‘Ay, if I ain’t drownded. Then settling ashore with me’ll sinnify a hole in the airth.’
‘Come, come,’ said I, ‘after thirty years of hard labour there’ll be surely dollars enough for a clean shirt and a roof. But you may be married, though?’
‘No I ain’t,’ he answered with a snap like cocking a gun.
‘Well, a sailor is a fool to get married,’ said I. ‘Why should a man burthen himself with a wife whose society he cannot enjoy, with whom he accepts all the obligations of a home without the privilege of occupying it, save for a few weeks at a time?’
‘Well, I ain’t married, so I don’t care. It’s nothen to me what other men do. Talk o’ settling! If you come to my berth I’ll show you the fruits of thirty year of sea sarvice; an old chest, a soot or two of clothes, and ’bout as much ready cash as ’ud purchase a dose of ratsbane.’ Here emotion choked him and he remained silent.
At this moment a low, mocking, most extraordinary laugh came out of the blackness upon the sea in the direction I happened to be gazing in. The sound was a distinct ha! ha! ha! and before the derisive, hollow, mirthless note had fairly died off the ear, a brisk angry voice within apparently a pistol-shot of us exclaimed, ‘That yacht is cursed!’ A laugh like the first followed and then all was still.
Crimp started, and I was grateful to heaven he did so, since it was an assurance the noise had been no imagination of my own. I will not deny that I felt exceedingly frightened. My legs trembled like an up-and-down lead line in a strong tideway. It was not only the suddenness, the unexpectedness of such a thing; it was the combination of deep gloom upon the waters, the play of the phosphoric fires there, the oppressive mystery of the sombre vastness stretching from over our rail as it seemed to the immeasurably remote dim lights of heaven lying low upon the edge of the ocean, and languishing in the darkness there.
‘Did you hear it?’ I cried in a subdued voice to Crimp.
‘Ay,’ responded the man in a startled voice. ‘I don’t see anything. Do you?’
I peered my hardest. ‘Nothing,’ I exclaimed. ‘Hush, the cry may be repeated.’