He eyed me dully, and after a stupid, staring pause, exclaimed, ‘I wish you hadn’t heard it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? ’Cause then I might ha’ believed it was my fancy; but as I says to the capt’n, two collected intellects ain’t going to get the same meaning out o’ what’s got no sense. I hope that this here trip may turn out all right, that’s all. I’ve been a going to sea now for thirty year, but smite me if ever I was in a wessel afore that was damned in the first watch by a woice a-sounding out of the blackness with nothen for it to come from.’
The breakfast bell now rang, and I went below not a little surprised by this exhibition of superstitious alarm in so sour and matter-of-fact a seaman as Jacob Crimp. For my part, though I admit the thing greatly puzzled me, it was only as some conjuring trick might. Perhaps with old Crimp I should have been better satisfied had but one of us heard the voice; or, presuming us both to have caught the sound, had we each made a different sentence of it. There lay the real oddness of the incident, but as to supposing there was anything supernatural in it, I should have needed the brains of my cousin, who could interpret Muffin’s stale and vulgar trick into a solemn injunction, perhaps from heaven, to think so.
Wilfrid joined us at breakfast; he made a good meal, and was easy in his spirits. I asked him if he had been troubled with any more warnings. He answered no, nothing whatever had occurred to disturb him. He had slept soundly, and had not passed so good a night for days and days. ‘But,’ said he with a glance round the cabin, for the valet had been hanging about, though he did not station himself behind his master’s chair as heretofore, ‘if I were ashore I should be prepared for another kind of warning, I mean a warning from Muffin, if I may judge by his face and manner. Something is wrong with the fellow.’
‘You once suspected his sanity,’ said I, smiling. ‘Upon my word I cannot persuade myself that such a dial-plate as his covers sound clockwork. He strikes wrongly, I’m sure. He don’t keep true time, Wilf.’
‘Do you think so really?’ he exclaimed with some anxiety.
‘Do you believe Muffin to be perfectly sound, Miss Jennings?’ said I, giving her a significant glance.
‘I should be very sorry to trust him,’ she answered with a spirited gaze at Wilfrid.
The subject dropped; our conversation went to the Indiaman that lay for a little, whilst we sat at the breakfast table, framed in the cabin porthole abreast of us, coming and going with the light reel of the yacht, but whenever set for a moment then the most dainty and lovely image imaginable, like to some small choice wondrous carving in mother-of-pearl of a ship, shot with many subtle complexions of light as though you viewed her through a rainbow of fairy-like tenuity. Then, having talked of her, we passed on to our voyage, till on a sudden a fit of sullenness fell upon Wilfrid, and he became moody; but, happily, I had by this time finished my breakfast, and as I had no notion of an argument, nor of courting one of his hot, reproachful, vexing speeches touching his own anguish and my coldness, I left the table, telling Miss Jennings that she would find her chair, rugs, and novel ready for her on deck when she should be pleased to join me.