“ ‘Just so,’ said he, ‘and if you had not been the kind of man I take you for, I should not have broached a word to you, seeing that you are a stranger to me, and seem to have met with Captain Catherton before.’
“ ‘The truth is,’ I answered, ‘I have been haunted with such a notion, ever since I boarded the ship in the offing; but as I have repeatedly racked my memory in vain to account for the impression, I begin to think that we must have met in a dream, or that my mind has been misled by a fancied resemblance to some one else, whom I have forgotten. However,’ said I, by way of a finale, ‘if he has murdered his wife and the boat’s crew in the way in which you suspect, depend upon it, he is as certain to swing in the wind, as a ship to her anchor, in a tide-way. In the meantime, it is best to say as little about the matter as possible—and you may as well turn the people too, and have the head-sails unbent.’
“ ‘Very good, sir,’ answered Parker, and down the poop-stairs he went, while I dove into the sail-room.
“While the crew were sending up new sails in place of the old top-sails and courses—worn as thin as sere leaves, blackened with the sooty smoke of the try-works, and marked in fifty places, from the yard-arms down, with gurry—the captain came off, with the old Parsee in company. I, immediately, made my report to him of the difficulty which had occurred in the morning, which he seemed disposed to treat lightly, informing me in turn, that Halil Ben Hamet had gone ashore before daylight, and had arranged every thing for the escape of Zuma on Saturday night.
“ ‘The blow is to be struck,’ he whispered, ‘at midnight, and on Sunday evening we weigh.’
“He then went below, and in a few minutes afterward, as I stood in the gangway, overlooking the preparations for sea, the two came up on the raised deck, for the sake of the current of air, which was felt or fancied under the awning of the poop. They were both in high spirits; the captain laughing and making the best use of his Arabic, with an occasional fragment of Persian, which he had picked up in his cruises; while the grave, ghostly Parsee—whose thin, bloodless face, and attenuated figure, seemed to set the boiling-point at defiance—sat under the awning, cosily ensconced in a bamboo arm-chair, his back at a luxurious angle, his slippered feet nestling in a sort of carved stool, which wheeled from beneath, and the bowl of his crooked pipe resting on the hot, white deck. He had exchanged his high, purple cap, embroidered with white flowers, for another of lighter make and smaller dimensions, the peak of which overhung and contrasted oddly with his orange cheek; and as the men swaying on the buntlines, squinted oft at his collarless white tunic, and calm, passionless face, with the scented smoke curling up in blue wreaths from the thin mustache, to the gurgle of his hookah, you’d’ve almost thought the fellows took the old Tartar’s poop for some odd corner of the eastern paradise.
“I was dreaming of some such thing myself, when I was suddenly startled by a half-smothered shriek from aft, coming, as it seemed to me, from the cabin under the raised deck. The mulatto steward, who happened to be passing along to the galley, dropped his basket of dishes with a crash, while Catherton himself, grew pale as death, sitting still on the poop, as it appeared, without the power to move a limb. The steward, however, without waiting to count the fragments of his dinner-plates, ran precipitately down the cabin stairs, while the second mate, who was standing near the break of the deck, speaking to the men on the mizzen-topsail-yard, slued half-round, turning as white as the canvas. Catching my eye, he stood fast again, continuing his orders; though both he and the men aloft, who heard the cry distinctly enough, were sufficiently startled to show what they thought of it. One great, clumsy fellow, slipping off the foot-ropes in his fright, when, doubtless he would have made a ghost of himself, had not a boat-steerer caught him by the breast of his duck-frock, and jerked him up on the yard again. For my part, seeing the superstitious fears of the rest, and noticing the change on the captain’s face, a strong contrast to his look a moment before, when he was carrying it off so pleasantly, I did not know what to make of it, thinking one instant of Catherton’s deceased wife, and the next of the Circassian Zuma, who, it flashed upon me, might have been brought on board without my knowledge. In a few moments, however, the steward came up on the poop with the monkey clinging to him, and told the captain, that one of the mutinous rascals whom we had confined below, had worked off his irons, and breaking open a small slide between the steerage and the store-room, had frightened master Jocko into hystericks. I caught the second mate’s eye seeking mine again at this; and Catherton called out from where he sat, to release the men, and turn them to with the rest.
“This was done, and nothing more said of the occurrence at the time, for a breeze suddenly sprung up, bringing in another of the sultan’s cruisers, which had been in sight in the offing all day, with a fleet of dows in convoy. She was a heavy frigate, with an English name, which I have forgotten. She came to anchor on the flood, abreast of the palace at the bottom of the cove, while the great, clumsy dows, moored in the passage astern of the grab-brig.
“The Parsee merchant went on shore just after dark; and being engaged on deck until late in the evening, I had no particular conversation with the captain that night. Awaking from an uneasy sleep about midnight, I went on deck.
“The harbor was still as death. The hot breath of the land-wind had failed. Not a cloud was to be seen on the sky, where the moon and the stars shone with resplendent beauty. The heat was excessive, the least exertion causing the perspiration to stream from the pores. All at once, as I leaned over the quarter, listening to a stir which sprung up on board of my old brig, which had been dismantled and turned into a floating hospital, it struck me that I heard a low murmur of voices, proceeding from the galley of the Tartar. My curiosity being sharpened by the shriek, which had so confused Captain Catherton and the steward, and set Parker and I off on opposite tacks—he thinking of a ghost, and I of the Circassian—I walked slowly for’ard on the larboard side of the deck, anxious to know what was going on.