"We could hear one another breathing, when ting-tang went four bells on deck. You heard it going across to the shore, as it were; and a few moments after, out of the humming far and wide along the land, back came the sound of another bell, toll upon toll, like some clock striking the hour a long way off. Then a third one followed on it, from a different direction, ringing clearer in the air; while the murmur and the rush seemed to swell up the more all round, and the plashing of the tide made the ship heave at her anchors. The mate shivered, Westwood and I started, but some extraordinary notion or other gleamed over the captain's face as he sat up. He was quite in his senses, too, apparently, though it seemed to be neither more nor less than sheer joy that overcame him, for he let out a long breath, and his eyes were glistening as if the tears stood in them. 'James—James Macleod!' said he quickly, with a husky voice,' you oughn't to've deceived one you've sailed so long with; but you meant me a good surprise, and 'twas kindly done of you! I know the very run o' the clocks off Greenwich Reach, man; d'ye think one could mistake the sound of Lon'on town, fidgeting when it wakes, either?—we 're—we're home already!'
"And he fell back in the cot, with the drops running down his cheek, smiling happily all the time at Macleod in a way that went to one's heart; while the Scotchman stared helplessly to the surgeon, who slipped to the port and closed it. 'I know by your way, James,' continued the poor man, 'you wanted to send up to Virginia Row for 'em all; but don't send for an hour yet; better go up yourself and break it to 'em—break it to 'em, be sure of that, James; I shouldn't wonder but I pulled up, after all. Ah—that first one we heard was Greenwich Hospital—t'other is Dicksons' brewery or Redriff——' Here his eyelids began to drop, owing to the sleeping-draught he had got, when suddenly they opened wide again.
"'Ha!' said he, listening, and putting up a finger, 'but I haven't heard St Paul's strike six yet; it's seldom so long after; ought to be heard from here of a morning; let's——' By little and little, however, the sick man's eyes closed, and you heard him murmuring, as his finger sank down, 'Macleod, say—to her—say—luff, luff, my lad, keep her her course—' till his shrunk face was as quiet on the pillow as if he'd been really at home the first night after a voyage.
"'Oh man, doctor!' said the second mate, heaving a breath, 'isn't it terrible! Good forgive me for a lee to a dying man! Take an old seaman's word for it, Dr Small, yon clock ashore was no mortal soond, sir; ye may keep your drogues for them they'll do good to. 'Twas neither more or less than the captain's dregy!' 'Phoo!' answered the Scotch surgeon, who was one of your sceptical chaps, as I heard say, 'some other vessels here, of course, that's all.' The sailor gave him only a smile of pity for not being able to distinguish the sound of a ship's bell. 'There can't be a town hereabouts, Collins?' whispered Westwood. 'A town—no!' said I; 'it's the best wilderness sign you can have—the African bell-bird!' [22] 'Ah, ah!' said the surgeon, laughing, 'there now, Macleod—of course it can be explained naturally, like other things.' The second mate gave me a doubtful scowl; but seeing Westwood, whom he had always seemed to think rather in the way before, his eye softened.
"'You'll be wanting to see the captain as soon as he wakes up, sir,' said he. 'I'm terrified to face him—but if ye'd just slip in when he comes to himself, sir, I'm thinking, reverend sir, ye might wile him off yon terrible notion o' his.' Westwood shook his head, seriously, not knowing what to say. 'Ay, ay, sir,' continued Macleod, as he half closed the door, 'no doubt a man ought to be upon better things; but it's hard for him, when he's got a wife and weans six thousand miles away, and wants them alongside in a couple of hours—uncommon hard, sir! She's a douce, careful body, too, Mistress Williamson, like the captain's self; and I heard her fleech sore with the captain before we sailed, for to bide quietly ashore this time, for good. Poor woman! if she didn't e'en go the length o' pairtin' in anger the last morning, wae's me! till the very moment when (he telt me himself, sir), she out with her arms round his neck, crying like to choke! An' all to—but if the captain had a fault, 'twas the love o'—good forgive me, though, when it was but studying his faim'ly, Mr Thomas! If it was only an auld tarry deevil like me, now, with neither kith or kin!' 'Except cousins, Mr Macleod,' said the surgeon, as he wiped his lancet on his coat-tail—'plenty of them in the High——' But he caught Westwood's eye, and was ashamed to finish his heartless joke, though the rough second mate was too full of his feeling to hear it; when Westwood said something about our all thinking too little of these things beforehand, but how the captain was plainly a man that had done his duty carefully, which no doubt would ease his mind. The mate looked up, and eyed him sideways for a moment: 'Eh? what?' said he bluntly; 'it's not so little I mind o' what I used to hear at the kirk langsyne, as not to know that's not the right doctrine. D'ye think, sir, that's what'll put him over, when he finds out this is not Greenwich Reach? There's the Methody minister with the glasses, though!' he broke out, when again a look of despair came over his broad hard-favoured countenance. 'They're always upon works, too, I've heard!' said he, turning and murmuring to himself; 'oh, if I could but hoist out a bit screed o' the truth myself to comfort the poor fellow with! Lord, how didn't I think of the Shorter Carritch—let's see how't went—"What is the chief end of"—no, it's "What is faith in—faith in the only rule to direct us"—no, no—"Baptism is a sacrament—where—whereby"'—and he was still overhauling some old catechism in this fashion, twisting himself all the time as if he were twisting a stiff rope the wrong way, with a look of misery none of us could have had the heart to laugh at, when a middy's voice came squeaking down the dark after-hatchway: 'Mr Macleod, sir, the chief officer wants you on deck.'
"Westwood slipped quietly off, and the young surgeon was beginning to talk easily, to rid his mind of something, perhaps, till I asked if there wasn't any chance. 'Oh, the captain, you mean?' said he; 'don't think there is—he's a bad subject! If we were out at sea now, Mr Collins, the calenture would make him think the waves all grass, or something as green as—as the cawdets used to call——' I looked at the fellow sternly, and he changed his key, though with a surprised air.
"'You're blessed early up, though, you two!' said he. 'I suppose that cursed squall kept you idlers awake; but how they managed without the first mate I can't think. Clever fellow, Finch! but wasn't it a curious trick of the poor skipper to box him up below here? I fancy he'd a guess we would all soon be under the mate's command! It's a queer thing the brain, isn't it, Mr Collins? For exaumple, now, there's the captain, it makes him think something or other a clock near London, with everything accordingly! Macleod fancies it a soopernatural knell, and twaddles about some Calvinist stuff he learned at school. Then you and me, you know, imaugines it's a bird—now, which is it after all? Nothing—maybe, eh?' The fellow capped all with a sneer, as much as to say I was a fool, which I had stood from him several times before; though now I could have kicked him, more for his heartless way than aught else. 'I tell you, Mr Small,' said I, 'what I think you—you're neither more nor less than a——' but I turned on my heel. 'I'm off, however,' said he, 'to turn in again.'
"Through the half-closed door one could see the sick man's face sleeping so quiet in the shadow from the lamp, you heard not a breath. I looked up the after-hatchway. It seemed still quite dark; and a patch of the deep dark-blue sky showed high over the square opening, with two or three keen sparks of stars, green ones and blue ones—you'd have thought the ladder, short as it was, went up to somewhere clean above the world. But the moment I got on deck, I saw it was really lighter—the heavy fog creeping slowly astern of the ship on both hands; the white mist rolling faster over it before the sea-breeze against her bows, which had swung seaward by this time from the tide, that rushed like a mill-stream upon both her tight cables; while the muddy river-water, bubbling, eddying, and fronting away past, spread far up in the middle, into the dusk astern. Such a jabbering, croaking, hissing, shrieking, and yelling, too, as burst into one's ears out of the dark, as if whole legions of monkeys, bull-frogs, parrots, paroquets, and what not, were coming together full upon us from both sides, one band nearer than the other; till the heavy boom of the surf round the point, and the roar of the tide coming in over the shallows about the river-mouth, pretty well drowned it.
"The sudden change was a good relief, Babel though it seemed after the closeness below, with what had been going on; and I looked ahead towards the sea, which lay away out off our larboard bow, round the headland, and over the opposite point; a cold watery streak of light showing it from where the breakers rose plunging and scattering along the sandy bar, to the steady grey line of horizon, clipped by one of the two brown chops we had got into. It looked dreary enough as yet, the mouth of it being wider than I'd fancied it from seaward at night; though even with full water over the long spit of sand in the middle, there was no draught at all for the Indiaman except by the channel betwixt it and the bold point to our right; and pretty narrow it appeared from our present berth, heaving, as it did, with the green swell that set in, while meantime the mist scudding across the face of the headland let us see but the hard lump of bare black rock underneath.
"In less time than I've taken to speak, however, the full space of sky aloft was turning clear, the sea far away suddenly shone out blue, with the surges tipped white; you saw a sparkling star high over it sink slowly in, and the fog spread off the water near us, till here and there you caught the muffled-up shape of a big tree or two looming through, not half-a-mile off our starboard quarter; the mist creeping over the headland till the sharp peak of it stood out against its shadow on the shoulder of a hill beyond, and old Bob Martin's single clump of cocoas on the rise waving in landward from the brisk sea-breeze.