CHAPTER XVIII. IS SHE THE ‘SHARK’?

It was not to prove a gale, though it would have been hard to guess what lay behind that dirty jumble of white and livid terraces which had been stealthily creeping all the morning zenithwards. The clouds scattered to the rush of the wind, the sun with a brightened disk leapt from one flying vaporous edge to another, dazzling out the snows of the dissolving seas till the eye reeled from the glare of the brilliant foam and the sharp and lovely sparkle of the pure dark blue between. Indeed, before long the wind steadied down into a noble sailing breeze with a piebald sky of warm and cheerful weather steadily swinging into the south-east, as though the whole heaven revolved from one quarter to another like a panorama on a cylinder. Wilfrid looked his wishes, but said nothing. He hung apart in a fashion that was the same as telling me to keep off, nor had he anything to say to Miss Jennings. Finn easily interpreting his master’s face, piled cloths on the yacht till it seemed as though another rag would blow the whole lofty white fabric of canvas, tapering spar, and rigging clean over the bows. We fled along in thunder, and to every curtsey of the vessel’s head the water recoiled in a roar of spume as far as the jibboom end, to speed aft as fast, you would have thought, as the eye could follow it, the swell washing to the counter as if to help her.

We held on in this way for some time, when suddenly Wilfrid, who had come to a stand at the weather rail and was looking ahead, bawled with the note of a shriek in his voice, ‘Look!’ and out sprang his long arm pointing directly on a line with our bowsprit.

‘Ay, there she is, sure enough!’ cried I, as I caught sight, to a floating lift of the deck at that moment, of the pearlish gleam of canvas of a milky brilliance slanting past the soft whiteness of a head of sea against the marble look of the sky there, where the sun-touched clouds were going down to the ocean edge in a crowd with a vein of violet here and there amongst them. I glanced at Wilfrid, not knowing what sort of mood this first glimpse of the yacht would put into him, but there was no alteration of face. His countenance had set into an iron hard expression; methought resolution could never show more grimly stubborn. Miss Jennings came to the side to look.

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‘There is little to be seen as yet,’ said I to her, ‘but we shall be heaving her hull up very soon. She is taking it quietly.’

Finn stood near; I took his glass from him and levelled it. ‘Why, ’tis merely ambling with her, captain,’ said I; ‘gaff topsails down and no hint of squaresail that I can make out. The cloud we are making astern should puzzle her. D’ye think Captain Fidler will recognise this vessel?’

‘Why, yes, sir; bound to it,’ he answered; ‘we aren’t like the “Shark,” you know: our figure-head alone is as good as naming us. Then our sheer of bow ’ud sarve like a sign-post to Fidler. Back this by our square rig and he’d have to ha’ fallen dark to mistake,’ meaning by dark, blind.

‘Is the “Shark” to be as easily recognised?’ asked Miss Jennings, who stood close by me, occasionally laying her hand upon my arm to steady herself and putting the other to her lips to speak, for the breeze rang with a scream in it at times over the rail in a manner to sweep the words out of her mouth as though her syllables were the smoke of a cigarette. Finn shook his long head.

‘Lay me close aboard, miss,’ said he, ‘and I’ll tell you the “Shark” from another craft; but there’s nothen distinct about her as there is with us. She’s black without gilt like a great many others, of a slaving pattern, long, low, without spring forrads or aft, with apple sides like others again. But,’ said he after a pause, during which he had taken a look through his telescope at the glistening fragment hovering like a butterfly over the bow, ‘though I don’t want to say too much, sir, I’d be willing to lay down a good bit o’ money on the chance of yonder chap proving the “Shark.” Time, place, all sarcumstances point her out.’

‘True,’ said I; ‘but there are many schooners afloat.’

‘Ay, sir; but such a coincidence as that, your honour,’ said he pointing, ‘sits too far on the werge of what’s likely to fit it to sarve as part of a man’s reckonings.’

‘I agree with Captain Finn,’ said Miss Laura; ‘besides, I feel here that it is the vessel we are pursuing.’ She laid her hand upon her bosom and turned to cross the deck where her chair was.

I assisted her to her seat with a peep out of the corner of my eyes at Wilfrid, but there was no encouragement in his face; so, posting myself forward of the companion for the shelter of it, I lighted a cigar and puffed away in silence till the luncheon bell rang. Wilfrid did not come to table. When I returned on deck after lingering nearly an hour below, partly with the wish to put some heart into Miss Jennings, who was pitifully dejected and nervous, and partly because I had had a long spell in the open air and guessed that for some time yet there would be little enough of the schooner showing to be worth looking at—I say when I returned I found my cousin at the rail with his arms tightly clasped on his breast staring fixedly ahead, with a face grim, indeed, with the scowling contraction of the brows, but as collected in the determined severity of it as can be imagined. In fact, the sight of the schooner[168] ahead had gathered all his faculties and wandering fancies and imaginations into a bunch, so to speak, and his mind as you saw it in his eyes, in the set of his lips, in the resolved and contained posture of his body, was as steady as that of the sanest man aboard us. It was without wonder, however, that I perceived we had risen the yacht to the line of her rail, when I noticed that she still kept under short canvas whilst the ‘Bride’ was bursting through the surges to the impulse now even of the lower studdingsail. I took Finn’s glass from him and made out a very handsome schooner, loftily sparred with an immense head to her mainsail, the boom of which hung far over her quarter, whilst she swang in graceful floating leapings from hollow to ridge with the round of her stern lifting black and flashing off each melting brow that underran her. We had, indeed, come up with her hand over hand, but then it would be almost the worst point of sailing for a fore-and-aft vessel, whilst we were carrying in our square rig alone pretty nearly the same surface of canvas that she had abroad. She was too far off as yet, even with the aid of the glass, to distinguish her people.

‘What do you think, Finn, now?’ said I, turning to him. He stood close beside me with his long face working with anxiety, and straining his sight till I thought he would shoot his eyes out of their sockets.

‘If she ain’t the “Shark,”’ said he, ‘she’s the “Flying Dutchman.” I had but one doubt. Yonder craft’s boats are white, and my notion, but I couldn’t swear to him, was that the “Shark’s” boats were blue. I’ve been forrards amongst the men, a few of whom are acquainted with Lord Winterton’s yacht, and one of ’em says her boats was blue, whilst th’ others are willing to bet their lives that they are white.’

‘But the cut of her as she shows yonder proves her the “Shark,” you think?’

‘I do, sir,’ he answered emphatically.

‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘after this hang me if I don’t burn my book and agree with your mate, old Jacob Crimp, to believe in ghosts.’

I levelled the glass again and uttered an exclamation as I got the lenses to bear upon her. ‘By thunder, Finn! yes, they look to have the scent of us now. See! there goes her gaff topsail?’

Wilfrid caught my words. ‘What are they doing?’ he roared, bursting out in a mad way from his rapt iron-like silence; ‘making sail, d’ye say?’ and he came running up to us with an odd thrusting forward of his head as though straining to determine what was scarce more than a blur to his short sight. He snatched the glass from my hand. ‘Yes,’ he shouted, ‘and there goes her squaresail. By every saint, Finn, there’s an end of my doubts;’ and he closed the glass with a ringing of the tubes as he telescoped them that would have made you think that the thing was in pieces in his hands.

‘Shall I signal her to heave to, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, speaking with a doubtful eye as if measuring the distance.

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‘Ay, at once,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘but’—he cast a look at the gaff end—‘she’ll not see your colours there,’ pointing vehemently.

‘I’ll run ’em up at the fore, Sir Wilfrid; they’ll blow out plain there with the t’gallant halliards let go.’

‘Do as you will, only you must make her know my meaning,’ cried my cousin, and he went with an impetuous stride right aft and resumed his former sentinel posture. Miss Jennings came timidly up to me.

‘She is the “Shark,” then?’ she said in a low voice.

‘All who know her are agreed, Finn says, saving here and there a doubt about the colour of her boats,’ I answered.

She had a sailor’s eye for sea effects, and instantly noticed that the schooner ahead had broadened her show of canvas.

‘Do they suspect who we are?’ she exclaimed, talking as though she were musing.

‘No doubt the “Bride” is recognised, and they will run away if they can.’

She looked at Wilfrid. ‘I do not like to speak to him,’ she exclaimed.

‘He’s killing Hope-Kennedy over and over again,’ said I: ‘his wife is before him too, and he is haranguing her. Bless us, what a wonderful thing human imagination is!’

Up went the signal flags forward in a string of balls, a man tugged, the bunting broke and streamed out in its variety of lustrous colours, every flag stiff as a sheet of horn handpainted, with the light of the sky past it showing through. I caught myself breathing short and hard whilst waiting for what was to follow this summons to the running craft. We had been crushing through it after her with the speed of a steamer, and, supposing her indeed to be the ‘Shark,’ had literally verified Wilfrid’s boast that the ‘Bride’ could sail two feet to her one. But now that she had broadened her wings there was a threat of considerable tediousness in the chase.

‘Do you suppose they have made out what yacht we are?’ I asked Finn.

‘Likely as not, sir. I shall think so for sartin if they don’t shorten sail on reading that bunting up there. A stranger ’ud be willing enough to speak us. Why not? ’Tis understandable that Fidler should have kept his rags small in the face of the muck that was crawling in the nor’rad this morning. He’s got nothen to chase, and was always a careful man, so I’ve heard, and I tell ye, sir,’ said he in a subdued way, speaking with his eyes fixed on Miss Jennings, who stood close with a white face, ‘that the sight of his easy canvas is almost the same to me as seeing of her ladyship a sitting there,’ levelling his hairy finger at the yacht, ‘for, fond as she was of the water, let anything of a breeze come and she was always for having Sir Wilfrid reduce sail.’ He put the glass to his eye as he spoke. ‘Hillo!’ he exclaimed in an instant, ‘they’re hoisting a colour. There it goes—there it blows. Oh my precious[170] eyes! What is it? what is it?’ he rumbled, talking to himself and working into the glass as though he would drive an eye clean through it. ‘Why, Mr. Monson,’ he bawled, ‘I’m Field Marshal the Duke o’ Wellington, sir, if she han’t hoisted Dutch colours.’

I snatched the glass from his hand, and sure enough made out the Batavian horizontal tricolour streaming from the peak signal halliards like a fragment of rainbow against the lustrous curve of the mainsail.

‘Wilfrid,’ I shouted, addressing him as he stood right aft, Miss Laura and I and the skipper being grouped a little forward of the main rigging, ‘they’ve hoisted Dutch colours. She’s a Hollander, not the “Shark!”’ and I fetched something like a breath of relief, for it was a condition of suspense that you wanted to see an end to one fashion or another as quickly as possible.

He approached us slowly, took the glass from my hand in silence, and after a steady inspection turned to Finn.

‘She’s the “Shark,”’ he said, with a fierce snap in his manner that was like letting fly a pistol at the skipper.

‘Your honour thinks so?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Them Dutch colours, Sir Wilfrid——’

‘A device, a trick! What could confirm one’s suspicions more than yonder display of a foreign ensign? She’s the “Shark,” I tell you, and that colour’s a stratagem. What do you say, Charles?’

‘I’m blest if I know what to think,’ said I. ‘If she’s the “Shark,” why has she taken it so leisurely, only just now setting her squaresail and gaff topsail though we have been in sight for a long time, crowding down upon her under a press that should awhile since have excited their suspicions? No need for them to hoist Dutch colours. If Fidler thinks he is chased, why don’t he haul his wind instead of keeping that fore-and-aft concern almost dead before it, as if he didn’t know on which side to carry his main boom?’

‘She’s the “Shark”!’ thundered Wilfrid, ‘the flag she is flying is a lie. Finn,’ he cried in a voice so savagely imperious, so confoundedly menacing, that I saw Miss Laura shrink, whilst the poor skipper gave a hop as though he had touched something red-hot; ‘are we overhauling that vessel?’

‘Yes, Sir Wilfrid.’

‘How long will it take us to come within gunshot of her?’

Finn scratched the back of his head. ‘Mr. Monson, sir,’ said he, addressing me, ‘that gun’ll throw about three-quarters of a mile, I allow.’

‘Call it a mile,’ said I.

My cousin, with his nostrils distended to the widest, his respiration hysteric, his whole body on the move, and with that raised look in his face I have formerly described, stared at Finn as though he would slay him with his gaze. The skipper scratched the back of his head again.

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‘Well, your honour, if yon schooner holds as she is and this here breeze don’t take off, we ought to be within gun-shot,’ here he produced a silver watch of the size and shape of an apple, ‘in three hours’ time, making it about half-past five.’

‘How far is she distant now?’

‘Betwixt three and four mile, Sir Wilfrid.’

‘Get your gun ready.’

‘A blank shot, your honour?’

‘A blank devil and be damned to you. Load with ball. Who’s your gunner?’

‘We shall have to manage amongst us, Sir Wilfrid,’ turning a face of alarm upon me.

I was about to remonstrate, but there was an expression in the eye that my cousin bent on me at that instant that caused me to take Miss Jennings’ hand as an invitation to her to cross the deck and walk.

‘Charles,’ said he, ‘you told me that you knew something about gunnery. Will you handle that weapon yonder for me?’

‘Wilf, it is madness,’ said I. ‘What! plump a shot into a craft that may not be the vessel you want! or, which in my opinion is just as bad, fire at with a chance of sinking a yacht with a lady aboard—that lady your wife—the woman whom you have embarked on this extraordinary adventure to rescue?’

My blood rose with my words. I dared not trust myself to reason with him. I crossed the deck with Miss Laura, and when we faced round I spied Wilfrid marching forwards with Finn, and presently he was beside of the gun gesticulating vehemently to a body of seamen who had collected round the piece.

Our signals were kept flying at the fore, whilst with the naked eye one could behold the minute spot of colour steadfast at the schooner’s peak. Onwards she held her course, swarming steadily forward in long gliding curtseyings over each frothing surge that chased her, a most shapely and beautiful figure with a long flash of her low black wet side coming off the line of foam like a lift of dull sunshine, whilst on high soared the stretches of her sails with something of the airiness of a dragon-fly’s wing in the milk-white softness of their spaces against the cloudy distance beyond. The time passed, Wilfrid remained forward. He stood upon one of the anchors swaying with folded arms to the movement of the yacht, stiff as a handspike, his face fixedly directed at the schooner ahead. The sailors hung about, chewing hard, spitting much, saying things to one another past the hairy backs of their hands, here and there a whiskered face looking stupid with a sort of dull wonder that was like an inane smile; but the fact is, from Cutbill down to the youngest hand all the seamen were puzzled, excited, and uneasy. The state of my cousin’s mind showed plainly to the least penetrating of those nautical eyes. No man amongst them could imagine what wild directions would be delivered, and[172] though I made no doubt the gun would be let fly when the order to fire was given, I was pretty sure that should it come to a command to board the schooner by force the men would decline. Sometimes Finn was forward, fluttering near Wilfrid, sometimes aft, restlessly inspecting the compass or going feverishly to the side and looking over, when again and again I would hear him say in a voice as harsh as the sound of a carpenter’s plane, ‘Glory, glory! blow, my sweet breeze, blow!’ manifestly unconscious that he spoke aloud, but evidently obtaining some ease of mind from the ejaculation.

The sun went floating down westwards, the breeze shifted a point or two towards him and then slackened, though it continued to blow a fine sailing wind with a regular sea that had long before lost the early snappish and worrying hurl put into it by the first of the dark blast. Slowly we had been gaining upon the chase; minute after minute I had been expecting to see her put her helm down, flatten her sheets, and go staggering away into the reddening waters weltering and washing to the sky under the descending sun, on what she might know to be some best point of sailing. She kept her squaresail spread and the Dutch flag hoisted, and swung stubbornly ahead of us, making nothing of our signals, which still continued to fly. Through Finn’s glass I could distinguish the figures of a few seamen forward and a couple of men pacing the weather-side of the quarterdeck. Now and again a head would show at the rail as though watching us, but the suggestion I seemed to find in the general posture and air aboard the vessel was that of indifference, as though, in fact, we had long ago exhausted curiosity, and had been quitted as a spectacle for inboard jobs and the routine of such life as was led there.

‘Is she the “Shark,”?’ I said to Finn.

‘If she isn’t,’ said he, ‘my eyes ain’t mates, sir. It is but a question of the colour of the quarter-boats.’

‘I see no name on the counter.’

‘No, sir, the “Shark” has no name painted on her.’

‘She’s steered by a wheel,’ said I.

‘So is the “Shark,” sir.’

‘What do the men forward who know the “Shark” think now?’ I asked.

‘Two of ’em say that it ain’t her; the rest that it is. But ne’er a man aboard has that knowledge of her that ’ud give him conscience enough to take an oath upon it. Glory, glory, there she walks! By the piper that played afore Moses in the woods, your honour, ’twill be the fairest sunrise that ever I see that lights up the end of this damned mess, begging your pardon, Mr. Monson, and yours, miss, I’m sure. Fact is, I feel all of a work inside me, like a brig’s boom in a calm.’

‘I am unable to hold the glass steady,’ said Miss Laura. ‘Mr. Monson, I see no signs of a lady on board. Do you, Captain Finn?’

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‘Not so much as the twinkle of a hinch of a petticoat, miss; but if her ladyship’s there, of course she’d keep below.’

‘You know Captain Fidler,’ said I.

‘Very well, sir.’

‘There are two figures walking that quarterdeck. Is one of them he?’

‘It’s too fur off, sir. I’ve been looking and looking, but it’s too fur off, I say, sir. Mind!’ he suddenly roared, ‘they’re a-going to fire,’ and he rolled hurriedly forwards.

A moment or two after, crash! went the gun. The blast broke in a dead shock upon the ear, and the smoke blew away over the lee bow as red with the tincturing of the sun as a veil of vapour at the edge of the crimson moon. Miss Jennings shrieked. A long yearning gush of sea catching the ‘Bride’ fair on the quarter swung her for a breadth or two so as to hide the schooner, then to her next yaw with Wilfrid still at the anchor bending forward in impetuous headlong pose and two or three sailors handling the gun and a crowd of men in the head staring their hardest, the chase swept into view afresh.

‘Ha!’ I shouted, ‘she’s heaving to.’

‘Oh, Mr. Monson!’ cried Miss Jennings, clasping her hands.

Instantly Finn fell to thundering out orders. ‘In stun’sails! clew up the t’garnsail! down squares’l; down gaff tops’l!’ Twenty such directions volleyed from him; in a trice the decks of the ‘Bride’ were as busy as an anthill; canvas rattled like musketry as it was hauled down; the strains of Cutbill’s whistle shrilled high above the voices of the men, and a true ocean meaning came rolling into the commotion and clamour from the yeasty seething over the side, the singing of the wind past the ear, and the frisky motions of the yacht as she brought the sea on her bow heading, to Finn’s yell to the man at the helm, to range to windward of the schooner that was now fast coming round with her squaresail descending, her main tack hoisting and her topsail withering with her head to the west.

Distance is mightily deceptive at sea. How far off the schooner was when they let drive at her from our forecastle I could not say. She was probably out of range; at all events she showed no damage as she came rounding to, away down upon the blue throbbing which had softened much within the hour, with a bronze gleam of sheathing, as she heeled over ere her canvas broke shivering in the eye of the wind, that wonderfully heightened the beauty of the long, low, black, most shapely hull, and the bland and elegant fabric of bright spar and radiant cloths shining white yet through the faint claret tinge in the atmosphere. Wilfrid came slowly aft, constantly looking at her as he walked. Under reduced canvas we swept down leisurely, sliding lightly upon the run of the surge that was now on the beam. I examined her carefully through the glass whilst Miss Laura stood by my side asking questions.

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‘Is she the “Shark”?’

‘She may be. But such of her crew as I make out don’t look to me to be English.’

‘Can you distinguish any women on board?’

‘Nothing approaching a woman. They mean to board us. They have a fine boat of a whaling pattern hanging to leeward, and there are sailors preparing to lower her. They are not Englishmen, I swear. I see a large fat man delivering orders apparently with sluggish gesticulations, which strike me as distinctly Dutch. How about her figure-head?’ I continued, and I brought the glass to bear on the bows of the schooner. ‘Ha!’ I cried, and looked round.

Wilfrid was watching the schooner right aft, where he had stood during the greater part of the chase, his arms folded as before, the same iron-hard expression on his countenance. I called to him.

‘What is the figure-head of the “Shark”?’

He started, and answered, ‘I don’t know. Ask Finn,’ and so saying walked towards us.

The skipper was giving some instructions to Crimp on the other side of the deck.

‘Captain Finn,’ I called.

‘Sir.’

‘What’s the “Shark’s” figure-head?’

‘A gold ball in a cup shaped like a lily, your honour.’

‘Then, Wilfrid,’ I cried, shoving the glass into his hands, ‘your pursuit must carry you further afield yet, for that craft’s figure-head is a white effigy, apparently a woman’s head.’

His manner to the sudden, desperate surging of the disappointment in him fell in a breath into the old form of the craziness of his moods of excitement. He looked through the glass, and then roared out—

‘Finn.’

The skipper came bundling over to us.

‘That vessel is not the “Shark.”’

‘I’ve been afeared not, sir, I’ve been afeared not,’ said Finn. ‘Like as two eggs end on; but now she’s drawed out—’tain’t only the figure-head. She han’t got the “Shark’s” length of bowsprit.’

Wilfrid dashed the telescope down on to the deck. ‘A fool’s chase!’ he exclaimed, scarcely intelligible for the way he spoke with his teeth set. ‘Heavenly God, what a disappointment! But it should have been Monday, it should have been Monday,’ and his gaze went in a scowling, wandering way from us to the schooner.

‘I suppose you know,’ said I to Finn, ‘that they’re standing by to lower a boat when we shall have come to a stand?’

‘Ay, sir, I know it,’ exclaimed Finn, who had picked up his telescope and was feeling over it in a nervous, broken-down manner as though he feared it was injured, but durst not look to make sure while Wilfrid stood nigh. ‘I shall heave to to looard for their convenience,’ and with that he walked aft to the wheel.

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Wilfrid looked crushed with something absolutely lifeless in the dull leaden blank of his eyes. It was perhaps fortunate for us, if not for him, that this sudden prodigious blow of disappointment should have completed the sense of physical and mental exhaustion which inevitably attended the war of emotions that had been going on all day in his weak mind, otherwise heaven alone knows what miserable and painful display might have followed this failure of his expectations. I was much affected by his manner, and endeavoured to console him, but he motioned me to silence with a gesture of the hand, and seated himself on the skylight, where he remained with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the deck, apparently heeding nothing that passed around him.

‘He’ll rally after a little,’ said I to Miss Laura, who furtively watched him with eyes sad with the shadow of tears.

‘It ought to have been the “Shark,” Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed in a low voice. ‘My cowardly heart all day has been praying otherwise; and now I would give ten years of my life that my sister were there—for his sake, for mine, and for yours too, that this wretched voyage of expectation and mistakes and superstitions—oh, and I do not know what else,’ she added with a little toss of her arms like a wringing of her hands, ‘might come to an end.’

The sailors forward were eyeing the vessel steadily as we approached her. By this time all hands were aware of the blunder that had been made, and one seemed to see a kind of suspense in the posture of the fellows, with a half-grin in it, too, as though ’twas an incident to be as much laughed at as wondered at. The breeze continued to slacken, the seas were momentarily losing weight as they rolled, the gushing of the western crimson floated in the air like a delicate red smoke, with a heap of flame-coloured clouds resting broodingly upon the southern confines and the new moon over the sun, a wonder for the bright sharpness of its curve in such a hectic as she stood in. We ran down and hove to within easy hailing distance to leeward of the schooner, but it was plain that Mynheer had no notion of talking to us from over his rail. His fine large boat hung manned at the davits as we rounded to, with a gang of fellows at either fall, and no sooner was our way arrested than down slowly sank the six-oared fabric. The oars sparkled in the red light, and away she came for us.

‘Charles,’ called my cousin from the skylight. I went to him. ‘I’m too ill to be worried,’ said he; ‘represent me, dear boy, will you? Get us out of this mess as best you can, and as quickly.’

He spoke faintly and slightly staggered after he had risen. Miss Jennings seeing this, took his arm and together they went below.

I stood at the gangway along with friend Finn. ’Twas a ludicrous position to be in, and what excuses to make I knew not, unless it was to come to my explaining the full motive and meaning of our expedition—a sort of candour I did not like the idea of. In the stern-sheets of the approaching boat was the large fat[176] man I had previously taken notice of on the schooner’s quarterdeck. His face was as round as the moon, with a smudge of bristly yellow moustache under a bottle-shaped nose: his person was the completest pudding of a figure that can be imagined, as though forsooth a huge suit of clothes had been filled out with suet. He wore a blue cap with a shovel-shaped peak and a piece of gold lace on it going from one brass button to the other.

‘That’s not Fidler,’ said I to Finn.

‘Fidler!’ he ejaculated, staring with all his might at the boat; ‘there’s twenty Fidlers in that man, your honour. Why Fidler’s a mere rib, lean enough to shelter himself under the lee of a rope-yarn.’

The boat came fizzing alongside handsomely, and the fat man, watching his opportunity, planted himself upon the steps and rose like a whale to our deck, upon which he stepped. In a very phlegmatic, leisurely way he stood staring around him for a little out of a pair of small, greenish, expressionless eyes, and with a countenance that discovered no signs of any sort of emotion; then in the deepest voice I ever heard in a man, a tone that literally vibrated upon the ear like the low note of a church organ, he said in Dutch, ‘Who speaks my language?’

I knew a few sentences in German, enough to enable me to understand his question, but by no means enough to converse with, even if the man spoke that tongue, so I said bluntly in English, ‘No one, sir.’

He wheezed a bit, looking stolidly at me, and exclaimed ‘You are captain?’

I motioned to Finn.

‘Vy you vire ot me?’ he demanded, turning his fat, emotionless face upon the skipper.

Finn touched his cap. ‘Heartily sorry, sir: ’twas all a blunder happening through our mistaking you for another craft. I’m very willing to ’pologise and do whatever’s right.’

The Dutchman listened apathetically, then slowly bringing his fist of the shape, if not the hue, of a leg of beef to his vast spread of breast, he exclaimed in a voice even deeper than his former utterance, ‘Vot I ask is, vy you vire at me?’

Finn substantially repeated his former apology. The Dutchman gazed at him dully, with an expression of glassiness coming into his eyes.

‘Vot schip dis?’

Finn answered with alacrity, ‘The schooner-yacht “Bride,” sir.’

‘Zhe vight vorr herr nation?’ sending a lethargic glance at our masthead as if in search of a pennant.

‘No, sir,’ cried Finn, ‘we’re a pleasure vessel.’

‘Dere is no var,’ exclaimed the Dutchman, shaking his head, ‘between mine coundry und yours.’

‘Ho no, sir,’ exclaimed Finn.

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‘Den I ask,’ said the Dutchman, in a voice like a trombone, ‘vy you vire ot me?’

This promised no end. I hastily whispered to Finn, ‘Leave him to me. Turn to quietly and trim sail and get way upon the vessel. He’ll take no other hint, I fear.’ Finn sneaked off. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ said I, ‘you’ll have heard from the captain that our firing at you was a blunder into which we were led by mistaking your ship. We desire to tender you our humble apology, which I trust you will see your way to accept without delay as we are very desirous of proceeding on our voyage.’

He looked at me with a motionless head and a face as vacant of human intelligence as a cloud, with its fat, its paleness, its Alp upon Alp of chin, then ponderously and slowly putting his hand into his breast he pulled out a great pocket-book and said, ‘Vot dis schip’s name?’

‘The “Bridesmaid,”’ said I.

He wrote down the word, wheezing laboriously.

‘Your captain name?’

‘Fidler,’ I answered.

This he entered.

‘Owner!’

‘Colonel Hope-Kennedy.’

‘Ow you shpell?’

I dictated, and he put down the letters as I delivered them.

‘Where you vrom?’

‘Limerick,’ I answered.

‘Ow you shpell?’ He got the word, and then said, ‘Vere you boun’?’

‘To the Solomon Group,’ I answered.

This I had to spell for him too. He wrote with such imperturbability, with such a ponderosity of phlegmatic manner in his posture, with such whale-like asthmatic wheezings broken only by the trembling notes of his deep, deep voice, that again and again I was nearly exploding with laughter, and indeed, had I caught anybody’s eye but his, I must certainly have whipped out with the merriment that was almost suffocating me. He slowly returned the note-book to his pocket and exclaimed, ‘Goot. You hear more of dis,’ and with that walked to the gangway.

‘Pray forgive me,’ said I, following him and speaking very courteously, ‘will you kindly tell me the name of your ship?’

He regarded me with a kind of scowl as he hung an instant in the gangway—the only expression approaching intelligence that entered his face, and said, ‘Malvina.’

‘And pray where are you bound to, sir?’

‘Cura?oa.’

‘Are you the owner, sir?’

‘Captain,’ he responded with an emphatic nod, and so saying he put his foot on the ladder and entered his boat.

Five minutes later we were breaking the seas afresh, making a[178] more southerly course than was needful by two points, that we might give as wide a berth as soon as possible to the Dutch schooner, that, at the time I went below to the summons of the dinner-bell, was sliding away west-south-west a league distant under every cloth that she had to hoist.