# Down to the Sea/The Closing of the Circuit

pp. 1–20.

### THE CLOSING OF THE CIRCUIT

WHILE my child lives and I am here to teach him, he will not know the meaning of the words light, color, and darkness. He will grow up ignorant of his condition and will be educated from expurgated books for the blind. I shall be his teacher, and as far as in my power I shall lighten his curse." Thus spoke the father to the physicians who had examined the expressionless blue eyes of his infant son. "No hope," they had said. The trouble was with the optic nerve or the inner connection with the brain. He would never know light from darkness, though the eye, being well nourished, would grow with the body and retain its color.
The wife and mother had died in giving birth to the little one, and as there were no solicitous relatives on either side to interfere, the doubly afflicted man was free to educate his child as he wished. He erected a high wall around his property, gave emphatic notice to the villagers to keep out, and retired into the darkened world of his son. While none approved of his plan, few cared to question or openly criticise the stern, iron-faced man who occasionally appeared on the streets, and in time, as they died off or moved away, the strange existence unfolding within those high walls was forgotten.
The child grew, healthy and strong. With his father for teacher and a few trusted servants his only companions, he passed his childhood and early youth, and was educated as are the blind—with this difference: nothing was taught him that in his father's judgment would lead him into inquiry as to his true condition. His four remaining senses became abnormally keen; he heard distant sounds that others could not detect, could taste an odor in the air, and could feel, besides colors, the faintest of shadows on the wall—which latter changing phenomenon was described to him as an uncertain attribute of heat.
In him, too, developed to a remarkable degree what has been called the magnetic sense, which enables the blind to distinguish the proximity of a solid object or an open space. So strong was this perception that he needed no cane to traverse at a run the rooms and passages of the house or the winding paths of the garden. And, to reduce the list of embargoed words, and because in a measure it did the work of his missing sense, to this faculty was given the name sight. Hence he would say that he "saw" something, when he merely meant that he felt its presence.
To the extent that he was influenced by external impressions, he was happy; but instincts within him, aided by maturing reasoning power, tended, as he neared manhood, to arouse his suspicion. The sounds beyond the garden wall, the making of his clothes by some one unknown to him, the occasional presence of silent men who worked quickly with tools and made changes in doors and passages, the continuous supply of food from without, and the great front door, locked from his earliest remembrance, were problems to his now logical mind that he would solve. They indicated the existence of a sphere of action far beyond his present environment; so he tortured his father with speculations, and his education stopped.
"I have taught him too much," said the unhappy man. "I started wrong. I should have made him deaf and dumb before I began."
The father took refuge in direct deceit, ascribing some of the phenomena which troubled the boy to the great unknown, others to the wisdom and experience of other men, which would come to him in time. He thus temporarily eliminated all factors but one—that of the locked front door; and could only meet the boy's demand to be allowed passage through by a downright refusal. The result was a stormy scene.
The father retired to his study sorrowing over the first harsh words he had given his son, and the boy went out into the evening and sought the extreme corner of the garden, where, sitting on a rustic bench and brooding rebelliously over the sudden appearance of boundaries to his investigations, he heard among the strange yet familiar sounds from beyond the wall a new one, and felt the presence of some one near and above him. Not needing to raise his head to assist his consciousness, he asked: "Who is it?"
"Me," came a musical voice.
"Who?" he asked again, with a puzzled face.
"Oh, auntie says I'm a tomboy. Do you live here? My! what a pretty garden. May I come down?"
"Yes, come," he answered, understanding the request.
"Look out! No. I'll get the ladder. I couldn't climb back if I jumped."
A black-eyed, dark-haired sprite of fifteen on top of the wall pulled up a ladder, lowered it, and clambered down.
"You're not polite—you might have helped me," she said, with a coquettish flirt of her curls as she faced the immovable boy. "What's your—oh, I didn't know. I'm so sorry."
Tears came to her eyes and a look of womanly pity swept over her childish face. She had seen his expressionless, half-closed eyes.
"Sorry? What for?" he asked. "Sorry you came? I'm glad. Who are you?" he passed his hand lightly over her shoulders and face.
"I'm sorry for you; I didn't know you were blinds Indeed, I didn't."
"Blind? What is that? You are a boy like me, aren't you? But your hair is dark while mine is light. How old are you? I am eighteen."
"No, I'm not a boy," she answered, indignantly. "I thought you were blind, but you can see my hair. You mustn't handle me like this—you mustn't. I'll go back."
He felt that he had offended her, and instinctively—for entertaining visitors as well as a perilous knowledge of another sex had not been included in his curriculum—he became deferential, and invited her to sit down. She did so, at a safe distance, which he respected.
"Nice evening, isn't it?" she said, breaking the embarrassing silence; but before he could answer this puzzling remark she went on:
"What ails your eyes? What makes you keep them half closed?"
"I don't know. Do I?" He felt of them, opened them wide, and turned his face toward her. "Tell me about yourself," he resumed. "Where do you come from?"
"Oh, I don't live here," said the maiden. "I'm just visiting Aunt Mary, and thought I'd climb the fence. I don't live anywhere; I've been aboard papa's ship all my life. He's coming for me to-day, for we sail to-morrow. We're going to Shanghai this voyage."
It was unintelligible, but from the list of strange words he selected one and asked what a ship was.
"Why, don't you know? A vessel square rigged on all three masts. The Franklyn carries double to'gallant sails and skysail yards. Papa says he will try her with stunsails next voyage."
"I never learned of these things," said the boy. "You say you live in a ship. Is it a house with a garden—like this?"
"Oh, the idea! No," she laughed, merrily; but the laugh changed to a little scream. "There's a caterpillar!" she said. "Take it away, quick! Knock it off! Ugh!" She sprang toward him. On my dress," she explained.
"What? Where? What is it?" he answered, reaching out both hands in the vacant air. His knowledge of caterpillars was nearly as limited as his knowledge of dresses. She brushed the creeping thing away with her handkerchief, and, sitting down, composed herself much as a bird smooths its ruffled feathers; then looked intently at the sightless eyes of the boy, staring high over her head.
"What was it?" he asked. "What hurt you?"
"Nothing; it's all right now. You are blind, aren't you?" she said, gently.
"I don't know," he answered, a little impatiently. "You said that before. What does blind mean?"
"Why, you can't see."
"Yes, I can."
"But your eyes were wide open and you didn't see the caterpillar. It was right under your nose, too."
"I don't see with my nose. And what difference does it make if my eyes were open? What are they good for, anyway?"
"To see with, of course. Didn't you know?"
"To see with? Eyes are good to see with? Do you see with your eyes?"
"Yes. Didn't you really know what eyes were for? Didn't you know that they were to see with? Couldn't you see when you were little?"
"Not with my eyes. I see with something inside of me; a sort of consciousness of things. How do you see with your eyes? What is it like? I thought I was the same as other people."
"Why," answered the girl, with a little quaver in her voice, "we see the sky, and the sun, and the stars, and flowers, and people, and houses, and—and— Oh, we see everything—that is, in daytime. In the night we can't see because it's dark." She was crying, softly.
"How far away can you see with your eyes?" asked the boy, eagerly. "I can see six feet."
"Oh, we can see miles and miles. We can see everything in front of us."
"And is every one that way but me?"
"Most every one. There are a few blind people. But, tell me," said the girl, wiping her eyes, "how do you know the color of my hair?"
"With my fingers. Do you tell colors with your eyes?"
"Mary! Bear a hand now, my girl," came a voice over the wall. "Where are you?"
"Oh, there's papa!" she exclaimed. "I must go." She moved toward the ladder. "Good-by."
"Don't go!" he cried, following her. "Don't go. Come back."
She turned, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him. "Oh, you poor boy!—poor boy!" she cried, in a choking voice. "Stone blind and you never knew it." She kissed him again, then bounded up the ladder and over the wall.
Not once within his memory had the boy felt the pressure of lips to his own, and this pure kiss of an innocent, childish girl-his initial experience—became a turning-point in his life; for it outweighed every other influence and consideration known to him.
With the kiss still warm on his lips, he felt for the ladder, climbed to the top and called, repeatedly, the name he had heard: "Mary!"
He was not answered. But his sensitive ear distinguished the sound of retreating footsteps—long and heavy, light and pattering—with the lessening murmur of a sweet voice, which dwindled as he listened until it became as the tinkle of a distant bell; and when this was hushed in the silence of the summer night, he descended to the bench, feeling as might a lost soul called to paradise only to receive sentence of doom.
"Stone blind and you never knew it." He repeated her last words again and again, for they rang in his ears. Others could see with their eyes and he could not. Why? They could see things far away and he could see but six feet. Why was it? Why had his father, from whom he had received everything, denied him this? And why, having denied him, did he prevent him from going out through the door, where perhaps others would give him this wondrous faculty? It was wrong, unjust, shameful. Mary was kinder than his father.
As he thought of the generous sympathy of the girl, which he had felt without wholly appreciating, his resentment toward his father increased to passionate rebellion.
"Mary lives in a ship," he muttered. "It has no garden. It can’t be far." He climbed the ladder, raised it, lowered it on the other side, and descended. He was running away—looking for Mary and the wonderful unknown faculty of eyesight. The patient labor of eighteen years was undone in one short ten minutes by a warm-hearted, irresponsible iconoclast in short dresses. A minute before the father had come softly into the garden and, without seeing the ladder, had looked a moment on the brooding boy; then, from motives of delicacy, had retired, leaving him to come in when he pleased.
At the foot of the ladder the boy hesitated, then followed the wall to the corner, where another—or fence—began. He followed this and reached another, which he knew was parallel to the one he had climbed, and here he found a movable part which swung like a door. This he opened, and the creaking of the hinges was answered by a deep-toned growl from behind. He had often heard this sound, and dogs had been described to him; but, never having been struck or injured in his life, he knew not the fear of physical pain, and so—though feeling an impulse to flee—waited until he felt the impact of a hairy body and the closing of powerful jaws on his arm. Then, instinct—antedating his reason by several thousand years—dominated his mind, and he acted, rightly. He was strong and active. Reaching for the throat of the beast, he choked it with all the power of his fingers until the jaws relaxed; then he flung the gasping, snarling brute from him, passed through, and shut the gate—feeling within him a dim consciousness of victory—and examined his arm. The skin was unbroken; the dog's teeth had but pinched severely.
He had conquered in his first friction with the unknown, but very humanly became frightened when the danger was past, and, not daring to return, went on feeling the fences. He was walking on boards, which soon gave way to gravel, then grass, but fences of different design still guided him. After an hour or so these ended and he felt open space. Turning to the left, he found hard ground underfoot, then more grass. As the ground made easiest walking, he held to it, turning to the right or the left as he felt the grass under his feet.
All night the boy followed this country road, pausing at intervals to call for Mary, wondering at the immensity of the new world he was exploring, but feeling no fear of the darkness and solitude, for this had been his life's portion, and with all fears that she might not be in front of him dominated by an indefinable impulse to go on. He was in the hands of his instincts, better guides than his eyes could have been, with his complete lack of worldly knowledge.
In the morning, faint with hunger and fatigue, with feet blistered and bleeding, he sat on a stone doorstep, and, with a strange roar of the waking city in his ears, called to the passers-by, asking for Mary and the ship. None answered until a withered old woman, hobbling along on crutches, stopped and said:
"Poor b'y, what ails ye? Oh, Mither o' God, he's blind. What ye doin' here, b'y?"
"I want to find Mary. I'm hungry."
"Come back, me b'y. Come back—jist round the corner. Me husband was blind—rist his sowl. I'll give ye a bite."
She fed him, questioned him without results, watched his head sink on the table in the lethargy of exhaustion, and put him to bed, with injunctions to her grandson. Tim, to "lave him be." Then she went to her apple-stand.
She had returned at nightfall and prepared her supper before he awakened; then the mutual questionings were resumed. A stubborn pride prevented him speaking of his father, or of himself beyond asking how he could learn to see with his eyes; but he demanded persistently to be taken to the ship and Mary, and became so urgent that the old woman finally called her grandson.
"Tim," she said, "take him down to the docks a bit and try and find his friends. He's lost, poor b'y, an' a bit daft. Mebbe he came from some ship close by. Bring him back if ye don't find them, Tim."
The only description of Tim that this story requires is that he was a typical gamin, fond of dog-fights, one of which, in a near-by vacant lot, he was now missing.
"Dere's a ship bound out to-morrer, two docks down," he said as they started. "Is dat de one yer lookin' fur?"
"Does Mary live there?" asked the boy.
"Dunno; her name's Mary, I think—Mary somethin'. Let's hurry."
They hurried—from different motives—and soon reached the dock, where, standing close up to the black, flaring bow of a full-rigged, deep-laden ship, Tim spelled out, in the light of a neighboring street-lamp, the name Mary Croft, in gilt letters on the topgallant rail.
"Mary, sure 'nough," he said; "is that de one?"
"Is it Mary?" asked the boy, in a frenzy of excitement. "Mary!" he called. "Mary!"
"C'm' on," said Tim, laconically. He piloted him to the long gangplank, placed his hands on the manrope, and said: "G'wan up; dat's de ship yer lookin' fur, I guess," then sped to the dog-fight.
Slowly, yet eagerly, the blind boy ascended the gangplank, felt the grating and steps inside the rail, and descended to the deck, calling the name of the girl whose magnetic sympathy had enchanted him from home; but, as the only soul on board was the watchman, very properly sound asleep in a forecastle bunk on the last night of his job, the boy's call was not answered. Just abreast of the gangway was the booby, or hatch-house, which led to a "'tween deck" below, formed by the extended poop or half-deck on which he stood. He felt the proximity of this hatch-house, and reached it, finding in the after part a door unlocked, which he opened; then he called again for Mary.
Hearing no answer, he stepped in with his hands on the sliding hood above the door. But his foot encountered emptiness, the hood slid back from the pressure of his weight, and he fell heavily to the deck below, where, striking his head against a cask, he lay quiet. Toward midnight he aroused to a half-consciousness, crawled aimlessly about twenty feet, and swooned again. Here he lay screened from observation until the officers and crew had come aboard in the morning, the ship had been towed to sea, and the pilot was preparing to step into the waiting dinghy which would take him to the station boat near the Sandy Hook Lightship. Then he was seen groping under the hatch. He was hauled to the deck and into the presence of the captain and officers, a pitiable spectacle, with clothing soiled from the filth of the "'tween deck," his sightless eyes staring from deep hollows in his livid face, and his temples streaked with congealed blood from a cut in his head.
"Stowaway!" grunted the captain, glaring on the trembling boy, weak from shock and seasickness. "All right. You'll get enough of it."
"That's no stowaway, captain," said the pilot, with one leg over the rail. "He's blind as a bat. I'll take him ashore if you say so."
"What do you say, you young brat?" bawled the captain. "We're short-handed, and you can stay if you want to. Do you want to go ashore, or do you want to stay in the ship?"
"I would rather stay in the ship. I want to see Mary."
The pilot was in a hurry, and, hearing the first part of the sentence, slid down the side out of hearing of the last part—which might have delayed his departure had he heard it. And in this ship the boy went to the southward, while the pilot went ashore.
The Mary Croft was, or had been, a composite ship—that is, wooden planked over iron frames. But this, among the other characteristics of her class, was all that was left her. During a long career, marked by innumerable dismastings and refittings, she had lost her iron spars and wire rigging, and had reverted to an old-fashioned wood and hemp. She was laden with kerosene oil in tin cases, was bound to the antipodes, and was manned with the usual short-handed crew, representative of all nations, so dear to the heart of the American captain.
Without being asked as to his name or for an explanation of his presence on board, the child of nature, who had not yet heard an oath or foul word, whose lowest ideal was the boon of eyesight, was driven with kicks and curses forward among the crew, where his inquiries for Mary were silenced with laughter, to work as best he could and learn to be a sailor. Profane abuse, cuffs, or fist blows, and a stinging rope's end were the methods employed in this school of seamanship, and his affliction only increased the rigor of the tutelage, for none of them believed him actually blind. His habitual use of the word "see" and its synonyms, the keenness of the faculty that he meant and the readiness with which he found any part of the deck where he had once been, was evidence to them that he was shamming—an outrageous violation of nautical ethics.
As the ship neared the tropics, his education, from being confined to the work on deck, progressed on higher lines. Followed by objurgations from the officers, he felt his way aloft one day to the mizzen-royal yard, and, under the instructions of a sailor who accompanied him, learned to loose and furl the sail. This became his especial task, to which, asleep or awake, night or day, he was called when sail was shortened or set. Thinly clad and hatless, he suffered torture from storm and sun, and in the watch below, the servant of the forecastle, he cleaned pots and pans, washed the shirts of the rest, and brought their food from the galley as ordered.
No word of sympathy, no kindly inquiry or expression of friendly interest lightened his darkness or relieved the hideous nightmare which enveloped his soul; he was merely a subject for forecastle wit and ridicule. But into the depths of his misery and helpless terror, surrounded by phenomena of sound and motion beyond the power of his mind to grasp, when the old life in the garden faded to a dream of another world, and even his father's voice would not come back, he carried the memory of the soft, yielding features of the girl, and the kiss on his lips, and the sympathy of her voice. And this memory kept him sane; for while he remembered he hoped, and the reason that hopes will not totter.
In the dreadful, stifling calm of the zone between the trade-winds the ship lay like a log, with the deck hot to the feet and the hemp rigging sticky with oozing tar that had been as hard as wood. A gale, a hurricane, would have been welcomed by the crew as they worked in the rigging or on the blistering deck; but not a catspaw of wind for days had relieved the air of its furnace heat, and no cloud appeared in the metallic sky with its promise. Off to the westward was a large clipper ship, which at the beginning had been hull down on the horizon, but now, at the end of the sixth day, in obedience to the law of attraction, was but five miles away and drifting closer each hour.
"This is a cyclone-breeder," remarked the captain to the first mate. "The barometer acts queer." He went below and returned in a moment, pale and earnest.
"The mercury's below twenty-nine," he said. "Shorten down to topsails before supper. I'm afraid of this."
"Look there, captain," answered the mate, pointing to the southern horizon. Sea and sky were merged in a filmy, translucent wall of light-bluish gray, that shaded indefinitely into the color of the two elements. As they looked it grew larger. The ship to the westward was taking in sky-sails and royals.
"In with the kites!" said the captain, tersely.
"Call all hands!" roared the mate, as he sprang forward. "Starboard watch aft!" he continued, as the crew answered. "Let go royal an' t-gallant hall'ards, fore and aft, an' clew up! Down wi' the flyin'-jib! Bear a hand, my lads! bear a hand!"
The men needed no encouragement. They saw the portent in the southern sky, and hauled and worked and multiplied themselves as only a short-handed merchant crew can. The three royals were soon hanging in the bunt-lines and they manned the top-gallant gear. The blind boy quickly furled the mizzen-royal, and came down while the men were still tugging at top-gallant clew-lines and bunt-lines. The mate saw him.
"Here, you goggle-eyed cub! Lay aloft and stow that main-royal!" he shouted. The boy obeyed, and as the captain directed the hauling-up of courses and lowering of upper topsails before sending the men aloft to furl, he was alone in the rigging, climbing a strange road to find in his darkness, by the similarity of structure with the mizzen-mast, a royal-yard where he was to do two men's work.
The dim shading of gray soon assumed form and size and a deeper hue. Covering half of the southern horizon, and stretching up, a dingy curtain, nearly to the zenith, it presented, in sharp contrast with the brilliant hue of the sky above and around, a menacing aspect of solidity, horrid to behold in the velvety blackness of the center, which absorbed every ray of light from the western sun, reflecting none. It was the complete negation of light and color. Beneath it was a narrow band of pale gray, and beneath this the glassy sea, which bore no trace of ruffling wind. The cloud—if cloud it was—seemed to move with a volition of its own, silently, with no mutterings of thunder or gleam of lightning.
As the boy reached the royal-yard, and the men below were manning topsail down-hauls, it gathered in its shadowy edges, lifted up, and came on, a mighty, roughly symmetrical ball which hovered nearly over the ship. Tints of deep purple now appeared in the valleys of its surface, and on its western edge was a golden rim.
"Make fast all!" cried the frightened captain. "Lay aloft and furl!" he roared.
While the last word was still on his lips, a sheet of white flame enveloped the Mary Croft, and a report beyond all imagining or description" shocked the air from horizon to horizon. The cloud above spread out to an elongated spindle, like the black wings of a mighty angel of death, and went on overhead, having done its work. The ship was a disintegrated wreck. Where wood separated iron in that composite hull, there was molten metal and flame. Each oaken rail was a line of fire. From the roaring furnace below arose, through each hatch and a dozen ragged holes in the deck, spurting, hissing columns of black smoke and burning oil and incandescent gas. The hemp rigging slackened, and, with the festooned canvas, burst into flames which crept aloft, threatening with new torture a moaning boy on the main-royal yard-arm, who alone of that ship's company, insulated on a dry wooden spar, had heard the report and felt a small part of the terrific discharge of heaven's artillery that had destroyed the ship. Not a man standing within or above that iron-ribbed hull had known what struck him. Each was dead before the sensory nerves could act.
The boy on the yard, racked with excruciating pain in every nerve, clung to the spar with one hand and held the other to his head, for in his head was the acme of his agony. Then he became conscious of heat from below, with smoke which stifled him. Choking and gasping, expecting momentarily to hear the roar of the mate, he attempted to furl the sail. Then he felt rain on his bare head, large drops, which multiplied to a shower, then to a deluge of water that compelled him to hold tight to the yard with both hands. The pain in his head increased as he took away his hand, and strange, dream-like sensations crowded his mind, sensations of motion, as though his brain was loosened and turning around. Then the heat and smoke from below ceased; then came wind, cooling and welcome, which increased, at first a breath, then a gust, then a breeze, then a gale—a screaming hurricane. He heard loud creaking below him. The yard inclined, and he shifted his position; it became upright. Then he heard a grinding crash from somewhere, and, clinging tightly to the spar, felt a sickening dizziness, which lasted until, coming with a swishing crash of water, he felt a concussion which, tearing him away from the yard, hurled him into a salt engulfing element that filled his mouth and nose and choked him. Something hard struck his legs, which he grasped, and soon he could breathe. It was the yard-arm, which he knew by the touch.
As he climbed on the floating tangle of spar and cordage, he felt again the scorching heat and breathed the stifling smoke. Then he heard a distant report. It was an encouraging signal from the clipper ship, which, laying over to the lessening squall, was steering a course that would bring her straight to the wreck. But it frightened the boy, reminding him of the awful sound that had hurt him. To him this terrible experience was but a little stranger than his daily contact with environment. He did not know what had happened or how he came to be in the water. He called for help, but, hearing no answer, waited for some one to come. The soreness in his joints was leaving him, though when he opened his eyes there invariably came the pain and the whirl and the phantasms in his head. But this pain gradually became endurable and the whirl less pronounced, so that the phantasmagoria was defined and at times stationary.
As he changed his position on the spar he noticed that the phantasms changed also. Then he found that merely moving his head to the right or to the left, up or down, seemed to cause this change and motion. He realized that when he faced one way there was little difference—nothing but a slight sensation of motion that was pleasurable. In another position there came sharply defined shocks which irritated him. Facing another way, he felt a return of the pain and a lively hatred of the phantasm which accompanied it. He turned away, instinctively shutting his eyes, and the movement and all sensation ended. Then he opened them, and the phenomena returned.
He felt of his eyes with his hand and a new phantasm blotted out all others. Removing his hand took it away. He brought both hands together and repeated the experiment; then, separating them and bringing them together, again and again, the truth came home to him.
"I see!" he cried, to the sky and ocean. "I can see with my eyes! I can see! I can see!"
The optic nerve had been at work since the lightning-bolt had jarred it into life.
In his great joy he shouted with all the power of his lungs; he wanted his shipmates to know; for even they, with the whole world, must rejoice with him. His shout was answered by a distant hail, and then he turned and shouted again. Into his field of vision came a moving object which slowly grew larger. He reached out his hand to touch it, but failed. He waited, shouting at intervals until the moving thing filled his eyes with its strange outline, then heard the voice again.
"All right, my lad," it said, close to him; "hold on! In bow! Way enough! Back water, starboard! Got him?"
Strong hands grasped him and he was lifted into a boat.
"Who's left? Any one?" asked the voice.
"I can see," he answered. "I can see with my eyes."
"Poor devil, he's crazy. Back water, men; we'll look aboard, if we can."
"Where were you when she was struck?" asked the man nearest him.
The boy was staring at the moving pictures filling his brain, which he knew must be men, like himself. For answer he shut his eyes and felt the features of the questioner.
"Where were you when she was struck?" the man repeated.
"Struck! Yes, something struck me. I was on the main royal-yard, and then I was in the water. I don't know. What was it? Who are you?"
"Great God, sir," sang out the man, "he was on the royal-yard when the mainmast went."
"No wonder he's daft. Way enough, boys!"
The flames above deck, temporarily quenched by the rain, were again breaking forth, fed by the raging gulf below. Holding his breath, the officer climbed the weather mizzen-chains, and, shading his eyes from the fierce heat, glanced once at the hecatomb on the shattered deck of the Mary Croft, and dropped back, pale and horror-struck.
"She'll sink in half an hour," he said. "It's best. Give way!"
They left the ship and returned to their own, the clipper, where the boy, astonished that no one shared his joyousness, was lifted up the side and placed on the deck. He looked around and staggered, until, shutting his eyes, he recovered his balance.
"Oh, it's the blind boy," exclaimed a voice that he knew, which sent his blood leaping.
"Mary!" he cried. "Mary! Mary, where are you? I can see now! I can see with my eyes!" She was at his side in an instant. With his eyes still closed, he felt of her face and hair, reveling in ecstatic delight of the senses which remembered her; then, opening them, stamped his soul with her image, which he had not yet imagined. And it pleased his new-born sense more than any of the phantasms that had yet appeared to it.