I GO ALOFT.
It was a fresh sweet ocean morning, one of the fairest I remember;
the wind, a tender fanning from the west, warm enough to make one
fancy an odour and balm of the tropics in it, leagues ahead as those
parallels yet lay. The sky was one broad surface of curls and feathers
of pearl-coloured vapour, an interweaving, as it were, of many-shaped
links of silken cloud shot with silver and amber and gold from the
early sun. I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so tender in glory
and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea spread in a firm
dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty roof of marble; the
sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the port bends of the
yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet blackness of the
glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of the brine in a great
puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud of brightly illuminated
steam ascending from the depths.
Everything was brilliant and clean and cheerful, the decks of the white
softness of foam, brass sparkling, rigging flemish-coiled or festooned
as by an artist’s hand upon the pins; forward stood the long cannon
radiant as polished jet, a detail that gave an odd significance to the
saucy knowing ‘spring,’ as it is called, of the yacht that way. The
cocks and hens in the coops were straining their throats and blending
with their cheerful voices was a noise of pigs; there was black smoke
pouring away from the galley chimney, and now and again you got a whiff
of something good frying for the men’s breakfasts, for my cousin fed
his sailors well. The ‘Bride’ with erect masts was sliding over the
wide folds of water whose undulations were so long drawn and regular
as to be scarce perceptible in the motion of the vessel; there was air
enough to crisp the sea, and where the sun’s light lay the tremble
was blinding; on either bow was a curl of silver and pale eddyings
alongside with a line of oil-smooth water going away astern from under
the counter; yet we were but creeping, too, spite of the yacht being a
pile of white cloths--every stitch she owned abroad to her topgallant
studdingsail.
The mate had charge, and was stumping the weather side of the
quarterdeck in his sour way when I arrived.
‘Good morning, Mr. Crimp.’
‘Marning,’ he answered.
‘Ugly squall that last night.’
‘Ugly? ay.’
The fellow gave the word _sir_ to no man, restricting its use when
ashore to dogs as Finn once told me; but his surly tricks of speech
and manner were so wholly a part of him, so entirely natural, so
unconsciously expressed, that it would have been as idle to resent them
as to have quarrelled with him for having an askew eye or lost one’s
temper because his beard resembled rope yarns.
‘Anything in sight?’ I asked, looking round.
‘Ay,’ he answered.
‘Where?’ I exclaimed, running my eye over the sea.
‘Up yonder,’ he responded, indicating with a gesture of his chin the
topgallant-yard where was perched the inevitable figure of a look-out
man.
‘But where away, Mr. Crimp,--where away, sir?’
‘On the starboard bow,’ he answered, ‘’tain’t long been sighted.’
Breakfast would not be ready for some time yet, and having nothing to
do I thought I would make a journey aloft on my own account and take a
view of the distant sail and of the spacious field of the glittering
morning ocean from the altitude of the masthead. I stepped below for
a telescope of my own, a glass I had many a time ogled the sea with
when I was doing penance for past and future sins in African and West
Indian waters. Muffin was at the foot of the companion steps holding a
pair of Wilfrid’s boots. He cast his eyes down and drew his figure in
though there was abundance of room for me to pass. A slow, obsequious,
apologetic smile went twisting and curling down his lips; his yellow
face had a burnished look; he was uncommonly clean-shaven, and his hair
was brushed or plastered to the smoothness of his skull.
‘Got your courage back?’ said I.
‘Thank you, yes, sir,’ he answered humbly with his eyes respectfully
cast down. ‘Richard’s himself again this morning, sir, as the saying
is. But it was a ’orrible time, sir.’
‘You came near to making it so,’ said I. ‘Have you been to Sir Wilfrid
yet?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How is he?’
‘Asleep, sir,’ he replied in a blandly confidential way.
‘Glad to hear it,’ I exclaimed, ‘don’t disturb him. He passed a bad
night down to two or three o’clock this morning.’ I was going; suddenly
I stopped. ‘By the way,’ said I, rounding upon the fellow, ‘how long
have you been in Sir Wilfrid’s service?’
My question appeared to penetrate him with a consuming desire to be
exact. He partially closed one eye, cocked the other aloft like a hen
in the act of drinking, and then said with the air of one happy in the
power of speaking with accuracy, ‘It’ll be five months to the hour,
sir, come height o’clock, Friday evening next.’
‘During the time that you have been in his service,’ said I carelessly,
‘have you ever heard him speak of hearing voices or seeing visions?’
‘Woices, no, sir,’ he answered; ‘but wisions,’ he added with a sigh and
lengthening his yellow face into an expression of deep concern, ‘has, I
fear, sir, more’n once presented theirselves to him.’
‘Of what nature, do you know?’
‘Sir Wilfrid’s a little mysterious, sir,’ he responded in a greasy tone
of voice, and looking down as if he would have me understand that with
all due respect he was my cousin’s valet and knew his place.
I said no more, but made my way on deck with a suspicion in me that the
fellow had lied, though I hardly knew why I should think so. I trudged
forward, and finding three or four of the men hanging about the galley
I pulled out five shillings and gave the money to one of them, saying
that I was going aloft and wished to pay my footing, for I was in no
temper to be chased and worried. This made me free of the rigging, into
which I sprang and had soon shinned as high as the topgallant-yard,
upon which I perched myself so noiselessly that the man who overhung it
on the other side of the mast and who was drowsily chewing upon a quid
of tobacco with his eye screwed into Wilfrid’s lovely telescope, had no
notion I was alongside of him. I coughed softly, for I had known seamen
to lose their lives when up aloft by being suddenly startled. He put
a whiskered face past the mast and stared at me as if I was Old Nick,
out of the minutest pair of eyes I ever saw in the human head, mere
gimlet-holes they seemed for the admission of light.
‘Thinking of your sweetheart, Jack?’ said I with a laugh, ignorant of
his name but counting Jack to be a sure word.
‘Can’t rightly say _what_ I was a-thinking of, sir,’ he answered
hoarsely; ‘’warn’t my sweetheart anyways, seeing that the only gell I
was ever really partial to sarved me as her ledship sarved Sir Wilfrid
yonder,’ indicating the quarterdeck with a sideways motion of his head.
‘Cut stick, eh?’ said I.
‘Wuss than that, sir,’ he answered. ‘If she’d ha’ taken herself off and
stopped at that I dunno as I should have any occasion to grumble; but
she prigged the furniture that I’d laid in agin getting married. Ay,
_prigged_ it. The boiling amounted to fourteen pound tew, a bloomin’
lot o’ money for a poor seafaring man to be robbed of for the sake
of a master chimney-sweep.’ He cast a slow disgusted look round and
expectorated with an air of loathing.
‘I hope you got the master chimney-sweep locked up,’ said I.
‘No fear!’ cried he, talking very fast; ‘smite me, your honour, if
that there gell didn’t tarn to and swear that that furniture was hers,
bought out of her own savings, and that she guv me the money to order
it with. Thinking o’ my sweetheart!’ he grumbled, lifting the telescope
in an abstracted manner to his eye, ‘if it worn’t for women dummed if
this ’ere earth wouldn’t be worth a-living in.’
I smothered a laugh, and catching sight of the sail shining faintly in
the blue air, leagues and leagues distant as it seemed, I pointed the
glass and easily distinguished the royal, topgallant-sail and a snatch
of the topsail of a ship heading directly for us.
‘I wonder if she’ll have any news?’ said I.
‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ exclaimed the man, ‘but could you tell me how
long it’s reckoned in the cabin this here ramble’s a-going to last?’
‘What was the nature of the voyage you signed for?’
‘Why,’ he replied, ‘a yachting cruise to Table Bay and home.’
‘It’ll not exceed that, I believe,’ I exclaimed.
‘And if we picks up that there “Shark” and recovers the lady afore
we git to the Cape, shall we keep all on or shift our hellum for
Southamptin again?’
‘Captain Finn will be able to tell you more about it than I,’ I
responded in a tone that silenced him, though his tiny eyes looked
athirst for information as he regarded me aslant over one of his huge
whiskers.
The height from which I surveyed the vast plain of sea, the spirit of
whose loneliness seemed to find the one touch of emphasis it needed to
render its magnitude realisable by human instincts in that remote flaw
of ship’s canvas which broke the continuity of the boundless horizon
filled me with a feeling of exhilaration I cannot express; the sweet
mild ocean breeze high on that slender yard sank through and through
me, and vitality to its most secret recesses was quickened by it into
a very intoxication of life, new, free, ardent; the air hummed gently
in a vibratory metallic note as though it were some echo of a distant
concert of harps and violins; far down the hull of the yacht, plentiful
as was her beam in reality, looked like a long slender plank rounded
at the bows, the whiteness of the deck showing with a sort of radiance
as though it were thinly sheeted with crystal upon which the shadows
of the rigging, masts, and canvas lay dark and beautifully clear, with
a fitful swaying of them to the heave of the fabric, off polished and
brilliant things such as the skylight or the brass decorations, when
flashes of fire would leap forth to be veiled again in the violet
gloom of the recurrent shade. The thin curve of foam on either hand the
cutwater looked like frosted silver; my eye went to the airy confines
of the ocean spreading out into a delicate haze of soft azure light
where it washed the marble of that magnificent morning firmament, and
then it was that, sharper than ever I had before felt it, there rose
the perception in me of the incalculable odds against our sighting the
yacht we were in pursuit of, so measureless did the ocean distance
appear when with the gaze going from the ‘Bride’s’ masthead I thought
of the distance that made the visible and compassable sphere, big as it
was, as little as a star compared with the heavenly desert it floats in.
When I looked down again I observed Miss Jennings watching me from the
gangway with her hand shading her eyes. I raised my hat and she bowed,
and being wistful of her company I bade my friend Jack keep his eyes
polished, as the piece that was nailed to the mast would help to lessen
the loss that his sweetheart had occasioned him, and descended, hearing
him rumbling in his gizzard as I got off the foot rope, though what he
said I did not catch.
‘What is there to be seen, Mr. Monson?’ was Miss Jennings’ first
question, with a delicate fire of timorous expectation in her eyes.
‘Only a ship,’ said I.
‘Not--not----’
‘No! not the “Shark” yet,’ I exclaimed smiling.
‘I am stupid to feel so nervous. I dare say I am as passionately
anxious as Wilfrid to see my sister in this vessel safe--and separated
from--from’--she faltered and quickly added, bringing her hands
together and locking them, ‘but I dread the moment to arrive when the
“Shark” will be reported in sight.’
‘Well, if we _are_ to pick up that craft,’ said I, ‘we shall do so and
then there’ll be an end on’t. But I give you my word, Miss Jennings,
the ocean looks a mighty big place from that bit of a stick up there.’
‘Too big for this chase?’
‘Too big I fear to give Wilfrid the chance he wants.’
She sent a bright glance at the topgallant yard and said, ‘Does not
that great height make you feel dizzy?’
‘Ay, as wine does. There is an intoxication as of ether in the air up
there. Oh, Miss Jennings, if I could only manage to get you on to that
yard--see how near to heaven it is! You would then be able not only to
say that you looked like an angel, but that you felt like one.’
She laughed prettily and turned as if to invite me to walk. After a bit
I spoke of the squall last night. It had not disturbed her. Then I told
her of Wilfrid’s melancholy perturbation, on which her face grew grave
and her air thoughtful.
‘He did not tell you the nature of the warning?’ she inquired.
‘No. It evidently had reference to his baby. I wished to ascertain
whether it was a voice or a vision--though I really don’t know _why_;
for an hallucination is an hallucination all the world over, and it
signifies little whether it be a sheeted essence to affect the eye or a
string of airy syllables to affright the ear.’
‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ she exclaimed anxiously; ‘it is a bad
symptom, I fear. Yet it ought not to surprise one. The shock was
terrible--so recent too! Scarcely a fortnight ago he felt safe and
happy in his wife’s love and faith----’
‘Maybe,’ I interrupted, ‘but I wouldn’t be too sure though. When I last
met him--I mean somewhile before he came to ask me to join him in this
trip--his manner was very clouded, I thought, when he spoke of his
wife. I fancy even then suspicion was something more than a seed. But
still, as you say, it is all desperately recent, and it certainly is a
sort of business to play havoc with such a mind as his. Did you ever
hear of his having warnings or seeing visions before?’
‘Never.’
‘I asked his valet that question just now, and he told me he did not
know that his master heard “woices,” but he believed he was troubled
with “wisions,” as he called them.’
‘Wilfrid has been very secret then. My sister spoke much to me of the
oddness of his character, made more of it indeed than ever I could
witness,--but then one understands why, now,’ she exclaimed with an
angry toss of her head. ‘But she never once hinted at his suffering
from delusions of the kind you name. How should his man know then?
Wilfrid is not a person to be so very confidential as all that with his
servant. I never liked Muffin, and I believe he is a story-teller.’
‘So do I,’ said I, ‘and a coward to boot,’ and I told her of my finding
him on his knees, and how I had prostrated him with a kick. This
provoked one of her cordial, sweet, _clearing_ laughs. It was a music
to fit to gayer thoughts than we had been discoursing, and presently
we were chatting lightly about dress, society, some maestro’s new
opera and other light topics very much more suitable for a yacht’s
quarter-deck under such a morning heaven as was then shining upon
us, than the raven, owl, and bat-like subjects of ghosts, warnings,
visions, and insanity.
The breakfast bell rang; Muffin arrived with a soap-varnished face and
a humble bow, and in greasy accents delivered his master’s compliments
to us and, please, we were not to wait breakfast for him. But when
we were half through the meal Wilfrid came from his cabin and seated
himself. He looked worn and worried; his expression was that of a man
who has succeeded in calming himself after a secret bitter mental
conflict, but whose countenance still wears the traces of his struggle.
He called for a cup of tea, which with a slice of dry toast formed his
breakfast. Now and again I saw him glancing wistfully at Miss Jennings,
but his eyes fell from her when she looked at him as though he feared
the detection of some wish or thought in the manner of his watching
her. He inquired languidly about the weather, the sail the yacht was
under, and the like.
‘There’ll be a ship in sight over the bow,’ said I, ‘by the time we are
ready to go on deck.’
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, instantly briskening; ‘we must speak her. Were it
to come to twenty vessels a day passing us we should hail them all.
But it is the wind’s capriciousness that makes the fretting part of an
excursion of this kind. Here are we creeping along as though in tow of
one of our boats, whilst where the “Shark” is there may be half a gale
driving her through it as fast as a whale’s first rush to the stab of a
harpoon.’
‘Heels were given to us in the small hours of this morning though,’
said I. ‘We covered more space of sea in five minutes than I should
like to swim if I had a month to do it in.’
‘Oh, but she was off her course,’ exclaimed Wilfrid.
‘Only to the first of the squall,’ I exclaimed; ‘when I went on deck
she was lying fair up again and crushing through it with the obstinacy
of a liner.’
He glanced at me absently as though he barely attended to my words,
and then looked round him, as I supposed, to observe if Muffin and the
stewards were out of hearing. He lay back in his chair, eyeing Miss
Jennings for a little with a thoughtful regard that was made pathetic
by the marks of care and grief in his face.
‘Laura,’ he said, ‘I am worrying about baby.’
‘Why, Wilfrid?’ she answered gently.
‘Oh, it may be a mere instinctive anxiety, some secret misgiving, well
founded but quite inexplicable and therefore to be sneered at by friend
Charles here--who knows not yet the subtleties of a flesh-and-blood
tie--as mere sentiment.’
‘But why allow a fancy to worry you, Wilfrid?’ said I.
‘I fear it is no fancy,’ he answered quickly.
‘I told Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘that you have been vexed and upset by
what you interpreted into a warning.’
‘Did it particularly refer to baby?’ she asked.
‘Wholly,’ he responded gloomily.
‘But confound it all, Wilfrid,’ cried I somewhat impatiently, ‘won’t
you put this miserable vision into words? What form did it take? A
warning! If you choose to view things asquint they’re full of warnings.
Consider the superstitions which flourish; the signs of luck and of
ill-luck; the meaning of the stumble on the threshold, the capsized
salt-cellar, and the rest of the inventions of the wicked old hags who
ride a cock-horse on broomsticks. Why,’ I cried, talking vehemently
with the idea of breaking through the thickness upon his mind, though
it was no better than elbowing a fog, ‘I protest, Wilfrid, I would
rather swing at your lower-yardarm and be cut down after a reasonable
time to plomb the deep peace of the green silence beneath our keel,
than live in a torment of apprehension of shadows, and convert life
into a huge mustard poultice to adjust to my quivering anatomy
staggering onwards to the grave!’
He surveyed me with a lack-lustre eye whilst he listened.
‘Might not this warning, as you call it, Wilfrid,’ said Miss Jennings,
‘have been some brief, vivid dream, the impression of which was keen
enough, when you awoke, to make you imagine you had viewed what had
appeared with open eyes?’
‘No!’ he answered emphatically, ‘what I saw I saw as I see you.’
‘Then it wasn’t a voice?’ I exclaimed.
‘No matter,’ he said, ‘God’s eye is upon the innocent. Surely he will
protect my little one. Still--still--’ he seemed to struggle with some
thought and paused.
I made up my mind to attempt a bold stroke. ‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘your child
must be dearer to you than your wife. Since you are uneasy about the
bairn why not abandon a pursuit which, I give you my word, seems to me
about as aimless as a chase after the flying shadow of a cloud, and
shift your helm for home, where you will be able to have the child by
your side and where there will be no need for warnings relating to her
to worry you?’
A dangerous light came into his eyes; his strangely cut nostrils
enlarged and trembled, half a dozen dark moods went like ripples of
shadow over his face. I regarded him steadfastly, but I will own not
without a good deal of anxiety, for his bearing at this moment had more
of the madman in it than I had ever before witnessed. He breathed deep
several times before speaking.
‘You are right,’ he said; ‘my child is dearer to me than my wife, but
my honour stands first of all. For God’s sake do not craze me with such
suggestions. Look at me!’ he cried, extending his arms, ‘gripped here,’
clasping his left hand, ‘by my child that in its sweet innocence would
withhold me from this pursuit; and dragged here,’ and here he clenched
his right hand with a menacing shake of it, ‘by a sense of duty that
_must_ have its way though it should come to my never setting eyes on
my baby again. Charles’--his voice sank--‘at _your_ hands I should have
expected something better than such advice as this. If you are weary of
the voyage----’
‘No, no,’ I interrupted.
‘Why torment me then,’ he shouted, ‘by representing this pursuit as
idle as a chase of shadows? Is it so? Great heaven, man! you yourself
read out the entry in Captain Puncheon’s log-book.’
‘Well, well, Wilfrid,’ said I soothingly, ‘I am very sorry to have said
anything to annoy you. The fact is I am too prosaic in my views of
things to be as helpful as I should like to be in a quest of this sort.
Come, shall we go on deck now and see if that chap which I sighted from
the topgallant-yard has hove into view yet?’
The poor fellow rose slowly from his chair, straightening up his figure
till he looked twice as tall again as he was. His anger had left him.
‘Oh for the privilege,’ he exclaimed, ‘of being able to catch but a
single glimpse of the future! Would to heaven I had been born a saint
with a glory round my head, for by that light only is it possible to
interpret the hieroglyphs in which the page of life is printed.’
‘Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘your sunny hair comes so near to this sort of
nimbus my cousin desires, that I am sure if you would cast your eyes
upon the mystical page that puzzles him you could read it aloud to us
both by the light of those golden tresses.’
‘Charles,’ exclaimed Wilfrid shortly, ‘you are for making fun of
everything,’ and he stalked to his cabin, but only to fetch his pipe,
as I afterwards found.
I could not discover, however, that Miss Jennings wholly agreed in
Wilfrid’s notion of my ridiculing propensity.