Daisy's Necklace, and What Came of It Part 8

VI.

_A lone ship sailing on the sea: Before the north 'twas driven like a cloud; High on the p.o.o.p a man sat mournfully: The wind was whistling through mast and shroud, And to the whistling wind thus did he sing aloud._

SMITH'S "BARBARA."

VI.

THE PHANTOM AT SEA.

_A Storm in the Tropics--The Lone Ship--The Man at the Wheel--How he sang strange Songs--The Apparition--The Drifting Bark._

The blood-red sun had gone down into the Atlantic. Faint purple streaks streamed up the western horizon, like the fingers of some great shadowy hand clutching at the world.

Huge ma.s.ses of dark, agate-looking clouds were gathering in the zenith, and the heavy, close atmosphere told the coming of a storm. Now and then the snaky lightning darted across the heavens and coiled itself away in a cloud.

A lone ship stood almost motionless in the twilight.

The sails were close-reefed. Here and there on the forecastle were groups of lazy-looking seamen; and a man walked the quarter-deck, glancing anxiously aloft. The sea was as smooth as a mirror, and that dreadful stillness was in the air which so often preludes a terrific storm in the tropics. A rumbling was heard in the sky like the sound of distant artillery, or heavy bodies of water falling from immense heights.

Then the surface of the sea was broken by mimic waves tipped with froth, and the vast expanse seemed like a prairie in a snow fall.

The lightning became more frequent and vivid, and the thunder seemed breaking on the very topmasts of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering darkness. The storm was at its height: the wind,

"Through unseen sluices of the air,"

tore the shrouds to strings, and bent the dizzy, tapering masts till they threatened to snap. But the bark bore bravely through it, while the huge waves seemed bearing her down to those coral labyrinths, where nothing goes

"But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."

The thunder sent forth peal after peal, and the heaven was like "a looming bastion fringed with fire." On through the slanting rain sped the ship, creaking and groaning, with its ribs warped and its great oaken spine trembling. The sailors on deck clung to the bulwarks; and below not a soul could sleep, for the thunder and the creaking of cordage filled their ears.

At midnight the storm abated; but the sea still ran dangerously high, and the wind sobbed through the rigging mournfully. The heaven was spangled with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds hung down in gossamer folds--G.o.d's robe trailing in the sea!

Toward morning the waves grew suddenly calm, as if they had again heard that voice which of old said, "Peace, be still!" There was no one above decks, save the man at the wheel, who ever and anon muttered to himself, or hummed bits of poetry. He was a man in the mellow of life, in the Indian summer of manhood, which comes a little while before one falls "into the sere and yellow leaf." Once he must have been eminently handsome; but there were furrows on his intellectual forehead not traced by time's fingers. His eyes were peculiarly wild and restless.

The slightest tinge of red fringed the East, and as the man watched it grow deeper and deeper, he sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of those odd sea-songs which Shakespeare scatters through his plays:

"The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I, The gunner and his mate, Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary, But none of us cared for Kate.

For she had a tongue with a tw.a.n.g, Would cry to a sailor, go hang!

She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,-- Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!"

Then his sonorous voice rang out these quaint words to the night:

"Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade--"

He abruptly broke off, and commenced:

"Break, break, break On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on, To the haven under the hill; But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me."

Suddenly he paused, while a paleness like death overspread his face; the spokes of the wheel slipped from his hold, and he called for help; but the wind went moaning through the shrouds, and drowned his voice. The sea moaned and the ship drifted with the wind.

"It comes again!" he cried; "the graveyard face! Go! I cannot bear those sad, reproachful eyes--those arms outstretched, asking mercy! Send foul fiends to torture me, and make my dreams hideous nightmares, but not this beautiful form to mock me with its purity, and kill me with its mild reproach. It has gone. But it will come again! It steals on me in the awful hours of night, when the air seems supernatural, and the mind is accessible to fear. It stood by my hammock last night; my conscious soul looked through my closed eyelids, and sleep felt its dreadful presence. If it comes again I will throw myself into the sea! Hush!" he whispered, "it stands by the cabin door, so pale! so pale! Come not near me, pensive ghost. Give me help, somebody! help! help!"

He sunk down by the wheel.

The stars, at the approach of morning, had grown as white as pond-lilies, and the wind had died away; but the same moan came up from the sea. On in the morning twilight drifted the ship for an hour, without a helmsman, save that unseen hand which guides all things--which balances with equal love and tenderness a dew-drop or a world.

VII.

_I was not always a man of woe._

WALTER SCOTT.

VII.

IN WHICH THERE IS A MADMAN.

_Mr. Flint sips vino d'oro--The Stranger--The Letter--Mr. Flint Outwitted--Mr. Flint's Photograph--The Madman's Story--The wrecked Soul--How Mr. Flint is troubled by his Conscience, and dreams of a Pair of Eyes._

The same night on which Mortimer was writing in the books of Flint & Snarle, Mr. Flint sat in the library of his bachelor home, sipping a gla.s.s of _vino d'oro_; and as the bells of Trinity Church fell faintly on his ear, he drew a ma.s.sive gold watch from his fob, and, patting it complacently on the back, scrutinized its face as if he would look it out of countenance. Then he yawned a couple of times and thought of bed.

"There's a gintleman without, sur," said Michel, putting his comical head in at the library door, "there's a gintleman without, sur," and he emphasized the 'gintleman.'

"What sort of a person, Michel?"

"A very quare one indade. 'Is Mr. Flint in?' sez he. 'He is sur,' sez I. 'I want to see him,' sez he. 'Your kard, sur,' sez I. He stared at me a minit, and laughed. Then, sez he, without the least riverence for your worship, 'Give this _to owld Flint_!'" And Michel, exploding with laughter, handed Flint a knave of clubs very much soiled.

"Michel!" said Mr. Flint, drawing himself up to his full alt.i.tude, "kick him down the steps!"

"Thanks!" said a voice directly behind Michel, who had retreated to the doorway. The voice was so near and unexpected that Michel's crisp hair stood on end with fright.

The door was thrown wide open, and a fine looking man, with the bearing of a sailor, stood between them. Mr. Flint turned as white as his immaculate shirt-bosom; and Michel, whose love of fun had got the better of his scare, regarded the intruder with a quizzical, inquiring air, peculiarly Irish.