"That's number one!" said old Masters, the boatswain, meeting me at the
door of the saloon as I came out on deck, Weston having already told him
the sad news. "Master Stokes'll foller next, and then you or hi, Master
Haldane, for we be all doomed men, I know, arter seein' that there
ghost-ship!"
I made no reply to the superstitious old seaman's ominous prediction,
but as I made my way forward to the bridge, to inform Captain Applegarth
and the others of what had happened, I could not help thinking how
strange it was that poor Jackson should have recalled, at the very
moment the spirit was quitting his crippled body, the fact of my
sighting the ship in distress, and the account I had given the skipper
of what I had seen on board that mysterious craft!
Mr Fosset, or some of the hands who accompanied him, must have taken
down the yarn to the stoke-hold, only just before the unfortunate man
met with his terrible accident, though I had no doubt that he must have
seen the man-of-war through the port hole of the cabin, which was right
opposite his bunk, as she brought up under our stern to speak to us
earlier in the afternoon, and the sight of _HMS Aurora_ had, somehow or
other, amid the wanderings of his unconscious brain, got mixed up with
the remembrance of what he had previously heard concerning the vessel I
had seen at sunset the two days prior.
It was now getting dark, the evening closing in quickly, and, what with
the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme
immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves
being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin
that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that
were fast enwrapping us, the dull roar of the ever-breaking sea and the
groaning of the ship as she rolled, like a living creature in pain, all
worked on my overtried fancy and made me almost afraid of my own shadow
as I slipped and stumbled along the sloppy deck, my mind being in a
complete whirl till I reached my goal--the bridge.
"What's the matther, me bhoy?" asked Garry O'Neil, who was speaking to
the skipper, the two examining a chart in the wheel-house, the light
from the doorway of which fell on my face. "Faith, ye look quite
skeared, Haldane, jist as if ye'd sane a ghoast, sure!"
I mentioned what had happened, however, and he at once dropped his
chaffing manner, looking as grave as a judge.
"Begorrah, it's moighty sorry I am to hear that, now!" said he in a more
serious tone. "Sure, and he was a foine, h'ilthy man entirely, barrin'
that accident, bad cess to it! He moight have lived till a hundred, an'
then aunly died of auld age; for he'd the constitution of an illiphent.
Faith, I never saw such a chist and thorax on a chap in me loife
before!"
"Poor fellow!" observed the skipper. "He seems to have gone off awfully
sudden at the last. I thought you said he was getting on well when you
went down to see him awhile ago?"
"Bedad, I did that, sir; father's no denyin' it," answered the Irishman,
off-hand. "But I niver s'id he'd git over it, cap'en. I tuld ye from
the first he couldn't reciver, for he was paralysed, poor craytur', from
the waist downwards, and had a lot of internal injury besides. It was
aunly bekase he was sich a shtrang man that he's lasted so long, sir.
Any one else would have died directly outright afther the accident, for
he was pretty well smashed to pieces!"
"Strange!" muttered Captain Applegarth, who, although hasty of temper
sometimes, was a man of deep feeling. "Sunday night again and that man
dead! Only a week ago, this very evening, he came up to me here as I
was standing by the binnacle to ask about some carpenter's stores that
were wanted in the engine-room. He and I then got talking, I recollect,
it being Sunday, I suppose, of religious matters. He imagined himself--
poor chap--a `materialist,' as they call themselves, but his arguments
on the point were very weak. He argued that there was no hereafter, no
future state; the heaven and hell spoken of in Scripture, he suggested,
being the happiness or punishment we meet with below here, while living,
in accordance with our own lives."
"Faith!" said Garry O'Neil, who was not a deep thinker, not troubling
himself much about anything beyond the present. "That's a puzzling
question; but I, for one, wouldn't care to be of that way of thinkin',
sure, sir."
"That question however, poor Jackson has solved, long ere this!"
As Captain Applegarth uttered these words, solemnly enough, the
fireman's ravings, when in the agonies of death, came back to me, and I
thought that, if confident in his materialism when in health and
strength, his creed had not altogether eased his mind at the last, when
I saw him raise his eyes, for a few minutes, to heaven in prayer.
That night the gale, which had moderated considerably during the
afternoon, assailed us again with renewed vigour, as if old Boreas had
put a fresh hand to the bellows, as sailor folk say.
It began in the middle watch, when the wind suddenly veered to the
southwards, and it came on to blow great guns, causing the skipper the
utmost uneasiness, as he feared we would break away from our spar
anchor, when, disabled as we were, a steamer in a storm without the use
of the engines being no better off than a baby in arms deprived of its
nurse, it seemed almost impossible to prevent the vessel from broaching-
to, in which case she would more than likely founder with all hands.
Consequently, not a soul turned in the livelong night, the port and
starboard watches both remaining on duty, with Captain Applegarth and
Mr Fosset on the bridge, while Garry O'Neil relieved the boatswain, who
now had eight men under him in charge of the wheel, where the utmost
caution and the greatest vigilance were necessary to keep the old
barquey's head to the sea. I had fearfully hard work, too, for the big
waves ever and anon leapt up over her bows, burying the fo'c's'le in
clouds of spray and spent water that came pouring down into the waist
and rushing aft, flooding the whole deck almost up to the gunwhales
taking everything movable overboard, the boats being lifted off the
chocks amidships even and swept away, and the cook's galley in the
forward part of the deckhouse got badly damaged.
This was in the height of the storm, just before daybreak, about two
bells in the morning watch, or five o'clock AM.
Our poor old barquey then rolled so much that the skipper thought the
wire hawser attached to the spars had parted and that we were at the
very mercy of the tempest. So certain, indeed, was he, that he yelled
out for all hands to make sail, with the idea of trying one last
desperate venture and beard the winds with our puny canvas.
Fortunately, however, there was no need for us to essay this futile
expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their
colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their
attack; and presently, shortly after six bells, when we really
experienced pretty nearly the worst of it, there was a muttered growl of
thunder, accompanied by a lightning flash that illuminated the whole of
the heavens from pole to pole, and then rain came down in a deluge, the
wind dropping, as suddenly, with a wild, weird shrill shriek of
disappointed rage that wailed and whistled through the rigging, and then
quietly died away.
Of course the sea did not quiet down all at once, old Neptune not being
easily pacified after being stirred up to so great an extent, and the
waves ran high most of the day, while the sky was overcast and the ocean
of a dull leaden colour; but towards evening it cleared up and, the
water being a bit calmer, the captain thought it a fitting time to bury
poor Jackson.
All the hands were mustered on deck, the engineers and stokers stopping
their busy repairing work below, which they had kept at night and day
without intermission ever since our breakdown, and coming up with the
rest of the crew to pay the last tribute of respect to their departed
comrade, even Mr Stokes, though he was still in a very weak state of
health and had his head and broken arm bandaged up, insisting on being
present, Garry O'Neil and Stoddart supporting him between them for the
purpose.
Then the body of the unfortunate fireman, enclosed in a hammock covered
by the ship's ensign and having a pig of ballast tied to the feet to
ensure its submersion, was brought up from the cabin where he had died,
and placed on a plank by the gangway where the waves had washed away our
bulwarks, leaving a wide open space.
Captain Applegarth read over the remains the beautiful prayers of the
Church Service appointed for the burial of those who die at sea, all of
us standing bareheaded around.
A faint gleam of light from the setting sun, away on our port bow, shone
through a mist of cloud that obscured the horizon to windward; and, as
this disappeared, the skipper came to the end of the viaticum, when, at
a signal from the boatswain, the plank was tipped and poor Jackson's
body was committed to the deep with a sigh of regret at his untimely
end, and the devout hope that though his earthly voyage had been cut
short, he might yet reach that haven where there are no accidents nor
shipwrecks, and where seas swallow not up, or stormy winds blow!
Some little while after this a slight breeze sprang up from the
southward and westward, bringing a cool feeling with it, and I shivered
as I stood on the bridge looking out over the dark waste of waters,
feeling rather melancholy, if the truth be told.
"That's a bad sign, Master Haldane," said old Masters close to my ear,
making me jump, for I did not know he was there. "They say that when a
ship chap shivers like that there, it be meaning that somebody or summit
be a-walking over his grave!"
"Stave that, bo'sun!" I cried impatiently. "You're a regular old
Jonah, and enough to give a fellow the creeps!"
"Ah, you may try to laugh it off, Mister Haldane," he retorted in his
lugubrious way. "But, as I says to ye last night, says I, when that
poor chap kicked the bucket as we've just been a-burying on, we ain't
seen the end on it yet. I misdoubts the weather, too, sir. There's a
great bank of cloud now rising up to win'ard, and I fancies I heard jist
now the sound o' thunder ag'in."
"Thunder?" I exclaimed. "Nonsense!"
"No, Mister Haldane, it ain't no nonsense," said the old fellow
solemnly. "You ain't known me to croak afore without re'sin, and I
tells ye I don't likes the look o' things to-night. There's summit a-
brewin' up over there, or I'm a Dutchman!"
"What's that, bo'sun?" cried the skipper, coming up on the bridge at the
moment to look for the chart of the North Atlantic, which he had left in
the wheel-house the night before, and overheard the old growler's
remark. "Got the _Flying Dutchman_ on the brain again?"
"No, sir, I weren't talking o' that," replied Masters. "I was a-saying
to Master Haldane that it were precious misty and thick to win'ard and I
feared thunder over there."
"Thunder! thunder your grandmother!" cried the skipper testily. "I've
pretty sharp ears, bo'sun, and I have heard none to-night. Have you,
Haldane?"
"N-n-o, sir, not thunder," I answered, listening attentively for a
moment. "Stay, sir, though. I do hear something now, but the sound
seems more like firing in the distance."
"What, guns?"
"No sir, more like rifle shots, or the discharge of a revolver firing
quickly at intervals."
Captain Applegarth thereupon listened attentively, too, in his turn,
while Masters went out to the end of the bridge and peered out over the
side to windward with rapt gaze.
"By George, yes, you're right, boy!" cried the skipper the next moment.
"I can hear the shots quite plainly, I do believe. Hullo, there! What
the deuce is going on over there, I wonder?"
There was reason for exclamation.
At that instant the dark mass of cloud on the horizon, towards which we
were all looking, was rent by a flash, and we could see, standing
against the black background in vivid relief, the masts and spars of a
large full-rigged ship.
She was evidently burning a "flare-up" to attract attention, and, ere
the light waned, I noticed that her yards were all a cock-bill and her
sails and rigging torn and disordered; while, stranger still, she had
her flag astern hoisted half-mast high--the French tricolour, too!
Both the boatswain and I, simultaneously, involuntarily, uttered a cry
of dismay.
The vessel in sight was the very identical ship I had seen three nights
before, flying the same signal of distress; and here she was now,
sailing, as then, four points off our weather bows and eight before the
wind, which was, as I've already said, blowing a light breeze from the
southward and westward.
What new calamity did this second appearance of the "ghost-ship," as the
old boatswain called her, portend to all of us?
Aye, what, indeed!
Time alone could tell.