A TRAGICAL DEATH.
For some time after I had relieved the deck, as it is termed, that
is to say, after the mate had gone below and left me in charge, I
had the company of the captain, who seemed restless and troubled,
often quitting my side as we paced, to go to the rail and view the
horizon, with the air of a man perturbed by expectation. I need not
tell you that I did not breathe a word to him respecting my talk with
the carpenter, not even to the extent of saying how fancies about the
Dutchman were flying about among the crew, for this subject he was in
no state of mind to be brought into.
The moon was rising a little before he joined me, and we stood in
silence watching her. She jutted up a very sickly faint red, that
brightened but a little after she lifted her lower limb clear of
the horizon, and when we had the full of her plain we perceived her
strangely distorted by the atmosphere of the shape--if shape it can be
called--of a rotten orange that has been squeezed, or of a turtle's egg
lightly pressed; she was more like a blood-coloured jelly distilled
by the sky, ugly and even affrighting, than the sweet ice-cold planet
that empearls the world at night, and whose delicate silver the lover
delights to behold in his sweetheart's eyes. But she grew more shapely
as she soared, though holding a dusky blush for a much longer time than
ever I had noticed in her when rising off the mid-African main; and her
wake, broken by the small, black curl of the breeze, hung in broken
indissoluble lumps of feverish light, like coagulated gore that had
dropped from the wound she looked to be in the dark sky.
There was a faintness in the heavens that closed out the sparkles
of the farther stars, and but a few, and those only of the greatest
magnitude, were visible, shining in several colours, such as dim pink
and green and wan crystal; all which, together with one or two of them
above our mastheads, dimly glittering amidst feeble rings, made the
whole appearance of the night amazing and even ghastly enough to excite
a feeling of awe in the attention it compelled. The captain spoke not a
word whilst the moon slowly floated into the dusk, and then fetching a
deep breath, he said--
"Well, thank God, if she don't grow round it's because of the shadow
on her. Keep a bright look-out, Mr. Fenton, and hold the ship to her
course. Should the wind fail call me--and call me too if it should head
us."
With which he walked quietly to the hatch, stood there a moment or two
with his hand upon it and his face looking up as though he studied the
trim of the yards, and then disappeared.
My talk with the carpenter and the behaviour of the captain bred in
me a sense as of something solemn and momentous informing the hours.
I reasoned with myself, I struggled with the inexplicable oppression
that weighed down my spirits, but it would not do. I asked myself,
"Why should the cheap, illiterate fears of such a man as the carpenter
affect me? Why should I find the secret of my soul's depression in
the superstitions of Captain Skevington, whose arguments as to the
endevilment of the dead exhibited a decay of his intellect on one side,
as phthisis consumes one lung, leaving the other sound enough for a man
to go on living with?" And I recited these comfortable lines of the
poet:--
"Learn though mishap may cross our ways,
It is not ours to reckon when."
Yet in vain. There was an intelligence of my spirits that was not
to be soothed, and I found myself treading about the deck, stepping
lightly, as a man might who walks upon ground under which the dead lie,
whilst I felt so much worried, down to the very bottom of my heart,
that had some great sorrow just befallen me I could not have been
sadder.
As the night wore on the moon gathered her wonted hue and shape, though
her refulgence was small, for the air thickened. Indeed, at half-past
ten all the lights of Heaven, saving the moon, had been put out by a
mist, the texture of which was illustrated by the only luminary the
sky contained, around whose pale expiring disc there was now a great
halo, with something of the character of a lunar rainbow in the very
delicate, barely determinable tinctures, which made a sort of shadowy
prism of it, more like what one would dream of than see. The ocean
lay very black, there was no power in the moon to cast a wake, the
breathings of the wind rippled the water and caused a scintillation
of the spangles of the phosphorus or sea-fire, the weight of the lower
sails kept them hanging up and down, and what motion the ship had was
from the swelling of the light canvas that rose very pale and ghostly
into the gloom.
I had gone to the taffrail and was staring there away into the dark,
whither our short wake streamed in a sort of smouldering cloudiness
with particles of fire in it, conceiving that the wind was failing,
and waiting to make sure before reporting to the captain, when I was
startled by the report of a musket or some small arm that broke upon my
ear with a muffled sound, so that whence it came I could not conceive.
Yet, for some minutes I felt so persuaded the noise had been seawards
that, spite of there having been no flash, I stood peering hard into
the dark, first one side then the other, far as the sails would suffer
me.
Then, but all very quickly, concluding that the explosion had happened
aboard and might betoken mischief, I ran along the deck where, close
against the wheel, I found a number of seamen talking hurriedly and in
alarmed voices. I called out to know what that noise had been. None
knew. One said it had come from the sea, another that there had been a
small explosion in the hold, and a third was giving his opinion, when
at that instant a figure darted out of the companion hatch, clothed
in his shirt and drawers, and cried out, "Mr. Fenton! Mr. Fenton! For
God's sake, where are you?"
I recognized the voice of Mr. Hall, and bawled back, "Here, sir!" and
ran to him. He grasped my arm. "The captain has shot himself!" he
exclaimed.
"Where is he?" said I.
"In his cabin," he answered.
We rushed down together. The great cabin, where we messed, was in
darkness, but a light shone in the captain's berth. The door was
open, and gently swung with the motion of the ship. I pushed in, but
instantly recoiled with horror, for, right athwart the deck lay the
body of Captain Skevington, with the top of his head blown away. It
needed but one glance to know that he had done this thing with his own
hand. He had fired the piece with his foot by a string attached to the
trigger, standing upright with his brow bent to the muzzle, for the
bight of the string was round his shoe, and he had fallen sideways,
grasping the barrel.
The sight froze me to the marrow. Had I killed him by accident with my
own hand I could not have trembled more. But this exquisite distress
was short-lived. It was only needful to look at his head to discover
how fruitless would be the task of examining him for any signs of life.
Some of the seamen who heard Mr. Hall cry out to me about this thing
had followed us below, forgetting their place in the consternation
roused in them, and stood in the doorway faintly groaning and muttering
exclamations of pity. Mr. Hall bid a couple of them raise the body and
lay it in its bunk and cover it with a sheet, and others he sent for
water and a swab wherewith to cleanse the place.
"You had better go on deck again, Fenton," says he to me; "the ship
must be watched. I'll join you presently."
I was glad to withdraw; for albeit there was a ghastliness in the look
of the night, the sea being black as ebony, though touched here and
there with little sheets of fire, and stretching like a pall to its
horizon that was drawing narrower and murkier around us minute after
minute, with the wing-like shadow of vapour that was yet too thin to
deserve the name of fog; though there was this ghastliness, I say,
aided by the moon that was now little more than a dim, tarnished
blotch of shapeless silver, wanly ringed with an ashen cincture, yet
the taste of the faint breeze was as helpful to my spirits as a dram
of generous cordial after the atmosphere of the cabin in which I had
beheld the remains of Captain Skevington.