A week later, Captain Snaggs, after drinking heavily during the evening,
was seized with a fit of delirium similar to the one he had that night
when he frightened me so terribly, for he rushed out of the cuddy,
screaming that `thet durned nigger Sam' was after him again.
He made my flesh creep; and I wouldn't have gone afterwards into the
stern of the ship at night, without a light, for a good deal, nor would
any of the fo'c's'le hands either, excepting, perhaps, Tom Bullover. I
am certain Hiram Bangs would have been even more reluctant than myself
to have ventured within the presumptive quarters of the ghost.
But, it was when we were off Cape Horn itself, though, that we
encountered our greatest peril.
The _Denver City_ had got down well below the latitude of the stormy
headland that is to mariners like the `Hill Difficulty' mentioned in the
`Pilgrim's Progress,' carrying with her up to then the light, favourable
breezes we had encountered after leaving the south-east trades which had
previously wafted her so well on her way; when, all at once, without
hardly a warning, the sea began to grow choppy and sullen, and the air
thick and heavy. The sky, too, which had been for days and days nearly
cloudless, became overcast all round, heavy masses of vapour piling
themselves upwards from the horizon towards the zenith, to the southward
and westward, gradually enveloping ship and ocean alike in a mantle of
mist.
"Cape Horn weather," observed Tom Bullover meaningly, as he squinted to
windward; "we'll have a taste of it presently!"
"Aye, bo," said Hiram, from the door of the galley opposite, where the
carpenter was holding on to the weather rigging; "I wonder what the
skipper's about, keepin' all thet hamper aloft an' a gale like thet
a-comin'! I reckon he'd better look smart, or we'll be caught nappin',
hey?"
Captain Snaggs, however, was also on the look-out; and, almost ere Hiram
had finished his sentence, he shouted out for all hands to take in sail.
"'Way aloft thaar!" he cried; "lay out on the yards, men, an' close reef
the tops'ls. We're going to hev a blow!"
And we did have a blow.
The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the
mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having
been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us
which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of
the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea,
rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of
water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.
I was standing on the poop, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with
the rest of the `idlers'--as those who are not regular sailors are
called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt
tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter--when this fierce blast came.
Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were
skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.
Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out
and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then,
those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter
below than the rigging afforded.
But, now, occurred a curious circumstance.
As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail
stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the poop before getting down
to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said
that he had heard Sam Jedfoot's voice in the ship since he had been lost
overboard, whispered to me as he passed:--
"Listen!" he said.