We crossed the equator a little before noon on a Tuesday. Though I had learnt at school all about the imaginary line that girdles the earth, yet I was stupid enough to believe what Kennet and the others told me: namely, that if I ascended³ to the foretop with a telescope, and pointed⁵ it steadily⁶ over the starboard cat-head, I should obtain a good view of the equator. No more was necessary than to ascertain⁹ at what hour the ship was likely to cross the line, so as to save the anxiety of looking for the circle when it might still be some distance below the edge of the sea. On the morning of this Tuesday Kennet arrived on the poop with a telescope in his hand, and said—  
“Poole and I are going into the foretop to view the equator. It should be in sight now from that height, for I heard the chief mate tell Mrs. Moore that if this air held we should be crossing[104] it about half-past eleven. Will you come along with us, Rockafellar?”
 
“Yes,” said I; “I should like to see the equator. It will be something to talk about when I get home.”
 
We went forward and got into the fore¹-shrouds¹² on the lee-side, that our going aloft might not be noticed from the poop. When we were in the top, Poole steadied the glass against the topmast rigging, and instantly cried out “Beautiful!”
 
“Is it in sight?” I exclaimed eagerly.
 
“Oh, lovely! oh, divine!” he said in a voice of rapture¹³, with his eye glued to the glass. “Kennet, my dear, come and take a look.”
 
He held the glass, and Kennet peered.
 
“Ha!” shouted the long-nosed youth, drinking in a deep breath: “a noble picture, by George! I wonder if the captain would let ’uth go athore upon it? Wouldn’t a ride on a camel be jolly along that ththrait road.”
 
They were as grave as a pair of judges, saving the rapture which they endeavoured to express with their countenances¹⁴.
 
“I say, Poole, let’s have a look!” said I, thirsting with curiosity.
 
“Make way for him, Kennet,” cried Poole.
 
I put my eye to the telescope, which the midshipman continued to hold steady against the[105] rigging, and sure enough, just a little way over the horizon, was the equator, a thin, very well-defined line, showing against the light azure¹⁶ of the sky like a delicate ruling in ink.
 
“Thee it?” cried Kennet.
 
“Yes,” said I, eagerly staring; “but it’s up in the air, Poole.”
 
“Refraction, man, refraction,” he answered; “it always shows like that.”
 
I sent a glance with my naked eye, and then peered again through the telescope.
 
“When shall we be able to see it without a glass?” I asked.
 
 
“I PUT MY EYE TO THE TELESCOPE.”
 
“That’ll depend upon the thtate of the weather,” answered Kennet.
 
“But do we sail under it?”
 
“Oh, hang it, Rockafellar!” cried Poole, “you’re[106] not at school now, little boy! Who’s to answer such questions? Let’s down on deck, or the mate’ll be singing out.”
 
As I descended¹⁷ the shrouds I saw some sailors at work in the waist, grinning very hard.
 
“Seen it, sir?” bawled¹⁸ one of them.
 
“Yes,” said I.
 
“No chance, I hope,” he sung out, “of its fouling¹⁹ our mast-heads, is there, sir? Otherwise it’ll sweep every spar overboard.”
 
“No, it looks to be too high up in the air to hurt us,” I answered, and trudged²¹ aft, followed by a half-smothered²³ chorus of laughter.
 
The mate stood at the head of the poop ladder.
 
“Where have you been, sir?” he exclaimed.
 
“Up in the foretop, sir,” I answered.
 
“And what job carried you there, young gentleman?”
 
“I have been viewing the equator, sir,” I responded.
 
“Who showed it to you?” said he, with a twinkling eye.
 
“Mr. Kennet and Mr. Poole, sir,” said I.
 
He beckoned²⁴, with a solemn motion of his forefinger²⁵, to Kennet, who approached.
 
“Have you the equator handy about you, young gentleman,” he inquired.
 
Kennet coloured up, and said he had left it in his telescope.
 
[107]
 
“Bring it here, sir,” said the mate, “and let Mr. Poole attend, that we may have the benefit of his learning.”
 
The midshipman disappeared, and shortly after returned, with the glass under his arm and Poole at his heels.
 
“Now then, young gentlemen,” said the mate, “be good enough to show Master Rockafellar the equator from the poop point of view.”
 
Poole looked very sheepish; Kennet hung his long nose over one of the middle lenses, which he unscrewed.
 
“Now, let’s have a good geographical²⁶ explanation, if you please, Mr. Poole,” said the mate.
 
“There’s the line, Rockafellar,” said Poole, taking the lens, and pointing to a hair stretched across it, secured by a drop of gum at either extremity²⁷.
 
It was now my turn to colour up. I had been handsomely gulled²⁸, and the worst of it was the sailors forward knew it.
 
“Never mind, Master Rockafellar,” said the mate kindly²⁹; “older birds than you have been caught by that kind of chaff³⁰. You can take the equator below, Mr. Kennet,” and, smothering³¹ a laugh between his teeth, he walked aft.
 
I was afterwards told that this was a very ancient trick; but, old as it was, a joke at my expense was made out of it, fore and aft; since[108] for many days it never came to my passing two or more of the sailors but that one would sing out—
 
“Bill, seen the line?”
 
“No, Jack³²; where is it?”
 
“In Rockafellar’s eye, bully³³!”
 
However, to my great satisfaction, in due course this piece of humour grew stale, and was dropped.
 
I had read, when at home, a good deal about the customs practised by sailors on crossing the equator, and was not a little disappointed to find that the crew went on with their work as unconcernedly as though the Line were a thousand miles distant. I had been haunted by visions of a fine theatrical³⁴ show, and had secretly longed for the hour that was to exhibit Neptune³⁵ with a crown on his head, and a beard of oakum on his chin, attended by his wife, his physician, and the several courtiers who made up his train of state. I had followed, with boyish eagerness, the accounts of the ceremony in the works of Marryat and in other novels, and was much dejected on being told by Mr. Cock that this sort of skylarking was out of date.
 
“And well for you, young gentleman, maybe,” said he, “that it is so; for you’re a green hand, do you see, and it was always upon the like of you that the forecastle tomfoolery was poured out[109] thickest. How would you relish³⁷, think you, being lathered³⁸ with a mixture of tar⁷ and slush and filth³⁹; next, having your cheeks scraped with jagged bits of iron cask-hoops till they bled; then plunged⁴¹ backwards⁴² into water enough to drown you, and left to scramble⁴³ out like a half-dead rat, amidst roars of laughter from the unfeeling Jack? No, no; I’m as fond as any man of honest skylarking, but there was always too much of Old Nick in the temper of the shaving and ducking custom to please my humour: and it’s a very good job, I think, that the mouldy bit of barbarity was long ago flung overboard.”
 
The ship was often brought to a stand by calms during our passage of the equator, and these intervals⁴⁷ were very monotonous⁴⁸ and hard to bear.
 
The midshipmen’s berth⁴⁹ was so insufferably hot that during my watch below I was unable to remain in it, and would come on deck and hang about under the break of the poop where the side-wings of the saloon, or cuddy, made a recess⁵⁰, and where one was kept cool by the fanning of light draughts⁵² of air sent circling betwixt the rails by the swaying of the folds of the hauled-up main-course.
 
It was at this time that an old gentleman named Catesby—a passenger—who had lived in Australia for many years, related to some of us lads an extraordinary[110] experience that had befallen him during a voyage he made to India when a young man. The old East-Indiaman was then afloat; pirates were also abundant; there was no steam then to be met with at sea, and the excitement and romance of the ocean were at their height. The old gentleman had known a relative of mine, and took a fancy to me, and would frequently bring a handful of almonds and raisins⁵³ or some sweet biscuits from his pockets—purloinings from the dessert on the cuddy table—and slip the delicacies⁵⁴ into my hand with a merry manner of cautiously looking around him as though he was afraid of the captain seeing him. I remember that he delightfully⁵⁶ killed several long hot hours one day by telling two or three of us lads the story of his early adventure. I see him now with a cigar drooping⁵⁸ between his lips as he went on reciting, and recall the stare of admiration⁵⁹ and expectation we fixed⁶⁰ upon his face as he proceeded.
 
The name which he said he always gave to his story when he told it to his friends was:
 
“LA MULETTE.”
 
All day long there had been a pleasant breeze blowing from abeam⁶¹; but as the sun sank into the west the wind fined into light, delicate curls of[111] shadow upon the sea that, at the hour of sundown when the great luminary⁶² hung poised⁶³ like a vast target of flaming brass⁶⁴ upon the ocean-line, turned into a surface of molten gold through which there ran a light, wide, long-drawn heave of swell⁶⁵, regular as a respiration⁶⁶, rhythmic⁶⁷ as the sway of a cradle to the song of a mother.
 
The ship was an Indiaman named the Ruby⁶⁸; the time long ago, as human life runs, in this century nevertheless, when the old traditional conditions of the sea-life were yet current—the roundabout Indian voyage by way of the Cape⁶⁹—the slaver sneaking⁷⁰ across the parching⁷¹ parallels of the Middle Passage—the piccaroon in the waters of the Antilles dodging⁷² the fiery⁷³ sloop⁷⁴ whose adamantine grin of cannons⁷⁵ was rendered horribly significant to the eye of the greasy⁷⁶ pirate by the cross of crimson⁷⁷ under whose meteoric⁷⁹ folds the broadside thundered.
 
I was a passenger aboard the Ruby, making the voyage to India for my pleasure. The fact was, being a man of independent means, I was without any sort of business to detain me at home. Your continental⁸⁰ excursion was but a twopenny business to me. Here was this huge ball of earth to be circumnavigated whilst one was young, with spirits rendered water-proof by health. Time enough, I thought, to amble⁴⁴ about Europe when Australia began to look a long way off. So this was my[112] third voyage. One I had made to Sydney and Melbourne, and a second to China; and now I was bound to Bombay with some kind of notion beyond of striking into Persia, thence to Arabia, and so home by way of the classic shores of the Mediterranean⁸².
 
Well, it happened this 18th of June to be the captain’s birthday. His name was Bow; he would be fifty-three years old that day he told us, and as he had used the sea since the age of thirteen he was to be taken as a man who knew his business. And a better sailor there never was, and never also was there a person who looked less like a sailor. If ever you have seen a print of Charles Lamb you have had an excellent likeness⁸³ of Captain Bow before you—a pale, spare creature of a somewhat Hebraic cast of countenance¹⁵, with a brow undarkened by any stains of weather. His memory went far back; he had served as mate in John Company’s ships, had known Commodore Dance who beat Linois and spoke⁸⁴ of him as a perfect gentleman; deplored⁸⁵ the gradual decay of the British sailor, and would talk with a wistful gleam in his eye of the grand and generous policy of the Leadenhall Street Directors in allowing to their captains as much cubic capacity in the ships they commanded for their own private use and emolument⁸⁶ as would furnish out the dimensions of a considerable smack⁸⁷.
 
[113]
 
It was his birthday and long ago all of us passengers had made up our minds to celebrate the occasion by a supper, a dance on deck, and by obtaining permission for Jack forward to have a ball on condition that we should be allowed to ply⁸⁸ him with drink enough to keep his heels nimble and no more. We were in the Indian Ocean climbing north, somewhere upon the longitude⁸⁹ of Amsterdam Island, so formidable was the easting made in the fine old times. The latitude⁹⁰, I think, was about 12° south, and desperately⁹¹ hot it was, though the sun hung well in the north. Spite of awnings⁹² and wet swabs the planks⁹⁴ of the deck seemed to tingle⁹⁶ like burning tin through the thin soles of your boots. If you put your nose into an open skylight the air that rose drove you back with a sense of suffocation⁹⁷, so heavily was the fiery stagnation⁹⁸ of it loaded with smells of food and of the cabin interior, though there never was a sweeter and breezier cuddy, with its big windows and windsail-heels when the thermometer gave the place the least chance. But when the sun was nearly setting, some sailors quietly came aft and fell to work to make a ball-room of the poop. They took the bunting out of the signal locker⁹⁹ and stretched it along the ridge-ropes betwixt the awning⁹³ and the rail until it was like standing¹⁰⁰ inside a huge Chinese lantern for colour. They hung the ship’s lamps along in rows, roused up the piano from its[114] moorings in the cuddy, embellished¹⁰¹ the tops of the hencoops with red baize, and in fifty directions not worth the trouble of indicating, so decorated and glorified¹⁰² the after-end of the ship that when the lamps came to be lighted with streaks¹⁰³ of pearl-coloured moonshine glittering upon the deck betwixt the interstices of the signal flags, and movement enough in the tranquil¹⁰⁴ lift of the great fabric¹⁰⁵ to the swell to fill the eye with alternations of swaying shadow and gleam, this ball-room of almond-white plank⁹⁵ and canvas ceiling of milky¹⁰⁶ softness and walls of radiant banners was more like some fairy sea-vision than a reality, especially with the glimpse you caught of the vast silent ocean solitude¹⁰⁸ outside with its sky of hovering¹⁰⁹ stars and a stillness as of a dead world in the atmosphere—such a contrast, by heaven! to the revelry within the shipboard pavilion, when once the music had struck up and the forms of women in white gowns fluffing up about them like soapsuds were swimming round the decks in the embrace of their partners, that a kind of shudder¹¹¹ would come into you with the mere¹¹² thinking of the difference between the two things.
 
The music was good; there was a steerage passenger, a lady, who played the piano incomparably well; then there was a cuddy passenger who blew upon the flute¹¹⁴ very finely indeed. A military officer returning to India after a long spell of sick-leave[115] at home had as light, delicate and accomplished¹¹⁵ a hand on the fiddle¹¹⁶ as any of the best of the first violins which I have heard in the crackest of orchestras. When the committee of passengers had been talking about and arranging for this band the chief officer told them that if they thought there would not be instruments enough there was a man forward, a fellow named Ratt, who played the fiddle exquisitely¹¹⁷, and, if we wished it, he would make one of the instrumentalists. We consented, and for several days previous to this night you might have heard Ratt rehearsing in the ’tween decks, scraping in a way that made the military gentleman returning from sick-leave look somewhat grave. He spoke of Ratt with a foreboding eye, and what he feared happened. The man could indeed play, but he had no sense of time. All went wrong with the first dance-air that was struck up. The tune³⁶ he made was right enough; but it was always darting¹²⁰ ahead and bewildering the others and finally the band came to a stop, though Ratt continued to play several bars, whilst the military gentleman in great temper was shouting to him to go away. I should have felt sorry for the poor fellow had he not been saucy¹²¹, for he had dressed himself with extraordinary care, greased every separate hair upon his head as though it had been a rope-yarn and had arrived aft with a sailor’s expectation of seeing plenty of fun and getting[116] plenty of drink. It ended in the chief mate grasping him by the collar and tumbling him down the poop ladder. I afterwards heard that he went forward and in a towering passion threw his fiddle overboard, swearing that he would never play upon anything again but the Jew’s harp¹²² and then only for hogs¹²³ to dance to; there was no longer any taste left amongst human beings, he said, for good music.
 
The merriment aft was scarcely affected¹²⁴ by this instant’s failure. The moment Jack had been tumbled off the poop the instrumentalists began afresh and the decks were once more filled with sliding and revolving¹²⁵ couples. I had slightly sprained¹²⁶ my ankle that morning by kicking against a coil of rope and was unable to dance; but this was no deprivation¹²⁷ to me on a burning hot night, with no place for the draughts out of the fanning canvas to come through, and the smell of blistered¹²⁸ paint rising in a lukewarm breathing off the sides of the ship as though the sun still stood over the main-truck. So squatting¹²⁹ myself on a hencoop I sat gazing at the merry, moving, radiant picture and listening to the music and to the laughter of the girls which came back from the canvas roof of the poop in echoes soft and clear as the notes of the flute.
 
There were thirty-two cabin passengers in all, and we had a poopful, as you will suppose. There[117] were more than a dozen girls, dark and fair, most of them pretty enough. There were a few young married ladies too and a little mob of dignified¹³⁰ mammas. The men were of the old-fashioned mixture, a few military officers, a sprinkling of Civil Service young gentlemen, fierce old men with white whiskers and gleaming eyes, with peppercorns for livers and with a capacity of putting on the tender aspects of Bengal tigers when anything went wrong—merchants, judges, planters—I can scarce remember now what they were. There were lanterns enough to make a bright light, and some of them being of coloured glass threw bars of ruby and of emerald against the yellow radiance of the clear flame and the ivory streaks of moonlight. Far aft was the wheel with the brass upon it reflecting the lustre¹³¹ till it glowed out against the blackness over the stern like a circle of dull fire upon the liquid obscurity. Grasping the spokes¹³² of it was the figure of a seaman¹³³, smartly apparelled in flowing duck and a grass hat on “nine hairs”; his shape, dim in the distance, floated up and down against a bright star or two; but there was little need for him to keep his eye on the course. The calm was dead as dead could be. Half-an-hour since the ship’s head was north-west and now it was west, and the swell was under the bow with a strange melancholy¹³⁴ sob¹³⁵ of water breaking into the pauses betwixt the music and sounding like the[118] sigh of a weeping giant somewhere in the blackness over the side.
 
And black the water was spite of the air being brimful of the soft silver of the moonlight. On either hand the planet’s wake the ocean ran in ebony to the indigo¹³⁶ of the night sky; but you only needed to steal to the break of the poop clear of the awning to mark how gloriously the luminary was limning¹³⁷ the ship as if she had no other magic for the deep that night. Every sail was a square of pearl, every shroud¹¹ and back-stay, every brace¹¹⁰ and halliard a rope of silver wire, the yards of ivory, with hundreds of stars of delicate splendour sparkling and flashing in the dew along the rails. The Jacks¹³⁸ had rigged up lanterns forward and were cutting capers¹³⁹ on the forecastle and in the waist to some queer music that was coming out of the darkness upon the booms. It was strange enough to see their whiskered faces revolving in the weak, illusive¹⁴⁰ light, to witness apparitions¹⁴¹ of knobs and warts¹⁴³ and wrinkles storm-darkened to the hue¹⁴⁴ of the shell of a walnut¹⁴⁵ showing out for an instant to the glare of a lantern. There was great laughter that way and a jovial¹⁴⁶ growling¹⁴⁷ of voices. I believe the sailors had got, with the captain’s leave, some of the women of the steerage passengers to dance with, and their happiness was very great; for give Jack a fiddle, and a girl to twirl to the sawing of it, and a drink of rum and[119] water to fill up the short measures of his breathing-times, and he will ask for no other paradise ashore¹⁴⁸ or afloat.
 
Much was made of old Captain Bow. He looked as if he had taken all day to dress himself, so skewered¹⁴⁹ was he in a garb¹⁵⁰ of the old school; tail-coat, a frill, a collar half way the height of the back of his head, buff waistcoat, tight pantaloons; shoes like pumps, and a heavy ground-tackle of seals dangling¹⁵¹ from the rim⁷⁸ of his vest.
 
“Captain shows nobly to-night, sir,” said the chief mate to me.
 
“Ay!” said I, “little enough of the salt in him you’d think.”
 
“He dances well enough for an old shellback,” said the mate. “A man needs a ship for a dancing-master to teach him how to spread his toes as the Captain does.”
 
“Aren’t you dancing?” I asked.
 
“No, it’s my watch on deck. I’ve got the ship to look after. But it’s little watching she wants. Oh, blow, my sweet breeze, blow!” he whispered, with a pensive¹⁵² cock of his eye at the sea through a space between the flags. “It isn’t to be the only birthday aboard us, I allow, Mr. Catesby. If the cockroaches¹⁵³ below aren’t celebrating some festival of their own, then are we manned with marines, sir. Phew! the Hooghley of a dead night with bodies foul²⁰ of the cable and the gangway ladder is[120] a joke to this. What’s become of the wind? What’s become of the wind?” and he stole away to the wheel softly whistling between his teeth.
 
It was too sultry to eat; the very drink you got was so warm that you swallowed it only for thirst, and put down the glass with a sort of loathing¹⁵⁴. When I took a peep through the after skylight and saw the tables laid out for supper for the special birthday feast that was to be eaten, my tongue did cleave¹⁵⁵ to the roof of my mouth, and I felt as if I should never be able to eat another blessed morsel¹⁵⁶ of food this side the grave. Every dish looked exhausted¹⁵⁷ with perspiration¹⁵⁸; the hams were melting, the fowls¹⁵⁹ shone like varnish¹⁶⁰, much that had come solid to the table was now fluid. However I was one of the committee and it would not do for me to be absent, so when the bell rang to announce supper and the music stopped, I stepped up to the wife of a colonel and, giving her my arm, fell in with the procession and entered the cabin.
 
It is a picture I need but close my eyes to vividly¹⁶¹ witness anew. There were two tables, one athwartships well aft, and the other running pretty nearly down the whole length of the cabin. The interior was lighted with elegant silver lamps, and along the length of the ceiling there was a beautiful embellishment of ferns, goldfish in globes, and so forth¹⁶³. On either hand went a range of berths¹⁶⁴, the bulkheads richly inlaid, the panels hand-painted,[121] and there was many another little touch full of grace and taste. Far aft, at the centre of the athwartship table—his quaint¹⁶⁵, old-fashioned figure showing like a cameo upon the dull ground of the bulkhead behind him—sat the captain, talking to right and left, with a dry, kind smile lying wrinkled upon his face like the meshes¹⁶⁶ of a South African spider’s web. On either side of him went a row of passengers, down to the foot of the table that was over against the cuddy front. The ladies’ dresses were handsome; we were an assemblage of rich folks for the most part, and had thoroughly¹⁶⁷ overhauled¹⁶⁹ our wardrobes that we might do fitting honour to this very interesting occasion. Jewels sparkled in white ears, and upon white wrists and fingers. We were not lacking in turbans and feathers, in thick gold chains, immense brooches bearing the heads of the living or of the departed. There was much popping of champagne¹⁷⁰ corks¹⁷¹, much rushing about of stewards¹⁷², much laughter, and a busy undertone of talk. The memory of the picture dwells in me with an odd pertinacity¹⁷³. I had shared in more than one festive¹⁷⁴ scene on board ship in my time, but in none do I recall the significance which the framework of vast ocean solitude outside, of the deep mystery of the wide moonlit shadow, and the oppressive peace of the tropical night, communicated to this one. It might have been the number of the folks assembled;[122] their gay, and in many instances, even splendid attire¹⁷⁵, the essentially¹⁷⁶ shore-going qualities of the merry-making, clearly defining themselves in the heart of the deep—like the sight of a house in a flood. In fact the scene completely dominated all shipboard habits, and the thoughts which grew out of them. It made every heave of the fabric upon the weak, black, invisible swell a sort of wonder as though some novel element were introduced; the familiar creak of a bulkhead, the faint jar of the rudder upon its post caused one to start as one would to such things ashore.
 
“You are refusing everything the stewards offer you, Mr. Catesby,” said the colonel’s lady by my side. “You are in love.”
 
“I am in a fever, madam,” I replied: “the tropics usually affect me as a profound passion. In fact I feel as if I could drown myself.”
 
“Why make a voyage to India, then, Mr. Catesby? Is there not the North-West Passage left to explore, with the great Arctic Circle to keep ye cool?”
 
“Madam,” said I, “I perceive your husband in the act of rising to make a speech.”
 
A short, fiery-faced Irishman, with whiskers like silver wires projecting cat-like from his cheeks, stood up to propose the captain’s health. Glasses were filled, and the little colonel blazed away. When he had made an end (old Bow steadfastly[123] watching him all the while with a smile of mingled¹⁷⁷ incredulity and delight), the skipper’s health was drunk with cheers and to the song of “He’s a jolly good fellow,” the air of which was caught up by the ship’s company forward, and re-echoed to the cuddy with hurricane lungs from the forecastle. Then old Bow rose straight and unbending in his tightly-buttoned coat on to his thin shanks; but at that moment there was a movement of a little group of the stewards at my end of the table; the colonel’s lady by my side was whispering with animation¹⁷⁸ to what was in those days called a “griffin,” a handsome young fellow seated on her left; and being half dead with heat, and in no temper to listen to old Bow, whose preliminary coughs and slow gaze around the table threatened a very heavy bestowal¹⁷⁹ of tediousness, I slipped off my chair, sneaked¹⁸⁰ through the jumble¹⁸¹ of stewards, and in a moment was ascending¹⁸² the poop ladder, breathing with delight the night atmosphere of the sea, that tasted cold as a draught⁵¹ of mountain water after the hot, food-flavoured air of the cuddy.
 
Forward the sailors had come to a stand, and were talking, smoking, drinking, and eating by the will-of-the-wisp glare of the few lanterns which hung that way. There was nobody aft, saving the helmsman and the second officer, who had turned out to relieve the chief mate that he might join the supper party. He lay over the rail abreast¹⁸³ of the[124] wheel, and I could hear him quietly singing. The lanterns burnt brightly; against the brilliant atmospheric¹⁸⁴ haze¹⁸⁵ of moonshine to larboard—larboard was then the word—the bunting which walled the poop glistened¹⁸⁶ like oiled paper. The monotonous voice of old Bow was still returning thanks; again and again his deep sea notes were broken by loud cheers. The life below, the speechifying and the huzzaing there, the brightness of the light, the frequent chink of glasses, put a wild sort of mocking look into the emptiness of this deck with its lanterns swaying to the roll of the ship, and the motionless figure of the steersman showing unreal, like some image of the fancy, down at the end of the vessel¹⁸⁷, through the vista¹⁸⁸ of bunting and kaleidoscopic¹⁸⁹ light and white awning framing a star-studded square of dark ether over the taffrail.
 
Yet I still wanted air. The poop was smothered up with flags and canvas; the cross-jack was furled, spanker brailed up, and the mainsail hung from its yard in festoons to the grip of its gear. There was no wing of canvas therefore near the deck to fan a draught along, and so it came into my head to jump aloft and see what sort of coolness of dew and dusk were to be had in the maintop. I got on to the rail and laid hold of the main shrouds, and leisurely¹⁹⁰ travelled up the ratlines. Methought it was as good as climbing a hill for the change of[125] temperature the ascent¹⁹¹ gave me. The iron of the futtock shrouds went through and through me in a delicious chill, and with the smallest possible effort I swung myself over the rim of the top and stood upon the platform, rapturously drinking in the gushings of air which came in little gusts¹⁹³ to my face out of the pendulum¹⁹⁴ beat of the great maintopsail against the mast to the tender swing of the tall fabric.
 
If ever you need to know what a deep sense of loneliness is like, go aloft in a dead calm when the shadow of the night lies heavy upon the breathless ocean, and from the altitude of top, cross-tree or yard, look down and around you! The spirit of life is always strong in the breeze or in the gale¹⁹⁵ of wind. There are voices in the rigging: there is the organ note of the billow flung foaming¹⁹⁶ from the ship’s side; there is a tingling¹⁹⁸ vitality¹⁹⁹ in the long floating rushes of the fabric bursting through one head of yeast²⁰⁰ into another. All this is company, along with the spirit shapes of the loose scud²⁰¹ flying wild, or the sociable²⁰² procession of large, slow clouds. But up aloft in such a clock-calm as lay upon the deep that night you are alone! and the lonelier for the distant sounds which rise from the decks—the dim laugh, the faint call, liker to the memories of such thing than the reality.
 
The body of the ship lay thin and long far beneath me like a black plank, pallid²⁰³ aft with the[126] spread of awning, with an oblong haze of light in the main hatch where the grating was lifted, and dots of weak flame from the lanterns forward, resembling bulbous corposants hovering about the forecastle rail. The ship’s hull²⁰⁴, by the broad raining of the moonshine, was complexioned²⁰⁶ to the aspect of the leaf of the silver tree when lighted by the stars. Yet as she slightly rolled, breaking the black water from her side into ripples²⁰⁷, you saw the phosphor starting and winking²⁰⁸ in the ebony profound there, like the reflection of sheet-lightning. Exquisitely lulling²⁰⁹ was the tender pinion-like flapping of the light, moonlit canvas, soaring spire-fashion in ivory spaces high above my head, with the pattering of dew falling from the cloths as they swayed. A sound of thin cheering from the cuddy floated to me; presently a fiddle struck up somewhere forwards, and a manly²¹⁰ voice began Tom Bowline. Now, thought I, if they would only strip the poop of its awning, that I might see them dancing by the lantern light when supper was over, and they had fallen to caper-cutting afresh! What a scene of pigmy revelry then! What a vision of Lilliputian enjoyment²¹¹!
 
I seated myself Lascar-fashion and lighted a cigar. Could I have distinguished²¹² the figure of a midshipman below I should have hailed him, and sent down the end of a line for a draught of seltzer and brandy. But the repose²¹³ up here, the dewy[127] coolness, the royal solitude of the still, majestic²¹⁴ night, with sentinel stars drowsily²¹⁵ winking along the sea-line, and the white planet of the moon sailing northwards into the west amid the wide eclipse of its own soft silver glory, were all that my fevered being could pray for.
 
It is as likely as not that after a little I was nodding somewhat drowsily. I recollect²¹⁶ that my cigar went out, and that on sucking at it and finding it out I would not be at the trouble of lighting²¹⁷ it again. I say I might have been half-asleep sitting, still Lascar-fashion, with my back against the head of the lower-mast, when on a sudden, something—soft, indeed, but amazingly heavy—struck me full on the face and chest, and fell upon my knees where it lay like a small feather-bed. But for my back being supported, I must have been stretched at full length and, for all I know, knocked clean overboard, or, worse still, hurled²¹⁸ headlong to the deck.
I was so confounded by the shock and the blow that for some moments I sat goggling²¹⁹ the object, that lay as lead upon my knees, like a fool. I then threw it from me, and stood up. It fell where a slant²²⁰ of moonshine lay clear upon the side of the top, and I perceived that it was a big sea-bird, as large as a noddy, white as snow saving the margin²²¹ of its wings, which were of a velvet²²² black. It had a long, curved beak²²³, and I gathered from the look[128] of one of its pinions²²⁴, which overlaid the body as though broken, that its width of wing must have come proportionately very near to that of the albatross. I could see by the moonshine that the eyes were closing by the slow drawing down of a white skin. The creature did not stir. I stood staring at it full five minutes, gripping the topmast rigging to provide against its rolling me out of the top should it rise suddenly and strike out with its wings, but there was no stir of life in it. It was then that I caught sight of something which seemed to glitter in the thick down upon its breast like a dewdrop on thistledown. It was a little[129] square case of white metal, apparently²²⁵ a tobacco-box, secured to the bird’s neck. By this time the passengers had come up from supper, and were dancing again on the poop. I could see nothing for the awning, but the music was audible enough, and I could also catch the sliding sounds of feet travelling over the hard planks, and the gay laughter of hearts warmed by several toasts. The Jacks were also at work forward. An occasional note of tipsy merriment, I would think, rose up from that part of the ship; but there was no lack of earnestness in the toe and heeling there; the slap of the sailors’ feet upon the decks sounded like the clapping of hands; and I could just catch a glimpse of the figure of the fiddler in the obscurity which overlaid the booms quivering and swaying as he sawed, as though the noise he made was driving him crazy.
 
I seized the big bird by the legs and found its weight by no means so considerable as I should have supposed from the blow it dealt me. So, tightly binding²²⁶ its webbed feet with my pocket-handkerchief, that they might serve me as a handle, I dropped with this strange, dead sea-messenger through the wide square of the lubber’s hole into the main shrouds, and leisurely descended. The chief mate stood at the head of the starboard poop ladder as I reached the rail.
 
“Hillo!” he called out, “good sport there, Mr.[130] Catesby. What star have you been shooting over pray? And what is it, may I ask? turkey?”
 
A shout of this sort was enough to bring everybody running to look. The music ceased, the dancing abruptly²²⁸ stopped. In a moment I was surrounded by a crowd of ladies and gentlemen shoving and exclaiming as they gathered about the skylight upon which I had laid the big sea-fowl.
 
“What is it, Mr. Catesby? My stars! a handsome bird surely,” exclaimed Captain Bow.
 
“Oh, Captain,” cried a young lady, “is the beautiful creature dead really?”
 
“See!” shouted a military man, “the creature’s breast is decorated with a crucifix. No, damme, it’s a trick of the light. What is it, though?”
 
“A silver pouncebox, I declare,” exclaimed a tall, stout²²⁹ lady, with a knowing nod of the feather in her head.
 
“A sailor’s nickel tobacco-box more like, ma’am,” observed the mate, “with some castaway’s writing inside, or that bird’s a crocodile.”
 
“Let’s have the story of the thing, Mr. Catesby,” said the captain.
 
I briefly²³⁰ stated that I had ascended to the maintop to breathe the cool air up there and that whilst I was nodding the bird had dashed against me and fallen dead across my knees.
 
“Oh, how dreadful!” “Oh how interesting!”[131] “Oh, I wonder the fright didn’t make you faint, Mr. Catesby!” and so on, and so on from the young ladies.
 
“Shall I cast the seizing of the box adrift, sir?” said the mate.
 
“Ay,” responded the captain.
 
The officer with his knife severed²³² the laniard of sennit and made to lift the lid of the box. But this proved a long job, inexpressibly vexatious to the thirsty expectations of the onlookers²³³ owing to the lid fitting so tightly as to resist, as though soldered²³⁴, the blade of the knife. When opened at last, there was disclosed, sure enough, inside, a piece of paper folded, apparently a leaf from a logbook.
 
“Bring a lantern, some one,” roared the mate.
 
Some one held a light close to the officer, who exclaimed, after opening the sheet and gazing at it a little, “Any lady or gentleman here understand Spanish?”
 
“I do,” exclaimed the handsome young “griffin” who had sat next to the colonel’s lady at table.
 
“Will you kindly translate this then?” said the mate, handing him the letter.
 
“It’s French,” said the young fellow; “no matter; I can read French.”
 
He ran his eye over the page, coughed, and read aloud as follows:—
 
“La Mulette, June 12th, 18—. This brig was dismasted in a hurricane ten days since. Three of[132] us survive. At the time of our destruction our latitude was 8° south, and longitude 81° 10’ east. Should this missive fall into the hands of any master or mate of a ship he is implored²³⁵ in the name of God and of the Holy Virgin²³⁶ to search for and to succour us. He will be richly——”
 
“Last words illegible²³⁷,” said the young fellow, holding the paper close to his nose.
 
“Humph!” exclaimed Captain Bow. He hummed over the latitude and longitude, and addressing the mate said, “The wreck²³⁸ should not be far off, Mr. Pike.”
 
“Oh, captain, will you search for the poor, poor creatures?” cried one of the younger of the married ladies.
 
“Twelfth of June the date is, hey?” said the captain, “and this is the eighteenth. In six days the deluge²³⁹, madam—at sea. Well, we shall keep a bright look-out, I promise you. D’ye want to keep the bird, Mr. Catesby?”
 
“No,” said I, “the box will suffice as a memorial.”
 
“Then, Mr. Pike, let it be hove overboard,” said the captain.
 
“Strike up ‘Tom Bowline’ for its interment,” cried the little Irish Colonel, “‘Faithful below he did his duty’ you know. Nearly knocked poor Catesby overboard, though. What is it, a Booby?”
 
“How can ye be so rude, Desmond?” said his wife.
 
[133]
 
“’Tis the bird I mane, my love,” he answered.
 
The girls would not let it be hove overboard for a good bit. They hung over the snow-white creature caressing²⁴¹ its delicate down and strong feathers with fingers whose jewels glittered upon the plumage like raindrops in moonlight. However ere long the music started anew. The people that still hovered²⁴² about the bird drew off, and the mate sneaking the noble creature to the side quietly let it fall.
 
Well, next day, I promise you, this incident of the bird gave us plenty to talk about. In fact it even swamped the memory of the dance and the supper, and again and again you would see one or another of the ladies sending a wistful glance round the sea-line, in search of the dismasted brig—as often looking astern as ahead, whilst one or two of the young fellows amongst us crept very gingerly aloft, holding on as they went as though they would squeeze all the tar out of the shrouds, just to make sure that there was nothing in sight. However, there was a professional look-out kept forward. I heard the captain give directions to the officer of the watch to send a man on to the fore-royal yard from time to time to report if there was anything in view; but as to altering his course with the chance of picking up the Frenchman, that was not to be expected in old Bow, whose business was to get to Bombay as fast as the wind would blow him[134] along; and indeed, seeing that the Ruby had already been hard upon four months from the river Thames, you will suppose that, concerned as we might all feel about the fate of La Mulette, the softest-hearted amongst us would have been loth to lose even a day in a search that was tolerably certain to prove fruitless—as the mate proved to a group of us whilst he stood pointing out our situation and the supposed position of the brig upon a chart of the Indian Ocean lying open upon the skylight.
 
We got no wind till daybreak of the morning following the dance, and then a pleasant air came along out of south-south-east, which enabled the Ruby to expand her stunsails and she went floating over the long sapphire²⁴³ swells²⁴⁴ of the fervid²⁴⁵ ocean under an overhanging cloud of cloths which whitened the water to starboard of her, till it looked like a sheet of quicksilver draining there. This breeze held and shoved the ponderous²⁴⁶ bows of the Indiaman through it at the rate of some four or five miles in the hour. So we jogged along, till it came to the fourth day from the date of my adventure in the maintop. The fiery breeze had by this time crept round to off the starboard bow, and the ship was sailing along with her yards as fore and aft as they would lie. It was a little before the hour of noon. The captain and mates were ogling²⁴⁷ the sun through their sextants on either hand the poop, for[135] the luminary hung pretty nearly over the royal truck with a wake of flaming gold under him broadening to our cutwater, so that the Ruby looked to be stemming some burning river of glory flowing through a strange province of dark blue land.
 
Suddenly high aloft from off the maintop-gallant-yard—whose arm was jockeyed by the figure of a sailor doing something with the clew of the royal—came a clear, distant cry of “Sail ho!” and I saw the man levelling his marline-spike at an object visible to him a little to the right of the flying-jibboom end.
 
“Aloft there!” bawled the mate, putting his hand to the side of his mouth, “how does she show, my lad?”
 
“’Tis something black, sir,” cried the man, making a binocular glass of his fists. “’Tis well to the starboard of the dazzle upon the water. It is too blinding that way to make sure.”
 
“Something black!” shouted the little colonel, whose Christian²⁴⁸ name was Desmond, “La Mulette, Captain Bow, without doubt. Anybody feel inclined to bet?”
 
Some wagering²⁴⁹ followed, whilst I stepped below for a telescope of my own, and then went forward and got into the fore-rigging, with the glass slung²⁵⁰ over my shoulders. There was no need to ascend⁴ above the top. I levelled the telescope when I gained that platform, and instantly saw the object[136] with a handbreadth of the gleam of the blue sea past her, showing that she was well this side of the horizon from the elevation²⁵¹ of the foremast, and that she would be visible from the poop in a little while. There was but a very light swell on; the spires²⁵² of the Ruby floated steadily through the blue atmosphere. I had no difficulty in commanding the object therefore, and the powerful lenses of my telescope brought her close. It was a wreck, a sheer hulk indeed, and without a shadow of a doubt La Mulette. Her masts were gone, though a fragment of bowsprit remained. Whole lengths of her bulwark²⁵³ were apparently crushed flat to the covering-board; nevertheless, the hulk preserved a sort of rakish aspect, a piratical sheer of long, low side. “Let her prove what she will,” thought I, “I am a Dutchman if yonder craft hasn’t carried a bitter and poisonous sting in her head and tail in her time.”
 
They had “made” eight bells on the poop, and the mellow²⁵⁴ chimes were sounding upon the quarter-deck, and echoing in the silent squares of canvas, as I descended the rigging and made my way aft. I told Captain Bow that the craft ahead was a hulk, and without doubt La Mulette; on hearing which the passengers went in a rush to the side and stood staring as though the object was close aboard, some of them pointing and swearing they could see her, though at the rate at which we were shoving through[137] it she was a fair hour and a half yet behind the horizon from the altitude of the poop.
 
However, when I came up from tiffin some little while before two o’clock, the hulk lay bare upon the sea over the starboard cat-head, with a light like the flash of a gun breaking from her wet black side to the languid roll of her sunwards, and a crowd of steerage-passengers and sailors forward staring at her. At any time a wreck at sea, washing about in the heart of some great ocean solitude, will appeal with solemn significance to the eye of one sailing past it. What dreadful tragedy has she been the little theatre of? you wonder. You speculate upon the human anguish²⁵⁵ she memorializes, upon the dark and scaring horrors her shape may entomb. But it is a sight to appeal with added force to people who have been at sea for many long weeks, without so much as the glimpse of a sail for days at a time to break the enormous monotony of the ocean, or to furnish a fugitive²⁵⁶ human interest to the ever-receding²⁵⁷ sea-line—that most mocking of all earthly limitations.
 
“Anybody see any signs of life aboard of her?” asked Captain Bow. “My sight is not what it was.”
 
There were many sharp young eyes amongst us, and some powerful glasses; but there was nothing living to be seen. She looked to have been a vessel of about two hundred and fifty tons. Her copper²⁵⁸ sheathing²⁵⁹ rose to the bends, and was fresh and[138] bright. She had apparently been pierced for ten guns, but this could be only conjecture²⁶⁰, seeing that her bulwarks²⁶¹ had been torn to pieces by the fall of her spars. There was a length of topmast, or what-not, riding by its gear alongside of her, with a raffle²⁶² of canvas and running rigging littering the fore-part. Her wheel stood and her rudder seemed sound. She was flush-decked, but all erections such as caboose, companion, and so forth were gone. Yet she sat with something of buoyancy on the water, and her rolling was without the stupefaction you notice in hulls²⁶⁴ gradually filling. As her stern lifted, the words, La Mulette, Havre, rose in long, white letters upon the counter, with a sort of ghastliness in the blank stare of them by contrast with the delicate blue of the sea. Old Bow hailed her loudly; then the mate roared to her with the voice of a bull, but to no purpose. I said to the second mate, who stood alongside of me at the rail—
 
“Yonder to be sure is the ship from which the sea-bird brought the letter the other night. There were three living men aboard her a few days ago. Are they below, think you?”
 
“Been taken off, sir, I expect,” he answered. “Or dead of hunger, or thirst, and lying corpses²⁶⁶ in the cabin. Or maybe they drowned themselves. Mr. Pike’s hail was something to bring a dying man out of his bunk²⁶⁷ to see what made it. No, sir, yonder’s an abandoned craft or a coffin²⁶⁸ anyway.”
 
[139]
 
Some ladies standing near overheard this, and at once went to work to induce the captain to bring the Ruby to a stand, and send a boat. I listened to them entreating²⁶⁹ him; he shook his head good-naturedly, with a glance into the north-western quarter of the sea. “Oh, but, dear captain,” the ladies reasoned, “after that letter, you know, as though you were appointed by Providence²⁷⁰ to receive it—surely, surely, you will not sail away from that wreck without making quite sure there is nobody on board her! Only conceive that the three poor creatures may be dying in the cabin, that they may have heard your cry and Mr. Pike’s, that they may be able even to see this ship through a porthole, and yet be too weak to crawl on deck to show themselves!” What followed was lost to me by the second mate beginning to talk:—
 
“She’ll have been a French privateer,” he said to me. “What a superb run, sir! Something in her heyday²⁷¹ not to be easily shaken of a merchantman’s skirts. Of course she’ll have thrown all her guns overboard in the hurricane. Does the capt’n mean to overhaul¹⁶⁸ her, I wonder,” he continued, throwing a look aloft. “He’ll have to bear a hand and make up his mind or we shall be losing her anon in yonder thickness. Mark the depression in the ocean line nor’-west, sir. D’ye notice the swell gathers weight too, and there’s a dustiness in the face of the sky that way that’s better than a hint[140] that the Bay of Bengal is not so many leagues distant ahead as it was a month ago.”
 
He was rattling²⁷² on in this fashion, more like one thinking aloud than talking to a companion, when there was a sudden clapping of hands among the ladies who surrounded the captain, and at the same moment I heard him tell the mate to swing the topsail to the mast and get one of the starboard quarter-boats manned. All was then bustle²⁷³ for a few minutes, the mate bawling²⁷⁴, the sailors singing out at the ropes, men manœuvring with the boats’ gripes and falls. I went up to the captain.
 
“Who has charge of the boat?” said I.
 
“Second mate,” he answered.
 
“May I accompany him, captain?”
 
“Certainly, Mr. Catesby. I will only ask you, should you board her, to look alive. The weather shows a rather suspicious front down there,” indicating with a nod of his head the quarter to which the second mate had called my attention. “But, bless my heart! there’ll be nothing to see, nothing worth sending for. It is only to please the ladies, you know.”
 
I sprang into the boat as she swang at the davits.
 
It was a trip, a treat, a pleasant break for me; besides, my being the first to receive the letter gave me a kind of title as it were to the adventure.
 
“There’s room for others,” said the second mate[141] standing erect²⁶³ in the stern sheets with a wistful glance at a knot of pretty faces at the rail.
 
There was no response from male or female. “Lower away now lively, lads,” cried the mate. Down sank the boat, the blocks were dexterously²⁷⁵ unhooked, out flashed the oars⁴⁵ and away we went.
 
I couldn’t have guessed what weight there was in this ocean swell till I felt the volume of it from the low seat of the ship’s quarter-boat. The Ruby looked to be rolling on it as heavily again as she seemed to have been when I was on her deck, and the beat of her canvas against the mast rang in volleys through the air like the explosion of batteries up there. The wreck came and went as we sank and soared, and I caught the second mate eying her somewhat anxiously as though theorizing to himself upon the safest dodge²⁷⁶ to board her. She was farther off than I should have deemed possible, so deceptive²⁷⁷ is distance at sea, and though the five seamen²⁷⁸ pulled cheerily, the job of measuring the interval⁴⁶ between the two craft, what with the voluminous heave of the swell running at us, and what with the roasting sunshine that lay like a sense of paralysis²⁸⁰ in one’s back bone, proved very tedious to my impatience²⁸¹ to come at the hulk and explore her. As we swept round under her stern, supposing that her starboard side would be clear of wreckage²⁸², I glanced at the Ruby and saw that they were clewing up her royals, and hauling[142] down her flying jib with hands on the cross-jack-yard rolling the sail up. There were spars and a litter of trailing gear on either side the hulk; every roll was a spiteful snapping at the ropes with a drag of the floating sticks which sometimes made the water foam¹⁹⁷.
 
“We must board her astern,” said the mate “and stand by for a handsome dip of the counter.”
 
Our approach was very cautious; indeed it was necessary to manœuvre very gingerly indeed. We got on to the quarter, and watching his chance the bow oarsman cleverly sprang through the crushed rail as the deck buoyantly swang down to the heave of the boat, carrying the end of the painter with him; the mate followed, and I after a tolerably long interval, wanting perhaps the nerve and certainly the practised limbs of the sailors. In truth I may as well say here that I should have stuck to the boat and waited for the mate’s report but for the dislike of being laughed at when I returned. I very well knew I should not be spared, least of all by those amongst the passengers who would have forfeited²⁸³ fifty pounds rather than quitted the ship.
 
The hull had a desperately wrecked²⁸⁴ look inboards with the mess of ropes, staves, jagged ends, crushed rails, rents manifesting the fury of the hurricane. I swept a glance along in expectation of beholding²⁸⁵ a dead body, or, if you will, some scarcely living[143] though yet breathing man; but nothing of the kind was to be seen. The mate hung his head over the companion hatch from which the cover had been clean razed²⁸⁶ and peered down, then shouted and listened. But no other sound followed than the long moan and huge washing sob of the swell brimming to the wash-streak with a dim sort of choking, gurgling noise as of water streaming from side to side in the hold.
 
“Hardly worth while exploring those moist bowels²⁸⁷, I think, sir,” said the mate.
 
“Oh, yes,” said I, “if we don’t take a peep under deck what will there be to tell? This is a quest of the ladies’ making, remember, and it must be a complete thing or ‘stand by’ as you sailors say.”
 
“Right you are, sir,” said he, “and so here goes,” and with that he put his foot upon the companion ladder and dropped into the cabin.
 
I followed at his heels, and both of us came to a stand at the bottom of the steps whilst we stared round. There was plenty of light to see by streaming down through the skylight aperture²⁸⁸ and the hatch. The cabin was a plain, snuff-coloured room with a few sleeping berths running forward, a rough table somewhat hacked²⁸⁹ and cut about as if with the slicing of tobacco, a row of lockers²⁹⁰ on either hand, a stand of firearms right aft and some twenty cutlasses curiously²⁹¹ stowed in a sort of brackets under the ceiling or upper deck. Hot as[144] it was above, the cabin struck chill as though it were an old well. Indeed you saw that it had been soused over and over again by the seas which had swept the vessel, and there was a briny²⁹², seaweedy flavour in the atmosphere of it that made you think of a cave deep down in a sea-fronting cliff. We looked into the sleeping berths going forward to where a moveable bulkhead stopped the road. It was not easy to walk; the increasing weight of the swell was defined by the heavy though comparatively buoyant rolling of the hull. The deck went in slopes like the roof of a house from side to side with now and again an ugly jerk that more than once came near to throwing me when a sudden yawn forced the dismasted fabric into a swift recovery.
 
“There’s nobody aft here, anyway,” said the mate; “no use troubling ourselves to look for her papers, I think, sir.”
 
“No; but this is only one end of the ship,” I answered. “There may be a discovery to make forward. Can’t we unship that bulkhead there, and so get into the ’tween-decks?”
 
We laid hold of the frame, and after peering a bit, for this part of the cabin lay in gloom, we found that it stood in grooves²⁹³, and without much trouble we slided it open, and the interior to as far as a bulkhead that walled off a bit of forecastle lay clear before us in the daylight shining through the[145] main-hatch. Here were a number of hammocks dangling from the deck, and some score or more of seamen’s chests and bags in heaps, some of them split open, with quantities of rough wearing apparel scattered²⁹⁴ about, in so much that I never could have imagined a scene of wilder disorder²⁹⁵, nor one more suggestive of hurry and panical consternation²⁹⁶ and delirious²⁹⁷ headlong behaviour.
 
“Nobody here, sir,” said the mate.
 
“No,” I answered; “I suppose her people left her in their boats, and that one of the wretches²⁹⁸ who were forced to remain behind wrote the letter we received the other night.”
 
“At sea,” said the mate, “there is no imagining how matters come about. I allow that the three men have been taken off by some passing vessel. Anyway, we’ve done our bit, and the capt’n, I expect, ’ll be waiting for us. Thunder! how she rolls,” he cried, as a very heavy lurch²⁹⁹ sent us both reeling towards the side of the craft.
 
“Hark!” cried I, “we are hailed from the deck.”
 
“Below there!” shouted a voice in the companion hatch. “They’ve fired a gun aboard the Indiaman, sir, and have run the ensign up half-mast high. The weather looks mighty³⁰⁰ queer, sir.”
 
“Ha!” cried the mate; “come along, Mr. Catesby.”
 
We walked cautiously and with difficulty aft,[146] gained the companion ladder and ascended. My instant glance went to the Ruby. She had furled her mainsail and fore and mizzen topgallant-sails, hauled down her lighter³⁰¹ staysails and big standing jib, and as I glanced at her a gun winked³⁰² in a quarter-deck port, and the small thunder of it rolled sulkily up against the wind. In fact, whilst we were below, the breeze had chopped clean round and the Ruby was to leeward³⁰³ of the wreck, with a very heavy swell rolling along its former course, the wind dead the other way, beginning to whiten the ridges³⁰⁴ on each huge round-backed fold, and a white thickness—a flying squall of vapour it looked to me, with a seething³⁰⁵ and creaming line of water along the base of it as though it was something solid that was coming along—sweeping³⁰⁶ within half-a-mile of the wreck right down upon us. The mate sent a look at it and uttered a cry.
 
“Haul the boat alongside,” he shouted to the fellows in her. “Handsomely now, lads. Stand by to jump into her,” he cried to the seaman who had been the first to spring on board the wreck with the end of the line.
 
They brought the boat humming and buzzing to the counter; the sailor standing on the taffrail plumped into her like a cannon-shot; ’twas wonderful he didn’t scuttle³⁰⁷ her. The mate whipping the painter off the pin or whatever it was that it had been belayed to, held it by a turn whilst he[147] bawled to me to watch my chance and jump. But the wreck lying dead in the trough was rolling in a quite frenzied³⁰⁸ way, like a see-saw desperately worked. Her movements, combined with the soaring and falling of the boat, were absolutely confounding. I would gather myself together for a spring and then, before I could make it, the boat was sliding as it might seem to me twenty or thirty feet deep and away.
 
“Jump, for God’s sake, sir!” cried the mate.
 
“I don’t mean to break my neck,” I answered, irritable³⁰⁹ with the nervous flurry that had come to me with a sudden abominable³¹⁰ sense of incapacity and helplessness.
 
As I spoke the words, sweep! came the white smother²² off the sea over us with a spiteful yell of wind of a weight that smote³¹¹ the cheek a blow which might have forced the strongest to turn his back. The hissing³¹², and seething, and crackling of the spume of the first of the squall was all about us in a breath, and, in the beat of a heart, the Ruby, and the ocean all her way vanished in the wild and terrifying eclipse of the thick, silvery, howling, steam-like mist.
 
“By ——, I have done it now!” cried the mate.
 
The end of the painter had been dragged from his hand or he had let it fall! And the wind catching³¹⁴ the boat blew her over the swell like the shadow of a cloud. The seamen threw their oars[148] over and headed for us, their faces pale as those of madmen.
 
“They’ll never stem this weather,” cried the mate; “follow me, Mr. Catesby, or we are dead men.”
 
He tore off his coat, kicked off his boots and went overboard without another word.
 
Follow him! To the bottom, indeed! but nowhere else, for I could not swim a stroke. But that was not quite it. Had I had my senses I might have grasped the first piece of wreckage I could put my hand upon and gone after him with it to paddle and hold on to till I was picked up. But all this business coming upon us so suddenly, along with the sudden blinding of me by the vapour, the distracting yelling of the wind and the sickening bewilderment caused by the wreck’s violent rolling, seemed to have driven my wits clean out of my head. The boat was scarcely more than a smudge in the thickness, vanishing and showing as she swept up and rushed down the liquid acclivities, held with her bow towards the hulk by the desperately-plied oars of the rowers. The mate was borne down rapidly towards her. I could just see three of the sailors leaning over the side to drag him out of the water; the next instant the little fabric had vanished in the thickness, helplessly and with horrible rapidity blown out of sight the moment the men ceased rowing to rescue their officer.
 
[149]
 
I do not know how long all this may have occupied; a few minutes maybe sufficed for the whole of the tragic³¹⁵ passage. I stood staring and staring, incredulous of the truth of what had befallen me, and then with an inexpressible sickness of heart I flung myself down upon the deck under the lee of a little space of bulwark, too dizzy and weak with the horror that possessed³¹⁶ me to maintain my footing on that wildly swaying platform.
 
I had met in my travels with but one specimen³¹⁷ of such weather as this; it was off the Cape of Good Hope to the westward³¹⁸; the ship was under topmast and topgallant studding sails, when, without an interval of so much as twenty seconds of calm, she was taken right aback by a wind that came with the temper of half a gale in it, whilst as if by magic a fog, white and dense³¹⁹ as wool, was boiling and shrieking³²⁰ all about her.
 
For some time my consternation was so heavy that I sat mechanically staring into that part of the thickness where the boat had disappeared, without giving the least heed³²¹ to the sea or to the wreck. It was then blowing in earnest, the ocean still densely³²² shrouded³²³ with flying vapour, and an ugly bit of a sea racing³²⁴ over the swell that rolled its volumes to windward. A smart shock an............