They all said it was, and thereupon went forward, but I noticed that those who were off duty did not offer to go below; they joined the watch on the forecastle, and I could hear them in earnest talk, their voices trembling through the stillness like the humming of a congregation in church following the parson's reading.
Mr. Hall came to my side and we walked the deck.
"I am sorry the men have got that notion of this ship being under a spell," said he. "This is no sweet time of the year in these seas; to put back will, I daresay, be only to anger the weather that's now quiet enough, and there's always the risk of falling into Dutch hands."
I told him of my talk with the carpenter, and said that I could not be surprised the crew were alarmed, for the old fellow had the Devil's own knack of putting his fancies in an alarming way.
"I laughed at some of his fancies," said I, "but I don't mind owning that I quitted his cabin so dulled in my spirits by his talk, that I might have come from a death-bed for all the heart there was in me."
"Well, things must take their chance," said Mr. Hall. "I'll speak to the carpenter myself in the morning, and afterwards to the men; and if they are still wishful that the ship should return to Table Bay we'll sail her there. 'Tis all one to me. I'd liefer have a new captain over me than be one."
We continued until five bells to walk to and fro the deck, talking about the captain's suicide, the strangeness of it as following his belief that ill-luck had come to the ship from the Plymouth vessel, with other such matters as would be suggested by our situation and the tragedy in the cabin; and Mr. Hall then said he would go below for a glass of rum; but he refused to lie down—though I offered to stand an hour of his watch, that is from midnight till one o'clock—for he said he should not be able to sleep.
Most of the crew continued to hang about the forecastle, which rescued the deck from the extreme loneliness I had found in it ere the report of the fatal musket startled all hands into wakefulness and movement. The lanthorns had been carried away and the ship was plunged in darkness. There still blew a very light air, so gentle that you needed to wet your finger and hold it up to feel it. From the darkness aloft fell the delicate sounds of the higher canvas softly drumming the masts to the very slight rolling of the ship. I went to the binnacle and found that the vessel was heading her course, and then stepped to the rail, upon which I set my elbows, leaning my chin in my hands, and in that posture fell a-thinking.