WE DRAW CLOSE TO A STRANGE AND LUMINOUS SHIP.
Now I might have stood thus for ten minutes, when I was awakened from
my dream by an eager feverish muttering of voices forward, and on a
sudden the harsh notes of a seaman belonging to my watch cried out,
"D'ye see that sail, right broad a-beam, sir?"
I sprang from my leaning posture, and peered, but my eyes were heavy;
the night was dark, and whilst I stared several of the sailors came
hurriedly aft to where I stood, and said, all speaking together,
"There--see her, sir? Look yonder, Mr. Fenton!" and their arms, to a
man, shot out to point, as if every one levelled a pistol.
Though I could not immediately make out the object, I was not surprised
by the consternation the sailors were in; for, such was the mood and
temper of the whole company, that not the most familiar and prosaic
craft that floats on the ocean could have broken through the obscurity
of the night upon their gaze without tickling their superstitious
instincts, till the very hair of their heads crawled to the inward
motions. In a few moments, sure enough, I made out the loom of what
looked a large ship, out on the starboard beam. As well as I could
distinguish she was close hauled, and so standing as to pass under our
stern. She made a sort of faintness upon the sea and sky where she was:
nothing more. And even to be sure of her, it was necessary to look a
little on one side or the other of her; for if you gazed full she went
out, as a dim distant light at sea does, thus viewed.
"She may be an enemy!" I cried. "There should be no lack of Dutch or
even French hereabouts. Quick, lads, to stations. Send the boatswain
here."
I ran to the companion hatch and called loudly to Mr. Hall. He had
fallen asleep on a locker, and came running in a blind sort of way
to the foot of the ladder, shouting out, "What is it? What is it?" I
answered that there was a large ship heading directly for us, whereupon
he was instantly wide awake, and sprang up the ladder, crying, "Where
away? Where away?"
If there was any wind I could feel none. Yet some kind of draught there
must have been, for the ship out in the darkness held a brave luff,
which proved her under command. We, on the other hand, rested upon the
liquid ebony of the ocean with square yards, the mizzen furled, the
starboard clew of the mainsail hoisted, and the greater number of our
staysails down. Whilst Mr. Hall stared in the direction of the ship the
boatswain arrived for orders. The mate turned smartly to me, and said,
"We must make ready, and take our chance. Bo's'n, pipe to quarters, and
Mr. Fenton, see all clear."
For the second time in my watch the boatswain's pipe shrilled clear to
the canvas, from whose stretched, still folds, the sounds broke away in
ghostly echoes. We were not a man-of-war, had no drums, and to martial
duties we could but address ourselves clumsily. But all felt that there
might be a great danger in the pale shadow yonder that had seemed to
ooze out upon our eyes from the darkness as strangely as a cloud shapes
itself upon a mountain-top.
So we tumbled about quickly and wildly enough, got our little batteries
clear, put on the hatch-gratings and tarpaulins, opened the magazine,
lighted the matches, provided the guns with spare breeches and tackles,
and stood ready for whatever was to come. All this we contrived with
the aid of one or two lanterns, very secretly moved about, as Mr.
Hall did not wish us to be seen making ready; but the want of light
delayed us, and, by the time we were fully prepared, the strange ship
had insensibly floated down to about three-quarters-of-a-mile upon our
starboard quarter.
At that distance it was too black to enable us to make anything of her,
but we comforted ourselves by observing that she did not offer to alter
her course, whence we might reasonably hope that she was a peaceful
trader like ourselves. She showed no lights--her sails were all that
was visible of her, owing to the hue they put into the darkness over
her hull. It was a time of heavy trial to our patience. Our ship had
come to a dead stand, as it was easy to discover by looking over the
side, where the small, pale puffs of phosphoric radiance that flashed
under water at the depth of a man's hand from our vessel's strakes
whenever she rolled, no matter how daintily, to the swell, hung
glimmering for a space in the selfsame spot where they were discharged.
Nor was there the least sound of water in motion under our counter,
unless it were the gurgling, drowning sobbing you hear there on a still
night, when the stern stoops to the drop of the fold, and raises that
strange, hollow noise of washing all about the rudder.
"I would to mercy a breeze would come if only to resolve her!" said
Mr. Hall to me in a low voice. "There's but little fun to be got out
of this sort of waiting. At this rate we must keep the men at their
stations till daylight to find out what she is. Pleasant if she should
prove some lump of a Dutch man-of-war! She shows uncommonly large,
don't you think, Fenton?"
"So do we to her, I dare say, in this obscurity," I replied. "But I
doubt that she's a man-of-war. I've been watching her closely and have
never once caught sight of the least gleam of a light aboard her."
"Maybe the officer of the watch and the look-out are sound asleep,"
said he, with a slight and not very merry laugh; "and if she's steered
on her quarter-deck she'll be too deep-waisted perhaps for the helmsman
to see us."
I heard him say this without closely heeding it, for my attention at
that moment was attracted by what was unquestionably the enlargement
of her pallid shadow; sure proof that she had shifted her helm and was
slowly coming round so as to head for us. Mr. Hall noticed this as soon
as I.
"Ha!" he cried, "they mean to find out what we are, hey? They've
observed us at last. Does she bring an air with her that she's under
control, or is it that she's lighter and taller than we?"
It was beyond question because she was lighter and taller, and having
been kept close-hauled to the faint draught had made more of it than
we who carried it aft. Besides, we were loaded down to our chain-plate
bolts with cargo, and the water and other stores we had shipped at the
Cape. Yet her approach was so sluggish as to be imperceptible, and I
would not like to say that our gradual drawing together was not as much
due to the current which, off this coast, runs strong to the westward,
setting us, who were deep, faster towards her than it set her from us,
as it was also owing to the strange attraction which brings becalmed
vessels near to each other--often indeed, to their having to be towed
clear by their boats.
Meanwhile, the utter silence on board the stranger, the blackness in
which her hull lay hidden, the strangeness of her bracing-in her yards
to head up for us without any signal being shown that she designed
to fight us, wrought such a fit of impatience in Mr. Hall, that he
swung his body from the backstay he clutched in movements positively
convulsive.
"Are they all dead aboard? On such a night as this one should be able
to hear the least sound--the hauling taut of a tackle--the rasping of
the wheel-ropes!"
"She surely doesn't hope to catch us napping?" said I.
"God knows!" cried the mate. "What would I give now for a bit of moon!"
"If it's to be a fight it'll have to be a shooting match for a spell,
or wind must come quickly," said I. "But if she meant mischief wouldn't
she head to pass under our stern, where she could rake us, rather than
steer to come broadside on?"
Instead of responding, the mate sprang on to the bulwark-rail, and in
tones such as only the practised and powerful lungs of a seaman can
fling, roared out--
"Ho, the ship, ahoy!"
We listened with so fierce a strain of attention that the very beating
of our hearts rung in our ears; but not a sound came across the water.
Twice yet did Mr. Hall hail that pallid fabric, shapeless as yet in the
dark air, but to no purpose. On this there was much whispering among
the men clustered about the guns. Their voices came along in a low,
grumbling sound like the growling of dogs, dulled by threats.
"Silence, fore and aft!" cried the mate. "We don't know what she
is--but we know what we are! and, as Englishmen, we surely have spirit
enough for whatever may come."
There was silence for some minutes after these few words; then the
muttering broke out afresh, but scattered, a group talking to larboard,
another on the forecastle, and so forth.
Meanwhile the vessels, all insensibly, had continued to draw closer
and closer to each other. A small clarification of the atmosphere
happening past the stranger, suffered a dim disclosure of her canvas,
whence I perceived that she had nothing set above her topgallant-sails,
though it was impossible to see whether she carried royal-masts, or
indeed whether the yards belonging to those masts were crossed on
them. Her hull had now also stolen out into a pitch-black shadow, and
after gazing at it with painful intentness for some moments, I was
extravagantly astonished to observe a kind of crawling and flickering
of light, resembling that which burnt in the sea, stirring like
glow-worms along the vessel's side.
I was about to direct Mr. Hall's attention to this thing, when he said
in a subdued voice, "Fenton, d'ye notice the faint shining about her
hull? What, in God's name, can it be?"
He had scarce uttered these words when a sailor on the starboard side
of our ship, whom I recognised by the voice as one Ephraim Jacobs, an
elderly, sober, pious-minded seaman, cried out with a sort of scream in
his notes--
"As I hope to be forgiven my sins for Jesu's sake, yon's the ship that
was curst last century."