The Tragedy of Ida Noble

Front Cover
A NOVEL
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1892
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1892
Copyright, 1891, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. All rights reserved.

On Monday, August 8th, 1838, the large bark Ocean Ranger, of which I was second mate, was in latitude 38° 40' N., and longitude 11° W. The hour was four o'clock in the afternoon. I had come on deck to relieve the chief officer, who had had charge of the ship since twelve. It was a very heavy day—a sullen sky of gray vapor seeming to overhang our mastheads within pistol-shot of the trucks. From time to time there had stolen from the far reaches of the ocean a note as of the groaning of a tempest, but there had been no lightning; the wind hung a steady breeze out of the east, and the ship, with slanting masts and rounded breasts of canvas, showing with a glare of snow against the dark ground of the sky, pushed quietly through the water that floated in a light swell to the yellow line of her sheathing.
Some time before I arrived on deck a vessel had been descried on the port bow, and now at this hour of four she had risen to the tacks of her courses, and her sails shone so radiantly in the dusky distance that at the first glance I knew her to be an American. The captain of my ship, a man named Hoste, was pacing the deck near the wheel; I trudged the planks a little way forward of him, stepping athwart-ships, or from side to side. The men, who were getting their supper, passed in and out of the galley, carrying hook-pots of steaming tea. It was an hour of liberty with them, the first of what is called the dog watches. The gloom of the sky seemed to heighten the quietude that was upon the ship. The sailors talked low, and their laughter was sudden and short. All was silent aloft, the sails stirless to the gushing of the long salt breath of the east wind into the wide spaces of cloths, and nothing sounded over the side save the dim crackling and soft seething noises of waters broken under the bow, and sobbing and simmering past, with now and again a glad note like the fall of a fountain.