“What with his face and his words, and the bad smell from the fog, I confess I began to feel queer myself—not frightened exactly—but I’d have much rather have been on Southsea common in the broad daylight than where I was at that moment, I can tell you.”
“Did you see anything, Jim?” I asked the old sailor at this juncture.
“I seed nothing, Master Charles, as yet but I felt something, I can’t tell what or how to explain; it was a sort of all-overish feeling, as if something was a-walking over my grave, as folks say, summat uncanny, I do assure you.
“The captain and the first lieutenant was on the quarter-deck, the latter with his telescope to his eye a-gazing at something forward apparently, that he was trying to discern amongst the clumps of fog. I was nigh them, and being to leeward could hear what they said.
“The first lieutenant, I hears him, turns to the captain over his shoulder speaking like, and sez he—
“‘Captain Manter, I can’t make it out exactly, but it’s most curious;’ and then turning to me, he sez, ‘Newman, go down to my steward and ax him to give you my night-glass.’
“I went down and fetched the glass and handed it to him, he giving me t’other one to hold; and he claps the night-glass to his eye.
“‘By Jove, Captain Manter,’ sez he presently, ‘I was right, it is the greatest marine monster I ever saw!’
“‘Pooh!’ says the captain, taking the glass from him and looking himself. ‘It’s only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this appearance of the sea!’ But presently I heard him mutter something under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, ‘It is best to be prepared;’ and a moment after that he gave an order, and the boatswain piped up and we beat to quarters. It was very strange that, wasn’t it? And so every man on board thought.
“A very faint breeze was springing up again, and I was on the weather side of the ship, which was towards the land from which the wind came, when suddenly Gil Saul, who was in the same battery and captain of my crew, grips my arm tight. ‘It’s coming! it’s coming!’ he said right in my ear, and then the same horrible foul smell wafted right over the ship again, and a noise was heard just as if a herd of wild horses were sucking up water together.