CHAPTER VIII.

VOYAGE CONTINUED.

I found the captain and mate of the _Eugenie_ both pleasant and instructive companions.

The latter, like the generality of his countrymen, was well educated; he was tolerably read in classical lore, and knew all the current literature of the day; thus his little state-room was so crammed with books, that he had scarcely room to move in it. Like many other Scotchmen of humble birth or limited means, Marc Hislop had educated himself, beyond what schools or teachers could have done. Though usually quiet in disposition, he was sometimes impatient, and more than once I have seen him snatch from his pocket a colt (a piece of knotted rope eighteen inches long) for the special benefit of the ship-boys, of whom we had three on board.

He was so learned on the theory and law of storms, with the practical exposition thereof, and could talk so fluently about straight, circular, and parallel winds, storm-waves, and storm-focuses, the height of a cyclone, and speed of a hurricane, that honest Sam Weston, the captain and Tom Lambourne, the second mate, wondered what it was all about; as they had weathered many a gale without ever caring a jot about the theory or law of them, or without ever troubling their brains about where the wind came from, and still less about where it _went to_.

Among other things, Hislop had a photographic apparatus, by which he took the aspect of the sea by moonlight and daylight, and all our likenesses, in groups or otherwise. Tattooed Tom Lambourne, who had once been adrift in the bush somewhere, and been decorated with certain ineffaceable marks by the natives, came out famously in these artistic efforts, as he was all over stripes, like a zebra or a New Zealander.

Calm weather and heavy rains succeeded the gale I have mentioned; but the _Eugenie_ steadily kept her course, and two days after, when spanking along before a fine topgallant breeze, we picked up a bottle, which was descried by the watch, floating and bobbing in the water a few fathoms distant from the brig. She was at once hove in the wind, and Hislop went in the stern boat to bring the bottle on board.

As the most trivial incident becomes of interest on board of ship, where the daily occurrences are so few, and the circle of society so limited, considerable concern was excited by the appearance of this bottle, which seemed to have been freshly corked; and on its being broken, we found a scrap of paper--torn apparently from a notebook--whereon a hurried and agitated hand had pencilled this brief notice:

"The _Mary_, clipper ship, of Boston, 20th Nov., 1861, momentarily expected to go down--pumps worn out, and the leaks gaining--Captain and first mate, with _all_ the boats, washed away--God help us!"

"The 20th of November? It was on that night we encountered the heavy gale," said Weston.

We had been on the _skirt_ of the tempest, as Hislop maintained, while the Yankee ship had probably suffered all the fury of it. From the main-cross-trees Captain Weston swept the sea with his telescope, in vain, for any trace of her; so if that melancholy scrap of paper told truth, all was doubtless over long since with the _Mary_ and her crew.

In the cabin that night, a conversation on the probabilities of her destruction or escape, led to a recurrence to the miraculous manner in which the unlucky Dutch schooner had floated so long with me; and I mentioned to Weston and Hislop the additional terrors I had endured by the effect of imagination, and a recollection of the strange incidents told me by Captain Zeervogel; but they ridiculed the story of the poor man, chiefly, I thought, because "it was the yarn of a Hollander."

"Though I am a Scotchman," began Hislop----

"And come of a people naturally superstitious," suggested Weston, parenthetically----

"As all large-brained races are," retorted the mate, while filling his clay pipe with tobacco.

"Well, what were you about to say?" asked Weston. "But first fill your glass and pass over the tobacco bag."

"I was simply about to reiterate that I don't believe in ghosts, or value them any more than I do the Yankee sea-serpent, a rope's end, or a piece of old junk; I never saw one, or knew a man who had seen one; but every one has heard of a man, that knew _another_ man who saw, or believed he saw a ghost. It is at variance with the laws of nature, which are so ordered that no such erratic spirit can be."

"I don't know that," replied Weston; "earth and water have their inhabitants, so why not the air also?"

"And why not the fire?"

"There you go, right before the wind into the troubled sea of argument--you Scotchmen are all alike."

"Ghosts are at variance with the workings of Divine wisdom, and we all know what Jones of Nayland says thereupon."

"No we don't," said Weston; "who the deuce was _he_--what port did he hail from?"

"'He who cannot see the workings of a Divine wisdom in the order of the heavens, the change of the seasons, the flowing of the tides, the operations of the wind and other elements, the structure of the human body, the circulation of the blood, the instinct of beasts, and the growth of plants, is sottishly blind and unworthy the name of man.'"

"You hear him, Mr. Rodney," said Weston; "now he has got both his anchor and topsails a-trip; he can pay out whole speeches in this fashion, all at a breath, as fast as the chain-cable running through the hawse-pipe."

Being fresh from Eton, I was not going to let our learned Scotch mate have it all his own way, when Weston resumed,--

"If you will listen, you shall hear a strange story in which I bore a prominent part."

"As the ghost?" said I.

"No; but you will soon acknowledge whether or not I had cause for fear."

And after he had replenished his glass and pipe, Captain Sam Weston began in this manner:

"About fifteen years ago, I found myself at Matanzas, in Cuba, the same port we are bound for now--adrift, without a ship, and almost without a penny in my pocket, among foreigners, Spaniards, and mulattoes, mestees and quadroons, black, white, and yellow. I had gone there as second mate of a ship from Boston, but the tyranny of our skipper wellnigh drove me mad. During the voyage he had nearly killed three of our men for being slow in sending down the top-gallant yards on a squally night. He beat them till they were black and blue with a handspike, and kept them for forty-eight hours, lashed to ringbolts in the lee-scuppers, that the sea might break over them, as he said, and cure their sores.

"When I interfered to save a poor cabin boy, whom he had hung by the heels from the main-boom, and was scourging with a heavy colt till his back was covered with blood, he produced a bowie knife and revolver, threatening to 'shoot or rip me up.'

"Just at that moment we were passing a Spanish ship of war which was at anchor in the bay, about half a mile from us, and had the red and yellow jack of Castile and Leon flying at his gaff peak. One of the poor fellows who had been so severely beaten was then in the foretop, so I hailed him to make a signal of distress to the Spaniard.

"In a moment his blue shirt was off and placed on the lift of the foreyard. This meant, Mr. Rodney, that as merchant seamen we appealed to the man-o'-war for protection, and wanted an armed boat's crew. Thank Heaven, such an appeal is never made in vain by a poor Jack of any country to a British man-o'-war, but the lubberly Spaniards never noticed the signal, or if so, never heeded it.

"The Yankee skipper uttered a fierce laugh.

"'Douse that shirt and come down, you sir,' he thundered out; 'down instantly, or I will shoot you like a coon.'

"But, desperate with fear, the poor fellow now stood upon the yard, and while one hand grasped the topping lift, with the other he waved his shirt to the Spaniards. I heard the crack of a pistol, and next moment he fell a quivering mass upon the deck, stone dead, shot by the revolver.

"'_That_ will teach you to make signals from my ship, you varmint,' snivelled the merciless skipper, giving the body a kick; 'and as for _you_,' he continued, addressing me, and ramming home his words with an oath; but before he could get further, I levelled him on the deck by a blow from a handspike, and tossed his knife and revolver overboard.

"His right arm was broken. There was a great row about all this before the Alcalde when we got into harbor; our bell was unshipped and our canvas unbent by a party of Spanish marines; but the captain crossed the Alcalde's hand with silver or gold, and there was an end of it. There was an end of my engagement too; for the Yankee weathered me about my salary, seized my chest, my quadrant, even an old silver watch which my mother gave me to make me comfortable, when I first went to sea, and then turned me out of the ship.

"So with nothing except a Mexican dollar in my pocket, but followed by my Newfoundland dog Hector, I found myself on a wet and dusky evening on the great quay of Matanzas, which faces the bay that opens into the Gulf of Florida.

"Low alike in spirit and funds, I had to endure being jostled by negro porters, scowled at by alguazils, ordered about by redcapped and blackbearded Spanish sentries, who were shirtless and tattered, and whose brown uniforms and red worsted epaulettes tainted the very sea-breeze with the odor of garlic and coarse tobacco.

"The sun had set behind clouds as red as blood. The bay was all of a deep brown tint, and the shores were black or purple. I was very sad at heart, and thought it hard that I, a British seaman, should be there an outcast, and all my kit reduced to the clothes on my back, in the very place where the same flag that Pococke and Albemarle hoisted on Havana, had brought all the Don Spaniards on their knees in old King George's time.

"However, that would neither find me supper or a bed. I lost or missed my Newfoundland dog Hector, and in the bitterness of my heart I banned the poor animal for ingratitude in leaving me. Just as I was looking about for a humble posada, where a moiety of my dollar might procure me a bed, a man stumbled against me.

"'Look alive, cucumber shanks,' said he angrily, in English.

"'Do you take me for a negro?' I asked, fiercely.

"'You are grimy enough for any thing,' said he; and after being a night in the Alcalde's lock-up house, I certainly was not the cleanest of men; but now it seemed as if the voice of the stranger was familiar to me. I examined his features.

"'What,' I exclaimed, 'Hislop--Jack Hislop, is this you?'

"''Tis I, Jack Hislop, certainly,' replied the other, who proved to be my old friend, Marc's father; 'but who the deuce are you?'

"'Your old shipmate, Sam Weston, who sailed with you for many a day in the _Good Intent_ of Port Glasgow.'

"For a moment his tongue seemed absent without leave.

"'What, you Sam Weston--English Sam, as we called you--adrift here at Matanzas among these Spanish land-crabs?'

"'Aye, adrift sure enough,' said I, as we shook hands heartily, and then adjourned to a taberna, when I told him all about my quarrel with the Yankee and my present hopeless condition, over a glass of nor'-nor'-west.

"'I have a brig here on the gridiron, repairing, for we lost some of her copper in scraping a rock near the Tortugas shoal. All my crew are of course ashore, and at present I am residing with a friend,' said Hislop; 'but I can find permanent quarters for you till you get a berth. Do you see that craft out there in the bay?'

"'The polacca brig, about a mile off?'

"'Yes. Well, she is consigned to my owner, but was found adrift, abandoned by all her crew except two, about fifty miles off, half way between this and the Salt Key Bank. I have charge of her now, and there you may sleep every night if you choose. What say you to that?'

"'That I thank you, old shipmate, with all my heart, but--but--'

"'What?'

"'I have heard of that polacca, and that the two of her crew who remained on board--'

"'Were dead; yes, true enough. They were found in their berths, one on the starboard, and the other on the port side of the cabin. But what of that? I buried them off the point of Santa Cruz, and there they sleep sound enough, believe me, each with a couple of cold shot at his heels. Here is the key of the companion hatch, and take my revolver with you, for picaros are pretty common hereabout.'

"'Thanks, Hislop,' said I; 'but how am I to get on board?'

"'Scull over to her in the punt that is moored beside the quay. When on board make yourself quite at home, for the agent and I left plenty of grog, beef, biscuits, and tobacco in the cabin. On the morrow I'll overhaul you, in the forenoon watch. Till then, good-by;' and before I could say any thing more, old Jack was gone, and I found myself alone on the stone mole, with the key of the polacca's companion in my hand.

"There seemed nothing for me but to accept the temporary home thus offered; so, in the hope that it might lead to something better, I stepped into the light punt, cast loose the painter, and after a few minutes' vigorous sculling found myself on the lonely deck of the silent polacca.

"Her canvas was unbent; most of the running rigging had also been taken off her and stowed away,--so her tall and taper spars stood nakedly up from the straight flush deck, with a sharp rake aft.

"Thick banks of dark-blue cloud were coming heavily up from the Gulf of Florida. The air was hot and sulphureous; some drops of rain, warm, and broad as doubloons, began to plash upon the deck and to make circles on the sea; while at the far edge of the horizon a narrow streak of bright moonlight, against which the waves were seen chasing each other, glittered through the flying scud, the bottom of which was uplifted in the offing, like a dark curtain that was tattered and rent.

"Then a flash of red lightning, tipping the waves with fire, shone, but to be replaced by instant darkness, and all became black chaos to seaward, save where a pale-green beacon burned steadily at Santa Cruz, on the western side of the bay.

"These signs prognosticated a rough night, but I was glad to perceive that the polacca was well moored at stem and stern; so I unlocked the companion door and descended, not without a shudder, into the dark and cold cabin, where the dead men had been found, and where all was silence and gloom.

"I struck a lucifer match; my teeth chattered; and while groping about for a candle, to make myself comfortable for the night, I began to wish I had remained on shore.

"I found a ship-lantern with the fag-end of a candle in it, and this, when lighted, enabled me to take a survey of the cabin; but I first applied to the jar of right Jamaica which stood on the table; and when looking about, found my eyes wander so incessantly to the side berths in which the dead Spaniards had been found, that at last I almost fancied their pale sharp profiles and rigid figures were visible in the flickering light of the candle.

"'Come,' said I, 'Sam Weston--this will never do! Are you a man, or have you become a child again?'

"Another application--a long one, too--to the rum jar, and I wrapped some bunting, a rug, and a pea-jacket that lay on the locker, round me, and lay down on the cabin floor to sleep; and scarcely had I stretched myself there when the candle flared up, and, after casting some strange kaleidoscopic figures on the beams overhead, through the perforated lantern-top--went out!

"I was in total darkness now, but more awake than ever.

"I felt as if in a great floating coffin, but heard no sound except the gurgle of the sea under the counter, or the splash of the stern warp, as it whipped the water occasionally.

"I kept my eyes closed resolutely, and determined, perforce, to sleep, and not to wake till morning; but still I could not help thinking of the two poor fellows who had died in the berths of that cold, dark, and silent cabin, and been tossed to and fro so long upon the sea before they received Christian burial.

"Which had died first,--the man in the larboard, or he in the starboard berth? Why were they thus abandoned? What had they said to each other? What messages had they sent to wife, to father, or mother? What tale of love to repeat.--of guilt to reveal?--messages given by the dead to the dead, and never delivered!

"These thoughts crowded upon me till I almost imagined the dead men lay there still, and that they might rise and give their last messages to me.

"Then I heard a sound in the forehold. It made my blood curdle! Was it caused by rats? Perhaps they had fed on the dead Spaniards and now were come to take a nibble at me. Rats were bad enough, but ghosts were worse. I took a third and last pull at the Jamaica jar; said my prayers over again, with more than usual devotion, adding thereto the wish that I should soon have a spanking craft of my own.

"Still the idea of the two dead men, with their pale faces and unclosed eyes, _would_ come before me again and again; and I could have groaned but for dread of some similar response that might make my heart wither up and my flesh creep. And creep it soon did; for, just as this horrid idea of an overstrained fancy, fostered by imagination and fashioned out of the silence and darkness, became strongest within me, what were my emotions,--how painful the throbbings of my heart,--on beholding a strange, green ghastly light glimmering about, and playing _within_ each of the side berths.

"While shrinking into a corner of the cabin, with eyeballs straining, I gazed at them alternately with a species of horrid fascination. The two lights were weird, wavering, and pale; they seemed to me as _two_ warnings from the land of spirits, for they played upon the curtains and in the recess of each berth, port, and starboard, in which a dead man had been found. And while these lights shone, there came upon my ear the palpable sound of a heavy breathing and snorting, as from the oppressed chest of some one close by me.

"I placed my hands upon my eyes and on my ears, to shut out these horrid lights and sounds; but when I looked again the former had disappeared, and all was opaque darkness.

"On putting forth my hand to rise, a cry of uncontrollable terror escaped me,--a yell that rang in wild echoes through the silent polacca,--when my fingers came in contact with something icy, and then a cold, clammy, and wet head of hair!

"Then two glistening eyes seemed to peer and to glare into mine!

"In horror and bewilderment, and followed by _something_, I knew not what, I sprang up the companion, and, half fainting, reached the deck of the polacca. Then I turned to find that the object which had excited so much dismay was no other than my poor dog Hector, which had swam off to the brig in pursuit of me.

"The eyes that in the dark seemed to glare into mine, were his; the icy object, from which my fingers shrunk, was his honest black nose; and what seemed a wet head of hair, was his own curly front; while the lights--the mysterious lambent lights--that had flickered about the dead men's berths, proved to be nothing more than the green beacon on the promontory of Santa Cruz, which shone at times through the two stern windows of the polacca.

"Being moored with the chain cable ahead, and a manilla warp from her port quarter to a buoy astern, she swung to and fro a little with the ebb and flow of the tide; hence the oscillation which caused the moving gleams that terrified me.

"'Ha! ha!' said I, on descending into the cabin, a wiser and a more sleepy man, 'scared by my own dog Hector! I have been as great a gull as ever touched salt water.'

"A fortnight afterwards, I shipped with old Jack Hislop as second mate, and the fifteenth day saw us running before a smart topgallant breeze into the Gulf of Florida, bound with a cargo of rum, sugar, and molasses for the Clyde.

"So that is my ghost yarn. It conveys a moral, does it not? Order them to strike the bell forward. Hislop, call the watch; see how her head bears, and let us turn in."