An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

There was a large full-rigged ship on the weather beam. We were slowly passing her. She was an East Indiaman, I think, of a frigate-like stateliness, with her white band and black ports, and her spacious rounds of canvas tapering in spires, to the delicate gossamer of the top-most cloths. The red ensign was waving at her peak as it was at ours, but then she was from England as we were, and had no more news to give us than we her. The bosoms of her canvas arched towards us with the rigging under each curve fine as wire against the sky that sloped to the horizon white and blinding as irradiated steel with the eastern gushing of glory there. There was just swell enough to heave a little space of her coppered forefoot out of the glittering brine that came brimming to her in a liquid blue light, and the rhythmic flash of the metal over the curl of snow at the stem gave an inexpressible grace to the dignity and majesty of the lofty and swelling fabric of cream-coloured cloths, each softened by an airy pinion of shadow at its lee clew. ’Twas wonderful the magic that ship had to vitalise and to subdue to human sympathy the brilliant, weltering wilderness of the morning ocean. She carried the thoughts away to the Thames and to Gravesend, to leave-takings and weeping women and the coming and going of boats, to the hurricane note of the Jacks getting the anchor, to the waving of handkerchiefs up on the poop, to the smell of hay for the live-stock, the gabble of poultry, the cries of children, the loud calls of officers, the ceaseless movements of passengers, stewards, friends, sailors, crowding and elbowing, talking, shaking hands, and crying upon the main deck. All this, I say, she made one think of, with a fancy, too, of the rushing Hooghley, a burning atmosphere sickly with the smell of the incense of the hubble-bubble, with a flavour of hot curry about, a dead black body gliding slowly past, the lip, lip, of the rushing stream against the ship’s bow and seething to the gangway ladder, the fiery cabins o’ nights vibratory with the horns of the mosquitoes like a distant concert of Jew’s harps mingling with the distant unearthly wail of the jackal. Pooh! ’twas a fit of imagination for its torrid atmosphere and Asiatic smells to make one mechanically mop the brow with one’s handkerchief. Why, far off as that Indiaman was the clear cool wind seemed to breeze down hot from her with an odour of bamboo and cocoanut rope, and chafing gear wrought from the jungle with strange aromas of oils along with the shriek of the paroquet and the hoarse musings of the macaw. I turned to surly old Jacob.

‘Good-morning, Mr. Crimp.’

‘Marning.’

‘Fine ship out yonder.’

‘Well, I’ve seen uglier vessels.’

I approached him close. ‘Heard any more voices, Mr. Crimp?’

‘No,’ he answered, thrusting his fingers into the door-mat of oakum upon his throat, ‘and I don’t want to.’

‘I advised you to keep your counsel,’ said I, ‘but I find that you have spoken to Captain Finn.’

‘Who wouldn’t? My mind ain’t a demijean, smother me! It’s not big enough to hold the likes of last night’s job. Told the capt’n? ’Course I did.’

I saw that he was a mule of a man, and not proper to reason with. I said with an air of indifference, ‘Have you thought the thing over? Was it a bird, as I said at the time, or a noise breaking out perhaps from the inside of the yacht, and by deception of the hearing sounding in syllables apparently away out upon the sea?’