"At length, favoured by a lurch of the ship, I somehow regained my footing on the bowsprit, stowed the jib in its netting, crept along the dripping spar, and regained the deck, where the men crowded round me with congratulations on my escape; for, had I remained even one moment longer among the foot-ropes, I should never have been seen again, as thrice in succession, with awful rapidity, the ship went forward, plunging bows and bowsprit under the sea with such force, that the starboard cathead and all our headrails were swept away.
"Well, sir, at that very hour—aye, at that very moment—my poor old mother, who was a-bed and asleep in her cottage by the Don, was awakened by a voice, which, with true maternal instinct and terror, she knew to be mine, crying as if in agony, and from a vast distance—'God help me, mother!'
"In the still and silent night, it rang dreadfully in her startled ears, and in her anxious heart. She roused her neighbours, and declared—poor auld body—with loud lamentations, that her dear Willie, her sailor laddie, her only bairn, was drowned; but it was only my thoughts that had rushed homeward, and she had received them in her sleep.
"It was, indeed, my voice she had heard, swept—He who holds the great deep in the hollow of his hand alone knows how—over the wide, roaring waste of the North Sea, and she never ceased to mourn for me, till our ship was signalled off the Girdleness, and all reported safe on board."
As Morley was neither so superstitious nor so deeply read as his Scotch friend, and consequently was ignorant of Dr. Ennemoser's queer theory of polarity, he could only listen in silence, as this was only one of many anecdotes such as Morrison was wont to beguile the watches of the night with.
At the time he fell over the cliff, and clutched the turf at Hawkshaw's feet, the name of "Ethel" escaped him, as we have related; but Morley had no recollection of the circumstance, and though at that dread moment his very soul seemed to fly to her, no warning voice came to poor Ethel's ear, so, in this instance, the first mate's theory was at fault.
"How steadily the trade wind holds," said he. "Watch, ahoy there, forward! set the royals and top-gallant studding-sails, and up with the flying jib—quick, lads, rouse it out of the netting, and hoist away."
These orders were promptly obeyed, and faster flew the Princess through the phosphorescent water, which seemed to smoke under her counter, and gleamed in millions of sparks in the long wake, that could be traced astern for miles upon the moonlit sea.
"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Ashton, what would be the emotions of a murderer, at such a moment as that I endured, when clinging among the hamper of the wet bowsprit, on that night in the North Sea, or when in any similar peril," observed the mate, recurring to his anecdote, as they trod to and fro.
"His emotions would be anything but enviable. That man, Hawkshaw, must feel himself a deliberate and cold-blooded assassin, and I frequently wonder how he comforts himself."