An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘I should have had two of them,’ said he with a momentary darkening of his looks to the rising in him of some vexing memory, pointing as he spoke to the bow ports, ‘but Finn thought one piece of such a calibre enough at this end of the vessel, and it would have been idle to mount a stern-chaser; for what we want to fire at—should it come to it—we can always manage to keep yonder,’ nodding in the direction of the jibboom.

I had no mind to talk with him in the presence of the two fellows, one of whom I would see screw up his eye like the twist of a gimblet at us whilst he went on polishing; so I stepped into the head to take a view of the shear of the cutwater as it drove knife-like into each green freckled and glass-smooth side of surge rolling transversely from us ere shattering it into a snowstorm; but the bulwarks being too tall to enable me to see all that I looked for, I sprang on to the bowsprit and laid out to the jibboom end, which I jockeyed, holding on to a stay and beckoning to Wilfrid to follow; but he shook his head with a loud call to me to mind what I was about.

One may talk of the joy of a swift gallop on horseback when the man and the animal fit like hand and glove, when all is smooth running, with a gallant leap now and again; but what is a flight of that sort compared with the sensations you get by striding the jibboom of such a schooner as the ‘Bride’ and feeling her airily leap with you over the liquid hollows which yawn right under you, green as the summer leaf or purple as the violet for a moment or two, before the smiting stem fills the thunderous chasm with the splendour of a cloud of boiling froth! It was a picture to have detained me an hour, so noble was the spectacle of the leaning yacht for ever coming right at me as it seemed, the rounds of her canvas whitened into marble hardness with the yearn and lean of the distended cloths to a quarter of the sea where hung a brighter tincture of sky through some tenuity of the eastern greyness behind which the sun was soaring. One felt a life and soul in the little ship in every floating bound she made, in every sliding blow of the bow that sent a vast smooth curl of billow to windward for the shrill-edged blast to transform into a very cataract of stars and diamonds and prisms! Lovely beyond description was the curtseying of her gilt figure-head and the refulgence of the gold lines all about it to the milk-white softness that seethed to the hawse-pipes.

I made my way inboards and said to Wilfrid, who stood waiting for me, ‘She’s a beauty. She should achieve your end for you if it is Table Bay only you are thinking of. But yonder great horizon!’ I exclaimed, motioning with my hand. ‘We are still in the narrow sea—yet look how far it stretches! Think then of the Atlantic circle.’

‘We shall overhaul her!’ he exclaimed quickly, with a gesture that made an instant’s passion of his way of speaking. ‘Come along aft, Charles, and stump it a bit for an appetite. Breakfast can’t be far off now.’

Miss Laura did not make her appearance until we were at table. I feared that the ‘Bride’s’ lively dance had proved too much for her, and glanced aft for the maid that I might ask how her mistress did. Indeed, though on deck one gave no heed to the rolling and plunging of the yacht, the movements were rendered mighty sensible in the cabin by the swift, often convulsive, oscillations of lamps and swing-trays, by the sliding of articles of the breakfast equipment in the fiddles, by the monotonous ticking-like noise of doors upon their hooks, the slope of the cabin floor, sounds like the groanings of strong men in pain breaking in upon the ear from all parts, and above all by sudden lee-lurches which veiled the port-holes in green water, that sobbed madly till it flashed, with a shriek and a long dim roar, off the weeping glass lifted by the weather roll to the dull grey glare of the day.

But we had scarcely taken our seats when the girl arrived, and she brought such life and light and fragrance in her mere aspect to the table, that it was as though some rich and beautiful flower of a perfume sweetened yet by the coolness of dew had been placed amongst us. She had slept well, she said, but her maid was ill and helpless. ‘And where is Muffin?’ she demanded.

‘He’s a lying down, miss,’ exclaimed the head steward; ‘he says his blood-wessels is that delicate he’s got to be werry careful indeed.’

Wilfrid leaned across to her and said, in a low voice that the steward might not hear him, but with the boyish air that I had found odd, and even absurd, strong in him again, ‘Laura, my dear, imagine! Muffin is drunk.’ He broke into a strong, noisy laugh. ‘Weepingly drunk, Laura; talks of himself as a globe of fish, and indeed,’ he added, with a sudden recovery of his gravity, ‘so queer outside all inspirations of the bottle that I’m disposed to think him mad.’ Again he uttered a loud ha! ha! peering at me with his short sight to see if I was amused.

A look of concern entered Miss Jennings’ face, but quickly left it, subdued, as I noticed, by an effort of will.