CHAPTER X. I GO ALOFT.

It was a fresh sweet ocean morning, one of the fairest I remember; the wind, a tender fanning from the west, warm enough to make one fancy an odour and balm of the tropics in it, leagues ahead as those parallels yet lay. The sky was one broad surface of curls and feathers of pearl-coloured vapour, an interweaving, as it were, of many-shaped links of silken cloud shot with silver and amber and gold from the early sun. I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea spread in a firm dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty roof of marble; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the depths.

Everything was brilliant and clean and cheerful, the decks of the white softness of foam, brass sparkling, rigging flemish-coiled or festooned as by an artist’s hand upon the pins; forward stood the long cannon radiant as polished jet, a detail that gave an odd significance to the saucy knowing ‘spring,’ as it is called, of the yacht that way. The cocks and hens in the coops were straining their throats and blending with their cheerful voices was a noise of pigs; there was black smoke pouring away from the galley chimney, and now and again you got a whiff of something good frying for the men’s breakfasts, for my cousin fed his sailors well. The ‘Bride’ with erect masts was sliding over the wide folds of water whose[85] undulations were so long drawn and regular as to be scarce perceptible in the motion of the vessel; there was air enough to crisp the sea, and where the sun’s light lay the tremble was blinding; on either bow was a curl of silver and pale eddyings alongside with a line of oil-smooth water going away astern from under the counter; yet we were but creeping, too, spite of the yacht being a pile of white cloths—every stitch she owned abroad to her topgallant studdingsail.

The mate had charge, and was stumping the weather side of the quarterdeck in his sour way when I arrived.

‘Good morning, Mr. Crimp.’

‘Marning,’ he answered.

‘Ugly squall that last night.’

‘Ugly? ay.’

The fellow gave the word sir to no man, restricting its use when ashore to dogs as Finn once told me; but his surly tricks of speech and manner were so wholly a part of him, so entirely natural, so unconsciously expressed, that it would have been as idle to resent them as to have quarrelled with him for having an askew eye or lost one’s temper because his beard resembled rope yarns.

‘Anything in sight?’ I asked, looking round.

‘Ay,’ he answered.

‘Where?’ I exclaimed, running my eye over the sea.

‘Up yonder,’ he responded, indicating with a gesture of his chin the topgallant-yard where was perched the inevitable figure of a look-out man.

‘But where away, Mr. Crimp,—where away, sir?’

‘On the starboard bow,’ he answered, ‘’tain’t long been sighted.’

Breakfast would not be ready for some time yet, and having nothing to do I thought I would make a journey aloft on my own account and take a view of the distant sail and of the spacious field of the glittering morning ocean from the altitude of the masthead. I stepped below for a telescope of my own, a glass I had many a time ogled the sea with when I was doing penance for past and future sins in African and West Indian waters. Muffin was at the foot of the companion steps holding a pair of Wilfrid’s boots. He cast his eyes down and drew his figure in though there was abundance of room for me to pass. A slow, obsequious, apologetic smile went twisting and curling down his lips; his yellow face had a burnished look; he was uncommonly clean-shaven, and his hair was brushed or plastered to the smoothness of his skull.

‘Got your courage back?’ said I.

‘Thank you, yes, sir,’ he answered humbly with his eyes respectfully cast down. ‘Richard’s himself again this morning, sir, as the saying is. But it was a ’orrible time, sir.’

‘You came near to making it so,’ said I. ‘Have you been to Sir Wilfrid yet?’

‘Yes, sir.’

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‘How is he?’

‘Asleep, sir,’ he replied in a blandly confidential way.

‘Glad to hear it,’ I exclaimed, ‘don’t disturb him. He passed a bad night down to two or three o’clock this morning.’ I was going; suddenly I stopped. ‘By the way,’ said I, rounding upon the fellow, ‘how long have you been in Sir Wilfrid’s service?’

My question appeared to penetrate him with a consuming desire to be exact. He partially closed one eye, cocked the other aloft like a hen in the act of drinking, and then said with the air of one happy in the power of speaking with accuracy, ‘It’ll be five months to the hour, sir, come height o’clock, Friday evening next.’

‘During the time that you have been in his service,’ said I carelessly, ‘have you ever heard him speak of hearing voices or seeing visions?’

‘Woices, no, sir,’ he answered; ‘but wisions,’ he added with a sigh and lengthening his yellow face into an expression of deep concern, ‘has, I fear, sir, more’n once presented theirselves to him.’

‘Of what nature, do you know?’

‘Sir Wilfrid’s a little mysterious, sir,’ he responded in a greasy tone of voice, and looking down as if he would have me understand that with all due respect he was my cousin’s valet and knew his place.

I said no more, but made my way on deck with a suspicion in me that the fellow had lied, though I hardly knew why I should think so. I trudged forward, and finding three or four of the men hanging about the galley I pulled out five shillings and gave the money to one of them, saying that I was going aloft and wished to pay my footing, for I was in no temper to be chased and worried. This made me free of the rigging, into which I sprang and had soon shinned as high as the topgallant-yard, upon which I perched myself so noiselessly that the man who overhung it on the other side of the mast and who was drowsily chewing upon a quid of tobacco with his eye screwed into Wilfrid’s lovely telescope, had no notion I was alongside of him. I coughed softly, for I had known seamen to lose their lives when up aloft by being suddenly startled. He put a whiskered face past the mast and stared at me as if I was Old Nick, out of the minutest pair of eyes I ever saw in the human head, mere gimlet-holes they seemed for the admission of light.

‘Thinking of your sweetheart, Jack?’ said I with a laugh, ignorant of his name but counting Jack to be a sure word.

‘Can’t rightly say what I was a-thinking of, sir,’ he answered hoarsely; ‘’warn’t my sweetheart anyways, seeing that the only gell I was ever really partial to sarved me as her ledship sarved Sir Wilfrid yonder,’ indicating the quarterdeck with a sideways motion of his head.

‘Cut stick, eh?’ said I.

‘Wuss than that, sir,’ he answered. ‘If she’d ha’ taken herself off and stopped at that I dunno as I should have any occasion[87] to grumble; but she prigged the furniture that I’d laid in agin getting married. Ay, prigged it. The boiling amounted to fourteen pound tew, a bloomin’ lot o’ money for a poor seafaring man to be robbed of for the sake of a master chimney-sweep.’ He cast a slow disgusted look round and expectorated with an air of loathing.

‘I hope you got the master chimney-sweep locked up,’ said I.

‘No fear!’ cried he, talking very fast; ‘smite me, your honour, if that there gell didn’t tarn to and swear that that furniture was hers, bought out of her own savings, and that she guv me the money to order it with. Thinking o’ my sweetheart!’ he grumbled, lifting the telescope in an abstracted manner to his eye, ‘if it worn’t for women dummed if this ’ere earth wouldn’t be worth a-living in.’

I smothered a laugh, and catching sight of the sail shining faintly in the blue air, leagues and leagues distant as it seemed, I pointed the glass and easily distinguished the royal, topgallant-sail and a snatch of the topsail of a ship heading directly for us.

‘I wonder if she’ll have any news?’ said I.

‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ exclaimed the man, ‘but could you tell me how long it’s reckoned in the cabin this here ramble’s a-going to last?’

‘What was the nature of the voyage you signed for?’

‘Why,’ he replied, ‘a yachting cruise to Table Bay and home.’

‘It’ll not exceed that, I believe,’ I exclaimed.

‘And if we picks up that there “Shark” and recovers the lady afore we git to the Cape, shall we keep all on or shift our hellum for Southamptin again?’

‘Captain Finn will be able to tell you more about it than I,’ I responded in a tone that silenced him, though his tiny eyes looked athirst for information as he regarded me aslant over one of his huge whiskers.

The height from which I surveyed the vast plain of sea, the spirit of whose loneliness seemed to find the one touch of emphasis it needed to render its magnitude realisable by human instincts in that remote flaw of ship’s canvas which broke the continuity of the boundless horizon filled me with a feeling of exhilaration I cannot express; the sweet mild ocean breeze high on that slender yard sank through and through me, and vitality to its most secret recesses was quickened by it into a very intoxication of life, new, free, ardent; the air hummed gently in a vibratory metallic note as though it were some echo of a distant concert of harps and violins; far down the hull of the yacht, plentiful as was her beam in reality, looked like a long slender plank rounded at the bows, the whiteness of the deck showing with a sort of radiance as though it were thinly sheeted with crystal upon which the shadows of the rigging, masts, and canvas lay dark and beautifully clear, with a fitful swaying of them to the heave of the fabric, off polished and brilliant things such as the skylight or the brass decorations, when flashes of fire would leap forth to be veiled again in the violet[88] gloom of the recurrent shade. The thin curve of foam on either hand the cutwater looked like frosted silver; my eye went to the airy confines of the ocean spreading out into a delicate haze of soft azure light where it washed the marble of that magnificent morning firmament, and then it was that, sharper than ever I had before felt it, there rose the perception in me of the incalculable odds against our sighting the yacht we were in pursuit of, so measureless did the ocean distance appear when with the gaze going from the ‘Bride’s’ masthead I thought of the distance that made the visible and compassable sphere, big as it was, as little as a star compared with the heavenly desert it floats in.

When I looked down again I observed Miss Jennings watching me from the gangway with her hand shading her eyes. I raised my hat and she bowed, and being wistful of her company I bade my friend Jack keep his eyes polished, as the piece that was nailed to the mast would help to lessen the loss that his sweetheart had occasioned him, and descended, hearing him rumbling in his gizzard as I got off the foot rope, though what he said I did not catch.

‘What is there to be seen, Mr. Monson?’ was Miss Jennings’ first question, with a delicate fire of timorous expectation in her eyes.

‘Only a ship,’ said I.

‘Not—not——’

‘No! not the “Shark” yet,’ I exclaimed smiling.

‘I am stupid to feel so nervous. I dare say I am as passionately anxious as Wilfrid to see my sister in this vessel safe—and separated from—from’—she faltered and quickly added, bringing her hands together and locking them, ‘but I dread the moment to arrive when the “Shark” will be reported in sight.’

‘Well, if we are to pick up that craft,’ said I, ‘we shall do so and then there’ll be an end on’t. But I give you my word, Miss Jennings, the ocean looks a mighty big place from that bit of a stick up there.’

‘Too big for this chase?’

‘Too big I fear to give Wilfrid the chance he wants.’

She sent a bright glance at the topgallant yard and said, ‘Does not that great height make you feel dizzy?’

‘Ay, as wine does. There is an intoxication as of ether in the air up there. Oh, Miss Jennings, if I could only manage to get you on to that yard—see how near to heaven it is! You would then be able not only to say that you looked like an angel, but that you felt like one.’

She laughed prettily and turned as if to invite me to walk. After a bit I spoke of the squall last night. It had not disturbed her. Then I told her of Wilfrid’s melancholy perturbation, on which her face grew grave and her air thoughtful.

‘He did not tell you the nature of the warning?’ she inquired.

‘No. It evidently had reference to his baby. I wished to[89] ascertain whether it was a voice or a vision—though I really don’t know why; for an hallucination is an hallucination all the world over, and it signifies little whether it be a sheeted essence to affect the eye or a string of airy syllables to affright the ear.’

‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ she exclaimed anxiously; ‘it is a bad symptom, I fear. Yet it ought not to surprise one. The shock was terrible—so recent too! Scarcely a fortnight ago he felt safe and happy in his wife’s love and faith——’

‘Maybe,’ I interrupted, ‘but I wouldn’t be too sure though. When I last met him—I mean somewhile before he came to ask me to join him in this trip—his manner was very clouded, I thought, when he spoke of his wife. I fancy even then suspicion was something more than a seed. But still, as you say, it is all desperately recent, and it certainly is a sort of business to play havoc with such a mind as his. Did you ever hear of his having warnings or seeing visions before?’

‘Never.’

‘I asked his valet that question just now, and he told me he did not know that his master heard “woices,” but he believed he was troubled with “wisions,” as he called them.’

‘Wilfrid has been very secret then. My sister spoke much to me of the oddness of his character, made more of it indeed than ever I could witness,—but then one understands why, now,’ she exclaimed with an angry toss of her head. ‘But she never once hinted at his suffering from delusions of the kind you name. How should his man know then? Wilfrid is not a person to be so very confidential as all that with his servant. I never liked Muffin, and I believe he is a story-teller.’

‘So do I,’ said I, ‘and a coward to boot,’ and I told her of my finding him on his knees, and how I had prostrated him with a kick. This provoked one of her cordial, sweet, clearing laughs. It was a music to fit to gayer thoughts than we had been discoursing, and presently we were chatting lightly about dress, society, some maestro’s new opera and other light topics very much more suitable for a yacht’s quarter-deck under such a morning heaven as was then shining upon us, than the raven, owl, and bat-like subjects of ghosts, warnings, visions, and insanity.

The breakfast bell rang; Muffin arrived with a soap-varnished face and a humble bow, and in greasy accents delivered his master’s compliments to us and, please, we were not to wait breakfast for him. But when we were half through the meal Wilfrid came from his cabin and seated himself. He looked worn and worried; his expression was that of a man who has succeeded in calming himself after a secret bitter mental conflict, but whose countenance still wears the traces of his struggle. He called for a cup of tea, which with a slice of dry toast formed his breakfast. Now and again I saw him glancing wistfully at Miss Jennings, but his eyes fell from her when she looked at him as though he feared the detection of some wish or thought in the manner of his watching her.[90] He inquired languidly about the weather, the sail the yacht was under, and the like.

‘There’ll be a ship in sight over the bow,’ said I, ‘by the time we are ready to go on deck.’

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, instantly briskening; ‘we must speak her. Were it to come to twenty vessels a day passing us we should hail them all. But it is the wind’s capriciousness that makes the fretting part of an excursion of this kind. Here are we creeping along as though in tow of one of our boats, whilst where the “Shark” is there may be half a gale driving her through it as fast as a whale’s first rush to the stab of a harpoon.’

‘Heels were given to us in the small hours of this morning though,’ said I. ‘We covered more space of sea in five minutes than I should like to swim if I had a month to do it in.’

‘Oh, but she was off her course,’ exclaimed Wilfrid.

‘Only to the first of the squall,’ I exclaimed; ‘when I went on deck she was lying fair up again and crushing through it with the obstinacy of a liner.’

He glanced at me absently as though he barely attended to my words, and then looked round him, as I supposed, to observe if Muffin and the stewards were out of hearing. He lay back in his chair, eyeing Miss Jennings for a little with a thoughtful regard that was made pathetic by the marks of care and grief in his face.

‘Laura,’ he said, ‘I am worrying about baby.’

‘Why, Wilfrid?’ she answered gently.

‘Oh, it may be a mere instinctive anxiety, some secret misgiving, well founded but quite inexplicable and therefore to be sneered at by friend Charles here—who knows not yet the subtleties of a flesh-and-blood tie—as mere sentiment.’

‘But why allow a fancy to worry you, Wilfrid?’ said I.

‘I fear it is no fancy,’ he answered quickly.

‘I told Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘that you have been vexed and upset by what you interpreted into a warning.’

‘Did it particularly refer to baby?’ she asked.

‘Wholly,’ he responded gloomily.

‘But confound it all, Wilfrid,’ cried I somewhat impatiently, ‘won’t you put this miserable vision into words? What form did it take? A warning! If you choose to view things asquint they’re full of warnings. Consider the superstitions which flourish; the signs of luck and of ill-luck; the meaning of the stumble on the threshold, the capsized salt-cellar, and the rest of the inventions of the wicked old hags who ride a cock-horse on broomsticks. Why,’ I cried, talking vehemently with the idea of breaking through the thickness upon his mind, though it was no better than elbowing a fog, ‘I protest, Wilfrid, I would rather swing at your lower-yardarm and be cut down after a reasonable time to plomb the deep peace of the green silence beneath our keel, than live in a torment of apprehension of shadows, and convert life into a huge mustard[91] poultice to adjust to my quivering anatomy staggering onwards to the grave!’

He surveyed me with a lack-lustre eye whilst he listened.

‘Might not this warning, as you call it, Wilfrid,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘have been some brief, vivid dream, the impression of which was keen enough, when you awoke, to make you imagine you had viewed what had appeared with open eyes?’

‘No!’ he answered emphatically, ‘what I saw I saw as I see you.’

‘Then it wasn’t a voice?’ I exclaimed.

‘No matter,’ he said, ‘God’s eye is upon the innocent. Surely he will protect my little one. Still—still—’ he seemed to struggle with some thought and paused.

I made up my mind to attempt a bold stroke. ‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘your child must be dearer to you than your wife. Since you are uneasy about the bairn why not abandon a pursuit which, I give you my word, seems to me about as aimless as a chase after the flying shadow of a cloud, and shift your helm for home, where you will be able to have the child by your side and where there will be no need for warnings relating to her to worry you?’

A dangerous light came into his eyes; his strangely cut nostrils enlarged and trembled, half a dozen dark moods went like ripples of shadow over his face. I regarded him steadfastly, but I will own not without a good deal of anxiety, for his bearing at this moment had more of the madman in it than I had ever before witnessed. He breathed deep several times before speaking.

‘You are right,’ he said; ‘my child is dearer to me than my wife, but my honour stands first of all. For God’s sake do not craze me with such suggestions. Look at me!’ he cried, extending his arms, ‘gripped here,’ clasping his left hand, ‘by my child that in its sweet innocence would withhold me from this pursuit; and dragged here,’ and here he clenched his right hand with a menacing shake of it, ‘by a sense of duty that must have its way though it should come to my never setting eyes on my baby again. Charles’—his voice sank—‘at your hands I should have expected something better than such advice as this. If you are weary of the voyage——’

‘No, no,’ I interrupted.

‘Why torment me then,’ he shouted, ‘by representing this pursuit as idle as a chase of shadows? Is it so? Great heaven, man! you yourself read out the entry in Captain Puncheon’s log-book.’

‘Well, well, Wilfrid,’ said I soothingly, ‘I am very sorry to have said anything to annoy you. The fact is I am too prosaic in my views of things to be as helpful as I should like to be in a quest of this sort. Come, shall we go on deck now and see if that chap which I sighted from the topgallant-yard has hove into view yet?’

The poor fellow rose slowly from his chair, straightening up his figure till he looked twice as tall again as he was. His anger had left him.

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‘Oh for the privilege,’ he exclaimed, ‘of being able to catch but a single glimpse of the future! Would to heaven I had been born a saint with a glory round my head, for by that light only is it possible to interpret the hieroglyphs in which the page of life is printed.’

‘Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘your sunny hair comes so near to this sort of nimbus my cousin desires, that I am sure if you would cast your eyes upon the mystical page that puzzles him you could read it aloud to us both by the light of those golden tresses.’

‘Charles,’ exclaimed Wilfrid shortly, ‘you are for making fun of everything,’ and he stalked to his cabin, but only to fetch his pipe, as I afterwards found.

I could not discover, however, that Miss Jennings wholly agreed in Wilfrid’s notion of my ridiculing propensity.