However, his inability to keep his attention long fixed helped me here, for he never attempted to pick up the end of the thread I had cut, though, little as he spoke, two-thirds of what he delivered himself of might have been worked into hot arguments but for my cautious answers.
I was not surprised on going on deck to find the wind no more than a light draught with the main boom swinging to the long roll of the yacht and the canvas flapping with vicious snaps at sheet and yard-arm. The water seemed to wash thick as oil from the yacht’s sides, a dirty blue that went into an oozy sort of green northwards. There was a deadness in the lift of the swell that made you think of an idiot shouldering his way through a crowd, and the eye sought in vain for a streak of foam for the relief of the crisp vitality of it.
‘Is that wind or thunder, think you, Mr. Crimp?’ said I to the mate, whom I found in charge, whilst I pointed to the heaped-up folds of cloud astern, the brows of which were not far off the central sky that, spite of the sunshine, was blurred to the very luminary himself with the shadow in the north and with tatters and curls and streaks of rusty brassish vapour risen off the line of the main body and sulkily floating southwards.
‘Wind or thunder?’ answered Crimp with a dull, indifferent look; ‘well, ’tain’t tufted enough for thunder, but there’ll be a breeze, I allow, behind this here swell.’
‘Are we rising the chap ahead?’
‘Not noticeably. She’ll have to shift her hellum for us for that to happen at this pace,’ sending an askew glance over the side. I was leaving him. ‘Heard any more woices?’ he asked.
‘No, have you?’
‘No, and don’t want to. It’s been a puzzling me, though,’ he exclaimed, mumbling over a quid the juice of which had stained the corners of his mouth into so sour a sneer that no artist could have painted it better. ‘Tell’ee what it is. I’m a-going to believe in ghosts.’
‘You can’t do better,’ said I; ‘get hold of a ghost and it will explain everything for you.’