Tom Cringle's Log Part 28

This startled me as much as the question I had almost unconsciously--and, I may say, involuntarily--put to the marine had surprised him, and I made a full stop, and leant back against the door-post. The Captain, who was walking up and down the cabin, had heard me speak, but without comprehending the nature of my question, and now recalled me in some measure to myself, by enquiring if I wanted any thing. I replied, hurriedly, that I did not.

"Well, Mr Cringle, dinner is ready--so take that chair at the foot of the table, will you?"

I sat down, mechanically, as it appeared to me--for a strange swimming dizzy sort of sensation had suddenly overtaken me, accompanied by a wh.o.r.eson tingling, as Shakespeare hath it, in my ears. I was unable to eat a morsel; but I could have drunk the ocean, had it been claret or vin-de-grave-to both of which I helped myself as largely as good manners would allow, or a little beyond, mayhap. All this while the Captain was stowing his cargo with great zeal, and tifting away at the fluids as became an honest sailor after so long a fast, interlarding his operations with a civil word to me now and then, without any especial regard as to the answer I made him, or, indeed, caring greatly whether I answered him or not.

"Sharp work you must have had, Mr Cringle--should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before pa.s.sing that bottle--zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge--grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate--thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though.

What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship--daring dog he must have been--can't forget how gallantly he weathered us when we chased him."

I broke silence for the first time. Indeed, I could scarcely have done so sooner, even had I chosen it, for the gallant officer was rather continuous in his yam-spinning. However, he had nearly dined, and was leaning back, allowing the champaigne to trickle leisurely from a gla.s.s half a yard long, which he had applied to his lips, when I said, "Well, the imagination does sometimes play one strange tricks--I verily believe in second sight now, Captain, for at this very instant I am regularly the fool of my senses,----but pray don't laugh at me;" and I lay back on my chair, and pressed my hands over my shut eyes and hot burning temples, which were now throbbing as if the arteries would have burst.

The Captain, who was evidently much surprised at my abruptness, said something hurriedly and rather sharply in answer, but I could not for the life of me mark what it was. I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the object that had before riveted my attention. It was neither more nor less than the Captain's cloak, a plain, unpretending, substantial blue garment, lined with white, which, on coming below, he had cast carelessly down on the locker, that ran across the after part of the cabin behind him. It was about eighteen feet from me, and as there was no light nearer it than the swinging lamp over the table at which we were seated, the whole of the cabin thereabouts was thrown considerably into shade.

The cape of the cloak was turned over, showing the white lining, and was rather bundled as it were into a round heap, about the size of a man's head. When first I looked at it, there was a dreamy, glimmering indistinctness about it that I could not well understand, and I would have said, had it been possible, that the wrinkles and folds in it were beginning to be instinct with motion, to creep and crawl as it were. At all events, the false impression was so strong as to jar my nerves, and make me shudder with horror. I knew there was no such d--ting, as well as Macbeth--, but nevertheless it was with an indescribable feeling of curiosity, dashed with awe, that I stared intently at it, as if fascinated, while almost unwittingly I made the remark already mentioned.

I had expected that the unaccountable appearance which had excited my attention so strongly would have vanished with the closing of my eyes; but it did not, for when I looked at it again, the working and shifting of the folds of the cloth still continued, and even more distinctly than before.

"Very extraordinary all this," I murmured to myself.

"Pray, Mr Cringle, be sociable, man," said the Captain; "what the deuce do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way? Were a woman now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in that wild, moonstruck sort of fashion."

"By all that is astonishing," I exclaimed in great agitation, "if the folds of the cape have not arranged themselves into the very likeness of his dying face! Why it is his face, and no fanciful grouping of my heated brain. Look there, sir--look there--I know it can't be but there he lies,--the very features and upper part of the body, lith and limb, as when he disappeared beneath the water when he was shot dead."

I felt the boiling blood, that had been rushing through my system like streams of molten lead, suddenly freeze and coagulate about my heart, impeding my respiration to a degree that I thought I should have been suffocated. I had the feeling as if my soul was going to take wing. It was not fear, nor could I say I was in pain, but it was so utterly unlike any thing I had ever experienced before, and so indescribable, that I thought to myself--"this may be death."

"Why, what a changeable rose you are, Master Cringle," said Captain Transom, good-naturedly; "your face was like the north-west moon in a fog but a minute ago, and now it is as pale as a white, I declare. Why, my man, you must be ill, and seriously too."

His voice dissipated the hideous chimera--the folds fell, and relapsed into their own shape, and the cloak was once more a cloak, and nothing more--I drew a long breath. "Ah, it is gone at last, thank G.o.d!"--and then aware of the strange effect my unaccountable incoherence must have had on the skipper, I thought to brazen it out by trying the free and easy line, which was neither more nor less than arrant impertinence in our relative positions. "Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain," filling a tumbler with vin-de-grave to the brim, as I spoke.

"Success to you, sir--here's to your speedy promotion--may you soon get a crack frigate; as for me I intend to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or maid of honour to the Queen of Sheba, or something in the heathen mythology."

I drank off the wine, although I had the greatest difficulty in steadying my trembling hand, and carrying it to my lips; but notwithstanding my increasing giddiness, and the buzzing in my ears, and swimming of mine eyes, I noticed the Captain's face of amazement as he exclaimed, "The boy is either mad or drunk, by Jupiter!"

I could not stand his searching and angry look, and in turning my eye, it again fell on the cloak, which now seemed to be stretched out at greater length, and to be altogether more voluminous than it was before. I was forcibly struck with this, for I was certain no one had touched it.

"By heavens! it heaves," I exclaimed, much moved--"how is this? I never thought to have believed such things,----it stirs again--it takes the figure of a man--as if it were a pall covering his body. Pray, Captain Transom, what trick is this?--Is there any thing below that cloak there?"

"What cloak do you mean?"

"Why, that blue one lying on the locker there--is there any cat or dog in the cabin? "--and I started on my legs.--"Captain Transom," I continued, with great vehemence, "for the love of G.o.d tell me what is there below that cloak."

He looked surprised beyond all measure.

"Why, Mr Cringle, I cannot for the soul of me comprehend you; indeed I cannot; but, Mafame, indulge him. See if there be any thing below my cloak."

The servant walked to the locker, and lifted up the cape of it, and was in the act of taking it from the locker, when I impetuously, desired the man to leave it alone.

"I can't look on him again," said I; while the faintishness increased, so that I could hardly speak. "Don't move the covering from his face, for G.o.d's sake--don't remove it," and I lay back in my chair, screening my eyes from the lamp with my hands, and shuddering with an icy chill from head to foot.

The Captain, who had hitherto maintained the well-bred, patronizing, although somewhat distant, air of a superior officer to an inferior who was his guest, addressed me now in an altered tone, and with a brotherly kindness.

"Mr Cringle, I have some knowledge of you, and I know many of your friends; so I must take the liberty of an old acquaintance with you.

This day's work has been a severe one, and your share in it, especially after your past fatigues, has been very trying, and as I will report it, I hope it may clap a good spoke in your wheel; but you are overheated, and have been over-excited; fatigue has broken you down, and I must really request you will take something warm, and turn in.--Here, Mafame, get the carpenter's mate to secure that cleat on the weather-side there, and sling my spare cot for Mr Cringle. You will be cooler here than in the gunroom."

I heard his words without comprehending their meaning. I sat and stared at him, quite conscious, all the time, of the extreme impropriety, not to say indecency, of my conduct; but there was a spell on me; I tried to speak, but could not; and, believing that I was either possessed by some dumb evil, or struck with palsy, I rose up, bowed to Captain Transom, and straightway hied me on deck.

I could hear him say to his servant, as I was going up the ladder, "Look after that young gentleman, Mafame, and send Isaac to the doctor, and bid him come here now;" and then, in a commiserating tone--"Poor young fellow, what a pity!"

When I got on deck all was quiet. The cool fresh air had an instantaneous effect on my shattered nerves, the violent throbbing in my head ceased, and I began to hug myself with the notion that my distemper, whatever it might have been, had beaten a retreat.

Suddenly I felt so collected and comfortable, as to be quite alive to the loveliness of the scene. It was a beautiful moonlight night; such a night as is nowhere to be seen without the Tropics, and not often within them. There was just breeze enough to set the sail to sleep, although not so strong as to prevent their giving a low murmuring flap now and then, when the corvette rolled a little heavier than usual on the long swell. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, not even a stray shred of thin fleecy gauzelike vapour, to mark the direction of the upper current of the air, by its course across the moon's disk, which was now at the full, and about half-way up her track in the liquid heavens.

The small twinkling lights from millions of lesser stars, in that part of the firmament where she hung, round as a silver pot-lid shield I mean, were swamped in the flood of greenish-white radiance shed by her, and it was only a few of the first magnitude, with a planet here and there, that were visible to the naked eye, in the neighbourhood of her crystal bright globe; but the clear depth, and dark translucent purity of the profound, when the eye tried to pierce into it at the zenith, where the stars once more shone and sparkled thick and brightly, beyond the merging influence of the pale cold orb, no man can describe now----one could, once--but rest his soul, he is dead and then to look forth far into the night, across the dark ridge of many a heaving swell of living water--but, "Thomas Cringle, ahoy where the devil are you cruising to" So, to come back to my story. I went aft, and mounted the small p.o.o.p, and looked towards the aforesaid moon, a glorious resplendent tropical moon, and not the paper lantern affair hanging in an atmosphere of fog and smoke, about which your blear-eyed poets haven't so much. By the by, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun--were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be--to them, in place of writing much wearisome poetry regarding her blighting propensities. But I have lost the end of my yarn once more, in the strands of these parentheses. Lord, what a word to p.r.o.nounce in the plural!--I can no more get out now, than a girl's silk worm from the innermost of a nest of pill boxes, where, to ride the simile to death at once, I have warped the thread of my story so round and round me, that I can't for the life of me unravel it. Very odd all this. Since I have recovered of this fever, every thing is slack about me; I can't set up the shrouds and backstays of my mind, not to speak of bobstays, if I should die for it. The running rigging is all right enough, and the canva.s.s is there; but I either can't set it, or when I do, I find I have too little ballast, or I get involved amongst shoals, and white water, and breakers--don't you hear them roar?--which I cannot weather, and crooked channels, under some lee-sh.o.r.e, through which I cannot sc.r.a.pe clear. So down must go the anchor, as at present, and there--there goes the chain cable, rushing and rumbling through the hausehole. But I suppose it will be all right by and by, as I get stronger.

"But rouse thee, Thomas! Where is this end of your yarn, that you are blameying about?"

"Avast heaving, you swab you--avast--if you had as much calomel in your corpus as I have at this present speaking--why you would be a lad of more mettle than I take you for, that is all.--You would have about as much quicksilver in your stomach, as I have in my purse, and all my silver has been quick, ever since I remember, like the jests of the gravedigger in Hamlett--but, as you say, where the devil is the end of this yarn?"

Ah, here it is! so off we go again--and looked forward towards the rising moon, whose shining wake of glow-worm-coloured light, sparkling in the small waves, that danced in the gentle wind on the heaving bosom of the dark blue sea, was right a-head of us, like a river of quicksilver with its course diminished in the distance to a point, flowing towards us, from the extreme verge of the horizon, through a rolling sea of ink, with the waters of which for a time it disdained to blend. Concentrated, and shining like polished silver afar off--intense and sparkling as it streamed down nearer, but becoming less and less brilliant as it Widened in its approach to us, until, like the stream of the great Estuary of the Magdalena, losing itself in the salt waste of waters, it gradually melted beneath us and around us into the darkness.

I looked aloft--every object appeared sharply cut out against the dark firmament, and the swaying of the mast-heads to and fro, as the vessel rolled, was so steady and slow, that they seemed stationary, while it was the moon and stars which appeared to vibrate and swing from side to side, high over head, like the vacillation of the clouds in a theatre, when the scene is first let down.

The masts, and yards, and standing and running rigging, looked like black pillars, and bars, and wires of iron, reared against the sky, by some mighty spirit of the night; and the sails, as the moon shone dimly through them, were as dark as if they had been tarpawlings. But when I walked forward and looked aft, what a beauteous change! Now each mast, with its gently swelling canva.s.s, the higher sails decreasing in size, until they tapered away nearly to a point, though topsail, topgallant sail, royal and skysails, showed like towers of snow, and the cordage like silver threads, while each dark spar seemed to be of ebony, fished with ivory, as a flood of cold, pale, mild light streamed from the beauteous planet over the whole stupendous machine, lighting up the sand white decks, on which the shadows of the men, and of every object that intercepted the moonbeams, were cast as strongly as if the planks had been inlaid with jet.

There was nothing moving about the decks. The lookouts, aft, and at the gangways, sat or stood like statues half bronze, half alabaster. The old quartermaster, who was cunning the ship, and had perched himself on a carronade, with his arm leaning on the weather nettings, was equally motionless. The watch had all disappeared forward, or were stowed out of sight under the lee of the boats; the first Lieutenant, as if captivated by the serenity of the scene, was leaning with folded arms on the weather gangway, looking abroad upon the ocean, and whistling now and then either for a wind, or for want of thought. The only being who showed sign of life was the man at the wheel, and he scarcely moved, except now and then to give her a spoke or two, when the cheep of the tiller-rope, running through the well-greased leading blocks, would grate on the ear as a sound of some importance; while in daylight, in the ordinary bustle of the ship, no one could say he ever heard it.

Three bells!--"Keep a bright look-out there," sung out the Lieutenant.

"Ay, ay, sir," from the four look-out men, in a volley.

Then from the weather-gangway, "All's well" rose shrill into the night air.

The watchword was echoed by the man on the forecastle, re-echoed by the lee-gangway look-out, and ending with the response of the man on the p.o.o.p. My dream was dissipated--and so was the first lieutenant's, who had but little poetry in his composition, honest man.

"Fine night, Mr Cringle. Look aloft, how beautifully set the sails are; that mizzen-topsail is well cut, eh? Sits well, don't it? But confound the lubbers! Boatswain's mate, call the watch."

Whi--whew, whi--whew, chirrup, chip, chip--the deck was alive in an instant, "as bees biz out wi" angry fyke.

"Where is the captain of the mizzen-top?" growled the man in authority.

"Here, sir."

"Here, sir!--look at the weather-clew of the mizzen-topsail, sir, look at that sail, sir,--how many turns can you count in that clew, sir?

Spring it, you no--sailor you--spring it, and set the sail again."

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time I will remember; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the Lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, addressed me once more.

"Have had no grub since morning, Mr Cringle; all the others are away in the prizes; you are as good as one of us now, only want the order to join, you know--so will you oblige me, and take charge of the deck, until I go below and change my clothes, and gobble a bit?"

"Unquestionably,--with much pleasure."

He forthwith dived, and I walked aft a few steps towards where the old quartermaster was standing on the gun.