I rose next morning shortly after seven, bathed and went to the cabin for a cup of coffee. I could see through the skylight that it was a fine day. The air showed a bright blue against the glass, and a rich tremble of sunlight was on the thick crystal of every weather porthole, the glory rippling with the reflective throbbing and running of the sea, as it broke upon the polished panels abreast or flashed in the confronting mirrors. The ocean was quiet too; the heave of the yacht was gentle, though the heel of her gave assurance of a breeze of wind. The two stewards were busy in the cabin. I knew that Finn would have the forenoon watch, since Crimp had had charge from eight to midnight, and I called to the head steward to know if the captain was about.

‘Not yet, sir, I believe.’

‘Take my compliments to him, and say I should like to see him at once, if possible—here, in the cabin, I mean.’

Whilst I waited, Muffin, hearing my voice, came from his berth. I watched him out of the corner of my eyes; he slowly advanced in a sort of writhing way, making many grimaces as he approached, as if in the throes of rehearsing a speech, and presently stood before me, first casting a look at the second steward who was polishing a looking-glass, and then clasping his hands before him and hanging his head.

‘Mr. Monson, I ’umbly ask your pardon, sir. May I beg that out of your kind ’art you will overlook my doings last night? Sir, I do not find myself partial to the hocean, and my desire is to return ’ome, sir. I meant no ’arm. I would not wrong an ’air of Sir Wilfrid’s ’ed. My five years’ character from the Right Honourable the Lord Sandown speaks to my morals, sir. I am sincerely remorseful, Mr. Monson, and trust to be made ’appy by your forgiving me, sir.’

I listened to what he had to say, and then exclaimed, ‘My forgiveness has nothing to do with the matter. You are not a person fit to wait upon Sir Wilfrid Monson, and—but I shall have something to tell you a little later on. Meanwhile, you can go.’

He said unctuously, ‘Am I to take Sir Wilfrid his ’ot water as usual, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘continue to wait on him.’

He plucked up at this and withdrew with an ill-dissembled smirk upon his countenance. Presently Captain Finn came trundling down the cabin steps, cap in hand, his long face bright with recent cleansing, and full of expectation. I asked him to sit, and[127] then, without a word of preface, I bluntly told him about the ‘warnings’ my cousin had received for two nights running, and how last night my suspicion, in some unaccountable way, having been aroused, I entered the baronet’s berth and found Muffin painting the sentence in a vermin-killing composition of phosphorus. Finn whistled.

‘The weasel!’ he cried; ‘how is he to be punished for this? Will ye have him ducked from the yard-arm, or seized up aloft, or played on with the hose for spells of half-an-hour, or whipped up for a grease-down job that’ll last him nigh a day? Say the word, sir. I feel to want the handling of a chap whose veins look to run slush, to judge by his colour and the lay of his hair.’

‘No,’ said I, ‘no need to deal with him as you suggest. But he must be turned out of this end of the vessel and sent into the forecastle. Before we decide, however, can you make use of him?’

‘Ay, can I. Leave him to me, your honour,’ said Finn, grinning. ‘I’ll make a man of him.’

‘Steward,’ I called, ‘send Muffin to me.’

The valet arrived, looking hard at Finn. I made some excuse to get the stewards out of the cabin, and then said, ‘Now, Muffin, attend. You are at once to decide whether you will go forward amongst the men, live with them in the forecastle and do such work as Captain Finn appoints, or whether Sir Wilfrid shall be told of last night’s business, that he may deal with you as he thinks proper.’

Finn gazed at him with a frown and a cheek purpled by indignation and contempt. The fellow fixed his dead black eye on me, and said, ‘I would rather go ’ome, sir.’

‘I dessay you would!’ burst out Finn. ‘How will ’ee travel? By locomotive or post-chay? By my grandmother’s bones! if one of my men had played such a trick on me as you’ve played on your master, I’d spreadeagle him with these here hands if he was as tall as my mainmast, and lay on till there wasn’t a rag of flesh left to tickle.’

I motioned silence with an indication with my head in the direction of Sir Wilfrid’s berth.

‘Take your choice, and be sharp about it,’ said I, turning hotly upon Muffin, whose very sleekness at such a time was a kind of insolence in him somehow; ‘either decide to be dealt with by Sir Wilfrid, who probably will shoot you for what you have done, or go to him after he has risen, tell him that you have made up your mind to discontinue your services as a valet, and that you have requested Captain Finn to place you upon the articles as a boy.’

‘Ay, as a boy,’ echoed Finn in a half-suppressed note of storm, and fetching his leg a mighty thump with his clenched fist.

Muffin’s left leg fell away, he clasped his hands in a posture of prayer upon his shirt-front, and, after looking in a weeping way[128] from Finn to me, and from me to Finn, he said, snuffling as he spoke, ‘Gentlemen, give me an ’arf hour to think it over, I beg of you.’

I pulled out my watch. ‘I must have your decision by eight o’clock,’ said I. ‘See to it. If you do not decide for yourself, I shall choose for you, and give my cousin the whole truth; though for your sake,’ I added, with a menacing look at him, ‘as well as for his, I am very desirous indeed that he should remain ignorant of your conduct. Go!’

I sat talking with Finn. His indignation increased upon him as we spoke of Muffin’s behaviour.

‘It was enough to drive his honour clean mad, sir,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, though there’s little I believes in outside what my senses tells me of, I allow I should feel like jumping overboard if so be on putting out the light I found a piece of adwice wrote upon the dark in letters of fire. But I’ll work his old iron up for that job. There’s something leagues out of the ordinary in that there slush made cove, sir. ’Taint that I hobjects to a man who never looks me in the eye. But there’s something in the appearance of that there Muffin which makes me think that if he could pull his heart out of his breast he’d find it like a piece of rotten ship’s bread, full of weevils and holes.’

‘The man is pining for the shore,’ said I. ‘The fellow thought to work upon the weak side of my cousin’s intellect. He meant no more, I believe, than to frighten Sir Wilfrid into returning. He remains a very good valet all the same, though we must have him out of this. He will not be the only servant in the world who has procured his or her ends by working on the master’s or mistress’s fears.’

‘Well, I suppose not, sir,’ said Finn; ‘taking men-servants all round they’re a bad lot. I never yet see one, specially if he wore big calves and had got white hair, but that I felt a longing to have him at sea for a month. By the way, sir, talking of this here Muffin’s mystifying of his honour, what d’ye think, Mr. Monson, sir? Blowed if old Crimp, who I shouldn’t ha’ credited with a single idea outside the tar bucket, hain’t gone and fallen superstitious! When I relieved him at midnight he up and spins a long twister about you and him having heard a woice holloing a curse upon this yacht away out on the starboard quarter somewhere.’

He broke into a low, deep sea laugh, which he endeavoured to check by clapping his hand to his mouth.

‘We heard something,’ said I, ‘that sounded like a voice, and we made out the noise to signify the same thing. It may have been a bird, or some mysterious fish come up to breathe, or some singular sound produced by the yacht herself. No matter what—I have dismissed it from my mind.’

‘Poor old Jacob!’ he continued, smothering another laugh; ‘why sir, he’d actually thought hisself into a clam when I went on deck, and said he reckoned this part of the hocean much colder than[129] the coast o’ Greenland. Jacob’s being so werry commonplace is the reason of my thinking nothen of the yarn. Had he even a little bit more mind than belongs to him I’d be willing to allow his story was a queer one; but he’s so empty of any sort o’ intellects short of the ones that he needs to enable him to keep a look-out and attend to the navigation of the craft, that his werry hollowness touches t’other extreme of a brain chock ablock with fantastical ideas; by which I mean that I’d as lief attend to a madman’s notion of a strange woice as to Jacob’s. Not but that he ain’t as trustworthy, practical a sailor as I could wish to have by my side if I ever found myself in a quandary.’

I cast my eye at the clock under the skylight. As I did so, Muffin came sliding towards us with exactly the same sort of gait and countenance you would expect in a well-practised funeral mute. He approached close before speaking, and postured in front of me, preserving a respectful silence, whilst he kept his eyes fastened on the deck.

‘Well?’ said I.

‘I’ve been considering the matter, sir, and beg to state that I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Well?’ I repeated.

‘It might ’urt Sir Wilfrid’s feelings, gentlemen, if you, Mr. Monson, sir, explained away the cause of what had alarmed him, and I’ll not deny that as his strength of mind isn’t such as to give him control over his passions, sir, I should go in fear. Which being so, I’m willing to tell him that I desire to discontinue my services as valet, and should be glad to become what I’ve ’eard Captain Finn describe as an ’and until such times as we fall in with a ship that may be willing to carry me ’ome. To which, Mr. Monson, sir, and you, Capt’n Finn, I trust, gentlemen, both, you’ll have no objection.’

I preserved my gravity with difficulty.

‘Very well,’ said I, witnessing in the vague indeterminable twinkle of the unpolished jet of his eye that he detected in me the mirth I flattered myself I had concealed; ‘after breakfast you will convey your resolution to Sir Wilfrid, of course taking care to insist if he should object, for after what has happened your connection with him must cease.’

‘As you wish; sir,’ he exclaimed, giving me a bow with the whole spine of him; ‘but, gentlemen, I should like to state that whatever may be the work Captain Finn puts me too, I would rather do it as an ’and than as a boy.’

I felt a bit sorry for the poor devil. It seemed to me that he had accepted his alternative with some pluck.

‘A boy is the next grade to ordinary seaman,’ said I; ‘you will be a hand just the same.’

‘What can you do?’ exclaimed Finn, running his eye over the figure of the man with an expression that was not one of quite unmixed contempt. ‘Can ’ee go aloft?’

[130]

The fellow clasped his hands and turned up the whites of his eyes. ‘Not to save my precious soul, sir.’

‘You can row,’ said I.

‘I’ll feather an oar agin any Thames waterman,’ exclaimed Muffin.

‘Enough has been said,’ I exclaimed, rising. ‘The stewards wait to lay the cloth for breakfast,’ and so saying, I mounted on deck, followed by the captain, who, after I had exchanged a few words with him, went forward to break his fast before relieving old Crimp.

There was a large full-rigged ship on the weather beam. We were slowly passing her. She was an East Indiaman, I think, of a frigate-like stateliness, with her white band and black ports, and her spacious rounds of canvas tapering in spires, to the delicate gossamer of the top-most cloths. The red ensign was waving at her peak as it was at ours, but then she was from England as we were, and had no more news to give us than we her. The bosoms of her canvas arched towards us with the rigging under each curve fine as wire against the sky that sloped to the horizon white and blinding as irradiated steel with the eastern gushing of glory there. There was just swell enough to heave a little space of her coppered forefoot out of the glittering brine that came brimming to her in a liquid blue light, and the rhythmic flash of the metal over the curl of snow at the stem gave an inexpressible grace to the dignity and majesty of the lofty and swelling fabric of cream-coloured cloths, each softened by an airy pinion of shadow at its lee clew. ’Twas wonderful the magic that ship had to vitalise and to subdue to human sympathy the brilliant, weltering wilderness of the morning ocean. She carried the thoughts away to the Thames and to Gravesend, to leave-takings and weeping women and the coming and going of boats, to the hurricane note of the Jacks getting the anchor, to the waving of handkerchiefs up on the poop, to the smell of hay for the live-stock, the gabble of poultry, the cries of children, the loud calls of officers, the ceaseless movements of passengers, stewards, friends, sailors, crowding and elbowing, talking, shaking hands, and crying upon the main deck. All this, I say, she made one think of, with a fancy, too, of the rushing Hooghley, a burning atmosphere sickly with the smell of the incense of the hubble-bubble, with a flavour of hot curry about, a dead black body gliding slowly past, the lip, lip, of the rushing stream against the ship’s bow and seething to the gangway ladder, the fiery cabins o’ nights vibratory with the horns of the mosquitoes like a distant concert of Jew’s harps mingling with the distant unearthly wail of the jackal. Pooh! ’twas a fit of imagination for its torrid atmosphere and Asiatic smells to make one mechanically mop the brow with one’s handkerchief. Why, far off as that Indiaman was the clear cool wind seemed to breeze down hot from her with an odour of bamboo and cocoanut rope, and chafing gear wrought from the jungle with strange aromas of oils along with the shriek of the paroquet[131] and the hoarse musings of the macaw. I turned to surly old Jacob.

‘Good-morning, Mr. Crimp.’

‘Marning.’

‘Fine ship out yonder.’

‘Well, I’ve seen uglier vessels.’

I approached him close. ‘Heard any more voices, Mr. Crimp?’

‘No,’ he answered, thrusting his fingers into the door-mat of oakum upon his throat, ‘and I don’t want to.’

‘I advised you to keep your counsel,’ said I, ‘but I find that you have spoken to Captain Finn.’

‘Who wouldn’t? My mind ain’t a demijean, smother me! It’s not big enough to hold the likes of last night’s job. Told the capt’n? ’Course I did.’

I saw that he was a mule of a man, and not proper to reason with. I said with an air of indifference, ‘Have you thought the thing over? Was it a bird, as I said at the time, or a noise breaking out perhaps from the inside of the yacht, and by deception of the hearing sounding in syllables apparently away out upon the sea?’

He eyed me dully, and after a stupid, staring pause, exclaimed, ‘I wish you hadn’t heard it.’

‘Why?’

‘Wh............