“Doing? Wot she’s a-doing on, sir?” he replied, repeating my own words and mouthing them over with much gusto. “Why, sir, she’s going sixteen knots still, and the bloomin’ old grampus has been keeping it up since four bells. She carries the wind with her, too; for jist as we bore up north awhile ago, astern the chase, I’m blessed if the breeze didn’t shift round likewise to the south’ard, keepin’ astern of us as before!”
“Where is the chase?” I asked, not being able to see forwards on account of the swelling foresail and other intervening objects. “I suppose she’s right ahead, eh?”
“No, sir. Jist come here alongside o’ me at the taffrail,” said he. “Now foller my finger, sir. Look, there she is, two points off our starboard bow. She was hull down jist now, but we’re rising her fast, sir. See, there she be right under the foreyard there!”
I looked in the direction he indicated, and could very faintly in the distance see something white like a sail, almost out of sight on the ocean ahead.
“But, Masters,” said I, having no glass with me to bring her nearer, and seeing she was too far off for me to distinguish her with the naked eye, “are you certain she’s the same craft?”
“As sartin, Master Haldane,” he answered solemnly, “aye, as sartin as that when we goes aboard her, as go aboard her we must, we shall both be a-goin’ to our death! That’s the ‘ghost-ship,’ Master Haldane, as you and I’ve seed three times afore. May I die this minute if she ain’t!”
“Die! don’t talk such nonsense, Masters.”
“It ain’t no nonsense, Master Haldane,” he retorted, and looking the picture of misery and unhappiness. “That there ship means no good to you nor me, nor to none of them as seed her afore, I knows. It’s her, sure enuff. No mortal ship could sail on like that continually since Friday, right afore the wind, and still allers be a-crossin’ our hawser, though her canvas be tore to ribbings and never a man aboard, as we’ve seed. It ain’t nat’ral, nohow. Aye, she be the ‘ghost-ship’ and no mistake,—and God help us all!”
I noticed at the moment a telescope lying on the top of the saloon skylight, which Mr Fosset must have left behind him in his haste, when he came from the bridge to hail the skipper and then hurried back to his post; so, quickly catching up the glass, I scanned the distant sail, which grew more perceptible every minute.
Yes, there was no doubt about it.