Under Rocking Skies

by L. Frank Tooker

"Two years ago," he began slowly, with the hesitation of a man who feels moved to confidence against his better judgment, "we were running up the straits to Singapore, when it suddenly came on thick. We were close-hauled and had just about wind enough for steerageway, and we had the fog-horn going and were keeping a sharp lookout, for we were right in the track of shipping, and you know how vessels drift together in a fog, no matter which way they were heading before it thickened up. Well, we hadn't heard a peep all day, and toward night it seemed to be lifting a little, when I heard the man at the wheel give a little cry, and, looking astern, there, not a cable's length away, was a dingy, raveled-out, full-rigged Portuguese brig slipping right across our wake. They hadn't made a sound, and they didn't even then, though our old man got black in the face with cursing them for their sins. There was a black-whiskered old fellow, with his coat-collar turned up about his ears, at the wheel; but he scarcely looked our direction: only once he wagged his beard at us, and threw one arm over his head in a funny way, and then squinted aloft again, paying no more attention to us than if we'd been so much seaweed. But just forward the fore-rigging there was a row of sailormen leaning over the rail, and their eyes followed us like a lot of beady birds' eyes till the fog swallowed them up again. Well, the day after we reached Singapore the old man came aboard in a brown study. He said he'd heard ashore that there'd been a lot of dirty weather knocking about the straits, and a Portuguese brig called the Villa Real was forty days overdue. Well, she stayed overdue, and not a splinter or spun-yarn of her ever came ashore." He paused a moment to relight his pipe, and then added: "On the stern of the Portuguese brig that we had seen, in big white letters a foot high, was the name Villa Real."

In the silence that followed some one forward gave a low laugh; in the fog it sounded strange and unnatural.

"Did you ever hear a loon cry alongshore at night?" asked Medbury. For the first time on the voyage he had become actually loquacious. "I used to hear them at home when I was a boy. It's a creepy sound, and makes a man feel lonesome and homesick." He paused, as if half-ashamed of the confession, but went on, with a boyish chuckle: "Somehow, that fellow's laugh made me think of it, though I can't say it sounded like a loon, either. It's queer how one thing'll suggest another that isn't at all like it."

"It sounded strange to me, too," confessed Hetty.

"Did it?" he said, turning to her. "Well, that's funny."

"Knocking about in fog and storm, without sleep, a sailor gets queer notions in his head at times," said Captain March, slowly. "Now I had a little experience once that seemed queer at the time, though I suppose it was natural enough, if you only knew how to explain it. You know what queer shapes will sometimes loom up at night; but walk right up to 'em and you find it's nothing but a stump or a white post or something. Well, the first vessel I ever had was the schooner Sarah J. Mason. I was pretty young at the time, and I guess I was a bit nervous, but it does seem yet as if that first voyage as master was the roughest I've ever had. I had chartered for Para, and we struck dirty weather almost from the first. About eight days out the wind came out ahead, light and baffling, and I got her topsails on for the first time. But along after sundown it freshened up again, and I took 'em in. A young fellow from up the State somewhere had stowed the maintopsail, and someway, I don't know how,—I guess he was hurrying and a little careless; it was his watch below,—he slipped. For years after that, when I wasn't feeling first-rate, I used to wake up with a start, thinking I heard his yell again. Well, it wasn't very rough, and we got a boat over, but it wasn't any use. He must have gone down like a stone. After that it was dirty weather, with scarcely a glimpse of the sun, all the way out. I was upset and worn out, I guess; but one night, looking aloft, I saw some one on the main-crosstrees. There was a good-sized moon, though the sky was overcast, but light enough to see pretty distinctly. 'Who's that aloft?' says I to the second mate. He didn't answer much of anything, but walked to the rail and looked up. 'Well, call him down,' I said sharply, and he went to the rigging, and, standing on the rail, yelled: 'Who's that up there?' Then he went half-way up and stopped. I guess he stood there five minutes before he came down and went forward. In a minute he came back, looking pretty white. 'Everybody accounted for, sir,' he said, and his teeth were chattering as if he had the ague.

"Now, it sounds funny, but I never looked aloft at night on that trip without wishing I didn't have to, and there wasn't a sailorman aboard who could have been driven to go up to that masthead after dark if he'd been killed for refusing. We had fair weather coming home, and we carried that topsail till we blew it off her one night. I was plagued glad to see it go."

"Talking about explaining things if you only walk right up to them," said Medbury—"now there 're some things you can't explain. Take the old Martha Hunter, for instance. How are you going to explain her?" He leaned forward and addressed his talk to Drew, who knew nothing of the Martha Hunter. "She was built in Blackwater when I was a boy," he went on, "and before her ribs were all up Jerry Bartow fell from the scaffolding and was killed, and Tom Martin nearly cut his foot off with an adze while he was trimming a stick of timber that went into her. It went in with the stain of his blood on it, and it wasn't the last stain of the kind that she carried before she was through. Oh, she was greedy for that sort of thing! When she was launched she must have got the notion that she was designed to dig out a new channel in the harbor, for she fetched bottom and carried away her rudder; and before the year was out she came off the Boston mud-banks so badly hogged that she looked as if she'd got her sheer on upside down. It wasn't long before a sailorman fell from aloft and was killed on her deck; and the very next trip, in warping her out of her berth in Wareham, the hawser parted and broke the leg of the man who was holding turn at the capstan. Cap'n Silas Hawkins brought her home to overhaul, and the very first day he walked down the main-hatchway and was killed. Why, she used to drag ashore in any sort of a white-ash breeze; and if there was any dirty weather knocking about, she always managed to run her nose into it, and would come limping home like a disreputable old girl out on a lark. You could have filled a book with the stories of the men she lost or maimed, and the trouble she got into first and last. But she was fortunate in a way, too, for she made money, and you couldn't lose her. I guess she's running yet."

"I saw her a year ago last fall," said Captain March. "I haven't heard anything startling about her since, so I guess she's going."

"Well," said Medbury, "how are you going to explain her, and others like her? I'm not superstitious, or any more so than the common run of folks; but things like that—" He shrugged his shoulders and laughed, then, dropping his elbows to the rail again, turned to listen.