WE RAISE THE SCHOONER.
I descended into the cabin, walked straight to the door of Wilfrid’s
berth and knocked.
‘Who’s there?’
‘I, Charles. I have news for you.’
‘Come in, come in!’
I entered and found Wilfrid in his bunk propped up on his elbow, his
eyes looking twice their natural size with the intensity of his stare,
and one long uncouth leg already flung over the edge so that his
posture was as if he had been suddenly paralysed whilst in the act of
springing on to the deck.
‘What news in the name of heaven? Quick, now, like a dear boy!’
‘There’s a schooner-yacht uncommonly like your “Shark” away down on the
lee bow visible from aloft.’
He whipped his other leg out of bed and sat bold upright. I had
expected some extravagance of behaviour in him on his hearing this, but
greatly to my surprise he sat silent in his bunk eyeing me, his brow
dark and his lips moving for several seconds, which might have been
minutes for the time they seemed to run into.
‘What is to-day, Charles?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Ha! It should be Monday. That light last night was an omen, as I told
you. I knew some great event could not be far off.’ His eyes kindled
under their quivering lids and an odd smile twisted his mouth into
the expression of a sarcastic grin. It was as ugly a look in him as I
had ever seen, and it gained heavily in the effect it produced by his
comparatively quiet manner.
‘We are heading directly for her, of course?’
‘Finn has her about two points on the lee bow,’ said I.
‘Will that do?’ he exclaimed.
‘Why, yes; hold a weather-gage of the chase, it is said; though I think
we shall be having a northerly blast upon us before the sun touches his
meridian.’
‘Is she the “Shark,” Charles?’
‘You know I never saw the vessel, Wilf. But Finn and the chap on the
yard seem to have no doubt of her, and the skipper ought to know
anyway.’
On this he leapt to the deck with a _cry_ of laughter, and coming up to
me let fall his hand heavily upon my shoulder with such a grip of it
that, spite of my having my coat on, it ached after he had let go like
an attack of rheumatism. ‘Now what say you?’ said he, stooping, for he
was a taller man than I, and peering and grinning close into my face.
‘You looked upon this chase as a crazy undertaking, didn’t you? The sea
was such a mighty circle, Charles! the biggest ship in the world but an
insignificant speck upon it, hey?’
He let go of me and brought his hands together, extending and slowly
beating the air with them, with his body rocking. I awaited some
passionate outfly, but whether his thoughts were too deep for words
or that he was satisfied to think what at another time he might have
stormed out with, he held his peace. Presently and very suddenly he
abandoned his singular attitude and fell to collecting articles of his
clothing which he pulled on as though he would tear them to pieces.
‘I’ll be with you on deck immediately,’ said I, going to the door. But
he did not seem to know that I was present; all the time he strained
and dragged at his clothes he talked to himself rapidly, fiercely;
pausing once to smite his thigh with his open hand; following this on
with a low, deep laugh, like that of a sleeper dreaming.
Well, thought I, as I stepped out and went to my berth, whether it
prove the ‘Shark’ or not we shall have to ‘stand by,’ as Finn hinted,
for some queer displays to-day. I met Miss Jennings’ maid in the cabin
and asked if she was going to her mistress. She replied yes. ‘Then,’
said I, ‘give her my compliments and tell her that we have raised a
large schooner-yacht during the night, and that Finn seems to think she
is the “Shark.”’
As I entered my berth I caught myself smiling over my fancy of the look
that would come into the sweet girl’s face when her maid gave her the
message; the brilliant gleam of mingled alarm, temper, astonishment in
her eyes, the sudden flush of her cheek and its paleness afterwards,
the consternation in the set of her lips and the agitation of her
little hands like the fluttering of falling snow-flakes as she dressed.
But in good sooth I too was feeling mightily excited once more; I had
cooled down somewhat since going on deck and viewing the distant sail
from the masthead; now that I was alone and could muse, my pulse rose
with my imaginations till it almost came to my thinking of myself as
on the eve of some desperate and bloody business, boarding a pirate,
say, with the chance of a live slow match in his magazine, or cutting
out something heavily armed and full of men under a castle bristling
with artillery. Supposing the craft to be the ‘Shark,’ what was to be
the issue? The ‘Bride’ would be recognised; and Hope-Kennedy was not
likely, as I might take it, to let us float alongside of him if he
could help it. Suppose we maimed her and compelled her to bring to;
what then? I had asked Finn this question long before, and he had said
it would not come to a hand-to-hand struggle. But how could he tell? If
we offered to board they might threaten to fire into us, and a single
shot, let alone a wounded or a killed man, might raise blood enough to
end in as grim an affray as ever British colours floated over. Small
wonder that my excitement rose with all these fancies and speculations.
And then again, supposing the stranger to be the ‘Shark,’ there was (to
me) the astonishing coincidence of falling in with her--picking her up,
indeed, as though we had been steered dead into her wake by some spirit
hand instead of blundering on her through a stroke of luck, which
had no more reference to Finn’s calculations, and suppositions and
hopings, than to the indications of the nose of our chaste and gilded
figure-head.
When I went on deck I spied Wilfrid coming down the forerigging. He
held on very tightly and felt about with his sprawling feet with
uncommon cautiousness for the ratlines ere relaxing his grip of the
shrouds. Finn was immediately under him, standing by, perhaps, to
shoulder him up if he should turn dizzy. They reached the deck and came
aft.
‘She’s not yet in sight from the cross-trees,’ exclaimed Wilfrid,
puffing and irritable from nervousness and exertion and disappointment,
‘and I can’t climb higher.’
‘If she’s the “Shark,”’ said I, ‘you’re not going to raise her upon
the horizon as if she were a beacon. But there’s a spread of wings
here that _she_ can’t show anyhow, and it will be strange if her white
plumes are not nodding above that blue edge by noon.’
‘Ay, sir,’ rumbled Finn, ‘specially with that coming along,’ pointing
to the north, where the weather looked heavy and smoky and thunderous
with a purple rounding of shadow upon the sea-line and a hot-looking
copperish light flowing off the jagged summits into the dusty blue as
though it were sundown that was reflected there, whilst the troubled
roll of the swell out of the shadow on the ocean put a finishing touch
to the countenance of storm you found spreading astern from north-east
to north-west. ‘There’ll be wind enough there, sir,’ said Finn,
keeping his square-ended stumpy fore-finger levelled, ‘to give us white
water to above our bow ports anon, or I’m a codfish.’
Wilfrid turned about and fell to pacing the deck; he struck out as
though walking for a wager, tossing his legs and swinging his arms
and measuring the planks from the wheel to very nearly abreast of the
galley. Such of the sailors as were to windward slided to the other
side, where you saw them exchanging looks though there was no want of
respect in their manner, but on the contrary an air of active sympathy
as if they were getting to master the full meaning of the existence of
that sail below the horizon by observing how the report of it worked in
the baronet.
‘We must try and raise her,’ muttered Finn in my ear, ‘if only to
pacify his honour by the sight of her. He can’t climb, and he’ll go out
of himself if he don’t see her soon.’
‘But do you gain on her!’
‘Why, yes, she is visible from the cross-trees already. But Sir Wilfrid
can’t get so high.’ Well, thought I, this should surely signify slower
heels than the ‘Shark’ is allowed to have.
I went to the taffrail and overhung it, watching the sky astern with an
occasional mechanical glance at the wool-white spin of the wake gushing
over the surface of the jumble of the swell like steam from the funnel
of a locomotive. It was blowing a fresh wind, though I guessed it would
slacken away soon to pipe up in a fresh slant presently. The yacht was
a great fabric of cloths, every stitch abroad that would hold air, and
she drove through it humming, troubled as she was by the irregular
heave of the sea. In fact her movements were so awkward as to render
walking inconvenient, and nothing, I believe, but the not knowing what
he was about could have furnished Wilfrid with his steady shanks that
morning. It was like a bit of sleep-walking, indeed, where a man who
awake could not look down forty feet without desiring to cast himself
out of a window, safely and exquisitely treads a narrow ledge of roof
as high as the top of London Monument.
I was startled from my reverie by an exclamation, and turning, saw him
hastily approaching Miss Jennings, who had just arrived on deck. He
came to her with his arms extended as though he would embrace her.
‘Laura, have you heard?’
‘_Is_ it the “Shark,” Wilfrid?’
‘Finn says yes. She exactly answers to the “Shark’s” description.
Hereabouts she should be, this is her track,--yes, yes, it is the
“Shark.” Would God it were Monday!’ Then, seeing me looking, he bawled,
‘Eh, Charles, what other ship should she prove? Fore and aft--fore
and aft, of the “Shark’s” burthen, as you and Finn say, a schooner,
a pleasure craft by the colour of her canvas--’ his face suddenly
darkened, and he said something to Miss Jennings, but what I could
not gather. She half turned away as if overcome by a sudden sense of
sickness or faintness; the effect of some expression of fierce joy,
I dare say, on his part, some savage whisper of assurance that his
opportunity was not far distant now which acted upon her nervous system
that trembled yet to the surprise of the news I had sent her through
her maid. There was something so sad and appealing in her beauty just
then that but for the feelings it possessed me with I might scarcely
have suspected what a lover’s heart I already carried in my breast for
her. The troubled sweetness of her glances, her pale cheeks and lips,
the swift rise and fall of her bosom, betokened consternation and the
conflict of many emotions and, as I could not but think, a subduing
sense of loneliness. Well, I must say I loved her the better for this
weakness of spirit, for this recoil from the confrontment that she
had been endeavouring to persuade herself she was looking forward to
with a longing for it only a little less venomous than Wilfrid’s.
Nothing, I had thought again and again, but the soul of a fond, tender,
chaste woman, gentle in mind and of a nature loveable, with the best
weaknesses of her sex, could go clad in such graces as she walked in
withal from her topmost curl of gold to the full, firm, elegant little
foot on which she seemed to float to the buoyant measures of the
yacht’s deck.
Wilfrid addressed her again hurriedly and eagerly with the
gesticulations of a Jew in a passion. She answered softly, continuously
sending scared looks over the yacht’s bow. I heard him name his wife,
but it was not for me to join them nor to listen, so I overhung the
taffrail afresh, observing that even now there was a noticeable
weakening in the weight of the wind, whilst the swing of the swell from
a little to the westward of north was growing more regular, a longer
and fuller heave with an opalescent glance in the vapour immediately
over the sea-line as though the weather was clearing past the rim of
the ocean.
‘Mr. Monson.’
I turned. Miss Laura stood by my side. Wilfrid had left the deck. ‘Is
that vessel, that is said to be ahead of us, the ‘Shark,’ do you think?’
‘I wish I knew positively for your sake, that I might relieve your
anxiety.’
‘If she should prove to be the vessel that my sister is in’--she drew
a long, tremulous breath--‘it will be a marvellous meeting, for I feel
_now_ as you have felt all through--now that that yacht is in sight
from the mast up there--that this ocean is a vast wilderness.’ She
slowly ran her eyes, which were still charged with their scared look,
along the sea-line.
‘Well, Miss Jennings, hanging and marriage go by destiny, they say, and
so does chasing a wife at sea apparently. I give you my word I am so
excited I can scarcely talk.’
‘But it may not be the ‘Shark.’’
‘Why, no.’
‘I hope it is not,’ she cried, starting to the rise in her voice with a
glance at the helmsman, who stood near us.
‘I can see that in your face,’ said I.
‘Oh, I hope it is not, and yet I want it to be the “Shark” too. Wilfrid
must recover Henrietta. But it makes my heart stand still to think of
our meeting. Oh, her shame! her shame! and then to find _me_ here. And
what is to happen?’
‘Best let that craft turn out to be the “Shark” though,’ said I. ‘Here
we are with a programme of rambles that threatens the world’s end if
we don’t fall in with the Colonel. Keep your heart up,’ said I gently.
‘What have you to fear? It is for the galled jade to wince. Why t’other
night you would have shot Hope-Kennedy had he stood up before you.’
She tried to smile, but the movement of her lips swiftly faded out into
their expression of grief and consternation.
‘I will play my part,’ she exclaimed, twisting her ring upon her
finger. ‘If my sister refuses to leave Colonel Hope-Kennedy I have made
up my mind not to leave _her_. Where she goes I’ll go.’
‘I hope not,’ I interrupted, ‘for it might come, Miss Jennings, to my
saying that where you go _I’ll_ go, and the Colonel may have rather
curious views on the subject of guests.’
‘You said you were too excited to talk,’ she exclaimed with a little
colour mounting. ‘It may be that I am stupidly influenced by old
memories. I was always afraid of Henrietta. She had an imperious
manner, and an old lord whom I met at your cousin’s--I forget his
name--told Wilfrid that her eyes made him think of Mrs. Siddons in her
finest scenes. I fear her influence upon me when I begin to entreat
her. I know how she will look.’
‘All this is mere nervousness,’ said I. ‘You thought of these things
before, yet you are here. Besides, the sense of wrong-doing will
mightily weaken the genius of wizardry in her--her power at least of
exercising it and subduing by it--subduing even you, the tenderest and
gentlest of girls; or depend on’t she’s no true member of your sex, but
one of those demon-women whom Coleridge describes as wailing for their,
or rather in her case for _new_, lovers.’
She made no reply. Shortly afterwards the breakfast bell summoned us
below.
At table Wilfrid spoke little, but his manner was collected; whether
it was that excitement was languishing in him or that he had managed
to master himself, what he said was rational, his words and manner
unclouded by that hectic which was wont to give the countenance of
a high fever to all he said and did when anything happened to stir
him up. He was stern and thoughtful, and it was easy to see that he
accepted the vessel ahead as the ‘Shark,’ and that he was settling his
plans. I was heartily grateful for this posture in him. I never knew
anyone so fatiguing with his restlessness as my cousin. Half an hour
of his company when he was much excited left one as tired, dry, and
hollow as a four hours’ argument with an illogical man. He was too much
preoccupied to notice how pale and subdued and scared Miss Laura was,
struggle as she might in his presence to seem otherwise. I talked very
cautiously for fear of provoking a discussion that might heat him. Once
he asked me in an angry, twitting way, as though to the heave-up within
him of a sudden mood of wrath with a parcel of words atop which were
bound to find the road out, whether I felt disposed _now_ to challenge
his judgment, whether I was still of opinion that the ocean was too
wide a field for such a chase as this, and so on, proceeding steadily
but with rising warmth through the catalogue of my early objections to
the voyage, but instead of answering him I praised the bit of virgin
corned beef off which I was breakfasting, wondered why it was that
poultry was always insipid at sea, and so forced him back into his dark
and collected silence or obliged him to quit his subject.
However, his inability to keep his attention long fixed helped me here,
for he never attempted to pick up the end of the thread I had cut,
though, little as he spoke, two-thirds of what he delivered himself of
might have been worked into hot arguments but for my cautious answers.
I was not surprised on going on deck to find the wind no more than a
light draught with the main boom swinging to the long roll of the yacht
and the canvas flapping with vicious snaps at sheet and yard-arm. The
water seemed to wash thick as oil from the yacht’s sides, a dirty blue
that went into an oozy sort of green northwards. There was a deadness
in the lift of the swell that made you think of an idiot shouldering
his way through a crowd, and the eye sought in vain for a streak of
foam for the relief of the crisp vitality of it.
‘Is that wind or thunder, think you, Mr. Crimp?’ said I to the mate,
whom I found in charge, whilst I pointed to the heaped-up folds of
cloud astern, the brows of which were not far off the central sky
that, spite of the sunshine, was blurred to the very luminary himself
with the shadow in the north and with tatters and curls and streaks of
rusty brassish vapour risen off the line of the main body and sulkily
floating southwards.
‘Wind or thunder?’ answered Crimp with a dull, indifferent look; ‘well,
’tain’t tufted enough for thunder, but there’ll be a breeze, I allow,
behind this here swell.’
‘Are we rising the chap ahead?’
‘Not noticeably. She’ll have to shift her hellum for us for that to
happen at this pace,’ sending an askew glance over the side. I was
leaving him. ‘Heard any more woices?’ he asked.
‘No, have you?’
‘No, and don’t want to. It’s been a puzzling me, though,’ he exclaimed,
mumbling over a quid the juice of which had stained the corners of his
mouth into so sour a sneer that no artist could have painted it better.
‘Tell’ee what it is. I’m a-going to believe in ghosts.’
‘You can’t do better,’ said I; ‘get hold of a ghost and it will explain
everything for you.’
‘Well, ’taint a childish notion anyhow. There’s first class folks as
believes in sperrits. What’s a ghost like? Ne’er a man as I’ve asked
forrads knows saving the mute, who describes it as a houtline.’
‘What’s inside his outline?’ I asked.
‘Why, that there Muffin can’t get further than that. I says to him,
how can a houtline speak? Look here, says he, answer me this: suppose
ye takes a bottle and sucks out all the air from inside of it, what’s
left? A wacuum, says I. And what’s a wacuum? says he. Why, I says, says
I, space, ain’t it? I says. And what’s space? says he. Why nothen, I
suppose, I says, says I. Then, says he, how can nothen exist? And yet,
says he, it do exist, because ye can point to the bottle and say there
it is. So with a ghost, says he; it’s a houtline with nothen inside
it if you like, but it’s as real in its emptiness as the inside of a
bottle with nothen in it.’
At any other time I should have hugely enjoyed an argument with this
acrid old sailor on such a subject as ghosts. There is no company to
my taste to equal that of a sour, prejudiced, ignorant salt of matured
years, whose knowledge of life has been gained by looking at the world
through a ship’s hawse pipe, and who is full to the throat with the
sayings and the superstitions of the forecastle. Jacob Crimp was such a
man. Indeed he was the best example of the kind that I can recollect,
thanks, perhaps, to the help he got from his queer sea-eyes, glutinous
in appearance as a jelly-fish, one peering athwart the other with a
look of quarrelling about them that most happily corresponded with
the sulky expression of his face and the growl of his voice that was
like a sea-blessing. But it was impossible to think of the schooner
ahead and talk with this man about ghosts. I left him and got into the
fore-shrouds and ascended to the cross-trees, where, receiving the
glass from the fellow on the yard above, I took a view of the sea over
the bow, and caught plainly the canvas of the vessel we were heading
for,--her mainsail visible to the boom of it with a glimpse of her
bowsprit end wriggling off into the dusky blue air at every rise of her
bow to the lift of the swell. I noticed, however, that she had taken
in her main gaff topsail, possibly with an eye to the weather astern;
but it was a thing to set me problemising. Supposing her to be the
‘Shark,’ either she had not yet sighted us or she had no suspicion of
us. Fidler, her captain, would, when we showed fair, be pretty sure to
twig us by our rig; but was it likely that the Colonel and Lady Monson
would gravely suppose that Wilfrid had started in chase of them? That,
indeed, might depend upon whether her ladyship had missed the Colonel’s
letter to her, which my cousin had asked me to read. Well, we should
have to wait a little. My heart beat briskly as I descended to the
deck. Put yourself in my place, and think of the sort of excitement
that was threatened before that morning sun shining up there had set!
Half an hour later the weak draught had died out; the rolling of
the ‘Bride’ was putting a voice of thunder into her canvas, and the
strain on hemp and spar presently obliged old Crimp to take in his
studdingsails, which he followed on by ordering the topgallant-sail to
be rolled up and the gaff topsail hauled down. Wilfrid, who had arrived
on deck, stood haggardly eyeing these manœuvres, but he said nothing,
contenting himself with an occasional look, as dark as the shadow
astern of us, at the weather there, and a fretful stride to the rail
and a stormy stare at the sallow oil-smooth water that came swelling to
the counter and washing the length of the little ship in a manner that
made her stagger at times most abominably.
‘Let that vessel prove what she may,’ said I, sitting down on a grating
abaft the wheel close to which he was standing, ‘we appear to have the
heels of her in light airs, however it may be with her in a breeze of
wind.’
‘How do you know?’ he inquired in a churchyard note.
‘Why,’ said I, ‘I was just now in the crosstrees and found her showing
fair from them, whereas before breakfast she was only visible from the
topgallantyard.’
He looked at me with a heavy, leaden eye, and said, ‘A plague on the
wind! It has all gone; just when we want it too.’
‘We shall have a capful anon,’ I exclaimed; ‘no need to whistle for
it. Mark how it brightens down upon the sea-line yonder as that shadow
floats upwards. That means wind enough to whiten this tumbling oiliness
for us.’
He directed his gaze in a mechanical way towards the quarter in which I
was looking, but said nothing. Miss Jennings came out of the companion.
I took her hand and brought her to the grating.
‘A strange, oppressive calm,’ she cried; ‘how sickly the sunshine is!
Nature looks to be in as dull a mood as we are.’
‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘if that schooner is the “Shark,” what will you do?’
‘What would _you_ do?’ he answered sternly, as though he imagined I
quizzed him, when God knows I was in a more sober and anxious humour
than I can express.
‘Well,’ said I very quietly and gravely, ‘when I got my yacht within
reach of her glasses, if I could manage it, I should signal that I
wanted to speak her.’
‘Quite right; that’s what I shall do,’ said he.
‘But after!’ I exclaimed.
‘After what?’ he cried.
‘Why, confound it, Wilf, suppose she makes no response, holds on all,
as we say at sea, and bowls along without taking the slightest notice
of us.’
He approached me close, laid his great hand upon my shoulder and thrust
his long arm forth straight as a handspike pointing to the forecastle
gun. ‘_There’s_ my answer to that,’ he cried in my ear in a voice as
disagreeable as the sound of a saw with irritability; ‘you wished me
to strike it down into the hold, d’ye remember? you were for ridiculing
it from the moment of your catching sight of it; yet without that
messenger to deliver my mind what answer would there be to the question
you have just now put? Oh my God,’ he suddenly cried, smiting his
forehead, ‘I feel as if I shall go mad.’
He crossed to the other side of the deck and paced it alone. Miss
Jennings was too much dejected by all this, by the excitement of the
time, by nervousness, grief, anxiety, to converse; nor, indeed, was my
mood a very sociable one. I procured a chair for her, and, presently
found myself alone, as Wilfrid was, wishing from the very bottom of my
heart that Colonel Hope-Kennedy was hanged, her ladyship in a lunatic
asylum, and myself in my old West End haunts again, though somehow
a misgiving as to the accuracy of this last desire visited me on a
sudden with the glance I just then happened to cast at Miss Laura, who
sat with her hands folded upon her lap, her head bowed in a posture
of meditation that took an indescribable character of pathos from the
expression on her sweet face.
It was now a little after ten o’clock. Crimp, who was pacing near me
that Wilfrid might have the whole range of the weather quarterdeck to
himself, suddenly rumbled out, ‘Here comes the wind at last!’ The stern
of the yacht was still upon the north, where, at the very verge of the
waters which sluggishly heaved like molten lead under the dark canopy
of vapour that overhung them, the sea was roughening and whitening to
the whipping of wind which looked at that distance to be coming along
in a straight line, though as it approached us I witnessed a strange
effect of long fibrine feelers sweeping out of the hoarse and rushing
ridges of foam which were seething towards us--like darting livid
tongues of creatures hidden in the yeast behind tipped with froth that
made one think of the slender stem of a vessel ripping through the
surface. In a few minutes the boiling popple was all about us, hissing
to our counter with a shriek of wind which flashed with such spite into
the great space of mainsail and the whole spread of square topsail
that the yacht for a moment was bowed down to her ways, fair as it
took her on her quarter. An instant she lay so, then came surging back
to an almost level deck with her rigging alive as with the ringing of
bells, took a sudden plunge forward, throwing from either bow a mass of
creaming sea the summit of which went spinning like a snowstorm ahead
of her, then gathering impulse in a long, floating, launching plunge as
it were, she went sliding through it faster and faster yet till she had
a wake like a millrace in chase of her.
It was a scene full of the life and spirit and reality of the ocean
after the spell of sulky calm with its dingy northern heaving of water
and its haze of weak, moist sunlight in the south and east. Finn to
the first of the blast came on deck and fell a-bawling, the sailors
sprang from rope to rope with lively heartiness, the slack running gear
blew out in semicircles, which with the curve of the canvas and the
lean of the masts as the yacht swept forward with the brine boiling
high along her, gave a wild, expectant, headlong look to the whole
rushing fabric, something indeed to make one fancy that the spirit of
her owner, the expression of whose face had her own strained, eager,
rushing air, so to speak, had passed into and vitalised her--mere
structure of timber as she was--into passionate human yearnings.