Thirst

CHARACTERS—	A GENTLEMAN A DANCER A WEST INDIAN MULATTO SAILOR

SCENE—A steamer’s life raft rising and falling slowly on the long ground-swell of a glassy tropic sea. The sky above is pitilessly clear, of a steel blue color merging into black shadow on the horizon’s rim. The sun glares down from straight overhead like a great angry eye of God. The heat is terrific. Writhing, fantastic heat-waves rise from the white deck of the raft. Here and there on the still surface of the sea the fins of sharks may be seen slowly cutting the surface of the water in lazy circles.
Two men and a woman are on the raft. Seated at one end is a West Indian mulatto dressed in the blue uniform of a sailor. Across his jersey may be seen the words “Union Mail Line” in red letters. He has on rough sailor shoes. His head is bare. When he speaks it is in drawling sing-song tones as if he were troubled by some strange impediment of speech. He croons a monotonous negro song to himself as his round eyes follow the shark fins in their everlasting circles.
At the other end of the raft sits a middle-aged white man in what wads once an evening dress; but sun and salt water have reduced it to the mere caricature of such a garment. His white shirt is stained and rumpled; his collar a formless pulp about his neck; his black tie a withered ribbon. Evidently he had been a firstclass passenger. Just now he cuts a sorry and pitiful figure as he sits staring stupidly at the water with unseeing eyes. His scanty black hair is disheveled, revealing a bald spot burnt crimson by the sun. A mustache droops over his lips, and some of the dye has run off it making a black line down the side of his lean face, blistered with sunburn, haggard with hunger and thirst. From time to time he licks his swollen lips with his blackened tongue.
Between the two men a young woman lies with arms outstretched, face downward on the raft. She is even a more bizarre figure than the man in evening clothes, for she is dressed in a complete short-skirted dancer’s costume of black velvet covered with spangles. Her long blond hair streams down over her bare, unprotected shoulders. Her silk stockings are baggy and wrinkled and her dancing shoes swollen and misshapen. When she lifts her head a diamond necklace can be seen glittering coldly on the protruding collar-bones of her emaciated shoulders. Continuous weeping has made a blurred smudge of her rouge and the black make-up of her eyes but one can still see that she must have been very beautiful before hunger and thirst had transformed her into a mocking spectre of a dancer. She is sobbing endlessly, hopelessly.
In the eyes of all three the light of a dawning madness is shining.

THE DANCER—(raising herself to a sitting posture and turning piteously to the Gentleman) My God! My God! This silence is driving me mad! Why do you not speak to me? Is there no ship in sight yet?
THE GENTLEMAN—(dully) No. I do not think so. At least I cannot see any. (He tries to rise to his fret but finds himself too weak and sits down again with a groan.) If I could only stand up I could tell better. I cannot see far from this position. I am so near the water. And then my eyes are like two balls of fire. They burn and burn until they feel as if they were boring into my brain.
THE DANCER—I know! I know! Everywhere I look I see great crimson spots. It is as if the sky were raining drops of blood. Do you see them too?

THE SAILOR—(stopping his song abruptly and turning quickly around) Water? Who’s got water? (His swollen tongue shows between his thy lips.)

THE GENTLEMAN—(turning to the Sailor) You know no one here has any water. You stole the last drop we had yourself (irritably) Why do you ask such questions? (The Sailor turns his back again and watches the shark fins. He does not answer nor does he sing any longer. There is a silence, profound and breathless.)

THE DANCER—(creeping over to the Gentleman and seizing his arm) Do you not notice how deep the silence is? The world seems emptier than ever. I am afraid. Tell me why it is.

THE GENTLEMAN—I, too, notice it. But I do not know why it is.

THE DANCER—Ah! I know now. He is silent. Do you not remember he was singing? A queer monotonous song it was—more of a dirge than a song. I have heard many songs in many languages in the places I have played, but never a song like that before. Why did he stop, do you think? Maybe something frightened him.

THE GENTLEMAN—I do not know. But I will ask him. (to the Sailor) Why have you stopped singing? (The Sailor looks at him with a strange expression in his eyes. He does not answer but turns to the circling fins again and takes up his song, dully, droningly, as if from some place he had left off The Dancer and the Gentleman listen in attitudes of strained attention for a long time.)

THE DANCER—(laughing hysterically) What a song! There is no tune to it and I can understand no words. I wonder what it means.

THE GENTLEMAN—Who knows? It is doubtless some folk song of his people which he is singing.

THE DANCER—But I wish to find out. Sailor! Will you tell me what it means—that song you are singing? (The negro stares at her uneasily for a moment.)

THE SAILOR—(drawlingly) It is a song of my people.

THE DANCER—Yes. But what do the words mean?

THE SAILOR—(pointing to the shark fins) I am singing to them. It is a charm. I have been told it is very strong. If I sing long enough they will not eat us.

THE DANCER—(terrified) Eat us? What will eat us?

THE GENTLEMAN—(pointing to the moving fins in the still water) He means the sharks. Those pointed black things you see moving through the water are their fins. Have you not noticed them before?

THE DANCER—Yes, yes. I have seen them. But I did not know they were sharks. (sobbing) Oh it is horrible, all this!

THE GENTLEMAN—(to the negro, harshly) Why do you tell her such things? Do you not know you will frighten her?

THE SAILOR—(dully) She asked me what I was singing.

THE GENTLEMAN—(trying to comfort the Dancer who is still sobbing) At least tell her the truth about the sharks. That is all a children’s tale about them eating people. (raising his voice) You know they never eat anyone. And I know it. (The negro looks at him and his lips contract grotesquely. Perhaps he is trying to smile.)

THE DANCER—(raising her head and drying her eyes) You are sure of what you say?

THE GENTLEMAN—(confused by the negro’s stare) Of course I am sure. Everyone knows that sharks are afraid to touch a person. They are all cowards. (to the negro) You were just trying to frighten the lady, were you not? (The negro turns away from them and stares at the sea. He commences to sing again.)

THE DANCER—I no longer like his song. It makes me dream of horrible things. Tell him to stop.

THE GENTLEMAN—Bah! You are nervous. Anything is better than dead silence.

THE DANCER—Yes. Anything is better than silence—even a song like that.

THE GENTLEMAN—He is strange—that sailor. I do not know what to think of him.

THE DANCER—It is a strange song he sings.

THE GENTLEMAN—He does not seem to want to speak to us.

THE DANCER—I have noticed that, too. When I asked him about the song he did not want to answer at all.

THE GENTLEMAN—Yet he speaks good English. It cannot be that he does not understand us.

THE DANCER—When he does speak it is as if he had some impediment in his throat.

THE GENTLEMAN—Perhaps he has. If so, he is much to be pitied and we are wrong to speak of him so.

THE DANCER—I do not pity him. I am afraid of him.

THE GENTLEMAN—That is foolish. It is the sun which beats down so fiercely which makes you have such thoughts. I, also, have been afraid of him at times, but I know now that I had been gazing at the sea too long and listening to the great silence. Such things distort your brain.

THE DANCER—Then you no longer fear him?

THE GENTLEMAN—I no longer fear him now that I am quite sane. It clears my brain to talk to you. We must talk to each other all the time.

THE DANCER—Yes, we must talk to each other. I do not dream when I talk to you.

THE GENTLEMAN—I think at one time I was going mad. I dreamed he had a knife in his hand and looked at me. But it was all madness; I can see that now. He is only a poor negro sailor—our companion in misfortune. God knows we are all in the same pitiful plight. We should not grow suspicious of one another.

THE DANCER—All the same, I am afraid of him. There is something in his eyes when he looks at me, which makes me tremble.

THE GENTLEMAN—There is nothing I tell you. It is all your imagination. (There is a long pause.)

THE DANCER—Good God! Is there no ship in sight yet?

THE GENTLEMAN—(attempting to rise but falling back weakly) I can see none. And I cannot stand to get a wider view.

THE DANCER—(pointing to the negro) Ask him. He is stronger than we are. He may be able to see one.

THE GENTLEMAN—Sailor! (The negro ceases his chant and turns to him with expressionless eyes.) You are stronger than we are and can see farther. Stand up and tell me if there is any ship in sight.

THE SAILOR—(rising slowly to his feet and looking at all points of the horizon) No. There is none. (He sits down again and croons his dreary melody.)

THE DANCER—(weeping hopelessly) My God, this is horrible. To wait and wait for something that never comes.

THE GENTLEMAN—It is indeed horrible. But it is to be expected.

THE DANCER—Why do you say it is to be expected? Have you no hopes, then, of being rescued?

THE GENTLEMAN—(wearily) I have hoped for many things in my life. Always I have hoped in vain. We are far out of the beaten track of steamers. I know little of navigation, yet I heard those on board say that we were following a course but little used. Why we did so, I do not know. I suppose the Captain wished to make a quicker passage. He alone knows what was in his mind and he will probably never tell.

THE DANCER—No, he will never tell.

THE GENTLEMAN—Why do you speak so decidedly? He might have been among those who escaped in the boats.

THE DANCER—He did not escape. He is dead!

THE GENTLEMAN—Dead?

THE DANCER—Yes. He was on the bridge. I can remember seeing his face as he stood in under a lamp. It was pale and drawn like the face of a dead man. His eyes, too, seemed dead. He shouted some orders in a thin trembling voice. No one paid any attention to him. And then he shot himself. I saw the flash, and heard the report above all the screams of the drowning. Some one grasped me by the arm and I heard a hoarse voice shouting in my ear. Then I fainted.

THE GENTLEMAN—Poor Captain! It is evident, then, that he felt himself guilty—since he killed himself. It must be terrible to hear the screams of the dying and know oneself to blame. I do not wonder that he killed himself.

THE DANCER—He was so kind and good-natured—the Captain. It was only that afternoon on the promenade deck that he stopped beside my chair. “I hear you are to entertain us this evening” he said. “That will be delightful, and it is very kind of you. I had promised myself the pleasure of seeing you in New York, but you have forestalled me.” (after a pause) How handsome and broad-shouldered he was—the Captain.

THE GENTLEMAN—I would have liked to have seen his soul.

THE DANCER—You would have found it no better and no worse than the souls of other men. If he was guilty he has paid with his life.

THE GENTLEMAN—No. He has avoided payment by taking his life. The dead do not pay.

THE DANCER—And the dead cannot answer when we speak evil of them. All we can know is that he is dead. Let us talk of other things. (There is a pause.)

THE GENTLEMAN—(fumbles in the inside pocket of his dress coat and pulls out a black object that looks like a large card case. He opens it and stares at it with perplexed eyes. Then, giving a hollow laugh, he holds it over for the Dancer to see.) Oh, the damned irony of it!

THE DANCER—What is it? I cannot read very well. My eyes ache so.

THE GENTLEMAN—(still laughing mockingly) Bend closer! Bend closer! It is worth while understanding—the joke that has been played on me.

THE DANCER—(reading slowly, her face almost touching the case) United States Club of Buenos Aires! I do not understand what the joke is.

THE GENTLEMAN—(impatiently snatching the case from her hand) I will explain the joke to you then. Listen! M-e-n-u—menu. That is the joke. This is a souvenir menu of a banquet given in my honor by this Club. (reading) “Martini cocktails, soup, sherry, fish, Burgundy, chicken, champagne”—and here we arc dying for a crust of bread, for a drink of water! (His mad laughter suddenly ceases and in a frenzy of rage he shakes his fist at the sky and screams) God! God! What a joke to play on us! (After this outburst he sinks back dejectedly, his trembling hand still clutching the menu.)

THE DANCER—(sobbing) This is too horrible. What have we done that we should suffer so? It is as if one misfortune after another happened to make our agony more terrible. Throw that thing away! The very sight of it is a mockery. (The Gentleman throws the menu into the sea where it floats, a black spot on the glassy water.) How do you happen to have that thing with you? It is ghastly for you to torment me by reading it.

THE GENTLEMAN—I am sorry to have hurt you. The jest was so grotesque I could not keep it to myself You ask how I happen to have it with me? I will tell you. It gives the joke an even bitterer flavor. You remember when the crash came? We were all in the salon. You were singing—a Cockney song I think?

THE DANCER—Yes. It is one I first sang at the Palace in London.

THE GENTLEMAN—It was in the salon. You were singing. You were very beautiful. I remember a woman on my right saying: “How pretty she is! I wonder if she is married?” Strange how some idiotic remark like that will stick in one’s brain when all else is vague and confused. A tragedy happens—we are in the midst of it—and one of our clearest remembrances afterwards is a remark that might have been overheard in any subway train.

THE DANCER—It is so with me. There was a fat, bald-headed, little man. It was on deck after the crash. Everywhere they were fighting to get into the boats. This poor little man stood by himself. His moon face was convulsed with rage. He kept repeating in loud angry tones: “I shall be late. I must cable! I can never make it!” He was still bewailing his broken appointment when a rush of the crowd swept him off his feet and into the sea. I can see him now. He is the only person besides the Captain I remember clearly.

THE GENTLEMAN—(continuing his story in a dead voice) You were very beautiful. I was looking at you and wondering what kind of a woman you were. You know I had never met you personally—only seen you in my walks around the deck. Then came the crash—that horrible dull crash. We were all thrown forward on the floor of the salon; then screams, oaths, fainting women, the hollow boom of a bulkhead giving way. I vaguely remember rushing to my stateroom and picking up my wallet. It must have been that menu that I took instead. Then I was on deck fighting in the midst of the crowd. Somehow I got into a boat—but it was overloaded and was swamped immediately. I swam to another boat. They beat me off with the oars. That boat too was swamped a moment later. And then the gurgling, choking cries of the drowning! Something huge rushed by me in the water leaving a gleaming trail of phosphorescence. A woman near me with a life belt around her gave a cry of agony and disappeared—then I realized—sharks! I became frenzied with terror. I swam. I beat the water with my hands. The ship had gone down. I swam and swam with but one idea—to put all that horror behind me. I saw something white on the water before me. I clutched it—climbed on it. It was this raft. You and he were on it. I fainted. The whole thing is a horrible nightmare in my brain—but I remember clearly that idiotic remark of the woman in the salon. What pitiful creatures we are!

THE DANCER—When the crash came I also rushed to my stateroom. I took this, (pointing to the diamond necklace) clasped it round my neck and ran on deck; the rest I have told you.

THE GENTLEMAN—Do you not remember how you came on this raft? It is strange that you and he should be on a raft alone when so many died for lack of a place. Were there ever any others on the raft with you?

THE DANCER—No, I am sure there were not. Everything in my memory is blurred. But I feel sure we were always the only ones—until you came. I was afraid of you—your face was livid with fear. You were moaning to yourself.

THE GENTLEMAN—It was the sharks. Until they came I kept a half-control over myself. But when I saw them even my soul quivered with terror.

THE DANCER—(horror-stricken, looking at the circling fins) Sharks! Why they are all around us now. (frenziedly) You lied to me. You said they would not touch us. Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid! (She covers her face with her hands.)

THE GENTLEMAN—If I lied to you it was because I wished to spare you. Be brave! We are safe from them as long as we stay on the raft. These things must be faced. (then in tones of utter despondency) Besides, what does it matter?—sharks or no sharks—the end is the same.

THE