‘Is she the “Shark,” Charles?’
‘You know I never saw the vessel, Wilf. But Finn and the chap on the yard seem to have no doubt of her, and the skipper ought to know anyway.’
On this he leapt to the deck with a cry of laughter, and coming up to me let fall his hand heavily upon my shoulder with such a grip of it that, spite of my having my coat on, it ached after he had let go like an attack of rheumatism. ‘Now what say you?’ said he, stooping, for he was a taller man than I, and peering and grinning close into my face. ‘You looked upon this chase as a crazy undertaking, didn’t you? The sea was such a mighty circle, Charles! the biggest ship in the world but an insignificant speck upon it, hey?’
He let go of me and brought his hands together, extending and slowly beating the air with them, with his body rocking. I awaited some passionate outfly, but whether his thoughts were too deep for words or that he was satisfied to think what at another time he might have stormed out with, he held his peace. Presently and very suddenly he abandoned his singular attitude and fell to collecting articles of his clothing which he pulled on as though he would tear them to pieces.
‘I’ll be with you on deck immediately,’ said I, going to the door. But he did not seem to know that I was present; all the time he strained and dragged at his clothes he talked to himself rapidly, fiercely; pausing once to smite his thigh with his open hand; following this on with a low, deep laugh, like that of a sleeper dreaming.
Well, thought I, as I stepped out and went to my berth, whether it prove the ‘Shark’ or not we shall have to ‘stand by,’ as Finn hinted, for some queer displays to-day. I met Miss Jennings’ maid in the cabin and asked if she was going to her mistress. She replied yes. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘give her my compliments and tell her that we have raised a large schooner-yacht during the night, and that Finn seems to think she is the “Shark.”’
As I entered my berth I caught myself smiling over my fancy of the look that would come into the sweet girl’s face when her maid gave her the message; the brilliant gleam of mingled alarm, temper, astonishment in her eyes, the sudden flush of her cheek and its paleness afterwards, the consternation in the set of her lips and the agitation of her little hands like the fluttering of falling snow-flakes as she dressed. But in good sooth I too was feeling mightily excited once more; I had cooled down somewhat since going on deck and viewing the distant sail from the masthead; now that I was alone and could muse, my pulse rose with my imaginations till it almost came to my thinking of myself as on the eve of some desperate and bloody business, boarding a pirate, say, with the chance of a live slow match in his magazine, or cutting out something heavily armed and full of men under a castle bristling with artillery. Supposing the craft to be the ‘Shark,’ what was to be the issue? The ‘Bride’ would be recognised; and Hope-Kennedy was not likely, as I might take it, to let us float alongside of him if he could help it. Suppose we maimed her and compelled her to bring to; what then? I had asked Finn this question long before, and he had said it would not come to a hand-to-hand struggle. But how could he tell? If we offered to board they might threaten to fire into us, and a single shot, let alone a wounded or a killed man, might raise blood enough to end in as grim an affray as ever British colours floated over. Small wonder that my excitement rose with all these fancies and speculations. And then again, supposing the stranger to be the ‘Shark,’ there was (to me) the astonishing coincidence of falling in with her—picking her up, indeed, as though we had been steered dead into her wake by some spirit hand instead of blundering on her through a stroke of luck, which had no more reference to Finn’s calculations, and suppositions and hopings, than to the indications of the nose of our chaste and gilded figure-head.
When I went on deck I spied Wilfrid coming down the forerigging. He held on very tightly and felt about with his sprawling feet with uncommon cautiousness for the ratlines ere relaxing his grip of the shrouds. Finn was immediately under him, standing by, perhaps, to shoulder him up if he should turn dizzy. They reached the deck and came aft.
‘She’s not yet in sight from the cross-trees,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, puffing and irritable from nervousness and exertion and disappointment, ‘and I can’t climb higher.’
‘If she’s the “Shark,”’ said I, ‘you’re not going to raise her upon the horizon as if she were a beacon. But there’s a spread of wings here that she can’t show anyhow, and it will be strange if her white plumes are not nodding above that blue edge by noon.’