place, I suppose. I'll work for my grub if you'll break me in so that I can get the job. I'm through with going to sea."

      "Certainly. All I need is to tell the boss. I've an extra saddle."

      So I tutored him in the tricks of cow-punching, and found him an apt pupil. But he was heavy and depressed, seeming to be burdened with some terrible experience, or memory, that he was trying to shake off. It was not until the evening before my departure, when I had secured him the job and we sat smoking before the mesquite-root fire, that he took me into his confidence. The friendly rat had again appeared, and he sprang up, backed away, and sat down again, trembling violently.

      "It was that rat that brought you to yourself that evening," I ventured. "Rats must have had something to do with your past life."

      "Right, they did," he answered, puffing fiercely. "I didn't know you had rats here, though."

      "A whole herd of them under the floor. But they're harmless. I found them good company."

      "I found them bad company. I was shipmates with thousands of rats on that last passage. Want the yarn? It'll raise your hair."

      I was willing, and he reeled it off. His strong self-control never left him from the beginning to the end, though the effect upon me was not only to raise my hair, but at times to stop the beating of my heart. I left him next morning, and have never seen or heard of him since; but there is strong reason to believe that he never went to sea again, or told that yarn in shipping circles. And it is because I have not seen that old Commodore since the evening in the restaurant, and because I cannot recall the name of the ship, or secure full data of marine happenings of the year 1875, that I am giving that story to the world in this form, hoping it will reach the right quarters and explain to those interested the mystery of the grain ship, found in good shape, but abandoned by all but the dead rats.

      "I shipped in her at 'Frisco," began Draper. "She was a big, skysail-yarder loading grain at Oakland, and as the skipper had offered me second mate's berth, I went over and sized her up. She seemed all right, as far as man may judge of a ship in port—nearly new, and well found in gear and canvas, which the riggers had rove off and bent. Her cargo of grain was nearly in, and there would be nothing much to do in the way of hard work. Still, I couldn't make up my mind. Something seemed to prevent me liking the prospect, so I went on up to Oakland СКАЧАТЬ