The following extraordinary story was told to me some years ago by the commander of a steamship in which I was making a voyage for my health. The captain, who, as we shall see, had himself shared in the experience he related, began his tale thus:—

“A good many years ago I was in Capetown, having been forced by illness to quit my post as second mate of a large ship bound to Bombay. A fortnight after the ship sailed, I recovered my health and was fit for work.

“In those days Capetown was without docks; nor does this carry the memory very far back, either. Colonial progress is the foremost of the miracles of our century. You visit some Antipodean shore after a few years and note a growth of docks, piers, warehouses, an expansion of suburbs, a magical embracing of the hillsides by roof upon roof of charming villas, as at Natal, for example; and whilst you look, you shall think it rational to hold that more than a century has gone to the creation of this noble scene of civilization, and that the little struggling village you remember arriving at a few years before, with its dockless bay[160] and its three or four small ships blistering under the eye of a roasting sun at their poor moorings alongside a rustic wooden wharf, was an imagination of your slumber.

“I was entirely dependent upon my profession. Sickness had heavily taxed my slender purse, and I was exceedingly anxious, when I was well enough for work, to obtain a situation. Ships brought up in the bay in those days, and discharged for the most part in lighters. The spacious breast of waters would offer again and again a grander show than is ever likely to be seen there in these or succeeding times. There was no Suez Canal; steam was by no means plentiful. All the trading to the East was by way of the Cape, and nearly everything bound round Agulhas looked into Table Bay for refreshment.

“I remember one of those mornings whilst I was hunting for a berth, that I counted a hundred and ten vessels at anchor in Table Bay. To be sure, I have witnessed as much as five hundred ships straining at their ground tackle at one time in the Downs. But that forest of spars had a wide area to distribute itself over in the waters streaming from the South Foreland down to the stretch that lies abreast of Sandwich. The hundred odd craft in Table Bay made a more imposing sight than the Downs picture, thanks, perhaps, to the solemn and magnificent scenery of mountain, whose lofty, silent terraces seemed, in the colossal sweep of them, to swell and thicken the ships into a stately,[161] rocking crowd, and they lay in a tall mass of symmetric spires, the rigging of one knitting that of another past her, and the bright wind was painted with the colours of a dozen nations.

“I stood at the head of a little jetty or pier. Was there nothing to find me a berth worth six pounds a month in all that gallant huddle of gleaming sides and coppered flanks? The water trembled like molten brass under the sun to the coral-white line of the opposite shore, where the land went away in strange hues of rusty red and sickly green, carrying the eye into the liquid blue distance in which hung a hundred miles off a range of magnificent mountains like pale gold in the far light, their sky-lines as clean cut in the full and even splendour of that magical climate as the top of Table Mountain, close at hand.

“I was watching a Malay fishing-boat sliding through the water with an occasional burst of spray off her weather bow, which arched a little rainbow for her to rush through, when I was accosted. I turned. It was the port-captain or harbour-master. I cannot remember the term by which his office was distinguished. He had sailed with my father some years earlier, and I had met him on two occasions in England. He had done me some kindness whilst I lay ill in lodgings in Capetown, and had assured me of his willingness to help me to find a ship when I should be well enough to go to sea. He was a Scotchman, with a hard, weather-coloured face, and a dry, arch expression of eye.

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“‘D’ye see anything to fit ye?’ said he.

“‘Ay,’ said I, ‘plenty.’

“‘Well, now,’ said he, ‘you’re the very mon I was thinking of not half an hour ago. I was in Adderley Street, and met a captain who was here last year. His name’s Huddersfield. He’s in charge of a Colonial trader from a South American port, with a small consignment for this place, and is bound for Sydney, New South Wales, where his little ship’s owned, chiefly, I believe, by himsel’.’

“‘Is there room for me in her?’

“‘Well, yes, I think you’ll stand a chance. She lost her chief officer overboard when six days’ sail from this port, and she’s got to ship another man. Take my advice and go aboard this evening and see the captain. He’s ashore till five or six o’clock.’

“‘Which is the vessel?’

“He pointed to a large three-masted schooner that was lying within a hundred strokes of an oar almost abreast of us. She looked an exceedingly fine craft. A large Dutch Indiaman was rolling upon the swell of the sea within a few cables’ length astern of her, and just ahead rode a Russian auxiliary frigate, very heavily sparred, with great gleaming windows in her stern, and a net-work of gilding on either quarter, so that the blue brine under her counter flashed as to the dart of a sunbeam whenever she lightly swayed; yet the schooner held her own in all points as a picture of beauty, and was not to be dwarfed. The gilded buttons of her trucks[163] shone high in the azure of that afternoon; she was painted white, and a gleam of dark red, like some cold wet flash of sunset, broke from her metalled bends whenever she was moved by the inflowing heave of the water.

“I lingered by the shore for the remainder of the afternoon, watching the people coming and going from and to the shipping, until I fancied, indeed I was certain, that the man I wanted, dressed in white clothes and a wide-brimmed straw hat, had been put aboard the schooner by her own boat.

“When I got on board I found the little ship a very noble, flush-decked vessel, with a clear sweep of sand-bright, yacht-like plank running from the taffrail to the ‘eyes’; the brass-work was full of the stars of the western sunshine. The glass of her skylights was dark and shining. Her ropes were Flemish coiled, as though, indeed, she had been a man-of-war. Everything was clean and neat. I guessed she was about three hundred tons burden. Her crew had knocked off for the day and were lounging about the windlass, two or three of them stripped to the waist washing themselves. They had a colonial air. This might have been owing to their dress of check shirt, open at the breast, no braces, here and there moleskins, and here and there a cabbage-tree hat.

“The second mate, a man whose name I afterwards ascertained was Curzon, was walking in the gangway smoking a pipe. I inquired if Captain Huddersfield was[164] on board. He asked me what my business was, as though suspicious of a visit from a stranger after working hours. I was about to explain the reason that had brought me to the schooner, when Captain Huddersfield himself emerged through the little companion way, and stepped on deck, pausing a moment with the sharp of his hand to his brow to gaze in the direction of Capetown.

“He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking person, thickly bearded, the hair of a rich auburn; the skin of his face was much burnt by the sun; his eyes were of a liquid blue, and when he approached and directed them at me I seemed to find something glowing and tender in them, as though he were an enthusiast, a man of strange, perhaps high, but always honest imaginings; a dreamer. He of all the men that ever I had met at sea the least corresponded in appearance with the received image of the nautical man, who, forsooth, whether in fiction or on the stage, must needs be a fraud from the landgoing point of view if he be not purple with grog blossoms, with eyes dim and staring with drink, with legs bent like the prongs of a pitch fork, and charged to the throat with a forecastle vocabulary incommunicable even by initials!

“I must say of Captain Huddersfield that never afloat or ashore had I before beheld in any man a more placid, benevolent expression of countenance. His age seemed about forty.

“‘That’s the captain,’ said the second mate.

“I lifted my cap and walked up to him. In a few[165] words I told my business, adding that I held not only a chief mate’s, but a master’s certificate of competency. He eyed me critically but with kindness, and nodded with something of gravity on my mentioning the name of the port-captain. After we had exchanged a few sentences, he took me into the cabin, a bright, breezy little interior, aromatic with a quantity of plants which had evidently been recently brought aboard, and cheerful with mirrors and pictures, as though, in short, this gentleman was in the habit when he went to sea of carrying his parlour with him; and bidding me be seated, he asked a number of questions, all which I saw with much pleasure, by the expression of his face, I answered to his satisfaction.

“The interview ended in his offering me the post of mate of the schooner on a lump wage for the run to Sydney, and early next morning I went on board with my chest, and took up my quarters in the cabin.

“I regarded this securing of a post as a fine stroke of luck, and was mighty thankful. Plentiful as was the shipping in Table Bay, I had suspected ever since I went ashore, a sick man, that my chance of getting a situation aft was small; that, in short, I should be obliged to get clear of the Cape by offering myself as a hand. A trip to Sydney was just to my liking, for amongst the ships there I should find no difficulty in procuring a berth owing to the gold craze which was emptying vessels of their crews, from mate to boy, before they were fairly berthed.

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“Four days after I had signed the schooner’s articles, we weighed and stood out of the Bay. We were just in time to escape the thrashing of a furious south-easter which came whipping and howling down Table Mountain, out of the magnificent milk-white softness of vapour that half veiled the grand height, sinking and lifting upon it. A wide surface of water was whitened by this strange local gale. The limits of the wind were sharply and extraordinarily defined by a line of foam, inside of which all was savage popple and boiling commotion, the ships in it straining wildly, their loose gear curving, their bunting roaring; whilst outside all was of a midsummer serenity, the water rolling like knolls of polished quicksilver, tarnished here and there by light breathings of wind which delicately stretched the sails of the Malay boats, and sent them glancing through it, till the catspaw died out into a roasting trance of burnished brine.

“We were, as I have said, a three-masted schooner, square-rigged forward, with an immense hoist of lower-mast for a square foresail, and a length of flying jibboom that made us all wings from the golden gleam of the figure-head to the tack of the flying jib. I had never before been shipmate with fore and aft canvas. All my knowledge of the sea had been picked up under square yards. There was nothing I could not do with a full-rigged ship, nor need a square-rigger and an old hand be charged with egotism for saying so. But when it came to boom-mainsails and gaff-foresails, and ropes[167] and rigging with unfamiliar names, I could only idly look on for awhile. But I did not doubt I should be able to quickly learn everything necessary to be known, and, meantime, when we were well out at sea, with the high African land upon our port quarter, blue in the air, with distant mountains trembling towards their summits into silver, and the mighty Southern Ocean stretching over our bows away down to the white silence of the Antarctic parallels, I watched the behaviour of the schooner with interest.

“The breeze was abeam, the whole hot distance of the rich blue ocean was in it, there was no land for hundreds of leagues to break or hinder it; the schooner leaned over and flashed her sheathing at the northern sun, and stretched along the deep with the look of a flying hare. The white water poured aft from her shearing stem, her riband of wake sparkled to midway the horizon in a soaring and sinking vein of silver full of frost-like lights and wreaths of foam bells. It was like yachting, and I reckoned upon a quick run to Sydney.

“From the hour of my coming aboard officially, Captain Huddersfield exhibited a very friendly, almost cordial disposition. He was a man of good education, a sailor first of all, but a gentleman also, not highly varnished perhaps, wanting in the airs and graces of the drawing-room, but abundantly possessed of those qualities which, when glazed and brightened by shore-going observance and habit, cause men to be esteemed for their breeding and bearing. He had a regard for[168] me, I think, because, like himself, I was not wholly a copy of the dramatic and romantic notions of the sailor. I neither swore nor drank. I was ever of opinion that it did not follow, because a man got his living under the commercial flag of his country, he must needs cultivate all qualities of blackguardism as a condition of his calling. I could not for the life of me understand why an officer in the merchant service should not be able to behave himself on board ship and ashore with as lively a sense of his duty and obligations as a gentleman as if he wore the buttons of the State.

“Possibly my friend, the port-captain at Capetown, had prejudiced Huddersfield in my favour. Then again, though he lived in Sydney, he was an Englishman born; his native county was mine, and this little circumstance alone, all those watery leagues away from the old home, was enough to establish a bond between us. Nevertheless, I did not observe that he was very communicative about his own affairs. For the first few days until the furious weather set in, we often conversed, but I never found that our chats left me with any knowledge of his past or of his business; as, for instance, how long he had lived in New South Wales, the occasion that had despatched him there, what his commercial interests were outside his schooner, whether he was married, and so forth.

“It breezed up ahead after we had been at sea a few days. The Cambrian looked well to windward, but she was still points off her course. Then again the great[169] Agulhas Stream set us to leeward, and our progress was slow. On the 22nd day of the month, we then being four days out from Table Bay, the weather blackened on a sudden in an afternoon in the north, the lightning streamed like cataracts of violet flame on those sooty sierras of storm, the thunder rolled continuously, but it was not till the edge of the electric stuff, black as midnight, was over our mastheads, with sea and sky dim and frightful as though beheld in the deep shadow of a total eclipse of the sun, that the hurricane took us.

“It came along in a note of thunder, sharp-edged with the continuous shrieking of wind; the sea boiled under it and raced with the diabolic outfly in a high white wall of water. It swept upon us with a flash in a whole sky-full of salt smoke, and the air was like a snow-storm with the throb and flight of the yeast; the trifle of canvas that had been left exposed vanished as a puff of steam would. The schooner lay over till her starboard shear poles were under, and then it was deep enough to drown a man in the lee scuppers.

“It was doubtful for some time whether she would right, and I was clawing my way forward with some dim hope of getting at the carpenter’s chest for an axe for the weather laniards, when the noble little craft suddenly rose buoyant, with the long savage yell of the gale in her rigging as she thrashed her lofty spars to windward.

“After this she made fairly good weather of it, but for three days we lay under bare poles, sagging[170] helplessly to leeward in the trough of that mighty ocean. The weather then moderated; within six hours of the breaking of the gale it was blowing a gentle wind out of the north-east; the sun shone brightly and the schooner flapped leisurely along her course under all plain sail and over a large but fast subsiding swell.

“During the time of violent weather Captain Huddersfield had seemed much depressed in spirits. I had attributed his dejection to the peril of those hours. We were a small ship for that tall southern surge. Moreover his risk in the vessel might be large for all I knew. I could not guess how gravely I misjudged one of the manliest intelligences that ever informed a sailor.

“We were seated alone at dinner on the first day of fine weather. He said, after regarding me steadfastly for some moments—

“‘Do you attach any meaning to dreams?’

“‘I do not,’ I answered.

“‘But when they recur?’ said he.

“‘No,’ said I, ‘not though they should recur for a month of Sundays.’

“‘Do you know of any superstitions in connection with dreams?’ he asked.

“‘I remember,’ said I, ‘an old woman once told me that to dream of a smooth sea is a sign of a prosperous voyage, but of a rough sea a stormy and unprofitable one.’

“He shook his head with a little impatience, without smiling.

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“‘Then, again,’ said I, taxing my memory to oblige him, for this sort of talk was sad stuff to my way of thinking, ‘a sailor once told me that if you dream of a dolphin you’re bound to lose your sweetheart. And the same man said that to dream of drowning was a promise of good luck. The hopefullest of all sea-dreams, I believe, is the vision of an anchor. ’Tis a fact,’ said I, finding myself thoughtful for a moment, ‘that I dreamt of an anchor the night before I received a letter from an uncle containing a cheque for two hundred pounds—the only money I ever received from a relative in all my life.’

“He was silent for a while, and then said, speaking in a very serious voice—

“‘For three nights running the same odd vision has troubled me. I have thrice dreamt that I was becalmed in an icy atmosphere of Antarctic darkness. The stars rode brilliantly, but they made no light. Regularly through this black atmosphere there sounded, in a note of sighing, human with articulation, and yet resembling the noise made by the whale when it spouts its fountain, these mysterious words: “Try for her in fi............