Isle o' Dreams

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

It was all rather absurd, he thought. There was nothing especially sinister about sailors carrying a line aft. To demand what it was about and make himself known would only serve to make him ridiculous if the explanation proved to be the carrying out of some legitimate duty. Being quiet, with the vessel at anchor, was hardly to be condemned. And if it turned out that the crew were preparing trouble it was no time to show that they were being watched unless the danger were imminent.

He stepped into the galley and felt along the bulkhead for the row of knives he had seen in their leathern pockets. He pulled out a large one, judging its size by the thickness of its handle. It was a formidable weapon.

Dinshaw was still breathing musically. So far as Trask could tell, all hands in the cabin were asleep. He passed through with great care, smiling at the figure he would cut if he were challenged and found with a great knife in his hands sneaking about the cabin. He, rather than the crew, would be held guilty of some dangerous intention against the safety of the schooner.

The rain was now striking the cabin roof with sweeping gusts. It was not a heavy downpour, but a threat of more to come, the weak advance guard of an approaching deluge.

Ascending the companion, he put his head out far enough to see a shape moving at the taffrail, evidently a man bent over some task. Then it moved away to starboard, slowly, and Trask heard a gentle blowing, as one might make in clearing the nostrils of rain.

Trask now felt rather ashamed of himself. Instead of an attack on the cabin, the man who had come aft had gone about his business and departed. There was nothing to be alarmed about in that, surely.

So Trask went to the forward door and looked out on deck, putting the knife away in the galley without, however, attempting to insert it in the leather sheath. Then he stood in the doorway, and listened.

The man could be seen moving along the starboard side slowly. Trask caught a foreign sound, a gurgle which he at first mistook for rain water running from the scuppers. But the deck was scarcely wet and, besides, the sound was to starboard. Water running off would go to port, for the schooner was heeled a little in that direction.

Soon there was a rasping along the hull, and emboldened by the fact that the man who had brought the line aft was now well forward, Trask stepped to the bulwark and looked over the side.

At first he could see nothing in the blackness below, but a new flurry of rain came, and the drops striking the water hissingly made it slightly luminous, outlining a dark, formless mass close to the side of the schooner. It moved forward slowly, its progress coincident with the movement of the man going along the rail. Trask could see his head and shoulders against the fog-like sheen of the water over the bows.