forehead, "but that may be a question not hard to settle if ye'll send
me aboard with a few tools."
The captain looked as if he had had a mind to entertain the idea, then
sent a glance to windward.
"She'll be full of water," said I.
"Ay," said the captain, turning to Jackson, "how then?"
"We can but lift a hatch and look out for ourselves, sir," answered
the man.
"Right," says the captain; "but you'll have to bear a hand. Get that
cask on board. Any water in it?" says he.
"Yes, sir," says I.
"Thank God for the same then," says he.
But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened in
a sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppy
sea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemed
willing that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascars
aloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the wind
freshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriek
betwixt our masts.
"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boat
under the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up."
The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the rail
with a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He had
scarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like the
report of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, I
was just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one on
either side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath,
and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, as
though it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething and
simmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of the
vessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of its
whole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was an
inch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a shark
sailing round it.
Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His face
of mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude.
Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through it
with her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying a
single reef in the foretopsail.
_The Strange Tragedy
of the "White Star_."
It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this
extraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale is
easily within the memory of the middle-aged.
The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the
wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly,
for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is
said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however,
advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on,
and there was no doubt of our getting away by then.
I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the poop under the
awning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. They
spoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and I
concluded that their business was with that ship, till I saw the
Frenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _White
Star_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board.
I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had the
air of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty of
whiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companion
was a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above the
average height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye is
privileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclined
to sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showed
the blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood that
possessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it when
her companion handed her over the side in order to look round and
aloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with its
central bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue from
the royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, and
particularly of her eyes.
I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them as
neither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of the
Indian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow of
tenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lids
dropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because their
expression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, and
there is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it.
I do not exaggerate when I assure you that the surprise of the beauty
of her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast in
their stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparable
in a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightly
electric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and of
that sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia.
I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning,
but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks in
Sydney.
"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman.
"He is not, sir."
"When do you expect him?"
"Every minute."
"May we stop here?"
"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"
"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the
gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the
heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before
you reach the old country."
She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured
smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a
ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.
As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was,
quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of
military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he
exclaimed:
"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss
Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We
have placed her in the care of the captain."
"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I
ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."
Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his
wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naïvete in the
girl's way of introducing us.
The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are
amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted
to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A
chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the
master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three of
us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly
directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming.
During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these
particulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partly
from the occasional remarks of the girl.
Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been
an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then
Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months
he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal
aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to
find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she
found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and
to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the
master, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five months
in Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson.
Half an hour passed before the captain arrived. When he stepped on
board I lifted my cap and left the poop, and the captain and the
others went into the cuddy.
Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I when
the tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over the
sheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits of
scenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyond
the grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded ship, what
with Jacks and passengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full up
with people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remained
unlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and lady
passengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand.
I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heard
afterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife,
with Colonel Atkinson, and certain nobs out of Government House had
driven down to the ship to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. I
wondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a bright
little lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts that
ever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that the
woman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe had
omitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfect
conformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of the
Australian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no time
to procure another maid had shipped alone.
At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the ship was at sea
and I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing through
the skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right of
his chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted and
emblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down to
dinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most of
them. But it was a glorious evening, and the red sunshine, flashing
fair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant and
hospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish.
I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look at
her, so standing as to be unobserved. Now that I saw her with her hat
off I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Her
eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full
spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer
intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I
think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It
accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her
hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more
fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white
teeth shone like light itself.
I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps,
that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in
which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in
a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstance
of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was
for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that
the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a
week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over
ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of
manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish
a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless
leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about
thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in
merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye,
weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near
six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage
with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us
apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.
For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy
happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take
charge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperate
parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the
ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round
of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to
sail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some brow
of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.
This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars
pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down
the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft
like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the
hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the
captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand.
He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still
lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney,
standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would
glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast
of her.
But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew
damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the ship
yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and
mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went
below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.
I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and
taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I
thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are
concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to
think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful
eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave
ashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as
it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a
husband's presence. That was how it struck me.
By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the
captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of
the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was
blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over
the rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the cold
sea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away
astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I
never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but
I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my
reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as
complete as slumber itself.
I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas
aloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was
deserted--at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhile
shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on
his face close beside the binnacle.
I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the
braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The ship
was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been
steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating
abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.
He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art
to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing
he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he
beheld a ghost at his side.
"A what?" said the captain.
"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in some
very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the
truth.
"What was it like?" asked the captain.
"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and
could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."
"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and
dropped on his nut."
"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the
Dane, in a passion of candour.
"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you
and report to me."
When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything
likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous
man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a
question.
"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before
you found out that the wheel was deserted?"
"Three or four minutes."
He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without
saying anything more about the ghost, went below.
The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of
sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He
described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with
sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the
features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could
not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said,
gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning
his head he found the Shape close beside him.
The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and
we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a
phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he
saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the
wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object
could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling
down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the
abandoned helm.
However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted
the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge
to get a "night in."
A few days later brought us into
cold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn.
We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to
under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the
long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of
ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively,
it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths
and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in the
cuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that people
could think of making love with icebergs close at hand.
It was no business of mine, and seemingly I gave the matter no heed,
though I could find leisure and curiosity sometimes for an askant
glance at the captain and his beauty when they were at table or when
the weather permitted the lady to come on deck, and their behaviour
left me in very little doubt that he was deeply in love with her; but
whether she was equally enamoured of him I could not guess.
We beat clear of the latitude of roaring gales blind with snow, and
mountainous ice-islands like cities of alabaster in ruins, and seas
ridging in thunder and foam to the height of our mizzentop, and
heading north blew under wide wings of studding sails towards the sun,
every day sinking some southern stars out of sight, and every night
lifting above the sea-line some gem of the heavens dear to northern
eyes.
I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were two
months "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had then
caught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when I
left the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder.
I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside my
bunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described.
"There's been murder done, sir," he cried. "The captain's killed."
I stared at him like a fool, and echoed mechanically and dully:
"Murder done! Captain killed!" Then collecting my wits I tumbled into
my clothes and rushed to the captain's cabin, where I found the doctor
and the third mate examining poor Griffith's body. It was
half-past-six o'clock in the morning, and the daylight strong, but none
of the passengers were moving. The captain had been stabbed to the
heart. The doctor said he had been killed by a single thrust. The body
was clothed in white drill trousers and a white linen shirt, which was
slightly stained with blood where the knife had pierced it.
Who had done this thing? It was horrible, unprovoked murder!
throughout the ship the captain had been the most popular man on
board. The forecastle liking for him was as strong as sentiment of any
sort can find expression in that part of a vessel. There had never
been a murmur. Indeed I had never sailed with a better crew. Not a man
had deserted us at Sydney and of the hands on board at least half had
sailed with the captain before.
We carefully searched the cabin, but there was nothing whatever to
tell us that robbery had been committed. However, a ghastly, shocking
murder had been perpetrated; the man on whose skill and judgment had
depended the safety of the ship and the many lives within her had been
foully done to death in his sleep by some mysterious hand, and we
determined at once upon a course.
First, I sent for some of the best and most trustworthy seamen amongst
the crew, and bringing them into the captain's cabin, showed them the
body. I then, in my capacity as commander of the vessel, authorised
them to act as a sort of detectives or policemen, and to search every
part of the ship and all the berths in the steerage and 'tween-decks
for any clue to the doer of the deed. It was arranged that the cabins
of the first-class passengers should be thoroughly overhauled by the
second and third mates.
All this brought us to the hour when the passengers arose, and the
ship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; in
all parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their faces
pale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break the
news to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man,
to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when the
doctor came from the young lady's berth.
"How did she receive the news?" said I.
"I wish it may not break her heart," said he, gravely. "She was turned
into stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful--not the greatest actress
could imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side of
England."
"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"
"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture of
the body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence of
the weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killed
himself.
I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waiting
for the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers who
were helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with this
murder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at the
wheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which I
guessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. It
was a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of my
imagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I had
observed the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixt
the captain and his young lady, and without taking any further notice
of it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as a
thorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucy
tongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of those
little asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealous
of either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two or
three days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-hearts
ought to be.
But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with this
murder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-lived
quarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless,
these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning of
that crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, in
what direction imagination was heading.