The mysterious voice broke forth anew in a torrent of unintelligible speech. The sound came this time almost as a relief to the tension. It was so unmistakably real, now that it was at closer quarters, that half its terrors fled.
“Whatever it is,” exclaimed Kavanagh, “it’s in here!”
Flinging open a door on his right hand, he stepped boldly in.
The next moment he burst into a shout of laughter. It was a large and imposing stateroom with a big teak bed—evidently the captain’s, a relic of the days when the captain of a crack sailing ship was decidedly a somebody, and when, moreover, he frequently took his wife to sea with him. And in the middle of the bed was a brass cage containing the owner of the voice—a fine sulphur-crested cockatoo, which was even now pouring forth a flood of the choicest polyglot oaths Kavanagh had ever heard.
It was astonishing what a reaction that bird brought about. All the haunted air of the ship seemed to have been effectually dispelled. Kavanagh’s spirits began to rise unreasonably as he continued his tour of his new command.
The sail locker yielded up only the remains of a fine-weather suit, mostly patches. Kavanagh whistled softly to himself as he fingered the thin canvas, and thought about the swiftly falling glass and the fierce gusts which blew ever more frequently out of the angry winter sunset.
Still, there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad job, so, leaving one of his best men at the wheel, he set about the task of getting off the rags of the fore-lower topsail and bending the new (or rather the whole) sail in its place.
And what a job that was! Never to the day of his death will Kavanagh forget it. He had worked with scratch crews in his time, but never before with a crowd like those well-meaning steamer deck-hands who had never seen a sail in their lives at such close quarters.
Swearing, struggling, hanging on with teeth and nails, they sweated and toiled on their unaccustomed perch, until at last—it seemed like a miracle—all was as snug aloft as was possible in the circumstances. The chaos on deck was reduced to something approaching order, though the ship still lay over to it rather more than Kavanagh liked. And now, the watch being set and look-outs posted, he had time to do what he had been longing to do—find out, if he could, what the old ship’s past had been.
He felt convinced that she was the product of some crack Aberdeen or Clydeside builder, for, in spite of her dirty and neglected condition, there was about her the unmistakable air of decayed gentility. The brass on capstan and wheel was so caked with rust and paint that the letters of the builder’s name could not be discerned, and it was only by chance, while making an inspection of the miscellaneous junk in the lazarette, that he made the great discovery.