little of interest happened at the outset. there were but three of us for company; our ship was a small one, and the inner life of it a monotonous round of eating, drinking, smoking, of taking the wheel, of pendulously stumping the quarter-deck, of keeping a look-out, of scrubbing and polishing, and making and shortening sail; whilst outside there was nothing but weather and sea; so that in a very short time i had lapsed into the old ocean trick of timing the passage of the hours by meals.
but that i may not approach in a staggering or disjointed way the huddle of astonishments which then lay many leagues’ distance past the gleam of the sea-line towards which our bowsprit was pointing, i will enter here in a sort of log-book fashion a few of the interests, features, and spectacles of this early passage of our singular excursion.
the fresh wind ran us well down channel. hour after hour the ‘bride’ was driving the green seas into foam before her, and there was a continuous fretful heaving of the log to wilfrid’s feverish demands, until i think, before we were two days out, the very souls of the crew had grown to loathe the cry of ‘turn!’ and the rattle of the reel.
that same morning—the morning, i mean, that i have dealt with in the last chapter—after wilfrid and i had been smoking a little while under the lee of the tall bulwark which the wind struck and recoiled from, leaving a space of calm in the clear above it to the height of a man’s hand, my cousin, who had been chatting with the utmost intelligence on a matter so remote from the object of this chase as a sale of yearlings which he had attended a few weeks before, sprang to his feet with the most abrupt breaking away imaginable from what he was talking about, and called to captain[51] finn, who was coming leisurely aft from the neighbourhood of the galley with a sailorly eye upturned at the canvas and a roll of his short legs that made you think he would feel more at home on all-fours.
‘finn,’ cried wilfrid, ‘there is no one on the look-out!’ and he pointed with his long awkward arm at the topgallant yard.
‘why, hardly yet, sir,’ began finn.
‘hardly yet!’ interrupted wilfrid, ‘my orders were, day and night from the hour of our departure.’
‘beg your honour’s pardon, i’m sure, sir,’ said finn. ‘i didn’t quite take ye as meaning to be literal. five days’ start, you know, sir wilfrid——’
‘what is that to me?’ cried my cousin impetuously; ‘it’s the unexpected you’ve got to make ready for at sea, man. figure something having gone wrong with the “shark”—her masts overboard—a leak—fire. any way,’ he cried with the heat of a man who means to have his will, but who grows suddenly sensible of the weakness of his arguments, ‘have a fellow stationed aloft day and night. d’ye hear me, finn?’
‘certainly i hear you, sir wilfrid.’
he knuckled his forehead, and was in the act of moving away to give directions, when my cousin stopped him.
‘no use sending blind men aloft, finn—mere gogglers like myself, worse luck! you must find out the men with eyes in their heads in this ship.’
finn hung in the wind, sending a dull rolling glance at the five-guinea piece nailed to the mainmast. ‘if it worn’t for that,’ he exclaimed, pointing to it, ‘it wouldn’t matter; but if i pick and choose, ’twill be like stirring up the inside of a sty. the men’ll argue that the piece of money is for the first man that sights the “shark,” and they’ll think it hard that a few of them only should be selected to stand a look-out aloft; for it will be but one of ’em that’s chosen as can airn the money.’
‘very true,’ said i.
‘confound it, charles!’ cried my cousin angrily, ‘what’ll be the good of posting a short-sighted man up there?’
‘all hands, captain finn, have got two eyes apiece in their heads?’ said i.
‘all, sir,’ he answered after a little reflection, ‘saving the mate, and he’s got two eyes too; only one makes a foul hawse of t’other.’
‘you may take it, wilfrid,’ said i, ‘that your men are able to see pretty much alike.’
‘is there no way of testing the fellows’ sight?’ cried wilfrid excitedly, with an unnecessary headlong manner about him as though he would heave his body along with every question he put or exclamation he uttered: ‘then we could uproot the moles among them. dash me, finn, if i’m going to let the “shark” slip astern of us for want of eyesight.’
[52]
the skipper sent a slow uncertain look around the horizon, evidently puzzled; then his face cleared a bit. he went to the weather rail and stared ahead, crossed to leeward and fastened his eyes on the sea on the lee bow; then, coming up to windward again, he hailed a man who was at work upon the topsail yard doing something to one of the stirrups of the foot-rope.
‘aloft there!’
‘hillo!’
‘jump on to the topgallant yard and let me know if there’s anything in sight ahead or on either bow?’
‘ay, ay, sir.’
the fellow got upon the yard, and leaned from it with one hand grasping the tie, whilst with the other he shaded his eyes and took a long whaling look. his figure was soft and firm as a pencil drawing against the hard and windy greyness of the heavens, and the rippling of his trousers to the wind, the yellow streak of his lifted arm naked to the elbow, the inimitable, easy, careless pose of him as he swayed to the swift vibrations of the spar on which he stood, with the ivory white curves of the jib and stay foresail going down past him till they were lost forward of the topsail that yawned in a shadowed hollow which looked the duskier for the gleam of the pinion of staysail this side of it, made a little sea picture of quiet but singular beauty.
‘nothing in sight, sir,’ he bawled down. finn raised his hand in token that he heard him and turned to wilfrid.
‘now, sir,’ said he, ‘something’s bound to be heaving into view shortly ahead of us. we might test the men thus: one watch at a time; two men on the topgallant yard, which can be hoisted without setting the sail; four men on the topsail yard; and two men on the foreyard. i’ll send crimp on to the forecastle to see all’s fair. there’s to be no singing out; the man that sees the sail first is to hold up his arm. that’ll test the chaps on the topgallant yard, who from the height they’re posted at are bound to see the hobject first; then it’ll come to the tops’l yard, and then to the foreyard. what d’ye say, sir? it’ll take the men off their work, but not, for long, i reckon, for something’s bound to show soon hereabouts.’
‘an excellent notion!’ shouted wilfrid gleefully, all temper in him gone. ‘quick about it, finn; and see here, there’ll be a crown piece for the man on each yard who’s the first to hold up his arm.’
‘that’ll skin their eyes for ’em,’ rumbled finn in half-suppressed hurricane note, and he went forward grinning broadly.
the port watch were mustered; i heard him explaining; the cock-eyed mate walked sulkily to the forecastle and took up his place between the knight-heads in a sullen posture; his arms folded and his eyes turned up. ‘away aloft!’ there was a headlong rush of men, the rigging danced to their springs, and in a few moments every yard had its allotted number of look-outs.
[53]
it was a test not to believe in, for the instant an arm on the topgallant yard was brandished the fellows below would know that something had hove into view, and the dishonest amongst them, calculating upon its appearance in due course, might flourish their fists before their eyes gave them the right to do so. however, wilfrid looked hugely pleased, and you witnessed the one virtue of the test in that. he bet me a sovereign to ten shillings that the man on the port topgallant yard-arm would be the first to lift his hand. i took him, and then naturally found the affair interesting.
in the midst of this business miss jennings arrived, cosily dressed in a jacket that fitted her shape and a little hat that looked to be made of beaver curled on one side to a sort of cockade where a small black plume rattled to the wind as i caught her hand and conducted her to my chair under the bulwarks. she started when she saw those sailors aloft all apparently staring in one direction with the intentness which the inspiration of five shillings would put into the nautical eye.
‘what is in sight?’ she exclaimed, looking round at wilfrid with a pale face. ‘surely—surely——’
i explained, whilst my cousin, rubbing his hands together and breaking into a loud but scarcely mirthful laugh, asked if she did not think it was a magnificent idea.
‘positively,’ she cried with alarm still bright in her eyes, ‘i believed at first that the “shark” or some vessel like her was in sight. but, wilfrid, when a man climbs up there to look-out, will not he have a telescope?’
‘yes, by day,’ he answered, ‘and a night-glass when the dark comes.’
‘then what good is there in that sort of test?’ she inquired. ‘the shortest-sighted man with a telescope at his eye would be able to see miles farther than the longest-sighted.’
‘aye,’ cried my cousin, ‘but a good sight’ll see further through a glass than a feeble one, and i want to find out who have got the good sight amongst those fellows.’
i saw her peep askant at me to gather what i thought of this business. very clearly she found nothing but childishness in it. meanwhile wilfrid kept his large weak eyes fixed upon the two fellows on the topgallant yard. they might have been a couple of birds perched on a bough and he a great hungry tom-cat watching them. finn was at the wheel, having sent the man who had been steering to join the others aloft. the mate on the forecastle looked sulkily up; the growling that was going on within him, and his astonishment and scorn of the whole proceeding, were inimitably expressed in his posture. twenty minutes passed. i was sick of staring, and filled another pipe, though without venturing to speak, for the breathless intensity of expectation in wilfrid’s manner, along with the eager, aching, straining expression of his face upturned to where the men were, was a sort of spell in its way upon one, and i positively felt afraid to break the silence. on a sudden[54] the man on the port side of the topgallant yard raised his hand, and in the space of a breath afterwards up went the other fellow’s arm. but my cousin had won his bet; he hit his leg a blow with boyish delight strong in his face.
‘a magnificent test, isn’t it?’ he whispered, as though he feared his voice would travel aloft; ‘now watch the topsail yard. the fellows there haven’t seen the gestures of the chaps above them. another sovereign to ten shillings, charles, that the outermost man to windward will hold up his hand first.’
i took the bet, and, as luck would have it, he won again, for a very few minutes after the sail had been descried from the loftiest yard the man whom wilfrid had backed signalled, and then up went the arms of the other three along with the arms of the two fellows who were stationed on the fore yard as though they were being drilled, whilst a rumble of laughter sounded from amongst a group of the starboard watch, who were standing near the galley awaiting the issue of the test.
the hands came down; the mate set the crew to work; the fellow whose trick it was at the wheel relieved the captain, who walked up to us.
‘that’s what they sighted, sir,’ he exclaimed, pointing ahead, where we could just catch a glimpse of an airy streak of a marble hue, which showed only whenever our speeding schooner lifted upon some seething brow that washed in thunder slantwise to leeward, but which presently enlarged to the proportions of a powerful cutter, apparently a revenue boat, staggering under a press as though in a hurry, steering north for an english port.
wilfrid’s satisfaction was unbounded; his exuberance of delight was something to startle one, seeing that there was nothing whatever to justify it. as i looked at him i recalled miss laura’s remark as to fits of excessive gloom following these irrational soarings of spirits, and expected shortly to find him plunged in a mood of fixed black melancholy. he told captain finn to have the other watch tested in the same way before the day was out, and produced fifteen shillings, ten of which were to go to the two men whom he had backed, and half-a-crown apiece to the fellows on the fore yard. finn took the money with an eye that seemed actually to languish under its load of expostulation, but he made no remark. he anticipated, as i might, indeed, that fathom after fathom of hoarse forecastle arguments would attend this distribution, for assuredly the men on the foreyard were no more entitled to the money than the others who received none.
‘now, captain,’ cried wilfrid, ‘send the man who first sighted that sail yonder aloft at once. let the foretopgallant yard be the look-out station; d’ye understand?’
‘yes, sir.’
‘call muffin.’
but muffin was too ill, or drunk, or both, to appear, so one of the stewards was summoned and ordered to bring from sir[55] wilfrid’s cabin a telescope that he would find in such and such a place. the man returned with the glass, a lovely dollond, silver-mounted.
‘try it, charles,’ my cousin said to me.
i pointed it at the cutter, and found the lenses amazingly powerful and brilliant. ‘a superb glass, indeed,’ said i, returning it to him.
‘now, captain,’ said wilfrid with that raised look i have before referred to, ‘i dedicate this glass to the discovery of the “shark.”’ his teeth met in a snap as he spoke the word, and his breathing grew laboured. ‘let this telescope be carried aloft by that topgallant-yard man who was the first to lift his hand, and there let it remain, passing from sunrise to sunset from hand to hand as the look-outs are relieved. never on any account whatever is it to be brought down from that masthead until the image of the craft we want is reflected fair in it. see to this, finn.’
‘ay, ay, sir,’ responded the captain with his long face still charged with expostulation, though you saw he would not have disputed for the value of his wages.
‘by-and-by,’ continued my cousin, ‘i’ll give you a night glass of equal power, to be dedicated to the same purpose.’
‘thank ’ee, sir wilfrid; but your honour’—and here the worthy fellow looked nervously from sir wilfrid to me—‘am i to understand, sir, that this here beautiful instrument,’ handling it as if it were a baby, ‘along with t’other which you’re to give me, is to be kept aloft day and night no matter the weather?’
‘day and night, no matter the weather,’ said wilfrid, in a sepulchral voice.
‘very good, sir, but i should just like to say——’
‘now, pray, don’t say anything at all,’ interrupted my cousin, peevishly; ‘you’re losing time, finn. send that fellow aloft, will you? gracious heaven! can’t you see it makes one feel desperate to understand that there’s nobody on the look-out?’
he jumped up and fell to pacing the deck with long, irritable strides. finn, without another word, hurried forward. presently the fellow who had first signalled sprang into the rigging with the glass slung over his shoulder. he ran nimbly aloft, and was speedily on the topgallant yard; and there he sat, with an arm embracing the mast, from time to time levelling the polished tube that glanced like a ray of light in his hand, and slowly sweeping the sea from one beam to another. wilfrid came to a stand at sight of him; he clasped his arms on his breast, his gaze directed aloft, whilst he swayed on one leg, with the other bent before him to the heave of the deck; his melodramatic posture made one think of a manfred in the act of assailing some celestial body with injurious language. it pained me to look at him. he was pale and haggard, but there was the spirit of high breeding in every lineament to give the grace of distinction and a quality of spiritual tenderness to his odd, irregular, uncomely face. he stared so long and so fixedly at the[56] man that i saw the fellows forward looking up too, as though there must be something uncommon there to detain the baronet’s gaze. after a while he let his arms drop with an awakening manner, and slowly sent his eyes around the sea in the most absent way that could be thought of, till, his gaze meeting mine, he gave a start, and cried, with a flourish of one hand, whilst he pointed to the topgallant yard with the other, ‘day and night, charles; day and night! and keep you on the look-out, too, will you, old friend? you carry a sailor’s eye in your head, and have hunted under canvas before. we mustn’t miss her! we mustn’t miss her!’ and with a shake of his head he abruptly strode to the companion and went below.
i sat with miss jennings under the shelter of the bulwarks until hard upon luncheon-time. wilfrid did not again make his appearance on deck that morning. the girl asked me if the test the men’s eyesight had been put to was my cousin’s notion. i answered that it was the captain’s.
‘then how stupid of him, mr. monson!’
‘well, perhaps so,’ said i, ‘but i’m rather sorry for finn, do you know. it is not only that he has to execute orders which he may consider ridiculous; he has to plot so as to harmonise the plain routine of shipboard life with wilfrid’s irrational or extravagant expectations. but there is the mate. i have not spoken to him yet. let’s hear what he thinks of the skipper’s testing job.’
he was pacing the lee quarter-deck, being in charge of the yacht, though finn had been up and down throughout the morning, sniffing about uneasily as though he could not bear to have the picture of the little ship out of his sight too long. i called to him, and he crossed over to us slowly, as though astonished that i should want him. his face had something of a cape horn look, with its slewed eye and a number of warts riding the wrinkles of his weather-seasoned skin, and a mat of hair upon his throat as coarse as rope-yarns. he was no beauty certainly, yet i fancied him somehow as a good seaman; maybe for the forecastle sourness of his face and a general sulkiness of demeanour, which i have commonly found as expressing excellent sea-going principles.
‘you’re the mate, i think, mr. crimp?’ said i, blandly.
‘yes, i’m the mate,’ he answered, staring from me to miss jennings, and speaking in a voice broken by years of bawling in heavy weather, and possibly, too, by hard drinking.
‘we’re blowing along very prettily, mr. crimp. if this breeze holds it cannot be long before we are out of soundings.’
‘no, i don’t suppose it will be long,’ he answered.
‘do you know the “shark?”’
‘why, yes.’
‘are we going to pick her up, think you?’
‘well, if we gets into her wake and shoves along faster nor she, there’ll be nothin’ to stop us picking her up,’ he answered, steadily[57] viewing miss jennings and myself alternately, to satisfy his mind, as i took it, that we were not quizzing him.
‘i suppose,’ said i, ‘that the captain will be testing the eyesight of the other watch presently?’
‘ay,’ said he, with a sort of sneer, ‘they’ll go aloft after dinner.’
‘isn’t it a good test?’
‘don’t see no use in it at all,’ he answered gruffly, sending a look aloft and following it on with an admonitory stare at the fellow at the wheel. ‘suppose nothen had hove into view; the men ’ud be still on the yards a-watching. ’sides, observing an object at sea depends upon where your eyes is. one chap may be looking in another direction when his mate sings out. is that going to stand for a sign that his sight’s poor?’
‘what do the men think?’ said i, anxious to get behind the forecastle, so to speak, for i was never to know how far knowledge of this kind might be serviceable to us later on.
‘why, the watch has been a-grumbling and a-quarrelling over the rewards. they say ’tain’t fair. if t’other watch is to be tested on the same terms, stand by for something like a melhee, says i.’
‘oh, but that must be stopped,’ i exclaimed, ‘we want no “melhees” aboard the “bride,” mr. crimp.’
just then i caught sight of captain finn. i beckoned to him, and the mate passed over to leeward, where he fell to pacing the deck as before. i told the skipper what crimp had said, and he burst into a laugh.
‘melhees!’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s just what old jacob ’ud like. he’s a regular lime-juicer, sir, and distils hacid at every pore; but he’s a first-class seaman. i’d rather have that man by my side at a time of danger than the choicest of all the sailors as i can call to mind that i’ve met in my day. but there’ll be no melhee, sir—there’ll be no melhee, lady. the men are grumbling a bit; and why? ’cause they’re sailors. but it’ll be all right, sir. that there notion of testing, i don’t mind owning of it to you, was merely to pacify sir wilfrid, sir. i’ll carry out his orders, of course, and send the other watch aloft arter dinner. it’ll have to cost another fifteen shillin’, otherwise i don’t mean to say there mightn’t come a feeling of onpleasantness amongst the sailors. but sir wilfrid’ll not mind that, sir.’
i drew the money from my pocket and gave it him. ‘here,’ said i, ‘you needn’t trouble sir wilfrid; i’ll make it right with him. only,’ i exclaimed, ‘keep the crew in a good temper. we do not want any disaffection. heaven knows there’s trouble enough aboard, as it is!’
he knuckled his forehead, and the luncheon bell now sounding, i handed miss jennings below; but i could not help saying to her, as we stood a moment together in the cabin, that i saw one part of my duty would lie in advising wilfrid to have as little as possible to do with his crew and the working of the yacht; for grief and[58] heart-bitterness had so sharpened his eccentricities that one never could tell what orders he might give of a nature to lead to difficulty and trouble with the men. ‘perhaps,’ i added, ‘it might be thought that a sincere friendship would suffer him to have his way, in the hope that some measure of his would bring this goose-chase to an abrupt end and force him home. but, then, you are interested in the pursuit, miss jennings, and heaven forbid that any active or passive effort, or influence, or agency of mine should hinder you from realising the hope with which you have embarked on this strange adventure.’
