John Conroy Hutcheson

“ Now these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to us.”
“How strange, sir,” said I. “Just like an aquarium plant. It is strange!”
“It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!” ”

“ Captain Applegarth spoke jocosely enough, everything being pretty easy on deck and the ship breasting the gale like a duck, but Mr Fosset’s face, I noticed, looked grave and he answered the other in a more serious fashion than his general wont, his mouth working nervously in the pale moonlight that lent him a more pallid air as the words dropped from his lips, making his countenance, indeed, almost like that of a corpse.
“But what, man!” exclaimed the skipper impatiently, interrupting his slow speech before Mr Fosset could get any further. “Anything wrong, eh?” ”

“ The surface fog, or mist, which had lately obscured the view, rising from the water immediately after the last gleams of the sunset had disappeared from the western sky, had now cleared away, giving place to the pale spectral light of night, an occasional star twinkling here and there in the dark vault overhead, like a sign-post in the immensity of space, making the wild billowy waste, through which we tore with all the power of wind and steam, seem all the wilder from contrast. ”

“ In answer to the skipper’s signal a sudden blast of steam rushed up the funnel abaft the wheel-house, and I could feel the ship tremble as the shaft began to revolve and the propeller blades splashed the water astern with the familiar “thump-thump, thump-thump.”
All hands joined in a hearty cheer, to which Masters and I in the top lent what aid our lungs could give.
“Steady amidship, there,” sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged ahead once more. “Steady, my man.” ”

“ The skipper drew himself up to his full height on my telling this and turned round on Mr Fosset, his face blazing with passion.
“A ship in distress, a woman on board imploring our aid,” he exclaimed in keen, cold, cutting tones that pierced one like a knife, “and you passed her by without rendering any assistance,—a foreigner too, of all. We Englishmen, who pride ourselves on our humanity above all other nations. What will they think of us?” ”

“ The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel, when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win’rd passed and lit a flare-up, hanged if you aren’t at it again with your ghost-ship! By George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good seaman like yourself should be such a confounded ass! ”

“ Nor would there be any more, for his ringing bark was hushed, his body and tail alike stiff and cold, while his noble heart which only throbbed with affection for those whom he loved when living, had stopped beating for aye.
“My dear child, poor Ivan is dead!” said Colonel Vereker tenderly after a short pause, drawing the young girl up to him so that she might not see the gruesome sight on the deck below. “The brave dog sacrificed his life for mine, and but for his help, little one, I should not now be by your side.” ”

“ I can not only see the ship distinctly, but also right down on to her deck!”
“Nonsense, boy; you’d better go below!” said the first mate brusquely, while Spokeshave sniggered and whispered something to the lamp-trimmer and man at the wheel that made them both laugh out right. “There’s something wrong with you to-night, Haldane, for you seem quite off your chump, so you’d better go below and sleep it off. There’s no ship near us, I tell you! What you imagined to be a sailing vessel is that dark cloud there, coming up from the leeward, which is fast shutting out the horizon from view. ”

“ But between slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Señor Applegarth, a wide margin; and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor even as my equal in any way!”
The skipper laughed.
“‘What’s bred in the bone,’ colonel—you know the rest!” said he. “Your old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race.”
“Pardon me,” rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, “I don’t dislike them at all. ”

“ My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie, whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.
It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for “a month of Sundays,” as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job. ”

“ Stoddart, the second engineer, was kneeling beside the poor fellow, rubbing his hands and holding every now and then to his nose what seemed to me a bottle of ammonia or some very pungent restorative, the powerful fumes of which overcame the foetid atmosphere of the stoke-hold, Mr Stokes, looking almost as pale as the unconscious man, assisting with his unwounded arm, with which he lifted Jackson’s head, his broken one being already set in splints by our doctor-mate. ”

“ I replied. “They’ve got the life left in them and that’s all, I’m afraid!”
“Neither dead, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Bravo! ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope,’” cried the skipper in a cheery tone. “Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?”
“Quite unable, sir,” I answered. “One’s unconscious, and I don’t think the other could move an inch if he tried!”
“Then we must haul ’em up,” said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. ”

“ The men sprang to the ropes with a will, but ere they had begun to cast them off from the cleats an ominous sound was heard from aloft, and, splitting from clew to earring, our poor topgallantsail blew clean out of the boltropes with a loud crack as if a gun had been fired off, the fragments floating away ahead of us, borne on the wings of the wind like a huge kite, until it disappeared in the dark chiaraoscura of the distant horizon, where heaven and sea met amid the shadows of night. ”

“ Ah, he was a very different sort of fellow to little Spokeshave, being a nice, jolly, good-natured chap, chubby and brown-bearded, and liked by every one from the skipper down to the cabin boy. He was a bit obstinate, though, was Mr Fosset; and “as pigheaded as a Scotch barber,” as Captain Applegarth would say sometimes when he was arguing with him, for the first mate would always stick to his own opinion, no matter if he were right or wrong, nothing said on the other side ever convincing him to the contrary and making him change his mind. ”

“ The skipper did not hesitate for one moment in giving his opinion, though, like most of my mess-mates, he was good enough to say how sorry he would be to part with me, and how he would miss me.
“Go by all means, my lad,” said he. “By George! it’s a chance that doesn’t come twice in a fellow’s lifetime, and you may consider your fortune as good as made!”
Mr Fosset and Garry O’Neil were equally enthusiastic. ”

“ As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might—such a contrast to us lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas—I could not help thinking of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers! ”

“ Like poor Ivan, and with equal ferocity, the Frenchman sprang at the ugly villain’s throat, the whole lot of us tumbling headlong on the deck together, which caused the wretch to release me in order to protect himself from Captain Alphonse, who, kneeling on the top of him, hammered him against the bulwarks as though trying to beat the life out of him. ”

“ There was no “racing” of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force! ”

“ Did I Dream It?
“Where away, Haldane?” cried Mr Fosset, the first to notice my shout, catching up a telescope that lay handy on the top of the wheel-house of the bridge; and, in his hurry, eagerly scanning every portion of the horizon but the right one. “I don’t see her!” ”

“ After Elsie and I got “spliced,” to use the old familiar language of my boyhood, the expressive argot of the sea, for which I shall always retain a passionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fashionable world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes or desires in any respect akin to ours. ”

“ There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!”
“Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground,” said the skipper, looking towards me. “Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!”
“Yes, young sir,” added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. “That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. ”

“ Alas! though, no opportunity was afforded him now to display his valour on the battlefield and lead his hosts to victory; for while we were en route for Caracas, a dastardly hound of a creole, whose blood was a mixture of the beast elements—part Spaniard, part Portuguese, part negro—well, this treacherous brute assassinated Colonel Vereker in the most cowardly fashion. ”

“ Cap’en Applegarth, at your service!”
“The deuce! I was forgetting. We passed you last night, I remember now! and you’re the captain?”
“Aye!” replied the skipper, not quite making out what the other was driving at. “I’m captain of this ship!”
“Merciful Heavens!” cried the rescued man, falling on his knees on the deck and bursting into a passion of sobs. “Thanks be to God! Yes, thanks be to God! You will save her, captain. You will save her?”
The skipper thought the evident suffering he had gone through had turned his brain. ”

“ Ere I could send a shot in the same direction to finish him off, the big negro, who had accompanied him to the front, instantly dragged back the ‘marquis,’ howling with rage and pain, behind the shelter of the mainmast; and then, picking up his revolver for him, the two of them blazed amongst us pretty securely from that retreat, without, however, doing any damage to our side. A bullet of mine, though, flattened the big negro’s nose a little more than Nature had already done for him, and which did not improve his beauty, as you can well believe. ”

“ No engines could stand it, with such a heavy sea on and the ship rolling and pitching all the time like a merry-go-round at Barnet Fair. The governor is no good; and, though Grummet or Links have their grip on the throttle valve all the while to check the steam, and I’ve every stoker and oiler on duty, the bearings are getting that heated that I’m afraid of the shaft breaking at any moment. Full speed, sir? Why, we can’t do it, sir, we can’t do it!”
“Nonsense, Stokes,” said the skipper good-humouredly. “You must do it, old fellow.” ”

“ Opportunity had also been taken, I noticed, to secure the broken engine-room skylight in a more substantial way than formerly, and so prevent any more green seas from flooding the hold, the opening having been planked over by the carpenter, and heavy bars of railroad iron, which formed part of our cargo, laid across, instead of the tarpaulin that was deemed good enough before and had given way when Mr Stokes—poor man—and the first mate and myself got washed down the hatchway by a wave that came over the side, crumpling the flimsy covering as if it were tissue paper. ”

“ How about that yarn of yours of the blessed ‘ghost-ship’ you saw the other night, I’d like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your Flying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. ”

“ As Mr Fosset had been the first to find out in the morning the Gulf Stream—that great river that runs a course of some two thousand miles in the middle of the ocean, keeping itself perfectly distinct from the surrounding water through which it flows, from its inception as a current in the Caribbean Sea to its final disposal in the North Atlantic—had first carried us in an easterly direction after we had broken-down so utterly ”

“ I made no reply to the superstitious old seaman’s ominous prediction, but as I made my way forward to the bridge to inform Captain Applegarth and the others of what had happened, I could not help thinking how strange it was that poor Jackson should have recalled, at the very moment the spirit was quitting his crippled body, the fact of my sighting the ship in distress and the account I had given the skipper of what I had seen on board that mysterious craft! ”

“ In other words, more suited to a landsman’s comprehension, it was five o’clock in the afternoon when I came on deck from my spell of leisure below, to relieve Mr Spokeshave, the third officer, then on duty, and the sight I caught of the heavens, across the gangway, was so beautiful that I paused a moment or two to look at the sunset before going up on the bridge, where Mr Spokeshave, I had no doubt, was anxiously awaiting me and, equally certainly, grumbling at my detaining him from his “tea!” ”

“ I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our hawser as then. ”

“ Another savage yell almost confirmed the thought. “Heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker, rendered almost frantic with grief and excitement, and noticing the appalling evidences of the Haytians’ triumph, while we stared aghast at each other. “My poor darling child, and those brave fellows I left behind, where are they all; where are they? For God’s sake find them! Alas! alas! those black devils have murdered them all.” ”

“ For before he could get so far, giving a fierce growl, the dog at once sprang up at him, his fangs meeting in the Haytian’s throat, whereupon the latter, toppling backwards over the poop-rail, fell into the waist below, with the dog hanging on to him; and I noticed presently that both were dead, the brave animal who had come so opportunely to the rescue of the colonel, his master, being stabbed to the heart by a knife which the negro still held in his lifeless hand, while his own neck had been torn to pieces by the dog whom death could not force to relinquish his grip! ”

“ Mr Spokeshave? Mr Spokeshave?”
No answer came this time, however, from my friend, Master “Conky,” though he had been ready enough just now with his aggravating “quite so.”
“I think, sir,” said I, “Mr Spokeshave has gone below to his tea.”
“Very likely,” replied the skipper drily; “he’s precious fond of his breadbasket, that young gentleman. I don’t think he’ll ever starve where there’s any grub knocking about. Fancy a fellow, calling himself a man, thinking of his belly at such a moment! Go, Haldane, and call him up again and tell him I want him.” ”

“ I replied to this hail of the skipper. “She’s about three miles off, I think, sir.”
“All right,” he shouted back to me. “Port your helm, there!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” repeated Parrell. “Port, sir, it is.”
“We’re rising her fast now, sir,” I called out after a short interval. “There’s a man in the boat; yes, a man, sir. I can see him quite plainly now, and I’m sure I’m not mistaken!”
“Are you quite sure, my lad?”
“Quite sure, sir. And he’s alive, too, I’m certain. Yes, sir; he moved then distinctly. I could see him plainly. Why, the boat is so near now that you ought to see it from the deck.” ”