i happened to be alone on deck after dinner, having left wilfrid at his diary and miss jennings in her cabin, where she had gone to make ready to join me, as she had said. the wreck had faded out before sundown, melting upon the flashing purple under the sinking luminary like the memory of a nightmare off a mind upon which is streaming a light of cheerfulness. the night was clear but dark, with a pleasant wind through whose dryness the stars looked down purely. the yacht was sailing a fair six knots, as i gathered when i stepped from the companion to the lee-rail and peered over in a wool-gathering way at the emerald gushings and eddyings of the phosphoric fires which winked in the cloudy paleness along the bends, and fled into the dimness of glow-worms to the spectral racing of our wake.
i was worried and oppressed by a sort of heaviness of spirits. i had acted a cheerful part at dinner, but there was little of my heart in the tongue i wagged. the recollection of the motionless figure seated upon the wreck, and darker yet, the memory of that bloated, long-haired phantom face sliding in the space of a breath across the gape in the shattered deck, with the sobbing wash of the black water on which it floated to put a dreadful meaning of its own into the livid, nimble vision went for something—nay, went for a good deal, no doubt; but it was the hail that had come from the wreck[148] which mainly occasioned my perplexity and agitation, and, i may add, my depression. twice now had syllables sounding from where there were no lips to pronounce them reached my ears. had i alone heard them i should have been alarmed for my reason, not doubting an hallucination, though never for an instant believing in the reality of the utterance; but the voices had been audible to others, they were consequently real, and for that reason oppressive to reflect upon. the shadow of wilfrid’s craziness lay on his ship; the voyage was begun in darkness, and was an aimless excursion, as i thought, with no more reasonable motive for it than such as was to be found in the contending passions of a bleeding heart. hence it was inevitable that any gloomy incident which occurred during such an adventure as this should gather in the eye of the imagination a very much darker tincture than the complexion it would carry under sunnier and more commonplace conditions of an ocean run.
whilst i lay over the rail lost in thought, i was accosted by finn.
‘beg pardon, mr. monson; couldn’t make sure in this here gloom whether it was you or sir wilfrid. may i speak a word with ’ee, sir?’
‘certainly, finn.’
‘well now, sir, if that there old jacob crimp ain’t gone and took on so joyful a frame of mind that i’m a land-crab if his sperrits ain’t downright alarming in a man whose weins runs lime-juice!’
‘old crimp!’ cried i, ‘what’s the matter with him?’
‘why, he comes up to me and says, “capt’n,” he says, “there’s joe cutbill, jemmy smithers, that funeral chap muffin, and the t’others who was in the boat that went to the wreck this afternoon, all a-swearing that they heard a voice in the air!” and so saying, he bursts out a laughing like a parrot. “a woice!” says he. “so me and mr. monson aren’t the only ones, d’ye see. damme,” says he, “if it don’t do my heart good to think on’t. there’s the whole bloomin’ boiling of us now,” says he, “to laugh at, capt’n; not jacob crimp only,” and here he bursts into another laugh.’
‘what does the old chap want to convey?’ said i.
‘why, sir, joyfulness as that he no longer stands alone as having heard a woice, for though to be sure you was with him that night, and some sound like to a cuss rose up off yon quarter, he feels like being alone in the hearing of it, for, ye see, a man in his position can’t comfortably hitch on to a gent like you, and it was the harder for him, for that the man at the wheel swore that he never heard the cry.’
‘he is superstitious, like most old lobscousers, no doubt,’ said i. ‘have the others been talking about this mysterious hail from the wreck?’
‘ay, sir; ’tis a pity. it’s raised an uneasiness ’mongst the men. there’s that irish fool o’connor, him that foundered the “dago,”[149] going about with his face as long as a wet hammock and swearing that ’taint lucky.’
‘i don’t know about it’s being unlucky,’ said i, ‘but it certainly is most confoundedly curious, captain finn.’
i saw him peering hard at me in the dusk. ‘but surely your honour’s not going to tell me there was a woice?’ said he.
‘as we were shoving off,’ said i, ‘we were hailed in god’s name to return. every man of us in the boat heard it. there were but two bodies in the wreck, as stone dead as if they had died before the days of the flood. what say you to that, captain finn?’
he pulled off his hat to scratch his head. after a pause he exclaimed slowly, ‘well, i’m for leaving alone what isn’t to be understood. there was ghosts maybe afore i was born, but none since; and the dead h’aint talked, to my knowledge, since new testament times. old jamaicy rum isn’t to be had by dropping a bucket over the side, and if a truth lies too deep to be fished up by creeps, better drop it, says i, and fix the attention on something else.’
‘you tell me the men are uneasy?’
‘ay, sir.’
‘do you mean all hands?’
‘well, your honour knows what sailors are. when they’re housed together under one deck they’re like a box of them patent lucifer lights—if one catches, the whole mass is aflame.’
‘it’s a passing fit of superstition,’ said i. ‘give it time. best say nothing about it to sir wilfrid.’
‘bless us, no, sir. sorry it’s raised so much satisfaction in that there old jacob, though. a laugh in jacob don’t sound natural. any sort o’ joyfulness in such a constitution is agin nature.’
at this point miss jennings arrived on deck, and finn, with a shadowy fist mowing at his brow, stepped to the opposite rail, where his figure was easily distinguished by the stars he blotted out.
‘i hope your spirits are better,’ said miss laura.
‘i should be glad to turn the silent sailor of that wreck out of my memory; but my spirits are very well.’
‘wilfrid noticed your depression at table, but he attributed it entirely to the dreadful sight you witnessed on the wreck.’ she passed her hand through my arm with a soft impulse that started me into a walk, but there was so much real unconsciousness in her way of doing this—a childlike intimation of her wish to walk without proposing it, and so breaking the flow of our speech at the moment—that for some little while i was scarce sensible that i held her arm, and that i was pacing with her. ‘but i think there is more the matter with you, mr. monson,’ she continued, with her face glimmering like pearl in the dusk, as she looked up at me, ‘than meets the ear—i will not say the eye.’
‘the fact is, miss jennings,’ said i abruptly, ‘i am bothered.’
‘by what?’
‘well, what think you of the suspicion which grows in me that this yacht carries along with her, in the atmosphere that enfolds[150] her, some sort of ariel, whose mission it is to bewilder out of its invisibility the sober senses of men of plain, practical judgment, like your humble servant?’
‘you want to frighten me by pretending that you are falling a little crazy.’
‘no!’
‘or are you creating an excuse to return home.’
‘no again. how can i return home?’
‘why, by the first convenient ship we happen to sight and speak. is this some stratagem to prepare wilfrid’s mind for your bidding us farewell when the chance happens?’
she spoke with a subdued note and a tremble of fretfulness in it.
‘suffer me to justify myself,’ said i, and with that i led her to the captain, who stood with folded arms leaning against the rail near the main rigging. ‘finn!’ he dropped his hands and stood bold upright. ‘be so good as to tell miss jennings what the men are talking about forward.’
‘you mean the woice, sir?’
‘what the men are talking about,’ said i.
‘well, miss,’ said finn, ‘as the boat that mr. monson had charge of this afternoon was a-leaving the wreck, the men heard themselves hailed by a woice that begged ’em, in god’s name, not to leave the party as called behind. mr. monson, sir, you heard it likewise.’
‘i did,’ i answered.
‘another mystery,’ exclaimed miss laura, ‘quite as dismal and astonishing as muffin’s phosphoric warning.’
‘thanks, finn; that’s all i wanted to ask you,’ said i, and we left him to resume our walk.
‘tell me about this voice,’ said the girl.
i did so, putting plenty of colour into the picture, too, for i wanted her to sympathise with my superstitious mood, whilst up to now there was nothing but incredulity and a kind of coquettish pique in her voice and manner.
‘and you are afraid of this voice, mr. monson? i wonder at you!’
‘you should have my full consent to wonder,’ said i, ‘if it were the first time; but there was the other night, you know, with solid, sour, uncompromising old crimp to hear me witness, and now again to-day, with a boatful of men for evidence.’
‘really, mr. monson, what do you want to make yourself believe?’ she asked, with a tone like a half-laugh in her speech; ‘the dead cannot speak.’
‘so ’tis said,’ i grumbled, sucking hard at my cigar to kindle it afresh.
‘human syllables cannot be delivered save by human lips. what, then, could have spoken out of the darkness of the sea the other night?’
[151]
‘does not milton tell of airy tongues that syllable men’s names?’ said i gloomily.
‘mr. monson, i repeat that i wonder at you. how can you suffer your imagination to be cheated by some trick of the senses?’ she laughed. ‘pray, be careful. you may influence me. then what a morbid company shall we make? i am sure you would like me to believe in this mysterious voice of yours. but, happily, we colonials are too young, as a people, to be superstitious. we must wait for our ruined castles, and our moated granges, and our long, echoing, tapestry-lined corridors. then, like you english, we may tremble when we hear a mysterious voice.’
she started violently as she said this, giving my arm so smart a pull that it instantly brought me to a halt, whilst in a voice of genuine alarm she exclaimed, ‘good gracious! what is that?’
her face was turned up towards the weather yardarm of the square topsail, where, apparently floating a little above the studdingsail-boom iron, like to a flame in the act of running down the smoke of an extinguished candle ere firing the wick, shone a pendulous bubble of greenish fire, but of a luminosity sufficiently powerful to distinctly reveal the extremity of the black spar pointing finger-like into the darkness ahead, whilst a large space of the curve of the topgallant-sail above showed in the lustre with something of the glassy, delicate greenness you observe in a midsummer leaf in moonshine. the darkness, with its burden of stars, seemed to press to the yacht the deeper for that mystic light, and much that had been distinguishable outlines before melted out upon the sight.
‘what is it?’ exclaimed miss jennings in a voice of consternation, and i felt her hand tighten upon my arm with her fears thrilling through the involuntary pressure.
‘figure an echoing corridor hung with aged tapestry stirring to cold draughts which seem to come like blasts from a graveyard, a noise as of the distant clanking of chains, and then the apparition of a man in armour, holding up such a lantern as that yonder, approaching you who are spell-bound and cannot move for horror.’ i burst out laughing.
‘what is that light, mr. monson?’ she cried petulantly.
‘why, miss jennings,’ i answered, ‘’tis a saint, not a light; a reverend old chap called st. elmo who transforms himself at pleasure into a species of snapdragon for the encouragement of poor jack.’
‘see that corposant, sir?’ rumbled finn out of the darkness.
‘very well, indeed,’ i answered. ‘finn has explained,’ i continued; ‘that light is what sailors call a corpusant—sometimes compreesant. if we were catholics of the columbian period we should tumble down upon our knees and favour it with a litany or oblige it with a hymn; but being bleak-minded protestants all that we can do is to wonder how the deuce it happens to be burning on such a night as this, for i have seen scores of these corposants in[152] my time, but always either in dead calms or in gales of wind. but there it is, miss jennings, an atmospheric exhalation as commonplace as lightning, harmless as the glow-worm, though in its way one of the most poetic of old ocean’s hundred suggestions; for how easy to imagine some giant figure holding that mystic lamp, whose irradiation blends the vast spirit shape with the gloom and blinds the sight to it, though by watching with a little loving coaxing of fancy one should be able after a bit to catch a glimpse of a pair of large sorrowful eyes or the outline of some wan giant face.’
‘it is gone,’ she exclaimed with a shudder.
‘hush!’ i exclaimed, ‘we may hear the rustling of pinions by listening.’
‘mr. monson, you are ungenerous,’ she cried with an hysterical laugh.
suddenly the light glanced and then flamed at the foretopmast head, where it threw out, though very palely, the form of the lookout man on the topgallantyard, whose posture showed him to be crouching with his arm over his eyes.
‘i dare say that poor devil up there,’ i exclaimed, ‘fully believes the fire-bubble to be a man’s ghost.’
‘it is a startling thing to see,’ exclaimed miss jennings.
‘but colonials are too young as a people to be superstitious,’ said i. ‘it is only we of the old country, you know, with our moated granges——’
‘what is the hour, mr. monson?’
‘i say, charles, are you on deck?’ shouted wilfrid from the companion hatch.
‘ay; here i am with miss jennings. what’s the time, wilfrid, d’ye know?’
as i spoke two silver chimes, and then a third, came floating and ringing from the forecastle—three bells, half-past nine.
‘see that corposant?’ bawled wilfrid. and he came groping up to us. ‘an omen, by george!’ he cried with an odd hilarious note in his voice. ‘laura, mark me, that flame isn’t shining for nothing. ’tis a signal light fired by fortune to advise us of some great event at hand.’
‘quarterdeck there!’ came down the voice of the lookout man, falling from sail to sail, as it seemed, in an echo that made the mysterious flame a wild thing to the imagination for a moment by its coming direct from it.
‘hallo?’ roared finn.
‘can i lay down till this here blasted light’s burnt out? ’tain’t right to be all alone with it up here.’
‘it is burnt out,’ cried finn, in a way which showed he sympathised with the fellow. in fact, as the sailor called, the light vanished, and, though we stood looking awhile waiting for its reappearance, we saw no more of it.
that ocean corpse candle had shone at the right moment. likely enough i should have made myself a bit merry over my[153] tender and beautiful companion’s fears in revenge for her pouting, pettish wonderment at the uneasiness which the mysterious voices had raised in me. but wilfrid remained with us for the rest of the evening, and, as i was anxious that he should know nothing about the strange sound, i forbore all raillery. it was midnight when we went to bed. our talk had been very sober, indeed somewhat philosophical in its way, with references to electrical phenomena. wilfrid chatted with excitement, which he increased by two or three fuming glasses of seltzer and spirits. he told us a wild story of a ship that he was on board of somewhere down off the new zealand coast, ploughing through an ocean of fire on a pitch-black night with a gale of wind blowing and a school of whales keeping pace with the rushing fabric, spouting vast feather-like fountains of burning water as they stormed through it. he talked like a man reciting a dream or delivering an imagination, and there was a passion in his speech due to excitement and old cognac, along with a glow in his large peering eyes and a play of flushed features that persuaded me of a very defined mood of craziness passing over his mind. his fancy seemed to riot in the roaring, fiery scene he figured; the ship, plunging into hollows, which flashed about her bows like volcanic vomitings of flame, the heavens above black as soot, the ocean waving like sheet lightning to its confines, and the huge body of the whales crushing the towering surges as they rolled headlong through them into a moonlike brilliance, flinging on high their delicate emerald-green sparkling spouts of water, which floated comet-like over them against the midnight of the heavens.
on eight-bells striking we went to bed. all was quiet on deck; a pleasant breeze blowing under the hovering prisms and crystals of the firmament, the yacht leaning over in a pale shadow in the dusk and seething pleasantly along with a noise rising up from round about her like the rippling of a flag in a summer breeze. i fell asleep and slept soundly, and when i awoke it was to the beating of somebody’s knuckles upon my cabin-door. the day had broken, and my first glance going to the scuttle, i spied through the thick glass of it a windy sunrise with smoky crimson flakes and a tint of tarnished pink upon the atmosphere.
‘hallo! hallo there! who’s that knocking?’
‘’tis me, sir, capt’n finn. can i have a word with your honour?’ exclaimed the skipper, who had subdued his voice to a note that was alarming with its suggestion of physical effort.
‘come in, finn. what is it now?’
the handle was turned, and the captain entered cap in hand. he closed the door carefully, and instantly said, ‘sorry to disturb you, sir, but baste me for an old duckling, mr. monson, if i don’t believe the “shark” to be in sight.’
‘what?’ i shouted, sitting bolt upright and flinging my legs over the edge of the bunk.
he glanced at the door, looking an intimation to me to make[154] no noise. ‘i thought i’d consult with ’ee first, sir, before reporting to sir wilfrid.’
‘is she in sight from the deck?’
‘no, sir.’
‘have you seen her?’
‘ay, mr. monson, i’m just off the t’gallant-yard, where i’ve been inspecting her ever since she was first reported, and that’ll be drawing on for five and twenty minutes.’
‘but she is hull down?’
‘yes, sir, and still a schooner-yacht at that,’ said he emphatically. ‘mind, i don’t say she is the “shark.” all i want to report is a schooner with a yacht’s canvas—not american cotton. no, sir, canvas like ourn, nothen square forrards, and sailing well she looks.’
‘how heading?’
‘why to the south’ard and west’ard as we are. i’m in your hands, sir. it’ll be a fearful excitement for sir wilfrid and a terrible blow if it’s another vessel.’
‘oh, but you have to give him the news, happen what will! wait, however, till i have had a look, will you? i shall be with you in a minute or two.’
he left the berth, and in red-hot haste with a heart beating with excitement i plunged into my clothes and ran on deck, passing softly, however, through the cabin; for, though i know not why it should be, yet i have observed that at sea there is something almost electrical in a time full of startling significance like this, an influence that, act as softly and be as hushed as you may, will yet arouse sleeping people and bring them about you in a dreaming way, wondering what on earth has happened. pale and windy as the sunrise was, there was dazzle enough in the soaring luminary to stagger my sight on my first emergence. i stepped clear of the companion and stood whilst i fetched a few breaths gazing round me. the sea was a dull, freckled blue with a struggling swell underrunning it athwart the course of the wind as though the coming breeze was to be sought northwards. the horizon astern was gloomy and vague in the shadow of a long bank of clouds, a heap of sullen terraces of vapour rising from flint to saffron and then to a faint wet rose where the ragged sky-line of the compacted body caught the eastern colour. all was clear water, turn where the gaze would. on the topgallant-yard the fellow on the look-out lay over the spar with a telescope at his eye; his figure, as it swung through the misty radiance against the pale blue of the morning sky that south-east looked to be kindling into whiteness, was motionless with the intentness of his stare. if what the tubes were revealing to him was the ‘shark,’ then, as he had been the first to sight her, that glittering heavy five-guinea piece nailed to the mainmast was his. it was as much the thought of this reward going from them as curiosity that had sent the watch on deck aloft too to have a look. the last of them was coming down[155] hand over hand as i went forward. discipline was forgotten in the excitement of such a moment as this, and swabs and squiligees had been flung down without a word of rebuke from cutbill, whose business it was to superintend the washing of the decks.
i sprang into the foreshrouds, and was presently alongside the lookout fellow. ‘give me hold of that glass,’ said i. to the naked eye up here the sail hung transparently visible upon the edge of the sea, a point of lustrous white like the head of a marble obelisk lustrous with the silver of sunrise. but the telescope made a deal more of that dash of light than this. i threw a leg over the yard, steadied the glass against the mast, and instantly witnessed the white canvas of what seemed unquestionably a large schooner-yacht risen to her rail upon the horizon where the thin black length of her swam like an eel with the fluctuations of the refractive atmosphere; but all above was the steady brilliant whiteness of the cloths of the pleasure ship mounting from boom to gaff; a wide and handsome spread with a flight of triangular canvas hovering between jibboom and topmast, as though a flock of seafowl were winging past just there.
‘do you know the “shark”?’ said i to the man.
‘i’ve seen her once or twice at southampton, sir.’
‘is that she, think you?’
‘ay, sartin as that there water’s salt.’
‘well, there’ll be good pickings for you on the mainmast,’ said i, handing him back the glass.
his face seemed to wither up between his whiskers to the incredible wrinkles of the smile which shrunk it to the aspect of an old dried apple. i got into the rigging and descended to the deck. the sailors stared hard at me as i went out. i suppose they imagined that i was well acquainted with the ‘shark,’ and they eyed my countenance with a solicitude that was almost humorous. finn stood near the main rigging perspiring with impatience and anxiety, fanning his long face with his cap and sending glances in the direction of the sea, where presently those two alabaster-like spires now hidden would be visible.
‘is it the “shark,” think ’ee, sir?’ he cried in a breathless way.
‘my good finn, how the dickens should i know? i know no more of the “shark” than of noah’s ark. but, seeing that the vessel we want is a schooner of some two hundred tons, of a fore and aft rig, bound our way, and a yacht to boot, then, if yonder little ship be not the chap we are in search of, this meeting with her will be an atrociously strange coincidence.’
‘just what i think, sir,’ he cried, still breathless.
‘do you mean to shift your helm for her?’
‘she was abeam when first sighted, sir. i have brought her on the bow since then, as ye can see. but i’ll head straight if ye should think proper,’ he exclaimed with a look aloft and around.
[156]
‘oh, by all means go slap for her, captain!’ said i. ‘that you know will be my cousin’s first order.’
‘trim sail, the watch!’ he bawled out.
the helm was put over and the yacht’s head fell off till you saw by the line of the flashing glass through which the fellow aloft continued to peer that the hidden sail had been brought about two points on the lee bow. all was now bustle on deck with trimming canvas, setting studdingsails, and the like. the dawn had found us close hauled with the topgallantsail lifting and every sheet flat aft, and now we were carrying the wind abaft the beam with a subdued stormy heave of the yacht over the sulky swell. indeed, finn should have made sail to the first shift of helm; but the poor fellow seemed to have lost his head till he had talked with me, scarce knowing how to settle his mind as to the right course to be instantly adopted in the face of that unexpected apparition which was showing like a snow-flake from aloft. for my part, i thought, i could not better employ the leisure that yet remained than by preparing for what was to come by a cold brine bath. so down i went, telling finn that i would rout out sir wilfrid as i passed through the cabin and give him the news.
