“Right ahead of us, sir,” replied the man in an equally eager tone. “And not half a cable’s length away!”
“My God!” exclaimed old Masters, the boatswain, whose grey hair seemed to stand on end with terror as we all now looked in the new direction indicated and saw a queer ghost-like craft gliding along mysteriously in the same direction as ourselves, and so close alongside that I could have chucked a biscuit aboard her without any difficulty. “That there be no mortal vessel that ever sailed the seas. Mark my words, Cap’en Applegarth, that there craft be either The Flying Dutchman, as I’ve often heard tell on, but never seen meself, or a ghost-ship; and—Lord help us—we be all doomed men!”
Chapter Six.
A Chapter of Accidents.
“Nonsense, man!” cried Captain Applegarth. “Don’t make such an ass of yourself! Flying Dutchman indeed! Why, that cock and bull yarn was exploded years ago, and I didn’t think there was a sailor afloat in the present day ass enough to believe in this story!”
“I may be a hass, sir; I know I am sometimes,” retorted old Masters, evidently aggrieved by the skipper speaking to him like this before the men. “But, sir, seein’ is believin’. There’s this ship an’ there’s that there craft a-sailin’ alongside in the teeth o’ the gale. Hass or no hass, I sees that, captain!”
“Hang it all, man, can’t you see that it is only the mirage or reflection of our own vessel, produced by the light of the meteor throwing her shadow on to the mass of cloud leeward? Look, there are our two old sticks and the funnels between, with the smoke rushing out of them! Aye, and there, too, you can see this very bridge here we’re standing on, and all of us, as large as life. Why, bo’sun, you can see your own ugly mug reflected now opposite us, just as it would be in a looking glass. Look, man!”
“Aye, I sees, sir, plain enuff, though I’m a hass,” said Masters at length. “But it ain’t nat’rel, sir, anyhow; an’ I misdoubts sich skeary things. I ain’t been to sea forty years for nothin’, Captain Applegarth, an’ I fears sich a sight as that betokens some danger ahead as ’ill happen to us some time or other this voyage. Even started on a Friday, sir, as you knows on, sir!”