One morning, going on three o'clock, while all were dreaming quietly
under their winding-sheet of fog, they heard something like a clamour of
voices--voices whose tones seemed strange and unfamiliar. Those on deck
looked at each other questioningly.
“Who's that talking?”
Nobody. Nobody had said anything. For that matter, the sounds had
seemed to come from the outer void. Then the man who had charge of the
fog-horn, but had been neglecting his duty since overnight, rushed for
it, and inflating his lungs to their utmost, sounded with all his might
the long bellow of alarm. It was enough to make a man of iron start, in
such a silence.
As if a spectre had been evoked by that thrilling, though deep-toned
roar, a huge unforeseen gray form suddenly arose very loftily and
towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all
like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as a
single beam of electric light evokes phantasmagoria on the screen of a
magic lantern.
Men appeared, almost close enough to touch them, leaning over the
bulwarks, staring at them with eyes distended in the awakening of
surprise and dread.
The _Marie's_ men rushed for oars, spars, boat-hooks, anything they
could lay their hands on for fenders, and held them out to shove
off that grisly thing and its impending visitors. Lo! these others,
terrified also, put out large beams to repel them likewise.
But there came only a very faint creaking in the topmasts, as both
standing gears momentarily entangled became disentangled without the
least damage; the shock, very gentle in such a calm had been almost
wholly deadened; indeed, it was so feeble that it really seemed as if
the other ship had no substance, that it was a mere pulp, almost without
weight.
When the fright was over, the men began to laugh; they had recognised
each other.
“_La Marie_, ahoy! how are ye, lads?”
“Halloa! Gaos, Laumec, Guermeur!”
The spectre ship was the _Reine-Berthe_, also of Paimpol, and so the
sailors were from neighbouring villages; that thick, tall fellow with
the huge, black beard, showing his teeth when he laughed, was Kerjegou,
one of the Ploudaniel boys, the others were from Plounes or Plounerin.
“Why didn't you blow your fog-horn, and be blowed to you, you herd of
savages?” challenged Larvoer of the _Reine-Berthe_.
“If it comes to that, why didn't you blow yours, you crew of
pirates--you rank mess of toad-fish?”
“Oh, no! with us, d'ye see, the sea-law differs. _We're forbidden to
make any noise!_”
He made this reply with the air of giving a dark hint, and a queer
smile, which afterward came back to the memory of the men of the
_Marie_, and caused them a great deal of thinking. Then, as if he
thought he had said too much, he concluded with a joke:
“Our fog-horn, d'ye see, was burst by this rogue here a-blowing too hard
into it.” He pointed to a sailor with a face like a Triton, a man all
bull-neck and chest, extravagantly broad-shouldered, low-set upon
his legs, with something unspeakably grotesque and unpleasant in the
deformity of strength.
While they were looking at each other, waiting for breeze or
undercurrent to move one vessel faster than the other and separate them,
a general palaver began. Leaning over the side, but holding each
other off at a respectable distance with their long wooden props, like
besieged pikemen repelling an assault, they began to chat about home,
the last letters received, and sweethearts and wives.
“I say! my old woman,” said Kerjegou, “tells me she's had the little boy
we were looking for; that makes half-score-two now!”
Another had found himself the father of twins; and a third announced
the marriage of pretty Jenny Caroff, a girl well known to all the
Icelanders, with some rich and infirm old resident of the Commune of
Plourivo. As they were eyeing each other as if through white gauze, this
also appeared to alter the sound of the voices, which came as if muffled
and from far away.
Meanwhile Yann could not take his eyes off one of those brother
fishermen, a little grizzled fellow, whom he was quite sure he never had
seen before, but who had, nevertheless, straightway said to him, “How
d'o, long Yann?” with all the familiarity of bosom acquaintance. He wore
the provoking ugliness of a monkey, with an apish twinkling of mischief
too in his piercing eyes.
“As for me,” said Larvoer, of the _Reine-Berthe_, “I've been told of
the death of the grandson of old Yvonne Moan, of Ploubazlanec--who was
serving his time in the navy, you know, in the Chinese squadron--a very
great pity.”
On hearing this, all the men of _La Marie_ turned towards Yann to learn
if he already knew anything of the sad news.
“Ay,” he answered in a low voice, but with an indifferent and haughty
air, “it was told me in the last letter my father sent me.” They still
kept on looking at him, curious at finding out the secret of his grief,
and it made him angry.
These questions and answers were rapidly exchanged through the pallid
mists, so the moments of this peculiar colloquy skipped swiftly by.
“My wife wrote me at the same time,” continued Larvoer, “that Monsieur
Mevel's daughter has left the town to live at Ploubazlanec and take care
of her old grand-aunt--Granny Moan. She goes out to needlework by the
day now--to earn her living. Anyhow, I always thought, I did, that
she was a good, brave girl, in spite of her fine-lady airs and her
furbelows.”
Then again they all stared at Yann, which made him still more angry; a
red flush mounted to his cheeks, under their tawny tan.
With Larvoer's expression of opinion about Gaud ended this parley with
the crew of the _Reine-Berthe_, none of whom were ever again to be seen
by human eyes. For a moment their faces became more dim, their vessel
being already farther away; and then, all at once, the men of the
_Marie_ found they had nothing to push against, nothing at the end of
their poles--all spars, oars, odds and ends of deck-lumber, were groping
and quivering in emptiness, till they fell heavily, one after the other,
down into the sea, like their own arms, lopped off and inert.
They pulled all the useless defences on board. The _Reine-Berthe_,
melting away into the thick fog, had disappeared as suddenly as a
painted ship in a dissolving view. They tried to hail her, but the only
response was a sort of mocking clamour--as of many voices--ending in a
moan, that made them all stare at each other in surprise.
This _Reine-Berthe_ did not come back with the other Icelandic fishers;
and as the men of the _Samuel-Azenide_ afterward picked up in some fjord
an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all
ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were
inscribed upon black slabs in the church.
From the very time of that apparition--the date of which was well
remembered by the men of the _Marie_--until the time of their return,
there had been no really dangerous weather on the Icelandic seas, but a
great storm from the west had, three weeks before, swept several sailors
overboard, and swallowed up two vessels. The men remembered Larvoer's
peculiar smile, and putting things together many strange conjectures
were made. In the dead of night, Yann, more than once, dreamed that he
again saw the sailor who blinked like an ape, and some of the men of
the _Marie_ wondered if, on that remembered morning, they had not been
talking with ghosts.