CHAPTER III
MY FELLOW PASSENGERS
It blew a hard breeze of wind that night. Soon after I had left the deck they furled the mainsail and topgallant-sail, reefed the maintopsail, and tied another reef in the mizzen-topsail. In fact, it looked as if we were to have a black gale of wind, dead on end too, with a sure prospect then of bearing up for the Downs afresh. How it may be in these steamboat times, I will not pretend to say; but my experience of the old sailing-ship is that the first night out, let the weather be what it will, is, on the whole, about as wretched a time as a man at any period of his life has to pass through.
Mr. Colledge was sound asleep in his bunk, his brandy flask within convenient reach of his hand. It was certain enough that he had heard nothing of the disturbance on deck. I undressed and rolled into my bed, and there lay wide awake for a long time. The ship creaked like a cradle. The full dismalness of a first night out was upon me, and it was made weightier yet—how much weightier indeed!—by the recollection of the wild and sudden tragedy of the evening. Oh, the insufferable weariness of the noises, the straining of the bulkheads, the yearning roar of the dark surge washing the porthole, with the boiling of it dying out into a dim simmering upon the wind, the instant stagger of the ship to the blow of some heavy sea full on her bow, the sensation of breathless descent as the vessel chopped down with a huge heave to windward into the trough, the pendulum swing of one’s wearing apparel hanging against the bulkhead, the half-stifled exclamations breaking from adjacent cabins, the whole improved into a true oceanic flavour by the occasional hoarse songs of the sailors above, faintly heard, as though you were in a vault, and that strange vibratory humming which the wind makes to one hearkening to it out of the cabin of a ship.
I fell asleep at last, and was awakened at half-past seven by the steward, who wished to know if I wanted hot water to shave with. The moment I had my consciousness, I was sensible that a heavy sea was running.
‘No shaving this morning, thank you,’ said I, ‘unless I have a mind to slice the nose off my face. How’s the weather, steward?’
‘Blowing a buster from the south’ard, sir,’ he answered, talking with his lips at the venetian of the closed door, ‘and the ship going along ’andsomely as a roll of smoke.’
Here somebody called him, and he trotted away.
Mr. Colledge awoke. ‘By George!’ he exclaimed, ‘I’ve had a doocid long sleep.’
‘How d’ye feel?’ said I.
‘In no humour to rise,’ he answered. ‘I suppose I can have what breakfast I’m likely to eat brought to me here?’