‘Well, ’taint a childish notion anyhow. There’s first class folks as believes in sperrits. What’s a ghost like? Ne’er a man as I’ve asked forrads knows saving the mute, who describes it as a houtline.’
‘What’s inside his outline?’ I asked.
‘Why, that there Muffin can’t get further than that. I says to him, how can a houtline speak? Look here, says he, answer me this: suppose ye takes a bottle and sucks out all the air from inside of it, what’s left? A wacuum, says I. And what’s a wacuum? says he. Why, I says, says I, space, ain’t it? I says. And what’s space? says he. Why nothen, I suppose, I says, says I. Then, says he, how can nothen exist? And yet, says he, it do exist, because ye can point to the bottle and say there it is. So with a ghost, says he; it’s a houtline with nothen inside it if you like, but it’s as real in its emptiness as the inside of a bottle with nothen in it.’
At any other time I should have hugely enjoyed an argument with this acrid old sailor on such a subject as ghosts. There is no company to my taste to equal that of a sour, prejudiced, ignorant salt of matured years, whose knowledge of life has been gained by looking at the world through a ship’s hawse pipe, and who is full to the throat with the sayings and the superstitions of the forecastle. Jacob Crimp was such a man. Indeed he was the best example of the kind that I can recollect, thanks, perhaps, to the help he got from his queer sea-eyes, glutinous in appearance as a jelly-fish, one peering athwart the other with a look of quarrelling about them that most happily corresponded with the sulky expression of his face and the growl of his voice that was like a sea-blessing. But it was impossible to think of the schooner ahead and talk with this man about ghosts. I left him and got into the fore-shrouds and ascended to the cross-trees, where, receiving the glass from the fellow on the yard above, I took a view of the sea over the bow, and caught plainly the canvas of the vessel we were heading for,—her mainsail visible to the boom of it with a glimpse of her bowsprit end wriggling off into the dusky blue air at every rise of her bow to the lift of the swell. I noticed, however, that she had taken in her main gaff topsail, possibly with an eye to the weather astern; but it was a thing to set me problemising. Supposing her to be the ‘Shark,’ either she had not yet sighted us or she had no suspicion of us. Fidler, her captain, would, when we showed fair, be pretty sure to twig us by our rig; but was it likely that the Colonel and Lady Monson would gravely suppose that Wilfrid had started in chase of them? That, indeed, might depend upon whether her ladyship had missed the Colonel’s letter to her, which my cousin had asked me to read. Well, we should have to wait a little. My heart beat briskly as I descended to the deck. Put yourself in my place, and think of the sort of excitement that was threatened before that morning sun shining up there had set!
Half an hour later the weak draught had died out; the rolling of the ‘Bride’ was putting a voice of thunder into her canvas, and the strain on hemp and spar presently obliged old Crimp to take in his studdingsails, which he followed on by ordering the topgallant-sail to be rolled up and the gaff topsail hauled down. Wilfrid, who had arrived on deck, stood haggardly eyeing these manœuvres, but he said nothing, contenting himself with an occasional look, as dark as the shadow astern of us, at the weather there, and a fretful stride to the rail and a stormy stare at the sallow oil-smooth water that came swelling to the counter and washing the length of the little ship in a manner that made her stagger at times most abominably.
‘Let that vessel prove what she may,’ said I, sitting down on a grating abaft the wheel close to which he was standing, ‘we appear to have the heels of her in light airs, however it may be with her in a breeze of wind.’
‘How do you know?’ he inquired in a churchyard note.
‘Why,’ said I, ‘I was just now in the crosstrees and found her showing fair from them, whereas before breakfast she was only visible from the topgallantyard.’
He looked at me with a heavy, leaden eye, and said, ‘A plague on the wind! It has all gone; just when we want it too.’
‘We shall have a capful anon,’ I exclaimed; ‘no need to whistle for it. Mark how it brightens down upon the sea-line yonder as that shadow floats upwards. That means wind enough to whiten this tumbling oiliness for us.’