The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure

by William Clark Russell

The madman sprang from his chair and stood erect with the revolver half raised from his side, and his eyes sparkled in his face that was dark with murderous intent. Thus he stood whilst the spoke of light through the port-hole moved gradually round the cabin until it vanished, by which time all was silent without. The unhappy man resumed his seat and former posture, and thus it went for half an hour at least; then, always grasping his murderous weapon, he walked like one in the chamber of death, carefully opened the door, and peered out.

The first sight he witnessed was the figure of the chief mate, Hardy, stretched at its length and on its side within a pace or two of the threshold, and upon the locker on the port side of the table, a cushioned locker as comfortable as a couch, lay the form of Julia Armstrong; her right arm hung down, and she lay as apparently dead as Hardy. The captain stepped across the body of the mate and looked with devouring, sparkling eyes at the girl, while he seemed to listen for sounds above. Nothing was to be heard save the inner grumbling of the ship as she swayed helpless in arrest. Now and again the wheel chains clanked to the blow of the sea upon the rudder.

The captain went to the girl's side and looked at her: her face was placid, pale, ghastly, and her lips a bright red. Thus exactly did Hardy's face show, and any one experienced in the symptoms of poisoning by laudanum or morphia would have known that these two people had been heavily drugged, even perhaps unto death.

It was the birthday of a madman in search of his drowned child, and they had drunk his health and the little drummer's. His face took on an air of hurry and bustle, and, always gripping his revolver, he stepped nimbly to the companion-steps and mounted them. He raised his head just above the companion-hood and looked; he saw that the man who had stood at the wheel was lying motionless beside it. Almost abreast of the companion was the curved form of Candy, who seemed to have been doubled up and then reeled into lifelessness. A few prostrate forms were to be seen forward, in the waist and about the forescuttle. They lay lifeless in the sleep or death of the drugged draught in which they had pledged their captain. In the forecastle lay the rest, some on the deck, some in their bunks, and every face showed as Hardy's and the girl's, placid, pale, and ghastly, and the lips a bright red. All the symptoms had been expended, the first pleasurable mental excitement, then the weariness, the headache, the intolerable weight of limb, the spinning and sickening giddiness, the drowsiness, the stupor, and now insensibility or death.

The captain rose in the hatch to his full height and stepped on to the deck, followed by the dog, which went to Candy and smelt him, and then with a low, uneasy growl went to the figure beside the wheel and sniffed at it. With a dreadful smile of hope and rejoicing the captain thrust the pistol into a side pocket and, going to the wheel, put the helm hard a-starboard, and secured it by several turns of the end of the mainbrace.

This done, always preserving his horrible expression of lofty exaltation, he took the breaker out of the bow of the port quarter-boat, filled it from the scuttle-butt, and replaced it. God knows how he was directed in what he did; the instincts of habit and knowledge must have governed him. It is certain that he made his preparations for departure with the sanity of a healthy brain. His dog closely followed him, and seemed afraid. He then went below into the pantry and returned with his arms full of food, which he placed in the stern-sheets along with a tumbler which he pulled out of his pocket. He moved rapidly and his lips often worked, and he'd flash his gaze along the decks at that memorable, tragical picture of ship with lifeless figures upon the planks, with all her white canvas curving inwards, stirless in the stream of the breeze. She seemed to have been drugged too, and rolled with a kind of stagger upon the soft folds of the swell.

He went below again, the dog at his heels, and, entering his cabin, took a dog-collar and chain out of a locker and secured the noble animal to a leg of the table, which was cleated and immovable. When he had done this he pressed his lips to the dog's head and sobbed dryly and sighed, for the light in his eyes was too hot a fire for tears. The dog whined and wagged its tail, and looked a hundred questions with its gentle eyes.

"I shall bring him back, I shall bring him back, Sailor!" the captain muttered to the Newfoundland.

And all this time Hardy lay close beside the dog as dead to the eye as any corpse under the ground.