But it was not his fortune to deliver himself of these observations, for immediately upon reaching the gathering he and Bertrand were set upon by the nearest pirates and held fast by the arms. The group separated into a double column leading to the larboard rail, from the gangway of which, illuminated by the flickering lanterns, the prisoners saw a plank run out some six feet over the sea.
"Nay!" Ebenezer's flesh drew up. "Dear God in Heav'n!"
Captain Pound was not in sight, but somewhere aft his voice said "On with't." The grim-faced pirates drew their cutlasses and held them ready; Ebenezer and Bertrand, at the inboard end of the gauntlet, were faced toward the plank, released, and at the same moment pricked from behind with swords or knives to get them moving.
"From the first, gentlemen, I have been uncertain which of you is Ebenezer Cooke," said Captain Pound. "I know now that the twain of you are impostors. The real Ebenezer Cooke is in St. Mary's City, and hath been these several weeks."
"Nay!" cried the poet, and Bertrand howled. But the ranks of steel blades closed behind them, and they were shortly teetering on the plank. Below them the black sea raced and rustled down the freeboard; Ebenezer saw it sparkle in the flare of lanterns and fell to his knees, the better to clutch at the plank. No time for a parting song like that of Arion, whose music had summoned dolphins to his rescue. In two seconds Bertrand, farther outboard, lost his balance and fell with a screech into the water.
"Jump!" cried several pirates.
"Shoot him!" others urged.
"I'God!" wailed Ebenezer, and allowed himself to tumble from the plank.
16: The Laureate and Bertrand, Left to Drown, Assume Their Niches in the Heavenly Pantheon
For better or worse, the Laureate found the water warm; the initial shock of immersion was gone by the time he scrabbled to the surface, and when he opened his eyes he saw the lights of the shallop's stern, already some yards distant, slipping steadily away. But despite the moderate temperature of the water his heart froze. He could scarely comprehend his position: uppermost in his mind was not the imminence of death at all, but that last declaration of Captain Pound's, that the real Ebenezer Cooke was in St. Mary's City. Another impostor! What marvelous plot, then, was afoot? There was of course the possibility that Burlingame, so clever at disguises, had arrived safely and found it useful to play the poet, the further to confound Coode. But if he had learned of Ebenezer's capture from passengers on the Poseidon, as one would suppose, surely he understood that assuming his identity would jeopardize his friend's life; and if instead he believed his ward and protégé dead, it was hard to imagine him having the heart for imposture. No, more likely it was Coode himself who was responsible. And to what evil purpose would his name be turned? Ebenezer shuddered to think. He kicked off his shoes, the better to stay afloat; the precious manuscript too he reluctantly cast away, and began treading water as gently as possible to conserve his strength.
But for what? The hopelessness of his circumstances began to make itself clear. Already the shallop's lights were small in the distance, obscured by every wave; soon they would be gone entirely, and there were no other lights. For all he knew he was in mid-Atlantic; certainly he was scores of miles from land, and the odds against another ship's passing even within sight by daylight were so great as to be unthinkable. Moreover, the night was young: there could be no fewer than eight hours before dawn, and though the seas were not rough, he could scarcely hope to survive that long.
"I'faith, I am going to die!" he exclaimed to himself. "There is no other possibility!"
This was a thing he had often pondered. Always, in fact — every since his boyhood days in St. Giles, when he and Anna played at saints and Caesars or Henry read them stories of the past — he had been fascinated by the aspect of death. How must the cutpurse feel, or the murderer, when he mounts the stairway to the gibbet? The falling climber, when he sees the rock that will dash out brains and bowels? In the night, between their bedchambers, he and his sister had examined every form of death they knew of and compared their particular pains and horrors. They had even experimented with death: once they pressed the point of a letter knife into their breasts as hard as they dared, but neither had had the courage to draw blood; another time each had tried being throttled by the other, to see who could go the farthest without crying out. But the best game of all was to see who could hold his breath longer; to see, specifically, whether either was brave enough to hold it to the point of unconsciousness. Neither had ever reached that goal, but competition carried their efforts to surprising lengths: they would grow mottled, their eyes would bulge, their jaws clench, and finally would come the explosion of breath that left them weak. There was a terrible excitement about this game; no other came so close to the feel of death, especially if in the last frantic moments one imagined himself buried alive, drowning, or otherwise unable to respire at will.
It is not surprising, therefore, that however unparalleled in his experience, Ebenezer's present straits were by no means novel to his imagination. Even the details of stepping from the plank at night, clawing from the depths for air, and watching the stern lights slip away they had considered, and Ebenezer almost knew ahead of time how the end would feeclass="underline" water catching the throat and stinging the nose, the convulsive coughing to expel it, and the inevitable reinspiration of air where no air was, the suck of water into the lungs; then vertigo, the monstrous pressure in head and chest, and worst of all the frenzy, the anxiety of the body not to die, that total mindless lust for air which must in the last seconds rend body and soul unspeakably. When he and Anna chose their deaths, drowning — along with burning, slow crushing, and similar protracted agonies — was disqualified at once, and the news that anyone had actually suffered from such an end would thrill them to the point of dizziness. But in his heart the fact of death and all these sensuous anticipations were to Ebenezer like the facts of life and the facts of history and geography, which, owing to his education and natural proclivities, he looked at always from the storyteller's point of view: notionally he admitted its finality: vicariously he sported with its horror; but never, never could he really embrace either. That lives are stories, he assumed; that stories end, he allowed — how else could one begin another? But that the teller himself must live a particular tale and die — Unthinkable! Unthinkable!
Even now, when he saw not the slightest grounds for hope and knew that the dread two minutes must be on him soon, his despair was as notional, his horror as vicarious, as if he were in his chamber in St. Giles playing the dying-game, or acting out a story in the summerhouse. Bertrand, he assumed with some envy, had strangled on his water and was done with it; there was no reason why he himself should not get it over with at once. But it was not simply fear that kept him paddling; it was also the same constitutional deficiency that had made him unable to draw his own blood, will himself unconscious, or acknowledge in his heart that there really had been a Roman Empire. The shallop was gone. Nothing was to be seen except the stars, or heard except the chuckle of water around his neck, yet his spirit was almost calm.
Presently he heard a thrashing in the sea nearby; his heart pounded. " 'Tis a shark!" he thought, and envied Bertrand more than ever. Here was something that had not occurred to him! Why had he not drowned himself at once? The thing splashed nearer; another wave and they were in the same trough. Even as Ebenezer struck out in the opposite direction, his left leg brushed against the monster.