"How dare you say so?" asked Captain Talbot.
"I am sure of what I assert, sir," said Derval, careless of how his words affected his enemy; "she is The North Star, of Whitchurch."
Something between a groan and a curse escaped the lips of Rudderhead, whose perplexity Derval really shared, but with much of awe, while the former felt much of rage and hatred, believing, almost hoping, that the name was Derval's invention, and suggested, perhaps, by some remark overheard in the dream, on the night he was too late to relieve the deck.
"The North Star," and "of Whitchurch" too! Was it a reality, or a phantom ship sent to blast the eye-sight and terrify the heart of Reeve Rudderhead?
Any way, it was a strange and startling coincidence, the whole episode; and the perfect similitude of the name with that of the vessel of his dreams, or his crime. This, together with the terrible circumstances under which she had been seen, had, for a time, a calming effect upon the brutal temper and spirit of the first mate, whose entry of the circumstances in the log, together with the details of how the Amethyst was handled in the hurricane, proved nearly illegible, so tremulous and uncertain was the handwriting.
As daylight broke the hurricane passed away, and the clouds cleared; but not a vestige of the wreck was to be seen, so those who swept the horizon with their glasses for her could but conclude that she had gone down, with her dead, in the night.
The sea was still running very high, and the Amethyst, having no canvas set, rolled very heavily. The morning watch, whose duty extends from 4 to 8 A.M., was now on deck.
"Away aloft and cast loose the topsails," was now the Captain's order; "hoist away, lads—up to the cross-trees with them." The courses were then let fall, and pleasantly and steadily the ship bore on, rolling away before the wind.
Derval, who had never mentioned the matter of the first mate's dreams and nocturnal visits to the Captain, had much difficulty in assuring Hal Bowline and Joe Grummet that the name he had given was that which he had really seen; for the boatswain was especially unbelieving. He laughed loudly again and again, slapped his thigh vigorously, and Derval's back too, supposing that the name was all an invention for the purpose of "giving that piratical beggar a dig—hitting him on the raw," and so forth; but the episode elicited, as usual at sea, a number of anything but enlivening or hilarious anecdotes, concerning wrecks and marvels of the deep.
"The last time I saw any dead bodies adrift upon the sea," said Joe, "was just before I shipped aboard this here craft. We had left Sidney in June, bound for Shanghai, and had fair winds till we reached latitude 6, south, when the glass fell low, the sea rose and the wind too, for we lost our fore-topmast, which snapped off at the cap like a clay-pipe. The gale increased, so we hauled to the wind on the port tack, under a close-reefed foresail, main-topsail, and fore-stay sail, and plenty of cormorants were flying about us and perching on the yard-arms. When the gale abated, and all but the watch were thankfully about to turn in, there was a cry of 'Wreck to leeward!' and there came drifting past us a raft made of planks, poles, and spars, on which was a poor wretch, almost naked as he came into the world, famished, starving, and well-nigh raving mad, the last survivor of only four unfortunate fellows who had escaped from a sinking ship. On the second day the ship sank, one of the men fell off the raft into the water, and was devoured by sharks under the eyes of the three survivors, around whom the sea-lawyers began to gather on every side. A second man died from exhaustion, and the other two threw him into the sea, hoping that then the sharks would go and leave them in peace. But the taste of human flesh seemed to increase their longings, and their numbers also, and still more when the third man fell dead on the raft and his mess-mate was too weak to throw him into the sea. They seemed to swarm up out of the deep now on every side; they crowded round the frail raft, which was level with the water, so that every wave rolled over it. Eagerly the sharks watched its only occupant on every hand, their dorsal fins quivering with hungry longings, their rows of awful teeth glittering head over head, side by side, in close ranks. Look which way he might, he saw nothing but eyes and teeth—eyes and teeth—and for well-nigh a week this lasted. He could neither sleep nor lie down, for dread of falling into the sea and being rent piece-meal. The hot sun of these scorching latitudes beat all day long upon his defenceless head; he was without food or water at last, and when we got him aboard was well-nigh a raving lunatic, and he had terrible dreams at night, like our friend in the cabin—dreams of sharp teeth and eyes, sharp teeth and glistening eyes, for long after. Another day of such work and we might have found him like his mess-mate, as the newspapers say, 'with the wital spark extinct.'"