Next day, Mr. Riley put in an appearance at breakfast. On seeing me he came round to my seat, and in a few words begged me not to explain the cause of the quarrel, as he had no wish that his peculiarity as a sleeper should be known to the rest of us. I gave him my word, but regretted that he should have exacted it, as I wished to talk with Saunders and Hemmeridge on the very extraordinary manifestations I had witnessed. It was fortunate, however, that my share in the disturbance was not guessed at. The colonel, Hemskirk, and the rest imagined that I had been drawn to the young men’s berth by the noise, as they had, and no questions were therefore asked me. Mr. Greenhew kept his bed for three days. It was mainly sulking and shame with him, the others thought; but the truth was his eye had not only closed, but was so swollen and blackened as to render him unfit to appear in public. He sent one of the stewards to ask me to see him; but I had had quite enough of Mr. Greenhew, and contrived to keep clear of the youth until his coming on deck made escape from him impossible.
Nothing happened worth noting in the week that followed this business. The trade-wind blew as languid a breeze as ever vexed the heart and inflamed the passions of a ship-master. It was to be a long passage, we all said—six months, Mr. Johnson predicted—and old Keeling admitted that he had nothing to offer us in the way of hope until we had crossed the equator, where the south-east trades might compensate us for this northern sluggishness by blowing a brisk gale of wind.
However, if the dull crawling of the ship held the spirits of us who lived aft somewhat low, forward the Jacks made sport enough for themselves, and of a second dog-watch were as jolly a lot as ever fetched an echo out of a hollow topsail with salt-hardened lungs. There were a couple of excellent fiddlers amongst them, and these chaps would perch themselves upon the booms, and with bowed heads and quivering arms saw endless dance-tunes out of the catgut. Many a half-hour have I pleasantly killed in watching and hearkening to the forecastle frolics. The squeaking of the fiddles was the right sort of music for the show; the Jacks in couples lovingly embracing each other, slided, twirled, frisked, polked with loose delighted limbs between the forecastle rails, their hairy faces grinning over each other’s shoulders; or one of them would take the deck—the rest drawing off to smoke a pipe and look on —and break into a noble maritime shuffle—the true deep-sea hornpipe—always dancing it to perfection, as I would think. One such scene I vividly recall as I sit writing: a tar of manly proportions, a little way past the forecastle ladder, plain in the view of the poop, his shoes twinkling, his flowing duck breeches trembling, his arms folded, or one hand gracefully arching to his head, his straw hat on nine hairs, his face between his broad black whiskers showing out in the hue of claret, his little eyes sparkling with the enjoyment of the measures, and the perspiration hopping off his nose like parched peas; past him a crowd of storm-dyed faces meditatively surveying him, gnawing with excitement upon the junks standing high in their cheeks in their sympathy with the dancer, or pulling their pipes from their lips with the slow deliberateness of the merchant sailor to expectorate and growl out a comment upon the capering lively; to the right of him amidships on the booms the two fiddlers, working their hardest, and threatening every moment to topple over on to the deck with the energy of their movements. Far ahead forked out the great bowsprit and jib-booms, made massive to the eye by the long spritsail yard and the enormously thick gear of shrouds and guys; on high rose the canvas at the fore, yellowing as it soared into a golden tinge to the westering glory that was setting the heavens on fire on the starboard beam. Oh! it was a sight beautiful exceedingly, with the gilding of the ropes by the sunset to the complexion of golden wire, and a long line of blood-red radiance flowing down to the ship from the horizon, and making a sparkling scarlet of the fabric’s glossy sides, and putting a crimson star of splendour into every window, with the sweep of the dark-blue sea coursing in long lines into the east, that showed in a liquid softness of violet past the wan spaces of the far overhanging studdingsails.
In this same week about which I am writing, Mr. Colledge, inspired possibly by the noise of the fiddles forward and the spectacle of the forecastle jinks, made an effort to get up a dance aft; but to no purpose. Some of the girls looked eagerly when the thing was suggested; and certainly Colledge’s programme was a promising one: there was the wide spread of awning for a ballroom ceiling; there were flags in abundance to stretch between the ridge-rope and the rail, as a wall of radiant colours through which the moon would sift her delicate tender haze without injury to the light of the lanterns, which were to be hung in a row on either side fore and aft; there was the piano to rouse up from its moorings below, and to be secured on some part of the deck where its tinkling could be everywhere heard. There was also a quiet sea, and a deck whose gentle cradling could but serve as a pulse to the joyous revolutions of the waltz.
Colledge was enchanted with his scheme, and went about thirstily in the prosecution of it; but, as I have said, to no purpose. Colonel Bannister shouted with derision when asked if he would dance; Greenhew was not yet well of his eye, was extremely sulky, and hung about in retired places; Riley called dancing a bore; Fairthorne pleaded tender feet; little Saunders smote his breast to Colledge’s inquiry and said plaintively: ‘Who would stand up with me?’ In short, every man-jack of us aft, saving Mr. Johnson and myself, declined to take any active part in the proposed ball; and Colledge, with a face of loathing, abandoned the idea, vowing to me that he had never met with such a pack of scarecrows in his life, and that we should have been better off in the direction of jollity and companionship had the cargo of monkeys been spared to take the place of our male passengers.
Thus did we somewhat wearily roll our way through the Atlantic parallels, fanned by a light north-east wind over the quarter, under a heaven of blue, with the sun in the midst of it splendidly shining, and a night-sky of airy indigo rich with stars from sea-line to sea-line. The flying-fish shot from the coppered sides of the Indiaman, but saving them and ourselves, the ocean was tenantless of life; we sighted no ship; no bird hovered near us; once only, when it was drawing near to midnight, I heard the sounds of a deep respiration off one or the other of the bows—the noise of some leviathan of the deep rising from the dark profound to blow his fountain under the stars; but there was no shadow of it to be seen nor break of white waters to indicate its neighbourhood. It was but a single sigh, deep and solemn, as though old ocean himself had delivered it out of his heart, and the glittering heights seemed to gather a deeper mystery from the mere note of it.
CHAPTER XI
A STRANGE SAIL
It was a Friday morning. On going on deck before breakfast for a pump-bath in the ship’s head, I found as queer a look of weather all about as ever I had witnessed in my life. A troubled swell, but without much height or power, was running from the westwards, and the Indiaman rolled awkwardly upon it with much noise of beating canvas aloft and of straining spars. The water was of a dull olive tint, with an appearance of mud in it, as though some violent disturbance at bottom had lifted the ooze cloudily to the surface. It was hard to tell whether the sky was blue or slate, so thick, dusty, impervious was it, with here and there a dim outline of cloud, and patches, so to speak, of a kind of yellowish blue, where some belly of obscured vapour stooped lower than the rest; whilst, the whole sea-circle round, there hovered an immense grummet or ring of a dingy, sooty appearance, like to a line of smoke left by the funnels of steamers, and hanging in a brown cloud, leagues in length, in silent motionless weather on the rim of the waters of the English Channel.