The Ebb-Tide Chapter 3 - The Old Calaboose - Destiny at the Door

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:15)

CHAPTER III. THE OLD CALABOUSE, DESTINY AT THE DOOR The old calaboose, in which the waifs had so long harbored, is a low, rectangular enclosure of a building at the corner of a shady western avenue and a little townward of the British Consulate. Within was a grassy court, littered with wreckage and the traces of vagrant occupation. Six or seven cells opened from the court, the doors that had once been locked on mutinous whalermen, rotting before them in the grass. No mark remained of their old destination, except the rusty bars upon the windows.

The floor of one of the cells had been a little cleared. A bucket, the last remaining piece of furniture of the three catiffs, stood full of water by the door, a half-coconut shell beside it for a drinking cup, and on some ragged ends of mat Huish sprawled asleep, his mouth open, his face deathly. The glow of the tropic afternoon, the green of sun-bright foliage, stared into that shady place through door and window. And Herrick, pacing to and fro on the coral floor, sometimes paused and loved his face and neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long arrears of suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and the harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point when pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and death and life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a caged brute, his mind whirling through the universe of thought and memory.

His eyes, as he went, skimming the legends on the wall. The crumbling whitewash was all full of them, Tahitian names and French and English, and rude sketches of ships under sail and men at fisticuffs.

It came to him of a sudden that he, too, must leave upon these walls the memorial of his passage. He paused before a clean space, took the pencil out, and pondered.

Vanity, so hard to dislodge, awoke in him.

We call it vanity at least, perhaps unjustly. Rather it was the bare sense of his existence prompted him, the sense of his life, the one thing wonderful, to which he scarce clung with a finger. From his jarred nerves there came a strong sentiment of coming change. Whether good or ill, he could not say. Change he knew no more. Change. With inscrutable veiled face, approaching noiseless.

With the feeling came the vision of a concert-room, the rich hues of instruments, the silent audience, and the loud voice of the symphony.

Destiny knocking at the door, he thought. Drew a stave on the plaster and wrote in the famous phrase from the Fifth Symphony.

So, thought he, they will know that I loved music and had classical tastes. They?

He, I suppose, the unknown, kindred spirit that shall come someday and read my memoir Querella. Ha! He shall have Latin, too!

And he added, Terce quaterce bai te cahius ante ora patrum.

He turned again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and supporting sense of duty done.

He had dug his grave that morning. Now he had carved his epitaph. The folds of the toga were composed. Why should he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do?

He paused and looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance. Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?

Only the obligation to go on, without discharge or furlough, bearing the unbearable? Ich trage, uner Tragliches. The quotation rose in his mind. He repeated the whole piece, one of the most perfect of the most perfect of poets, and a phrase struck him like a blow.

Du, stotzes Herz, a hast es ja gewollt.

Where was the pride of his heart? And he raged against himself as a man bites on a sore tooth, in a heady sensuality of scorn. I have no pride, I have no heart, no manhood, he thought. Or why should I prolong a life more shameful than the gallows? Or why should I have fallen to it? No pride, no capacity, no force. Not even a bandit. And to be starving here worth worse than Banditi, with this trivial hell-hound!

His rage against his comrade rose and flooded him, and he shook a trembling fist at the sleeper. A swift step was audible. The captain appeared upon the threshold of the cell, panting and flushed, and with a foolish face of happiness. In his arms he carried a loaf of bread and bottles of beer, and the pockets of his coat were bulging with cigars. He rolled his treasures on the floor, grasped Herrick by both hands, and crowed with laughter. Broach the beer! he shouted. Broach the beer! And glory hallelujah! Beer? repeated Huish, struggling to his feet. Beer it is, cried Davis. Beer and plenty of it. Any number of persons can use it, like lion's tooth-tablet, with perfect propriety and neatness. Who's to officiate? Leave me alone for that, said the clerk.