"At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours—and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was Le Comte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine, de la Marine Français, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India—when it struck me there was no one on the quarter-deck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard someone speaking, over the schooners lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.
"It was middle-watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all was quiet—Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang, and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his leathery Hindoo face and moustache like a firefly in the root of a banyan, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour. These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics; and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw me—a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put in my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time the serang stopped his talk and sidled off.
"However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like dewdrops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon, through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's too long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had too, blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft, and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells as deep in the hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant, one could not say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western quarter till you saw a star in it The night was so lovely, in fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times, when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of the watch on the weather quarter-deck, which surprised me the more in Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and, to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by the weather-side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as I thought, apparently speaking to someone down the schooner's side; upon which I stepped across.
"Jones's back was to me as I looked over too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash of the water which was louder there than in-board, while you heard the plash from her bows every time she forged he evidently didn't hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading aloud out to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had no doubt left in the dining-cabin—the book open in both hands, he giving it forth in long staves, with a break between—and regular Greek it was too. You'd have thought he timed them to the plash alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost fancied I made a meaning of them—each like a wave, as it were, sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it you can't conceive, and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of the kind he stopped. 'There!' said he, 'there, old Homer—women, wine, and adventure—what could the devil ask more, blind old prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash away, lying old blue-water, you can't wash it out—and wine—no, not the strongest rum in Cape Town—can wash you out!' With that Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand, muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. 'Still, it rouses the old times in me!' said he. 'Here comes this book across me, too. Ay, ay, and the rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek out of old wild Homer all weekday—and—and his girl slipping out and in—'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh—then warn me against the sea—ha!'
"The laugh that came from him at that moment was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering 'Women, wine, and adventures, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess too; still he was a good old man, the rector—no guile nor evil in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with—ah, the less of that the better.—Twas in me, though, and all our blood—and in her dark eyes, too, Mary though she was!' He broke out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something under the side: 'I didn't take her the first time I came home—nor the second—but-but—ay, I came back! Oh that parting-stile in sight of the sea—and that packet-ship—but O God! that night—that night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue—blue——' And he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. 'Hellish!' he said, suddenly standing upright and looking straight aloft with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky, and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened along the gaff. 'She was pure to the last!' I heard him say, though I had walked to the other side of the boom; 'ay, though I rot to perdition for it!—Down, old fiend!' as he lifted his one hand with the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away astern.
"Now I had heard nothing from Jones that I couldn't have fancied before, and there was even a humour to my mind in the notion of clapping it all on old Homer, if Homer it was, and heaving him overboard with such a confoundedly complimentary burial-service. But some of the words that dropped from him shot through one's veins like icicles; and now there was something fearful in the sight of him standing straight again, with a look right into the heavens, as if he'd have searched them up and up—in that lovely night too, spread far and wide—the very rays of the moonlight sparkled down the weather-side of the sail I was on, trembling on the leech-ropes and brails as they swayed, and into the hollows they made in the belly of the taut canvas; the long shining spot of it wavered and settled on the same two planks of the quarter-deck, beyond the shadow of the bulwark from the moon's eye, fast as the schooner moved through the water, and it was like a hand laid upon her, with the air and wind stretching between. Of a sudden I saw Jones wheel slowly round where he stood, like a man turned about by main strength, with his eyes fixed aloft, and his one arm raising from the shoulder till his forefinger pointed to something, as I thought, about the fore-to'gallantsail. His face was like ashes, his eye glaring, and I sprang across to him under the main-boom. 'See!' said he, never turning his head, and the words hissed betwixt his teeth, 'look at that!'
"'For Heaven's sake, what, Mr Jones?' said I. 'Her—her,' was his answer, 'coming against the wind—dead fore-and-aft in the shade of the sails!' On the lee-sides of them the high boom-sails made a sort of a thin shadow against the moonshine off the other beam, which came glimpsing through between them out of a world of air to the south-east, with a double of it flickering alongside on the water as it heaved past to leeward; and whether it was fancy, or whether it was but the reflection aloft from below, I thought as I followed Jones's finger, I saw something like the shape of a woman's dress floating close in with the bonnet of the fore-topmaststaysail, from the dusk it made to the breast of the fore-topsail, and even across the gush of white light under the yard—long and straight, as it were, like a thing lifted dripping out of water, and going, as he said, right against the schooner's course. 'Now in the foresail!' whispered Jones, his eye moving as on a pivot, and a thrill ran through me at the notion; for I made out one single moment what I thought a face against the sky at the gaff-end, white as death, shooting aft towards the mainsail—though next instant I saw it was but a block silvered by the moon as the schooner lifted. 'Now the mainsail!' said he, huskily, 'and now—now by the heavens—rising—rising to the gaff-topsail—away! O Lord! Mary!'
"He was leaning aft toward the width of the sky, with both hands clutched together before him, shuddering all over. For the first minute my own blood crept, I must say; but directly after I touched him on the shoulder. 'This is strange, Mr Jones,' said I; 'what's the matter?' 'Once in the Bermudas!' said he, still wildly, 'once in the Pacific—and now! Does the sea give up its dead, though, think ye?' 'You've a strong fancy, Mr Jones, that's all,' I said sternly. 'Fancy!' said he, though beginning to get the better of himself; 'did ye ever fancy a face looking down—down at you in the utterest scorn—down sideways off the shoulder of the garment, as it sticks wet into every outline like life? All the time gliding on the other way, too, and the eyes like two stars a thousand miles away beyond, as kind as angels'—neither wind nor sea can stop it, till suddenly it rises to the very cope of heaven—still looking scornfully down at you!—No, sir, fancy it you couldn't!'
"The glance he gave me was somehow or other such as I couldn't altogether stomach from the fellow, and he was turning to the side when I said quietly, 'No, nor Homer either, I daresay!' Jones started and made a step towards me. 'You heard me a little ago!' rapped out he, eyeing me. 'Yes,' I said; 'by Jove! who could help being curious to hear a sailor spout Greek as you were doing, Mr Jones?'
'The fact is, Mr Collins,' answered he, changing his tone, 'I was well brought up—the more shame to me for bringing myself to what you saw me. I had a sister drowned, too, on her passage to America one voyage, when I was mate of the ship myself. No wonder it keeps my nerves shaking sometimes, when I've had too long about shore.' 'Well, well, Jones,' said I, rather softening, 'you've proved yourself a first-rate seaman, and I've got nothing to complain of; but I tell you fairly I had my doubts of you! So you'll remember you're under the Articles of War aboard here, sir,' added I, 'which, as long as I have this schooner under hand, I'll be hanged if I don't carry out!' All at once the thought struck me, a little inconveniently, of my carrying off Webb, and his people, and I fancied Jones's quick eye wandered to the Lascars forward. 'I know it, sir,' said he, looking me steadily in the face; 'and what's more, Mr Collins, at any rate I couldn't forget you picked me out, confounded low as I looked, to come aft here. 'Tis not every captain afloat that has such a good eye for a seaman, as I know!' 'Oh, well, no more about it,' I said, walking forward on the weather-side, and leaving him on the lee one as distinctly as Lord Frederick Bury could have done to myself in the frigate. Jones no doubt thought I didn't notice the slight wrinkle that gathered round his lee eye when he gave me this touch of butter at the end; but I put it down for nothing more, gammon though it was.