Old Masters turned his face towards me as the fleeting vision became
swallowed up in the darkness that now obscured the sky to the westwards,
and I saw that he looked horror-struck, staring into space spell-bound.
As for me, I cannot express what I felt, because I am unable to describe
it fully.
"There, there!" I exclaimed, clutching Captain Applegarth's arm in
nervous horror. "There she is again!"
But the skipper, although startled by the sudden appearance of the
mysterious vessel in the first instance, as his ejaculation on catching
sight of her showed, evidently did not regard her in the same light as
the boatswain and myself.
"Why, Haldane, what's the matter with you, my lad?" he said in a joking
way, "You seem all of a tremble; and, by George, you grip tight!"
"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," I stammered out, trying to pull
myself together as I released his arm. "But--but--did you--did you--see
her, sir?"
"See that ship just now? Yes, of course I did. I suppose she sighted
us lying here like a log and wanted us to report her or something,
though why they lit that flare-up over her stern I am sure I can't
imagine. They couldn't expect us to read her name at that distance.
She must have been close on five miles off!"
"But, sir," I cried out quickly. "She's the same!"
"The same what, Haldane?"
"Why, the ship in distress, sir, that I sighted at sunset on Friday
night just before our breakdown."
Captain Applegarth whistled through his teeth.
"My good lad," he said incredulously, "that's simply impossible!"
"Well, sir, you may not believe me," I urged, rather nettled that he
should put me down in this way, "but I declare to you she is the
identical vessel I saw that evening, as I told you at the time, and of
which we went in chase till the gale stopped us and our machinery gave
out! I cannot doubt the evidence of my own eyes, sir."
"My dear boy," replied the skipper, in kinder tones than I expected to
this outburst, for he was a hot-tempered man generally, and disliked
anything like argument from his officers when he had once said his say,
being of the opinion that his word should be last. "Just reflect a
moment and let your own natural good sense decide the point. How can it
be likely that the vessel you asserted you saw on Friday night, hundreds
of miles away from here, should come across us now under precisely
similar circumstances, considering all that has happened since?"
"She's the same ship, sir, nevertheless," I maintained stubbornly,
though I was a bit puzzled on my own account, mind, by his putting the
case so strongly. "The vessel I saw on Friday night was a full-rigged
ship, with her sails knocked about and had her ensign hoisted half-mast
high at the peak, and this one seemed the same in every particular. I
did not notice all that when she burnt the flare-up just now. The light
only lasted an instant."
"There is something in that, certainly, Haldane," answered the skipper,
wavering a little, I thought, in his ideas. "Still, when one is
inclined to believe in a thing, the imagination is often a great aid in
turning a wish into a certainty."
"Besides, sir," I continued, wishing to clench my argument, "if we were
driven out of our course by the gale, she might have been similarly
affected, and the winds and currents might have brought us together
again."
"That's possible, but not probable," he rejoined. "I've known two
bottles of the same weight dropped overboard from the same ship at the
same hour, and--"
"Well, sir?"
"One was found landed on the Lofoden Isles, off the coast of Norway: the
other came ashore at Sandy Point, in the Straits of Magellan!"
He laughed when he said this, apparently thinking he had utterly settled
the matter, but I checkmated him with his own theory.
"The very uncertainty of the action of the currents of the Atlantic
which you instance, sir," I said, "shows that what you think impossible
might be very possible, and the strange, weird vessel that I saw three
nights ago might have come within sight of us again."
"That's one for you, Haldane," acknowledged the skipper very good-
naturedly, for he was a fair man when anything was laid clearly before
him. "But, recollect, no one saw this ship distinctly but yourself. I
couldn't say of my own knowledge what rig she was, and I certainly
didn't see any flag or sign of distress. I only saw something that
looked like a ship burning a flare-up in the distance--that's all."
"Beg pardon, sir," whispered old Masters, stepping up and touching his
cap ere he addressed the skipper, "but I seed the ghost-ship, too, sir,
the same as Master Haldane, sir."
The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.
"Ghost-ship, man! What do you mean?"
"I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which
have passed us afore, sir. She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and
as a Christian man, Cap'en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!"
The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard
work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his
extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.
"I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo'sun," he said. "I believe in a
divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence; but I
can't believe in any of your queer supernatural visitations, whether as
warnings or what not!"
"Not if you seed the same blessed thing three times?"
"No; not if I saw it a hundred times!" he roared out impatiently.
"Ah, seein' is believin', I says," whined old Masters, not a whit shaken
on the point, in spite of the skipper's scepticism. "Master Haldane
seed it, and I seed it, and poor Jackson seed it."
"Indeed?" cried the skipper. "I did not know he had been on deck before
the accident."
"It wore arter that, sir, that he seed the ghost-ship," said the old
boatswain in reply to the implied question. "It were jist afore he
died."
"Just before he died!" repeated Captain Applegarth indignantly, as if he
thought he was being made a fool of. "Why, man, the poor fellow was out
of his mind then, and besides, never stirred out of his cabin!"
"Ah, but he had the warnin' jist the same, for Weston, it was, told me
as how Jackson seed the ship and cried out when he lay there a-dyin'.
Bulkheads can't keep sperrits out, sir."
"Nor in, either, as I know to my cost," returned the skipper drily.
"Your friend Weston is pretty familiar with them, if they come in his
way, I fancy! Stuff and nonsense, bo'sun; how can you believe such
rubbish? The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel,
when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your
absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win'rd passed and lit a
flare-up, hanged if you aren't at it again with your ghost-ship! By
George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good
seaman like yourself should be such a confounded ass!"
"Hass or no hass, there she wer'," said the old fellow doggedly. "But
here comes Mr Fosset, sir. He were on the poop aft when that vessel
passed as I speaks on. Ax him what he thinks of her and if she weren't
the same full-rigged ship as Master Haldane and all of us seed?"
"I will," replied Captain Applegarth promptly; and on the first mate
approaching nearer, he hailed him. "I say, Fosset, what did you think
of that ship just now?"
The other's answer, however, bewildered the skipper more than Masters
and I had done previously.
"Ship!" said the first mate. "What ship?"
"That vessel that lit the flare-up awhile ago."
"I didn't see any flare-up!" replied Mr Fosset, "and certainly no ship
has passed us to my knowledge since I've been on deck."
"By George, I don't know who or what to believe," exclaimed Captain
Applegarth, looking from the one to the other of us. "You've set my
very brains wool-gathering between you, with your `vessels in distress'
and `ghost-ships'; I'm hanged if I won't go down to the engine-room and
have a little practical common sense knocked into me, as well as see how
they're getting on with the repairs to the machinery!"
So saying, the skipper went below, and, as there was nothing particular
for me to do on deck, I followed his example. Instead of proceeding
down to the engine-room, however, I only went as far as my bunk and
turned in, wondering what the morrow would bring forth. I was haunted,
though, by strange dreams all through the night, continually waking up
and then getting to sleep again in snatches, only to wake up again
immediately after I had dropped off.