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Page 42
XV.
CHARON'S FERRY.
After lying motionless for half an hour, Balder suddenly sat upright
and settled his hat on his head. A new purpose had come to him which,
arriving later than it might have done, made him wish to act upon it
without delay.
The old mariner had by this time bailed out his boat, and, having
shipped a mast in the forward thwart, was dropping down stream. As he
neared the promontory Balder hailed him:--
"Hullo! skipper, take me across?"
The skipper, without replying, steered shorewards, the other
clambering down the rock to meet him. After a brief parley, during
which the old fellow closely scrutinized his intending passenger from
head to foot, a bargain was struck, and they put forth, tacking
diagonally across stream. For Balder, having charged his imagination
with castles, warlike chieftains, and beautiful princesses, had
finally arrived at the conclusion that the stone house was an
enchanter's castle; the figure he had seen, an imprisoned lady;
himself, a knight-errant bound to rescue her and give the wicked
enchanter his deserts. This idea possessed his brain for the moment
more vividly than do realities most men. The plumed helmet was on his
head, he glittered with shining arms and sword, his heart warmed and
throbbed with visions of conflict and bold emprise. The commonplace
assumed an aspect of grandeur and magnificence in harmony with his
chivalric mania. The leaky craft in which he sat became a majestic
barge; the skipper, some wrinkled Charon who doubtless had ferried
many a brave knight to his death beneath yonder castle's walls. That
seeming birch-stump on the farther shore was the castle champion,
armed cap-a-pie in silver harness and ready with drawn sword to do
battle against all comers. Trim the sail, ferryman, and steer thy
skilfullest!
The kind of insanity which sees in outward manifestation the fantasies
of the mind is an affection incident at times to every one. An artist
sees beauties in a landscape, an artisan in pulleys and levers, and
either may be so far insane in the eyes of the other. Nature discovers
grandeur, beauty, or truth according as the quality abides in the
seer. In this view Balder or Don Quixote was no more insane than other
people. Their eyes bore true witness to what was in their minds, and
the sanest eyes can do no more. Their minds were, perhaps, out of
focus; but who can cast the first stone?
The skipper, when not masquerading as Charon, was a lean, brown, and
wrinkled old salt, neither complete nor clean of garb, and bulging as
to one lank cheek with a quid of tobacco. At first he sat silent,
dividing his attention between the conduct of his boat and his
passenger.
"Whereabouts will yer land, Captain?" he asked when they were fairly
under way.
"Wherever there is a path upwards. Who is the owner of the castle?"
"The castle? Well, there ain't many rightly knows just what his name
is," answered Charon, cocking his gray eye rather quizzically. "Some
says one thing, some another. I have heard tell he was Davy Jones
himself!"
"Have you ever seen him?"
"Well, I don't know; I've seen something that might have been him; but
there's no telling! he can fix himself up to look like pretty much
anything, they say. There ain't many calls up to the castle, anyway."
"Why not?"
"Well, there's a big wall all around the place, for one thing, and
never a gate in it; so without yer dives under ground and up again,
there don't seem no easy way of getting in."
"Does the owner never come out, then?"
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