The cry now raised recalls her, causing all to rush towards the frigate’s side, and once more bend their eyes on the barque.
No, not on her; only in the direction where she was last seen. For, to their intense astonishment, the polacca has disappeared!
Chapter Seven.
A Black Squall.
The surprise caused by the disappearance of the strange vessel is but short-lived; explained by that very natural phenomenon—a fog. Not the haze already spoken of; but a dense bank of dark vapour that, drifting over the surface of the sea, has suddenly enveloped the barque within its floating folds.
It threatens to do the same with the frigate—as every sailor in her can perceive. But though their wondering is at an end, a sense of undefined fear still holds possession of them. Nor is this due to the fast approaching fog. That could not frighten men who have dared every danger of the deep, and oft groped their way through icy seas shrouded in darkness almost amorphous.
Their fears spring from the old fancy, that the other phenomena are not natural. The fog of itself may be; but what brings it on, just then, at a crisis, when they were speculating about the character of the chased vessel, some doubting her honesty, others sceptical of her reality, not a few boldly pronouncing her as a phantom? If an accident of nature, certainly a remarkable one.
The reader may smile at credulity of this kind; but not he who has mixed among the men of the forecastle, whatever the nationality of the ship, and whether merchantmen or man-of-war. Not all the training of naval schools, nor the boasted enlightenment of this our age, has fully eradicated from the mind of the canvas-clad mariner a belief in something more than he has seen, or can see—something outside nature. To suppose him emancipated from this would be to hold him of higher intelligence than his fellow-men, who stay ashore ploughing the soil, as he does the sea. To thousands of these he can point, saying: “Behold the believers in supernatural existences—in spirit-rappings—ay, in very ghosts; this not only in days gone by, but now—now more than ever within memory of man!” Then let not landsmen scoff at such fancies, not a whit more absurd than their own credence in spiritualism.