“It will be forty years ago next month,” said the old Captain, “since
the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was
paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very
glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth,
asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old
sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet.
He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor—what you young men
would call ‘an old salt’—and couldn’t live out of sight of the blue sea
and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us take who have
spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself—a sort of feeling
that we must be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and
see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It’s wonderful to see the
trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn’t come so home to
an old sailor. I know that we’re all just as much under the Lord’s
hand on shore as at sea; but you can’t read in a book you haven’t been
used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works
of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn’t their fault if they
don’t see His wonders on the land so easily as other people.
“But, for all that, there’s no man enjoys a cruise in the country more
than a sailor. It’s forty years ago since I started for Plymouth,
but I haven’t forgotten the road a bit, or how beautiful it was; all
through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then on by the
mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to
Plymouth, for we didn’t get about so quick in those days.
“The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about
with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked
up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in
those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old
Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole
heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to
live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some
one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a
light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes
and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion
and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that
we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was
never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the
fleet, and the stations I had been on.
“Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly,
and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore
to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig,
lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore, and he got
his boy a midshipman’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth
himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old
gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung, and went below
into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by
the pilot-boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at
parting from his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised
to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a
chance.
“I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had
been my own younger brother, and, for that matter, so were all the
crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He was such a gallant
youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he
climbed over the boatswain’s shoulders, and was almost first on deck;
how he came out of it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But
he hadn’t a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any
one who was wounded or down with sickness.
“After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta,
on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the
post wasn’t so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months
without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at
home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he
got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off
duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make
him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could;
but he didn’t pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I
talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at
last I came to think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep
out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was—I remember
it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty
night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were
under close-reefed topsails—I had the first watch, and at nine o’clock
I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there, where he would be fresher
and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.
“I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather
got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and
hummed through the rigging—it made me melancholy to listen to it. I
could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should
say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after
midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t go to sleep
at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the
ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which
was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other
hammocks swinging slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off,
and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with
a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but the swinging
hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one
was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see
any of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and
the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all
that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled
hair coming out from under a red woollen night cap, and his shoulders
wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often
seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful,
disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not
speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice,
but didn’t seem to recognize me; and, just as I was getting back my
tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: ‘Where’s Tom? this is his
hammock. I can’t see Tom;’ and then he looked vaguely about and passed
away somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I jumped out
and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat
down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact
time, twenty minutes to two. I didn’t turn in again, but sat watching
the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his
great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was
rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel
and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a
few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew,
dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure
by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.
“However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore’s death.
‘It had been a very sudden break-up,’ his executor said. He had left
all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to
get leave to come home as soon as he could.
“The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went
home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first thing I
did after landing was to find out the Commodore’s executor. He was a
quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my
questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to
tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his
spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite
nervous till he looked up and said, ‘Twenty-five minutes to two, sir,
A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes
later.’
“‘How do you mean, sir?’ I asked.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me,
watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to
two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in
whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed
to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never
could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old
dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight,
I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you gentlemen, who are bred
to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying,
the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its
hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and
said slowly, “I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see Tom.”
Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was
really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I
do not remember anything like it in my forty years’ practise.’”
There was a silence of a few seconds after the captain had finished his
story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little
surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break
the silence, which he did with a long respiration; but, as he did not
seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.
“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you,
Captain Hardy?”
“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.”
“The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have
managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where
his nephew was,” said Blake.
“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain.
“But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.”
“You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the
Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a
moment.”
“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake.
“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding
the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that
I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of
the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was
thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken
a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have
never met with just such a case as this.”
“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well
enough,” said Tom.
“We can’t account for these things, or for a good many other things
which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day.”