‘It was,’ said the other—a grizzled, tanned, elderly man—as he warmed his legs, and looked rather ashamed of himself. ‘But hardly enough to make such a row over as you chaps reckons I did. I was dreamin’,’ he continued, speaking slowly, ‘as I was at sea again. It was on Christmas Day, an’ the ship was close to Cape Horn. How I knowed that, I can’t tell. But the land was in sight quite plain. Me an’ another feller—I can see his ugly face yet, and sha’n’t never forget it—was makin’ fast one of the jibs. Presen’ly we seemed to ’ave some words out there, hot an’ sharp. Then I done a thing, [279] ]the like o’ which ud never come into my mind when awake—not if I lived to the age of Methyuseler—I puts my sheath-knife into him right up to the handle.
‘The weather were heavy, an’ the ship a-pitchin’ bowsprit under into a head sea. Well, I was just watchin’ his face turn sorter slate colour, an’ him clingin’ on to a gasket an’ starin’ hard, when she gives a dive fathoms deep.
‘When I comes up again I was in the water, an’ there was the ship half-a-mile away.
‘Swimmin’ an’ lookin’ round, I spies the other feller alongside me on top of a big comber, with the white spume all red about him.
‘Nex’ minute, down he comes, an’ I feels his two hands a-grippin’ me tight by the throat. I expect’s it was then I sung out an’ woke myself,’ and the man shivered as he gazed intently into the heart of the glowing myall ashes.
‘Well, Jack Ashby,’ said one of his hearers, gathering up the scattered cards, ‘it wasn’t a nice dream. If I was you I should take it as a warnin’ never to go a-sailorin’ no more. Never was at the game myself, and don’t want to be. There can’t be much in it, though, when just the very thoughts o’ what’s never ’appened, an’ what’s never a-goin’ to ’appen, is able to give a chap such a start as you got.’
‘Ugh!’ exclaimed the sailor, getting up and shaking himself as he climbed into his bunk. ‘No, I’ll never go back to sea again!’
[280]
]But, in course of time, Jack Ashby became tired of station life—became tired of the everlasting drudgery of the rouseabout, the burr-cutting, lamb-catching, and all the rest of it.
He had no more dreams of the kind. But when o’ nights the wind whistled around and shook the crazy old hut, he would turn restlessly in his bunk and listen for the hollow thud of the rope-coils on the deck above, the call of ‘All hands,’ the wild racket of the gale, and the hiss of stormy waters.
So his thoughts irresistibly wandered back again to the tall ships and the old shipmates, and all the magic and mystery of the great deep on whose bosom he had passed his life. He knew that he was infinitely better off where he was—better paid, better fed, better off in every respect than he could ever possibly hope to be at sea.