An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

Finn stood near; I took his glass from him and levelled it. ‘Why, ’tis merely ambling with her, captain,’ said I; ‘gaff topsails down and no hint of squaresail that I can make out. The cloud we are making astern should puzzle her. D’ye think Captain Fidler will recognise this vessel?’

‘Why, yes, sir; bound to it,’ he answered; ‘we aren’t like the “Shark,” you know: our figure-head alone is as good as naming us. Then our sheer of bow ’ud sarve like a sign-post to Fidler. Back this by our square rig and he’d have to ha’ fallen dark to mistake,’ meaning by dark, blind.

‘Is the “Shark” to be as easily recognised?’ asked Miss Jennings, who stood close by me, occasionally laying her hand upon my arm to steady herself and putting the other to her lips to speak, for the breeze rang with a scream in it at times over the rail in a manner to sweep the words out of her mouth as though her syllables were the smoke of a cigarette. Finn shook his long head.

‘Lay me close aboard, miss,’ said he, ‘and I’ll tell you the “Shark” from another craft; but there’s nothen distinct about her as there is with us. She’s black without gilt like a great many others, of a slaving pattern, long, low, without spring forrads or aft, with apple sides like others again. But,’ said he after a pause, during which he had taken a look through his telescope at the glistening fragment hovering like a butterfly over the bow, ‘though I don’t want to say too much, sir, I’d be willing to lay down a good bit o’ money on the chance of yonder chap proving the “Shark.” Time, place, all sarcumstances point her out.’

‘True,’ said I; ‘but there are many schooners afloat.’

‘Ay, sir; but such a coincidence as that, your honour,’ said he pointing, ‘sits too far on the werge of what’s likely to fit it to sarve as part of a man’s reckonings.’

‘I agree with Captain Finn,’ said Miss Laura; ‘besides, I feel here that it is the vessel we are pursuing.’ She laid her hand upon her bosom and turned to cross the deck where her chair was.

I assisted her to her seat with a peep out of the corner of my eyes at Wilfrid, but there was no encouragement in his face; so, posting myself forward of the companion for the shelter of it, I lighted a cigar and puffed away in silence till the luncheon bell rang. Wilfrid did not come to table. When I returned on deck after lingering nearly an hour below, partly with the wish to put some heart into Miss Jennings, who was pitifully dejected and nervous, and partly because I had had a long spell in the open air and guessed that for some time yet there would be little enough of the schooner showing to be worth looking at—I say when I returned I found my cousin at the rail with his arms tightly clasped on his breast staring fixedly ahead, with a face grim, indeed, with the scowling contraction of the brows, but as collected in the determined severity of it as can be imagined. In fact, the sight of the schooner ahead had gathered all his faculties and wandering fancies and imaginations into a bunch, so to speak, and his mind as you saw it in his eyes, in the set of his lips, in the resolved and contained posture of his body, was as steady as that of the sanest man aboard us. It was without wonder, however, that I perceived we had risen the yacht to the line of her rail, when I noticed that she still kept under short canvas whilst the ‘Bride’ was bursting through the surges to the impulse now even of the lower studdingsail. I took Finn’s glass from him and made out a very handsome schooner, loftily sparred with an immense head to her mainsail, the boom of which hung far over her quarter, whilst she swang in graceful floating leapings from hollow to ridge with the round of her stern lifting black and flashing off each melting brow that underran her. We had, indeed, come up with her hand over hand, but then it would be almost the worst point of sailing for a fore-and-aft vessel, whilst we were carrying in our square rig alone pretty nearly the same surface of canvas that she had abroad. She was too far off as yet, even with the aid of the glass, to distinguish her people.

‘What do you think, Finn, now?’ said I, turning to him. He stood close beside me with his long face working with anxiety, and straining his sight till I thought he would shoot his eyes out of their sockets.

‘If she ain’t the “Shark,”’ said he, ‘she’s the “Flying Dutchman.” I had but one doubt. Yonder craft’s boats are white, and my notion, but I couldn’t swear to him, was that the “Shark’s” boats were blue. I’ve been forrards amongst the men, a few of whom are acquainted with Lord Winterton’s yacht, and one of ’em says her boats was blue, whilst th’ others are willing to bet their lives that they are white.’