It was a glorious morning, and so warm that I went up on deck without
any hat or cloak, glad to have the sunlight playing on my hair and the
soft breeze blowing on my face. The scene was perfectly enchanting; the
mountains were bathed in a delicate rose-purple glow reflected from the
past pomp of the sun's rising,--the water was still as an inland lake,
and every mast and spar of the 'Diana' was reflected in it as in a
mirror. A flock of sea-gulls floated round our vessel, like fairy
boats--some of them rising every now and then with eager cries to wing
their graceful flight high through the calm air, and alight again with
a flash of silver pinions on the translucent blue. While I stood gazing
in absorbed delight at the beauty which everywhere surrounded me,
Captain Derrick called to me from his little bridge, where he stood
with folded arms, looking down.
"Good morning! What do you think of the mystery now?"
"Mystery?" And then his meaning flashed upon me. "Oh, the yacht that
anchored near us last night! Where is she?"
"Just so!" And the captain's look expressed volumes--"Where is she?"
Oddly enough, I had not thought of the stranger vessel till this
moment, though the music sounding from her deck had been the last thing
which had haunted my ears before I had slept--and dreamed! And now--she
was gone! There was not a sign of her anywhere.
I looked up at the captain on his bridge and smiled. "She must have
started very early!" I said.
The captain's fuzzy brows met portentously.
"Ay! Very early! So early that the watch never saw her go. He must have
missed an hour and she must have gained one."
"It's rather strange, isn't it?" I said--"May I come on the bridge?"
"Certainly."
I ran up the little steps and stood beside him, looking out to the
farthest line of sea and sky.
"What do you think about it?" I asked, laughingly, "Was she a real
yacht or a ghost?"
The captain did not smile. His brow was furrowed with perplexed
consideration.
"She wasn't a ghost," he said--"but her ways were ghostly. That is, she
made no noise,--and she sailed without wind. Mr. Harland may say what
he likes,--I stick to that. She had no steam, but she carried full
sail, and she came into the Sound with all her canvas bellying out as
though she were driven by a stormy sou'wester. There's been no wind all
night--yet she's gone, as you see--and not a man on board heard the
weighing of her anchor. When she went and how she went beats me
altogether!"
At that moment we caught sight of a small rowing boat coming out to us
from the shore, pulled by one man, who bent to his oars in a slow,
listless way as though disinclined for the labour.
"Boat ahoy!" shouted the captain.
The man looked up and signalled in answer. A couple of our sailors went
to throw him a rope as he brought his craft alongside. He had come, so
he slowly explained in his soft, slow, almost unintelligible Highland
dialect, with fresh eggs and butter, hoping to effect a sale. The
steward was summoned, and bargaining began. I listened and looked on,
amused and interested, and I presently suggested to the captain that it
might be as well to ask this man if he too had seen the yacht whose
movements appeared so baffling and inexplicable. The captain at once
took the hint.
"Say, Donald," he began, invitingly--"did you see the big yacht that
came in last night about ten o'clock?"
"Ou ay!" was the slow answer--"But my name's no Tonald,--it's just
Jamie."
Captain Derrick laughed jovially.
"Beg pardon! Jamie, then! Did you see the yacht?"
"Ou ay! I've seen her mony a day. She's a real shentleman."