William Faulkner - Mosquitoes

So they tied a rope to something, knotting it intricately, then Major Ayers discovered that they had tied it to a winch handle which fitted loosely into a socket and which would probably come out quite easily, once a strain came onto the rope. So they untied it and found something attached firmly to the deck, and they tied the rope to this, and after a while the captain and the stranger, clutching a short evil pipe, came back on deck and stood and watched them. “We’ve got the right rope,” Fairchild told his watch in an undertone, and they knotted the rope intricately and straightened up.

“How’s that, Cap?” Fairchild asked.

“All right,” the captain answered. “Can we trouble you for a match?”

Fairchild gave them a match. The stranger fired his pipe and they got into the tender and departed. They hadn’t got far when the one called Walter came out and called them, and they put about and returned for him. Then they went back to the tug. Fairchild’s watch had ceased work, and it gazed after the tender. After a time Fairchild said, “He said that was the right rope. So I guess we can quit.”

So they did, and went aft to where the ladies were; and presently the tender came bobbing back across the water. It came alongside again and a Negro, sweating gently and regularly, held it steady while the one called Walter and yet anotherstranger got aboard, bringing a rope that trailed away into the water behind them.

Everyone watched with interest while Walter and his companion made the line fast in the bows, after having removed Fairchild’s rope. Then Walter and his friend went below.

“Say,” Fairchild said suddenly, “do you reckon they’ve found our whisky?”

“I guess not,” the Semitic man assured him. “I hope not,” he amended; and they all returned in a body to stare down into the tender where the Negro sat without selfconsciousness, eating of a large grayish object. While they watched the Negro Walter and his companion returned, and the stranger bawled at the tug through his hands. A reply at last, and the other end of the line which they had recently brought aboard the yacht and made fast, slid down from the deck of the tug and plopped heavily into the water; and Walter and his companion drew it aboard the yacht and coiled it down, wet and dripping. Then they elbowed themselves to the rail, cast the rope into the tender and got in themselves, and the Negro stowed his strange edible object temporarily away and rowed back to the tug.

“You guessed wrong again,” Mark Frost said with sepulchral irony. He bent and scratched’ his ankles. “Try another rope.”

“You wait,” Fairchild retorted, “wait ten minutes, then talk. We’ll be under full steam in ten minutes. . Where did that boat come from?”

This boat was a skiff, come when and from where they knew not; and beneath the drowsy afternoon there came faintly from somewhere up the lake the fretful sound of a motorboat engine. The skiff drew alongside, manned by a malaria-ridden man wearing a woman’s dilapidated hat of black straw that lent him a vaguely bereaved air.

“Whar’s the drownded feller?” he asked, grasping the rail.

“We don’t know,” Fairchild answered. “We missed him somewhere between here and the shore.” He extended his arm. The newcomer followed his gesture sadly.

“Any reward?”

“Reward?” repeated Fairchild.

“Reward?” Mrs. Maurier chimed in, breathlessly. “Yes, there is a reward: I offer a reward.”

“How much?”

“You find him first,” the Semitic man put in. “There’ll be a reward, all right.”

The man clung yet to the rail. “Have you drug fer him yet?”

“No, we’ve just started hunting,” Fairchild answered. “You go on and look around, and we’ll get our boat and come out and help you. There’ll be a reward.”

The man pushed his skiff clear and engaged his oars. The sound of the motorboat grew clearer steadily; soon it came into view, with two men in it, and changed its course and bore down on the skiff. The fussy little engine ceased its racket and it slid up to the skiff, pushing a dying ripple under its stem. The two boats clung together for a time, then they parted, and at a short distance from each other they moved slowly onward while their occupants prodded at the lake bottom with their oars.

“Look at them,” the Semitic man said, “just like buzzards. Probably be a dozen boats out there in the next hour. How do you suppose they learned about it?”

“Lord knows,” Fairchild answered. “Let’s get our crew and go out and help look. We better get the tug’s men.”

They shouted in turn for a while, and presently one came to the rail of the tug and gazed apathetically at them, and went away; and after a while the small boat carne away from the tug and crossed to them. A consultation, assisted by all hands, while the man from the tug moved unhurriedly about the business of making fast another and dirtier rope to the Nausikaa’s bows. Then he and Walter went back to the tug, paying out the line behind them while Mrs. Maurier’s insistence wasted itself upon the somnolent afternoon. The guests looked at one another helplessly. Then Fairchild said with determination:

“Come on, we’ll go in our boat.” He chose his men, and they gathered all the available oars and prepared to embark.

“Here comes the tug’s boat again,” Mark Frost said.

“They forgot and tied one end of that rope to something.” Mrs. Wiseman said viciously. The boat came alongside without haste and it and the yacht’s tender lay rubbing noses, and Walter’s companion asked, without interest:

“Wher’s the feller y’all drownded?”

“I’ll go along in their boat and show ’em,” Fairchild decided. Mark Frost got back aboard the yacht with alacrity. Fairchild stopped him. “You folks come on behind us in this boat. The more to hunt, the better.”

Mark Frost groaned and acquiesced. The others took their places, and under Fairchild’s direction the two tenders retraced the course of yesterday. The first two boats were some disstance ahead, moving slowly, and the tenders separated also and the searchers poled along, prodding with their oars at the lake floor. And such is the influence of action on the mind that soon even Fairchild’s burly optimism became hushed and uncertain before the imminence of the unknown, and he too was accepting the possible for the probable, unaware.

The sun was hazed, as though wearied of its own implacable heat, and the water — that water which might hold, soon to be be revealed, the mute evidence of ultimate flouting of all man’s strife — lapped and plopped at the mechanical fragilities that supported them: a small sound, monotonous and without rancor — it could well wait! They poled slowly on.

Soon the four boats, fan wise, had tranversed the course, and they turned and quartered back and forth again, slowly and in silence. Afternoon drew on, drowsing and somnolent. Yacht and tug lay motionless in a blinding shimmer of water and sun. .

Again the course of yesterday was covered foot by foot, patiently and silently and in vain; and the four boats as without volition drew nearer each other, drifting closer together as sheep huddle, while water lapped and plopped beneath their hulls, sinister and untroubled by waiting. . soon the motorboat drifted up and scraped lightly along the hull in which Fairchild sat, and he raised his head, blinking against the glare. After a while he said:

“Are you a ghost, or am I?”

“I was about to ask you that,” Gordon, sitting in the motorboat, replied. They sat and stared at each other. The other boats came up, and presently the one called Walter spoke.

“Is this all you wanted out here,” he asked in a tone of polite disgust, breaking the spell, “or do you want to row around some more?”