Chapter 2

I’m dead broke. I ’aven’t got nothink. No bag, no bed, no blanket, no
shirt—not a bloomin’ rag but what I stand in. But I ’ad the ’art to
stand up agin’ them Yankees. ’As any of you ’art enough to spare a pair
of old pants for a chum?”

He knew how to conquer the naïve instincts of that crowd. In a moment
they gave him their compassion, jocularly, contemptuously, or surlily;
and at first it took the shape of a blanket thrown at him as he stood
there with the white skin of his limbs showing his human kinship
through the black fantasy of his rags. Then a pair of old shoes fell
at his muddy feet. With a cry:—“From under,” a rolled-up pair of
canvas trousers, heavy with tar stains, struck him on the shoulder.
The gust of their benevolence sent a wave of sentimental pity through
their doubting hearts. They were touched by their own readiness to
alleviate a shipmate’s misery. Voices cried:—“We will fit you out,
old man.” Murmurs: “Never seed seech a hard case.... Poor beggar....
I’ve got an old singlet.... Will that be of any use to you?... Take
it, matey....” Those friendly murmurs filled the forecastle. He pawed
around with his naked foot, gathering the things in a heap and looked
about for more. Unemotional Archie perfunctorily contributed to the
pile an old cloth cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton, lost in
the serene regions of fiction, read on unheeding. Charley, pitiless
with the wisdom of youth, squeaked:—“If you want brass buttons for your
new unyforms I’ve got two for you.” The filthy object of universal
charity shook his fist at the youngster.—“I’ll make you keep this ’ere
fo’c’sle clean, young feller,” he snarled viciously. “Never you fear.
I will learn you to be civil to an able seaman, you ignerant ass.” He
glared harmfully, but saw Singleton shut his book, and his little beady
eyes began to roam from berth to berth.—“Take that bunk by the door
there—it’s pretty fair,” suggested Belfast. So advised, he gathered the
gifts at his feet, pressed them in a bundle against his breast, then
looked cautiously at the Russian Finn, who stood on one side with an
unconscious gaze, contemplating, perhaps, one of those weird visions
that haunt the men of his race.—“Get out of my road, Dutchy,” said the
victim of Yankee brutality. The Finn did not move—did not hear. “Get
out, blast ye,” shouted the other, shoving him aside with his elbow.
“Get out, you blanked deaf and dumb fool. Get out.” The man staggered,
recovered himself, and gazed at the speaker in silence.—“Those damned
furriners should be kept under,” opined the amiable Donkin to the
forecastle. “If you don’t teach ’em their place they put on you
like anythink.” He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty
bed-place, gauged with another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding,
then leaped up to the Finn, who stood pensive and dull.—“I’ll teach
you to swell around,” he yelled. “I’ll plug your eyes for you, you
blooming square-head.” Most of the men were now in their bunks and the
two had the forecastle clear to themselves. The development of the
destitute Donkin aroused interest. He danced all in tatters before
the amazed Finn, squaring from a distance at the heavy, unmoved face.
One or two men cried encouragingly: “Go it, Whitechapel!” settling
themselves luxuriously in their beds to survey the fight. Others
shouted: “Shut yer row!... Go an’ put yer ’ed in a bag!...” The hubbub
was recommencing. Suddenly many heavy blows struck with a handspike
on the deck above boomed like discharges of small cannon through the
forecastle. Then the boatswain’s voice rose outside the door with an
authoritative note in its drawl:—“D’ye hear, below there? Lay aft! Lay
aft to muster all hands!”

There was a moment of surprised stillness. Then the forecastle floor
disappeared under men whose bare feet flopped on the planks as they
sprang clear out of their berths. Caps were rooted for amongst tumbled
blankets. Some, yawning, buttoned waistbands. Half-smoked pipes were
knocked hurriedly against woodwork and stuffed under pillows. Voices
growled:—“What’s up?... Is there no rest for us?” Donkin yelped:—“If
that’s the way of this ship, we’ll ’ave to change all that.... You
leave me alone.... I will soon....” None of the crowd noticed him.
They were lurching in twos and threes through the doors, after the
manner of merchant Jacks who cannot go out of a door fairly, like mere
landsmen. The votary of change followed them. Singleton, struggling
into his jacket, came last, tall and fatherly, bearing high his head
of a weather-beaten sage on the body of an old athlete. Only Charley
remained alone in the white glare of the empty place, sitting between
the two rows of iron links that stretched into the narrow gloom
forward. He pulled hard at the strands in a hurried endeavour to finish
his knot. Suddenly he started up, flung the rope at the cat, and
skipped after the black tom which went off leaping sedately over chain
compressors, with its tail carried stiff and upright, like a small flag
pole.

Outside the glare of the steaming forecastle the serene purity of the
night enveloped the seamen with its soothing breath, with its tepid
breath flowing under the stars that hung countless above the mastheads
in a thin cloud of luminous dust. On the town side the blackness of
the water was streaked with trails of light which undulated gently on
slight ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to the shore.
Rows of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on
parade between towering buildings; but on the other side of the harbour
sombre hills arched high their black spines, on which, here and there,
the point of a star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off,
Byculla way, the electric lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of
lofty standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of
some evil moons. Scattered all over the dark polish of the roadstead,
the ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam
of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and bulky, like strange and
monumental structures abandoned by men to an everlasting repose.

Before the cabin door Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they
stumbled and lurched along past the mainmast, they could see aft
his round, broad face with a white paper before it, and beside his
shoulder the sleepy head, with dropped eyelids, of the boy, who held,
suspended at the end of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp.
Even before the shuffle of naked soles had ceased along the decks, the
mate began to call over the names. He called distinctly in a serious
tone befitting this roll-call to unquiet loneliness, to inglorious and
obscure struggle, or to the more trying endurance of small privations
and wearisome duties. As the chief mate read out a name, one of the men
would answer: “Yes, sir!” or “Here!” and, detaching himself from the
shadowy mob of heads visible above the blackness of starboard bulwarks,
would step bare-footed into the circle of light, and in two noiseless
strides pass into the shadows on the port side of the quarterdeck.
They answered in divers tones: in thick mutters, in clear, ringing
voices; and some, as if the whole thing had been an outrage on their
feelings, used an injured intonation: for discipline is not ceremonious
in merchant ships, where the sense of hierarchy is weak, and where all
feel themselves equal before the unconcerned immensity of the sea and
the exacting appeal of the work.

Mr. Baker read on steadily:—“Hansen—Campbell—Smith—Wamibo. Now, then,
Wamibo. Why don’t you answer? Always got to call your name twice.”
The Finn emitted at last an uncouth grunt, and, stepping out, passed
through the patch of light, weird and gaudy, with the face of a man
marching through a dream. The mate went on faster:—“Craik—Singleton—
Donkin.... O Lord!” he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly
dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped; it uncovered pale
gums and long, upper teeth in a malevolent grin.—“Is there any-think
wrong with me, Mister Mate?” it asked, with a flavour of insolence in
the forced simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck subdued
titters were heard.—“That’ll do. Go over,” growled Mr. Baker, fixing
the new hand with steady blue eyes. And Donkin vanished suddenly out
of the light into the dark group of mustered men, to be slapped on the
back and to hear flattering whispers:—“He ain’t afeard, he’ll give
sport to ’em, see if he don’t.... Reg’lar Punch and Judy show.... Did
ye see the mate start at him?... Well! Damme, if I ever!...” The last
man had gone over, and there was a moment of silence while the mate
peered at his list.—“Sixteen, seventeen,” he muttered. “I am one hand
short, bo’sen,” he said aloud. The big west-countryman at his elbow,
swarthy and bearded like a gigantic Spaniard, said in a rumbling
bass:—“There’s no one left forward, sir. I had a look round. He ain’t
aboard, but he may turn up before daylight.”—“Ay. He may or he may
not,” commented the mate, “can’t make out that last name. It’s all a
smudge.... That will do, men. Go below.”

The distinct and motionless group stirred, broke up, began to move
forward.

“Wait!” cried a deep, ringing voice.

All stood still. Mr. Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun round
open-mouthed. At last, furious, he blurted out:—“What’s this? Who said
‘Wait’? What...”

But he saw a tall figure standing on the rail. It came down and
pushed through the crowd, marching with a heavy tread towards the
light on the quarterdeck. Then again the sonorous voice said with
insistence:—“Wait!” The lamplight lit up the man’s body. He was
tall. His head was away up in the shadows of lifeboats that stood on
skids above the deck. The whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed
distinctly, but the face was indistinguishable. His hands were big and
seemed gloved.

Mr. Baker advanced intrepidly. “Who are you? How dare you...” he began.

The boy, amazed like the rest, raised the light to the man’s face. It
was black. A surprised hum—a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed
mutter of the word “Nigger”—ran along the deck and escaped out into
the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he
stood in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:—“My
name is Wait—James Wait.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Baker. Then, after a few seconds of smouldering silence,
his temper blazed out. “Ah! Your name is Wait. What of that? What do
you want? What do you mean, coming shouting here?”

The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and
stood behind him in a body. He overtopped the tallest by half a head.
He said: “I belong to the ship.” He enunciated distinctly, with soft
precision. The deep, rolling tones of his voice filled the deck without
effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly condescending, as if
from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the vastness of
human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He went
on:—“The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn’t get aboard sooner.
I saw you all aft as I came up the ladder, and could see directly you
were mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name. I thought you
had it on your list, and would understand. You misapprehended.” He
stopped short. The folly around him was confounded. He was right as
ever, and as ever ready to forgive. The disdainful tones had ceased,
and, breathing heavily, he stood still, surrounded by all these white
men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp—a head vigorously
modelled into deep shadows and shining lights—a head powerful and
misshapen with a tormented and flattened face—a face pathetic and
brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger’s
soul.

Mr. Baker, recovering his composure, looked at the paper close. “Oh,
yes; that’s so. All right, Wait. Take your gear forward,” he said.

Suddenly the nigger’s eyes rolled wildly, became all whites. He put
his hand to his side and coughed twice, a cough metallic, hollow, and
tremendously loud; it resounded like two explosions in a vault; the
dome of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of the ship’s bulwarks
seemed to vibrate in unison, then he marched off forward with the
others. The officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say:
“Won’t some of you chaps lend a hand with my dunnage? I’ve got a chest
and a bag.” The words, spoken sonorously, with an even intonation, were
heard all over the ship, and the question was put in a manner that made
refusal impossible. The short, quick shuffle of men carrying something
heavy went away forward, but the tall figure of the nigger lingered
by the main hatch in a knot of smaller shapes. Again he was heard
asking: “Is your cook a coloured gentleman?” Then a disappointed and
disapproving “Ah! h’m!” was his comment upon the information that the
cook happened to be a mere white man. Yet, as they went all together
towards the forecastle, he condescended to put his head through the
galley door and boom out inside a magnificent “Good evening, doctor!”
that made all the saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on
the coal locker in front of the captain’s supper. He jumped up as if
he had been cut with a whip, and dashed wildly on deck to see the
backs of several men going away laughing. Afterwards, when talking
about that voyage, he used to say:—“The poor fellow had scared me. I
thought I had seen the devil.” The cook had been seven years in the
ship with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife
and three children, whose society he enjoyed on an average one month
out of twelve. When on shore he took his family to church twice every
Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every evening with his lamp turned up
full, a pipe in his mouth, and an open Bible in his hand. Some one
had always to go during the night to put out the light, take the book
from his hand, and the pipe from between his teeth. “For”—Belfast used
to say, irritated and complaining—“some night, you stupid cookie,
you’ll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook.”—“Ah! sonny,
I am ready for my Maker’s call ... wish you all were,” the other
would answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile
and touching. Belfast outside the galley door danced with vexation.
“You holy fool! I don’t want you to die,” he howled, looking up with
furious, quivering face and tender eyes. “What’s the hurry? You blessed
wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle will have you soon enough. Think
of Us ... of Us ... of Us!” And he would go away, stamping, spitting
aside, disgusted and worried; while the other, stepping out, saucepan
in hand, hot, begrimed and placid, watched with a superior, cock-sure
smile the back of his “queer little man” reeling in a rage. They were
great friends.

Mr. Baker, lounging over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid night in
the company of the second mate.—“Those West India niggers run fine
and large—some of them ... Ough!... Don’t they? A fine, big man that,
Mr. Creighton. Feel him on a rope. Hey? Ough! I will take him into my
watch, I think.” The second mate, a fair, gentlemanly young fellow,
with a resolute face and a splendid physique, observed quietly that
it was just about what he expected. There could be felt in his tone
some slight bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to
argue away. “Come, come, young man,” he said, grunting between the
words. “Come! Don’t be too greedy. You had that big Finn in your watch
all the voyage. I will do what’s fair. You may have those two young
Scandinavians and I ... Ough!... I get the nigger, and will take that
... Ough! that cheeky costermonger chap in a black frock-coat. I’ll
make him ... Ough!... make him toe the mark, or my ... Ough!.... name
isn’t Baker. Ough! Ough! Ough!”

He grunted thrice—ferociously. He had that trick of grunting so between
his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective
grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy,
bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face,
his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long ago
discounted by the men. They liked him; Belfast—who was a favourite,
and knew it—mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley—but with
greater caution—imitated his rolling gait. Some of his sayings became
established, daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go
no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting
occasion the mate could “jump down a fellow’s throat in a reg’lar
Western Ocean style.”

Now he was giving his last orders. “Ough! You, Knowles! Call all hands
at four. I want ... Ough!... to heave short before the tug comes.
Look out for the captain. I am going to lie down in my clothes....
Ough!... Call me when you see the boat coming. Ough! Ough!... The
old man is sure to have something to say when he gets aboard,” he
remarked to Creighton. “Well, good-night.... Ough! A long day before us
to-morrow.... Ough!... Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!”

Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and
Mr. Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning
over the rail, and looked dreamily into the night of the East. And he
saw in it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing
sunshine. He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread, and framing in
their arch the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And
through the arch a girl in a light dress, smiling under a sunshade,
seemed to be stepping out of the tender sky.

At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp
burning now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud
breathings, by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned
black, like graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain
of gaudy chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A
leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight
out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two
light snores, that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue.
Singleton stripped again—the old man suffered much from prickly
heat—stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on
his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck
above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing
of his box, and spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about
in his socks, tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about
his calves. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin
munched a piece of hard ship’s bread, sitting on the deck with upturned
feet and restless eyes; he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the
whole fist and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face. Crumbs fell
between his outspread legs. Then he got up.

“Where’s our water-cask?” he asked in a contained voice.

Singleton, without a word, pointed with a big hand that held a short
smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of the tin,
splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him
over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved up sideways.

“There’s a blooming supper for a man,” he whispered bitterly. “My dorg
at ’ome wouldn’t ’ave it. It’s fit enouf for you an’ me. ‘Ere’s a big
ship’s fo’c’sle!... Not a blooming scrap of meat in the kids. I’ve
looked in all the lockers....”

The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign
language. Donkin changed his tone:—“Giv’ us a bit of ’baccy, mate,” he
breathed out confidentially, “I ’aven’t ’ad smoke or chew for the last
month. I am rampin’ mad for it. Come on, old man!”

“Don’t be familiar,” said the nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a
chest near by, out of sheer surprise. “We haven’t kept pigs together,”
continued James Wait in a deep undertone. “Here’s your tobacco.”
Then, after a pause, he inquired:—“What ship?”—“Golden State,”
muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled
low.—“Ran?” he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged
out. “In course I ran,” he mumbled. “They booted the life hout of one
Dago chap on the passage ’ere, then started on me. I cleared hout
’ere.—” “Left your dunnage behind?”—“Yes, dunnage and money,” answered
Donkin, raising his voice a little; “I got nothink. No clothes, no bed.
A bandy-legged little Hirish chap ’ere ’as give me a blanket. Think
I’ll go an’ sleep in the fore topmast staysail to-night.”

He went on deck trailing behind his back a corner of the blanket.
Singleton, without a glance, moved slightly aside to let him pass. The
nigger put away his shore togs and sat in clean working clothes on his
box, one arm stretched over his knees. After staring at Singleton for
some time he asked without emphasis:—“What kind of ship is this? Pretty
fair? Eh?”

Singleton didn’t stir. A long while after he said, with unmoved
face:—“Ship!... Ships are all right. It is the men in them!”

He went on smoking in the profound silence. The wisdom of half a
century spent in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken
unconsciously through his old lips. The cat purred on the windlass.
Then James Wait had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him,
tossed him like a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes
headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily
out of his bunk: “’Struth! what a blamed row!”—“I have a cold on my
chest,” gasped Wait.—“Cold! you call it,” grumbled the man; “should
think ’twas something more....”—“Oh! you think so,” said the nigger
upright and loftily scornful again. He climbed into his berth and began
coughing persistently while he put his head out to glare all round the
forecastle. There was no further protest. He fell back on the pillow,
and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a man oppressed in his
sleep.

Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and his back to
the darkness. And alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping forecastle
he appeared bigger, colossal, very old; old as Father Time himself,
who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre to
contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler.
Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured and
forgotten generation. He stood, still strong, as ever unthinking; a
ready man with a vast empty past and with no future, with his childlike
impulses and his man’s passions already dead within his tattooed
breast. The men who could understand his silence were gone—those men
who knew how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of
eternity. They had been strong, as those are strong who know neither
doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent
and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to
represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as
going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had
been men who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not
fear, and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage,
but easy to inspire; voiceless men—but men enough to scorn in their
hearts the sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate.
It was a fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to
them the privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate
and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or
the refuge of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow
grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Their
successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They
are less naughty, but less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also
less believing; and if they have learned how to speak they have also
learned how to whine. But the others were strong and mute; they were
effaced, bowed and enduring, like stone caryatides that hold up in the
night the lighted halls of a resplendent and glorious edifice. They are
gone now—and it does not matter. The sea and the earth are unfaithful
to their children: a truth, a faith, a generation of men goes—and is
forgotten, and it does not matter! Except, perhaps, to the few of those
who believed the truth, confessed the faith—or loved the men.

A breeze was coming. The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to
a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the
windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose
gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life
that had been lurking stealthily in the iron. In the hawse-pipe the
grinding links sent through the ship a sound like a low groan of a man
sighing under a burden. The strain came on the windlass, the chain
tautened like a string, vibrated—and the handle of the screw-brake
moved in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward.

Till then he had been standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful
and hopeless, with a face grim and blank—a sixty-year-old child of
the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been
expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much
part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert
understanding upon the sternness of his aged face. The flame of the
lamp swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood
over the brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing
shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged
ahead slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down,
and after swaying imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap
on the hard wood planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a
violent throw forward of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the
brake. He recovered himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while
glaring down at the powerful and compact engine that squatted on the
deck at his feet like some quiet monster—a creature amazing and tame.

“You ... hold!” he growled at it masterfully, in the incult tangle of
his white beard.

CHAPTER TWO

Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea.

A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbour the measureless
expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like a floor of jewels, and as
empty as the sky. The short black tug gave a pluck to windward, in
the usual way, then let go the rope, and hovered for a moment on the
quarter with her engines stopped; while the slim, long hull of the ship
moved ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper canvas blew
out in the breeze with soft round contours, resembling small white
clouds snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home,
the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid,
gliding, all shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned
short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes
watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell
between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with
fierce hurry. She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle,
surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape
with ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of the land. She left
a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing trails of
foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black
patch of soot remained, undulating on the swell—an unclean mark of the
creature’s rest.

The Narcissus left alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent
and still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam
swept past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the
land glided away slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless
wings over the swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the
birds went away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow
running for Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of
the horizon, lingered and vanished like an illusion.