An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘Yes, by day,’ he answered, ‘and a night-glass when the dark comes.’

‘Then what good is there in that sort of test?’ she inquired. ‘The shortest-sighted man with a telescope at his eye would be able to see miles farther than the longest-sighted.’

‘Aye,’ cried my cousin, ‘but a good sight’ll see further through a glass than a feeble one, and I want to find out who have got the good sight amongst those fellows.’

I saw her peep askant at me to gather what I thought of this business. Very clearly she found nothing but childishness in it. Meanwhile Wilfrid kept his large weak eyes fixed upon the two fellows on the topgallant yard. They might have been a couple of birds perched on a bough and he a great hungry tom-cat watching them. Finn was at the wheel, having sent the man who had been steering to join the others aloft. The mate on the forecastle looked sulkily up; the growling that was going on within him, and his astonishment and scorn of the whole proceeding, were inimitably expressed in his posture. Twenty minutes passed. I was sick of staring, and filled another pipe, though without venturing to speak, for the breathless intensity of expectation in Wilfrid’s manner, along with the eager, aching, straining expression of his face upturned to where the men were, was a sort of spell in its way upon one, and I positively felt afraid to break the silence. On a sudden the man on the port side of the topgallant yard raised his hand, and in the space of a breath afterwards up went the other fellow’s arm. But my cousin had won his bet; he hit his leg a blow with boyish delight strong in his face.

‘A magnificent test, isn’t it?’ he whispered, as though he feared his voice would travel aloft; ‘now watch the topsail yard. The fellows there haven’t seen the gestures of the chaps above them. Another sovereign to ten shillings, Charles, that the outermost man to windward will hold up his hand first.’

I took the bet, and, as luck would have it, he won again, for a very few minutes after the sail had been descried from the loftiest yard the man whom Wilfrid had backed signalled, and then up went the arms of the other three along with the arms of the two fellows who were stationed on the fore yard as though they were being drilled, whilst a rumble of laughter sounded from amongst a group of the starboard watch, who were standing near the galley awaiting the issue of the test.

The hands came down; the mate set the crew to work; the fellow whose trick it was at the wheel relieved the captain, who walked up to us.

‘That’s what they sighted, sir,’ he exclaimed, pointing ahead, where we could just catch a glimpse of an airy streak of a marble hue, which showed only whenever our speeding schooner lifted upon some seething brow that washed in thunder slantwise to leeward, but which presently enlarged to the proportions of a powerful cutter, apparently a revenue boat, staggering under a press as though in a hurry, steering north for an English port.

Wilfrid’s satisfaction was unbounded; his exuberance of delight was something to startle one, seeing that there was nothing whatever to justify it. As I looked at him I recalled Miss Laura’s remark as to fits of excessive gloom following these irrational soarings of spirits, and expected shortly to find him plunged in a mood of fixed black melancholy. He told Captain Finn to have the other watch tested in the same way before the day was out, and produced fifteen shillings, ten of which were to go to the two men whom he had backed, and half-a-crown apiece to the fellows on the fore yard. Finn took the money with an eye that seemed actually to languish under its load of expostulation, but he made no remark. He anticipated, as I might, indeed, that fathom after fathom of hoarse forecastle arguments would attend this distribution, for assuredly the men on the foreyard were no more entitled to the money than the others who received none.

‘Now, captain,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘send the man who first sighted that sail yonder aloft at once. Let the foretopgallant yard be the look-out station; d’ye understand?’