Part 47

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--a prosy, staid, unromantic, London citizen--so 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 apologise. 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. The air was delightfully cool. The wind had gone, but cats-paws came up every now and then, bellying the sails out for a moment or two with a great jerk, but dropping suddenly the canvas fell back against the masts with a bang and rattle of blocks and creaking of sheaves. 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, so to speak, the weird scene. The captain had discarded his oilskins, which were lying on the top of a hencoop, and he himself 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 himself up, turned his back to the rail, folded his arms across his breast, and puffing at his cigar as he cast a scrutinising 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 like 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. The steward had kept something hot for me.

When I went on deck I noticed the Spanish lady reclining in a deck chair, near the companion-way. She was reading a book, and perhaps that accounted for her taking no notice of me as I bowed and said ‘Good-morning.’