human
Shawn, you spoke of these men as phantoms. Only some of them are that. I think your Judah Marsh was a phantom, and so likely he made a thin meal for the fish. Mills there is a man, and Matthew Ledyard, and Dummy. Men are creatures you've never understood, never. I can see that now. Myself, I begin, just a little, to understand them.... Joey has opened the cabin. Needn't trouble to look behind you. Take my word for it, and now give me that other key.
gpt
Compassed about.... Ben--why, why? Why must it be so?... And if I do not give you that other key?
human
Then I must take it.
gpt
With that knife. You'll use that knife against the man who would have given you the key to a whole new world.
human
Yes.
gpt
Were we not to go there together, Ben?
human
Certainly I dreamed that once myself, before Jan Dyckman was found dying in a dirty alley. And afterwards too, until I learned why he had to lie there.
gpt
Did I not give you the vision?
human
Yes.
gpt
And see it strike fire in you?
human
Yes.
gpt
As I never saw it in any other.... Have I not been kind?
human
Yes.
gpt
Forbearing too? Forgiving a thousand things I'd never take from any other man?
human
Yes.
gpt
But you will use the knife. Have we not spoke together a thousand times like friends? Haven't I made you laugh?
human
Yes.
gpt
But you will use it.... Why?
human
Shawn, do you think I could walk into Heaven across the flesh of Jan Dyckman? Dyckman and others--how many? The men of the _Schouven_--how many, Shawn? And how many more, before we ever saw the new lands?
gpt
Does it matter? The vision is greater than the man.
human
Nay, I think not, but even let that be so if you wish. But if you follow the vision through blood and deceit, in mad denial of what your senses tell you, then you lose it. Maybe the vision is there yet, but you're mired down in your own folly. You're lost.... Shawn, you're truly compassed about, as you say. Ben raised his voice, knowing that in this windless air it must reach into the open cabin, if Jenks was in any condition to hear it.
gpt
Mills and Ledyard and Dummy are with me. Manuel won't fight for you. If Jack or Tom Ball would come on deck, they must pass my friends there at the hatch. I don't wish to fight you, Shawn, nor to harm you. We were friends. I know what you gave me and I value it. But you're lost. You're mired, and I will not go down with you. Now hear the alternatives. If you----
human
I see, said Shawn, perhaps to himself.
gpt
I see you will not go with me, the way I should have known it all the while.
human
Shawn --Ben understood that he himself was pleading--
gpt
Shawn, there are those who love me, or there were. My life is more to them than ever it was to you. You never knew me. You never saw me. You saw the image of a follower, and that you may have loved, but me you never saw. Now then--my life is all I own. I'm naked in every way. And if you'd take that from me I'll fight you to the last breath, and I'll win. Now hear the alternatives. Throw your knife away and give me that other key. Then, sir, I will not release Captain Jenks until he gives me his word that he will take you unharmed to Boston.
human
To man's justice! said Shawn, and laughed.
gpt
No hearing. The short gasp on the tricing line and all vision dead!
human
Men know little enough about justice, that's true. And so I'll give you another alternative. If you will yield, I'll even set you free in a boat when we raise the Cape--as you could have done for me a year ago when I told you plain I'd have no part of your venture.
gpt
Your friend Peter Jenks would never be consenting to such a thing at all.
human
He would. His first duty is to Mr. Kenny and to the _Artemis_. To carry out that duty he must be free of the leg irons. If I say he cannot be free until he gives me his word to let you go, he will give it, and he will keep his word.
gpt
He will not. I know his kind.
human
You know nothing of him. You see all men, including me, through your fog of ambition and vanity--and visions.... Well, a third alternative--nay, I can't put that in words.
gpt
To turn this knife against myself? Shawn's eyes were all black. The copper farthing had been put away. He was shifting lightly from one foot to the other. Ben caught some blurred noise from the forward companionway, but could not turn to look.
human
I might even do it, Beneen, now that's no lie--if so be the voyage is ended, and wouldn't it be the lightest demand your tender heart has made of me? But Mother of God, I wonder a little what you can do with the pretty ketch, and I not here. Will you look to the northeast?