As is often the case, at the tail of the great blast was a deluge. It was as if some huge door in the sky had been opened and the waters fell out in a cataract. I hurried below, as I had no desire to be soaked to the skin, and when I reached the cuddy I found the Spanish lady passenger seated at the table, looking very scared and unhappy.
“Oh, Mr. Gibling,” she exclaimed, “is there any danger? What an awful storm!”
I assured her that all was well, and that the rain would probably bring a dead calm.
“Did you see the captain?’ she asked, still displaying great agitation.
There was something in her manner and the tone of her voice that struck me as peculiar, and I replied:
“Yes. I saw him on deck.’
“Ah, but I mean here. He has just come down and gone to his room. I spoke to him, but he would not answer me. He looked awful. I am sure there is something queer about him. His eyes seemed bulging from his head, and if he had seen a ghost he couldn’t have been whiter. He is either ill or going mad. Do go to him.”
The lady’s words did not tend to allay my own fears and suspicions, but, anxious not to add to her alarm, I said with an air of assumed indifference:
“The fact is, I suppose, he is over-anxious. Not that there is anything to fear, I am sure. We are in the squall zone, you know, but there is every prospect of making a good passage. However, I will go and talk to the captain.”
So saying, I left her, and made my way to the skipper’s state room. I knocked as usual, but again there was no response; so I pushed the door open, and found Captain Tredegar seated in his chair, his body bent over the table, and his face hidden by his arms. His cap had fallen off and was lying on the table, and I noted that his hands were opening and shutting in a spasmodic, nervous way. It was no time for ceremony. I should have been dull indeed not to recognize that the man was suffering. I therefore went to his side, and laying my hand on his shoulder said sympathetically:
‘Excuse me, Captain Tredegar, but you are not well. Can I do anything for you? Do make a confidant of me. Believe me I am not actuated by mere vulgar curiosity. Pray command my services if I can be of any use.”
He lifted his head up. I had never seen before in any human face such a pronounced look of nervous horror. His eyes wandered about the room; the corners of his mouth twitched, and he sobbed like a child that had cried itself into a state of physical exhaustion. I was positively alarmed, and my first impulse was to run for assistance. As if divining my thoughts he seized my wrist in his powerful hand, and said in a broken voice:
“Pardon me, sir, you are very good. I am suffering from an attack to which I am at rare intervals subject; but I shall be all right directly. Please don’t make a scene. There is some rum there in that bottle, give me a little drop. It will set me up.” Although I was doubtful whether rum was the proper remedy in such a case, I could not resist his appealing manner, and taking the bottle from the rack I poured into a glass about a table-spoonful.
“Oh, more than that, more than that,” he cried. “Fill the glass nearly.”
Perhaps at any other time I should have argued against his request, but I let the rum run from the bottle until the tumbler was quite half-full. He clutched it with trembling hand, and poured the contents at one gulp down his throat.
“Thanks, thanks,” he said, as he recovered his breath and placed the glass on the table. “That will put new life into me. I feel better already.”
He rose, shuddered as he did so, and took his sou’wester and oilskin from a peg. He put a hand on each of my shoulders, and looking me in the face, said with an impressive earnestness:
“Mr. Gibling, I am more than obliged to you. Add to my obligation, will you, by promising not to mention to anyone that you have seen me in one of my strange moods.”
“Certainly I will,” I replied. “You may trust me. And, as I have said, if I can be of service command me.”
“Very well; some day I may put you to the test,” he answered; “good-night, and God bless you.”
He left me, and I heard him clatter up the gangway in his great boots. As I crossed towards my own cabin the Spanish lady was still sitting at the cuddy table.
“Have you been with the captain?” she asked.
“I have,” I replied.
“How is he?”
“He is all right,” I answered lightly.
She glanced about the cuddy as if to make sure no one was listening, and then, bending towards me as if inviting confidence, she said in a half whisper:
“Do you know, Mr. Gibling, when the captain came down from the deck a little while ago there was such a peculiar look in his face that I could almost have fancied he—”
She stopped suddenly in her speech, visibly shuddered, and put her pretty white fingers before her eyes. After an awkward pause I broke the silence by saying:
Almost fancied he—what?”
“He had seen some gruesome and unnatural sight.”
I laughed, though I had an inkling of her meaning, for strangely enough a vague, phantom-like thought had been troubling me; but I could not define it, could not give it shape; now at her words it was clear enough and an uncontrollable impulse impelled me to give it utterance:
“Ghosts, you mean,” and I laughed at my own words, for the idea seemed to me utterly ridiculous. But not so to the lady. Her face assumed a graver aspect, and her eyes betrayed that whatever my views might be her mind was made up.
“What I mean is, he has seen a vision,” she remarked, with awe in her voice.
“Oh, nonsense,” I exclaimed. “Hobgoblins and bogeys belong to the period of our childhood. When we come to years of discretion we should cease to be childish.”
My remark annoyed her. She rose and curled her lip disdainfully. “I am not childish and I don’t talk nonsense,” she said, as she swept past me without so much as giving me a chance to apologize. I felt annoyed with myself for having been so tactless, but otherwise laughed mentally at what I considered the absurdity of the position.
A few minutes later I went on deck to finish my final smoke before turning in. The rain had ceased and the air was delightfully cool. The wind had gone, the sky was a mass of picturesque clouds with fantastic outlines. Here and there groups of stars were visible, and with chastened light, as if shining through gauze, the moon made a silver pathway over the face of the deep until it blended with the horizon in impenetrable blackness, which rounded off the weird scene. The captain had discarded his oilskins, which were lying on the top of a hencoop, and he was leaning on his elbows over the taffrail, complacently smoking a cigar, and absorbed apparently in the contemplation of the phosphoric display that flashed and glistened under the ship’s counter as she fell and rose to the swell. I approached him. He straightened up, turned his back to the rail, folded his arms across his breast, and puffing at his cigar as he cast a scrutinizing eye aloft at the flapping sails, he said in a cheerful tone:
“Quite a contrast to a little while ago, isn’t it, Mr. Gibling? But it’s the sort of weather we must expect in these latitudes.”
I was struck by his changed-manner. He seemed so cheerful and light-hearted. He wasn’t the same man I had seen down in the cabin half an hour ago.
“Yes, I suppose so,” I remarked, for the sake of saying something.
“It’s not your first voyage to sea, is it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Have you been to Cuba before?”
“Oh yes.”
“Ah! Then you will know pretty well what kind of voyage it is.”
I told him that I knew fairly well what one might expect on such a voyage at that time of the year, and we continued to chat pleasantly for a little while until six bells struck (eleven o’clock). “All’s well!” came in solemn tones from the look-out man on the fo�
��c’stle.
“Well, I think I shall turn in,” said the captain, as he threw the stump of his cigar overboard, glanced up aloft, then at the binnacle, and calling the second officer who was on watch, and telling him to keep the ship on the same course until the morning, he moved towards the companion-way, and I followed. When we reached the saloon he put out his hand. As I took it he said “Good-night,” and immediately added in lower tones, “Don’t forget your promise.”
I turned in and tried to sleep, but for a long time tossed about, thinking of what had passed, and trying to account for the captain’s strange behaviour; but the more I thought the more I got puzzled, and I came to the conclusion there was some strange mystery about him. I saw through my port the sun beginning to redden the eastern horizon before sleep came to me. I did not waken until long after the usual breakfast hour, so I breakfasted alone.
When I went on deck I noticed the Spanish lady reclining in a deck-chair. She was reading a book, and perhaps that accounted for her taking no notice of me as I bowed and said “Good-morning.”
The sun was shining brilliantly. The sky was cloudless save on the horizon, where there were woolly banks. A steady little breeze just kept the sails full, and the short, choppy waves danced and flashed in the sunlight. The captain was not on deck, and I was informed by the second mate that he had not turned out yet. Wishing to propitiate the Spanish lady passenger, I carried a camp stool to where she was sitting, and in the most fascinating manner I was capable of commanding I asked if I could sit beside her. She smiled sweetly, and accorded her gracious permission. We said some commonplace things about the weather; she descanted on the tropical beauties of Cuba, and criticized rather severely the English climate; while as for London, she spoke of it with scorn and much shrugging of shoulders.
When she paused, I embraced the opportunity to turn the trend of conversation by saying:
“I am afraid that I was a little rude to you last night.” But I hardly expected such a blunt reply as she made.
“Yes, you were exceedingly rude, and I hate rude men.”
“I hope you don’t hate me,” I cried, laughingly.
“Oh no, not quite. You’re a Londoner, you see.”
This was very severe. I confess I was hardly prepared for it, and I was tempted to say something cutting in reply, but checked myself, bowed, and merely remarked:
“Which is not my fault. Therefore pity me rather than blame me.”
“Certainly I do that,” she replied, with an amusing seriousness. “But look here; answer me this. Why should you have been rude last night when I said what I did about the captain?”
“Madame,” I said, as I laid my hand on my heart and bowed, “believe me I had no intention of being rude; but the fact is, I am a somewhat commonplace, matter-of-fact man, and I have no belief in anything that is said to be due to supernatural causes.”
“Supernatural or not supernatural,” she retorted, “there are things going on around us which certainly cannot be explained by any known laws.”
“Possibly, and yet I doubt it,” I replied, with a sceptical smile.
“Well, your obtuseness is your own affair,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders; “but now, look here, Mr. Gibling, permit me to make a little prophecy. Captain Tredegar has something awful on his mind. He sees visions, and will ultimately go mad.”
Her words startled me. For the first time I was inclined to regard her seriously, in one respect at least; that was the ultimate madness of the skipper. That thought had haunted me, but I had tried to put it away. Even to my somewhat dulled perception it had been made evident that a man who could act as Tredegar had acted on the previous night was a victim to some obscure form of mental disease which might ultimately destroy him. Now the lady spoke with such an absence of vagueness that I asked her if she had known the captain long, and if she was acquainted with his past history.
“Indeed, no,” she exclaimed. “I never saw the man in my life until I joined the ship in Liverpool.”
“Then why do you speak with such an air of self-conviction?”
“I speak as I think. I think as I know.”
“But how do you know?’
“Well, you are stupid,” she exclaimed, with a show of exasperation. “I know, because I have a sense you don’t possess. I was born where the sun shines. I have beliefs you have not. I believe that men who do evil in this world can be haunted into madness by the disembodied spirits of those they injure. Now you may laugh and sneer as much as you like, sir, but I tell you this: when Captain Tredegar came down to the cabin last night his face clearly indicated that he had been terrified by something not human, and I saw madness written large in his eyes.”
I should be wanting in common honesty if I failed to say that this woman’s remarks put certain rambling thoughts of my own into shape, impressed me in a way that a short time previously I should have been ashamed to own to. They set me pondering, and I tried to recall every act, word, look and gesture of the captain’s, with the result that I had to admit there was something strange about him. At that moment Captain Tredegar himself came on deck. His breezy, jovial manner, and smiling bronzed face, seemed to make the conversation about him ridiculous, and tended to confound the prophet who had talked of madness.
He bowed politely to the lady, and chatted to her pleasantly. He greeted me with a cheery “Good-morning,” and expressed a hope that neither of us had been much alarmed by the squall of the previous evening. He said the passage was going to be a splendid one; one of the best he had ever made; and if, as he anticipated we should do, we picked up a good slant of wind when we had made a little more westing, we should reach Cuba several days before the time we were expected.
The mate now came on deck and he and the captain walked to the break of the poop. When he was out of earshot I turned to the lady and said;
“He doesn’t look much like a man who is given to seeing visions and is doomed to madness, does he?”
“You cannot see beneath the mask,” she replied, with another contemptuous curl of her lip; and she added somewhat mysteriously, “Wait, wait, wait,” repeating the word three times, with a rising inflection on each repetition. Then she turned to her book again, as if she wished me to understand that she would say no more. I took the hint, and making a show of stretching my limbs, I rose and began to pace up and down. The subject of the conversation between me and the lady continued to occupy my thoughts against my will, and the more I thought the more like a riddle did the captain appear to me. I was really astonished to find myself taking so much interest in him. If Captain Tredegar had been a relative of mine, my own brother, in fact, I could hardly have felt more anxious or more desirous to solve the mystery that seemed to surround him. His appearance that morning, and his appearance and behaviour of the night before, were in such violent contrast that to put it down to the merely varying moods to which we are all liable was not satisfactory enough. What puzzled me more than anything else was his behaviour during the storm. To suppose that he was a coward and lost his nerve in a passing squall was absurd on the face of it. In the very height of the storm he delivered his orders with coolness and judgment, as I could testify, but what did he mean by exclaiming: There it is again! There, out there on the crest of that wave? Then again, why the appeal to God to pity him? Having perplexed and fretted myself until I felt quite confused, I found myself unable to alter the original opinion I had formed, which was that Captain Tredegar was liable to attacks of mental aberration, and that being so he was not a fit person to have charge of a valuable vessel and her living freight.
Viewing the matter from this point, I came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that it was my bounden duty as an honest man to make representations to his owners as to the skipper’s state of mind; for surely no one would say that a man liable to attacks of temporary mania was the proper person to be
in charge of a ship. As I came to this decision I heard the captain call out from the break of the poop:
“Make eight bells.”
The boatswain struck the hour on the bell, and “eight bells” was roared out by the men about the decks. I was recalled to a sense of my surroundings and as the skipper passed me, he said cheerily:
“Well, Mr. Gibling. It’s time to splice the main brace, isn’t it?”
I may explain for the benefit of those who have not made a voyage to sea that it is customary in most passenger vessels for the passengers to partake of a glass of liquor of some kind at noon, eight bells. This, in nautical phraseology, is termed “splicing the main brace.” It is the most interesting period of the twenty-four hours to lands-people, because the captain and his officers having taken their sights, as it is called, they proceed to work them out, in order to discover the position of the ship; that is, her latitude and longitude, and that being done, it is marked on the chart.
As I accompanied the skipper to the cuddy, I began to think that perhaps after all I was doing him a wrong, and it would be unfair to say anything to his owners until I had received stronger proof that my suspicions were well founded. Certainly, as he sat at the table making his calculations and working out the position, he not only seemed the perfection of physical fitness, but fully endowed with keen and sound intelligence. As I noted this I came to the conclusion that it was no less my duty to suspend my judgment—than to watch closely and wait patiently.
I wish it to be distinctly understood that at this period of the voyage I was halting between two opinions. On the one hand, I considered Captain Tredegar peculiar in many respects—a man of mystery, in short—and on the other, I was painfully anxious not to do him an injustice. It will also be noted that the conclusions arrived at by the Spanish lady, who was an emotional and superstitious woman, were not in accordance with my own. For according to her views, the captain’s strange behaviour was the result of seeing visions; according to mine, he suffered from intermittent mania, which was probably traceable to a too free indulgence in rum or other potent liquors. Not that I had ever seen him the worse for drink, but he took a good deal more than was good for him, in my opinion, though it did not affect him as it would have done others who were not so case-hardened.
The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack Page 38
