Varney the Vampyre 26The Admiral’s Opinion.—the Request of Charles
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Literature · Horror
Varney the Vampyre 26
The Admiral’s Opinion.—the Request of Charles
RymerEnglish
Charles then sought the admiral, whom he found with his hands behind him, pacing to and fro in one of the long walks of the garden, evidently in a very unsettled state of mind. When Charles appeared, he quickened his pace, and looked in such a state of unusual perplexity that it was quite ridiculous to observe him.
“I suppose, uncle, you have made up your mind thoroughly by this time?”
“Well, I don’t know that.”
“Why, you have had long enough surely to think over it. I have not troubled you soon.”
“Well, I cannot exactly say you have, but, somehow or another, I don’t think very fast, and I have an unfortunate propensity after a time of coming exactly round to where I began.”
“Then, to tell the truth, uncle, you can come to no sort of conclusion.”
“Only one.”
“And what may that be?”
“Why, that you are right in one thing, Charles, which is, that having sent a challenge to this fellow of a vampyre, you must fight him.”
“I suspect that that is a conclusion you had from the first, uncle?”
“Why so?”
“Because it is an obvious and a natural one. All your doubts, and trouble, and perplexities, have been to try and find some excuse for not entertaining that opinion, and now that you really find it in vain to make it, I trust that you will accede as you first promised to do, and not seek by any means to thwart me.”
“I will not thwart you, my boy, although in my opinion you ought not to fight with a vampyre.”
“Never mind that. We cannot urge that as a valid excuse, so long as he chooses to deny being one. And after all, if he be really wrongfully suspected, you must admit that he is a very injured man.”
“Injured!—nonsense. If he is not a vampyre, he’s some other out-of-the-way sort of fish, you may depend. He’s the oddest-looking fellow ever I came across in all my born days, ashore or afloat.”
“Is he?”
“Yes, he is; and yet, when I come to look at the thing again, in my mind, some droll sights that I have seen come across my memory. The sea is the place for wonders and for mysteries. Why, we see more in a day and a night there, than you landsmen could contrive to make a whole twelvemonth’s wonder of.”
“But you never saw a vampyre, uncle?”
“Well, I don’t know that. I didn’t know anything about vampyres till I came here; but that was my ignorance, you know. There might have been lots of vampyres where I’ve been, for all I know.”
“Oh, certainly; but as regards this duel, will you wait now until to-morrow morning, before you take any further steps in the matter?”
“Till to-morrow morning?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Why, only a little while ago, you were all eagerness to have something done off-hand.”
“Just so; but now I have a particular reason for waiting until to-morrow morning.”
“Have you? Well, as you please, boy—as you please. Have everything your own way.”
“You are very kind, uncle; and now I have another favour to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“Why, you know that Henry Bannerworth receives but a very small sum out of the whole proceeds of the estate here, which ought, but for his father’s extravagance, to be wholly at his disposal.”
“So I have heard.”
“I am certain he is at present distressed for money, and I have not much. Will you lend me fifty pounds, uncle, until my own affairs are sufficiently arranged to enable you to pay yourself again?”
“Will I! of course I will.”
“I wish to offer that sum as an accommodation to Henry. From me, I dare say he will receive it freely, because he must be convinced how freely it is offered; and, besides, they look upon me now almost as a member of the family, in consequence of my engagement with Flora.”
“Certainly, and quite correct too; there’s a fifty-pound note, my boy; take it, and do what you like with it, and when you want any more, come to me for it.”
“I knew I could trespass thus far on your kindness, uncle.”
“Trespass! It’s no trespass at all.”
“Well, we will not fall out about the terms in which I cannot help expressing my gratitude to you for many favours. To-morrow, you will arrange the duel for me.”
“As you please. I don’t altogether like going to that fellow’s house again.”
“Well, then, we can manage, I dare say, by note.”
“Very good. Do so. He puts me in mind altogether of a circumstance that happened a good while ago, when I was at sea, and not so old a man as I am now.”
“Puts you in mind of a circumstance, uncle?”
“Yes; he’s something like a fellow that figured in an affair that I know a good deal about; only I do think as my chap was more mysterious by a d—d sight than this one.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, dear, yes. When anything happens in an odd way at sea, it is as odd again as anything that occurs on land, my boy, you may depend.”
“Oh, you only fancy that, uncle, because you have spent so long a time at sea.”
“No, I don’t imagine it, you rascal. What can you have on shore equal to what we have at sea? Why, the sights that come before us would make you landsmen’s hairs stand up on end, and never come down again.”
“In the ocean, do you mean, that you see those sights, uncle?”
“To be sure. I was once in the southern ocean, in a small frigate, looking out for a seventy-four we were to join company with, when a man at the mast-head sung out that he saw her on the larboard bow. Well, we thought it was all right enough, and made away that quarter, when what do you think it turned out to be?”
“I really cannot say.”
“The head of a fish.”
“A fish!”
“Yes! a d—d deal bigger than the hull of a vessel. He was swimming along with his head just what I dare say he considered a shaving or so out of the water.”
“But where were the sails, uncle?”
“The sails?”
“Yes; your man at the mast-head must have been a poor seaman not to have missed the sails.”
“All, that’s one of your shore-going ideas, now. You know nothing whatever about it. I’ll tell you where the sails were, master Charley.”
“Well, I should like to know.”
“The spray, then, that he dashed up with a pair of fins that were close to his head, was in such a quantity, and so white, that they looked just like sails.”
“Oh!”
“Ah! you may say ‘oh!’ but we all saw him—the whole ship’s crew; and we sailed alongside of him for some time, till he got tired of us, and suddenly dived down, making such a vortex in the water, that the ship shook again, and seemed for about a minute as if she was inclined to follow him to the bottom of the sea.”
“And what do you suppose it was, uncle?”
“How should I know?”
“Did you ever see it again?”
“Never; though others have caught a glimpse of him now and then in the same ocean, but never came so near him as we did, that ever I heard of, at all events. They may have done so.”
“It is singular!”
“Singular or not, it’s a fool to what I can tell you. Why, I’ve seen things that, if I were to set about describing them to you, you would say I was making up a romance.”
“Oh, no; it’s quite impossible, uncle, any one could ever suspect you of such a thing.”
“You’d believe me, would you?”
“Of course I would.”
“Then here goes. I’ll just tell you now of a circumstance that I haven’t liked to mention to anybody yet.”
“Indeed! why so?”
“Because I didn’t want to be continually fighting people for not believing it; but here you have it:—”
We were outward bound; a good ship, a good captain, and good messmates, you know, go far towards making a prosperous voyage a pleasant and happy one, and on this occasion we had every reasonable prospect of all.
Our hands were all tried men—they had been sailors from infancy; none of your French craft, that serve an apprenticeship and then become land lubbers again. Oh, no, they were stanch and true, and loved the ocean as the sluggard loves his bed, or the lover his mistress.
Ay, and for the matter of that, the love was a more enduring and a more healthy love, for it increased with years, and made men love one another, and they would stand by each other while they had a limb to lift—while they were able to chew a quid or wink an eye, leave alone wag a pigtail.
We were outward bound for Ceylon, with cargo, and were to bring spices and other matters home from the Indian market. The ship was new and good—a pretty craft; she sat like a duck upon the water, and a stiff breeze carried her along the surface of the waves without your rocking, and pitching, and tossing, like an old wash-tub at a mill-tail, as I have had the misfortune to sail in more than once afore.
No, no, we were well laden, and well pleased, and weighed anchor with light hearts and a hearty cheer.
Away we went down the river, and soon rounded the North Foreland, and stood out in the Channel. The breeze was a steady and stiff one, and carried us through the water as though it had been made for us.
“Jack,” said I to a messmate of mine, as he stood looking at the skies, then at the sails, and finally at the water, with a graver air than I thought was at all consistent with the occasion or circumstances.
“Well,” he replied.
“What ails you? You seem as melancholy as if we were about to cast lots who should be eaten first. Are you well enough?”
“I am hearty enough, thank Heaven,” he said, “but I don’t like this breeze.”
“Don’t like the breeze!” said I; “why, mate, it is as good and kind a breeze as ever filled a sail. What would you have, a gale?”
“No, no; I fear that.”
“With such a ship, and such a set of hearty able seamen, I think we could manage to weather out the stiffest gale that ever whistled through a yard.”
“That may be; I hope it is, and I really believe and think so.”
“Then what makes you so infernally mopish and melancholy?”
“I don’t know, but can’t help it. It seems to me as though there was something hanging over us, and I can’t tell what.”
“Yes, there are the colours, Jack, at the masthead; they are flying over us with a hearty breeze.”
“Ah! ah!” said Jack, looking up at the colours, and then went away without saying anything more, for he had some piece of duty to perform.
I thought my messmate had something on his mind that caused him to feel sad and uncomfortable, and I took no more notice of it; indeed, in the course of a day or two he was as merry as any of the rest, and had no more melancholy that I could perceive, but was as comfortable as anybody.
We had a gale off the coast of Biscay, and rode it out without the loss of a spar or a yard; indeed, without the slightest accident or rent of any kind.
“Now, Jack, what do you think of our vessel?” said I.
“She’s like a duck upon water, rises and falls with the waves, and doesn’t tumble up and down like a hoop over stones.”
“No, no; she goes smoothly and sweetly; she is a gallant craft, and this is her first voyage, and I predict a prosperous one.”
“I hope so,” he said.
Well, we went on prosperously enough for about three weeks; the ocean was as calm and as smooth as a meadow, the breeze light but good, and we stemmed along majestically over the deep blue waters, and passed coast after coast, though all around was nothing but the apparently pathless main in sight.
“A better sailer I never stepped into,” said the captain one day; “it would be a pleasure to live and die in such a vessel.”
Well, as I said, we had been three weeks or thereabouts, when one morning, after the sun was up and the decks washed, we saw a strange man sitting on one of the water-casks that were on deck, for, being full, we were compelled to stow some of them on deck.
You may guess those on deck did a little more than stare at this strange and unexpected apparition. By jingo, I never saw men open their eyes wider in all my life, nor was I any exception to the rule. I stared, as well I might; but we said nothing for some minutes, and the stranger looked calmly on us, and then cocked his eye with a nautical air up at the sky, as if he expected to receive a twopenny-post letter from St. Michael, or a billet doux from the Virgin Mary.
“Where has he come from?” said one of the men in a low tone to his companion, who was standing by him at that moment.
“How can I tell?” replied his companion. “He may have dropped from the clouds; he seems to be examining the road; perhaps he is going back.”
The stranger sat all this time with the most extreme and provoking coolness and unconcern; he deigned us but a passing notice, but it was very slight.
He was a tall, spare man—what is termed long and lathy—but he was evidently a powerful man. He had a broad chest, and long, sinewy arms, a hooked nose, and a black, eagle eye. His hair was curly, but frosted by age; it seemed as though it had been tinged with white at the extremities, but he was hale and active otherwise, to judge from appearances.
Notwithstanding all this, there was a singular repulsiveness about him that I could not imagine the cause, or describe; at the same time there was an air of determination in his wild and singular-looking eyes, and over their whole there was decidedly an air and an appearance so sinister as to be positively disagreeable.
“Well,” said I, after we had stood some minutes, “where did you come from, shipmate?”
He looked at me and then up at the sky, in a knowing manner.
“Come, come, that won’t do; you have none of Peter Wilkins’s wings, and couldn’t come on the ærial dodge; it won’t do; how did you get here?”
He gave me an awful wink, and made a sort of involuntary movement, which jumped him up a few inches, and he bumped down again on the water-cask.
“That’s as much as to say,” thought I, “that he’s sat himself on it.”
“I’ll go and inform the captain,” said I, “of this affair; he’ll hardly believe me when I tell him, I am sure.”
So saying, I left the deck and went to the cabin, where the captain was at breakfast, and related to him what I had seen respecting the stranger. The captain looked at me with an air of disbelief, and said,—
“What?—do you mean to say there’s a man on board we haven’t seen before?”
“Yes, I do, captain. I never saw him afore, and he’s sitting beating his heels on the water-cask on deck.”
“The devil!”
“He is, I assure you, sir; and he won’t answer any questions.”
“I’ll see to that. I’ll see if I can’t make the lubber say something, providing his tongue’s not cut out. But how came he on board? Confound it, he can’t be the devil, and dropped from the moon.”
“Don’t know, captain,” said I. “He is evil-looking enough, to my mind, to be the father of evil, but it’s ill bespeaking attentions from that quarter at any time.”
“Go on, lad; I’ll come up after you.”
I left the cabin, and I heard the captain coming after me. When I got on deck, I saw he had not moved from the place where I left him. There was a general commotion among the crew when they heard of the occurrence, and all crowded round him, save the man at the wheel, who had to remain at his post.
The captain now came forward, and the men fell a little back as he approached. For a moment the captain stood silent, attentively examining the stranger, who was excessively cool, and stood the scrutiny with the same unconcern that he would had the captain been looking at his watch.
“Well, my man,” said the captain, “how did you come here?”
“I’m part of the cargo,” he said, with an indescribable leer.
“Part of the cargo be d——d!” said the captain, in sudden rage, for he thought the stranger was coming his jokes too strong. “I know you are not in the bills of lading.”
“I’m contraband,” replied the stranger; “and my uncle’s the great cham of Tartary.”
The captain stared, as well he might, and did not speak for some minutes; all the while the stranger kept kicking his heels against the water-casks and squinting up at the skies; it made us feel very queer.
“Well, I must confess you are not in the regular way of trading.”
“Oh, no,” said the stranger; “I am contraband—entirely contraband.”
“And how did you come on board?”
At this question the stranger again looked curiously up at the skies, and continued to do so for more than a minute; he then turned his gaze upon the captain.
“No, no,” said the captain; “eloquent dumb show won’t do with me; you didn’t come, like Mother Shipton, upon a birch broom. How did you come on board my vessel?”
“I walked on board,” said the stranger.
“You walked on board; and where did you conceal yourself?”
“Below.”
“Very good; and why didn’t you stay below altogether?”
“Because I wanted fresh air. I’m in a delicate state of health, you see; it doesn’t do to stay in a confined place too long.”
“Confound the binnacle!” said the captain; it was his usual oath when anything bothered him, and he could not make it out. “Confound the binnacle!—what a delicate-looking animal you are. I wish you had stayed where you were; your delicacy would have been all the same to me. Delicate, indeed!”
“Yes, very,” said the stranger, coolly.
There was something so comic in the assertion of his delicateness of health, that we should all have laughed; but we were somewhat scared, and had not the inclination.
“How have you lived since you came on board?” inquired the captain.
“Very indifferently.”
“But how? What have you eaten? and what have you drank?”
“Nothing, I assure you. All I did while was below was——”
“What?”
“Why, I sucked my thumbs like a polar bear in its winter quarters.”
And as he spoke the stranger put his two thumbs into his mouth, and extraordinary thumbs they were, too, for each would have filled an ordinary man’s mouth.
“These,” said the stranger, pulling them out, and gazing at them wistfully, and with a deep sigh he continued,—
“These were thumbs at one time; but they are nothing now to what they were.”
“Confound the binnacle!” muttered the captain to himself, and then he added, aloud,—
“It’s cheap living, however; but where are you going to, and why did you come aboard?”
“I wanted a cheap cruise, and I am going there and back.”
“Why, that’s where we are going,” said the captain.
“Then we are brothers,” exclaimed the stranger, hopping off the water-cask like a kangaroo, and bounding towards the captain, holding out his hand as though he would have shaken hands with him.
“No, no,” said the captain; “I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do it!” exclaimed the stranger, angrily. “What do you mean?”
“That I can’t have anything to do with contraband articles; I am a fair trader, and do all above board. I haven’t a chaplain on board, or he should offer up prayers for your preservation, and the recovery of your health, which seems so delicate.”
“That be——”
The stranger didn’t finish the sentence; he merely screwed his mouth up into an incomprehensible shape, and puffed out a lot of breath, with some force, and which sounded very much like a whistle; but, oh, what thick breath he had, it was as much like smoke as anything I ever saw, and so my shipmate said.
“I say, captain,” said the stranger, as he saw him pacing the deck.
“Well.”
“Just send me up some beef and biscuit, and some coffee royal—be sure it’s royal, do you hear, because I’m partial to brandy, it’s the only good thing there is on earth.”
I shall not easily forget the captain’s look as he turned towards the stranger, and gave his huge shoulders a shrug, as much as to say,—
“Well, I can’t help it now; he’s here, and I can’t throw him overboard.”
The coffee, beef, and biscuit were sent him, and the stranger seemed to eat them with great gout, and drank the coffee with much relish, and returned the things, saying,
“Your captain is an excellent cook; give him my compliments.”
I thought the captain would think that was but a left-handed compliment, and look more angry than pleased, but no notice was taken of it.
It was strange, but this man had impressed upon all in the vessel some singular notion of his being more than he should be—more than a mere mortal, and not one endeavoured to interfere with him; the captain was a stout and dare-devil a fellow as you would well meet with, yet he seemed tacitly to acknowledge more than he would say, for he never after took any further notice of the stranger nor he of him.
They had barely any conversation, simply a civil word when they first met, and so forth; but there was little or no conversation of any kind between them.
The stranger slept upon deck, and lived upon deck entirely; he never once went below after we saw him, and his own account of being below so long.
This was very well, but the night-watch did not enjoy his society, and would have willingly dispensed with it at that hour so particularly lonely and dejected upon the broad ocean, and perhaps a thousand miles away from the nearest point of land.
At this dread and lonely hour, when no sound reaches the ear and disturbs the wrapt stillness of the night, save the whistling of the wind through the cordage, or an occasional dash of water against the vessel’s side, the thoughts of the sailor are fixed on far distant objects—his own native land and the friends and loved ones he has left behind him.
He then thinks of the wilderness before, behind, and around him; of the immense body of water, almost in places bottomless; gazing upon such a scene, and with thoughts as strange and indefinite as the very boundless expanse before him, it is no wonder if he should become superstitious; the time and place would, indeed unbidden, conjure up thoughts and feelings of a fearful character and intensity.
The stranger at such times would occupy his favourite seat on the water cask, and looking up at the sky and then on the ocean, and between whiles he would whistle a strange, wild, unknown melody.
The flesh of the sailors used to creep up in knots and bumps when they heard it; the wind used to whistle as an accompaniment and pronounce fearful sounds to their ears.
The wind had been highly favourable from the first, and since the stranger had been discovered it had blown fresh, and we went along at a rapid rate, stemming the water, and dashing the spray off from the bows, and cutting the water like a shark.
This was very singular to us, we couldn’t understand it, neither could the captain, and we looked very suspiciously at the stranger, and wished him at the bottom, for the freshness of the wind now became a gale, and yet the ship came through the water steadily, and away we went before the wind, as if the devil drove us; and mind I don’t mean to say he didn’t.
The gale increased to a hurricane, and though we had not a stitch of canvass out, yet we drove before the gale as if we had been shot out of the mouth of a gun.
The stranger still sat on the water casks, and all night long he kept up his infernal whistle. Now, sailors don’t like to hear any one whistle when there’s such a gale blowing over their heads—it’s like asking for more; but he would persist, and the louder and stronger the wind blew, the louder he whistled.
At length there came a storm of rain, lightning, and wind. We were tossed mountains high, and the foam rose over the vessel, and often entirely over our heads, and the men were lashed to their posts to prevent being washed away.
But the stranger still lay on the water casks, kicking his heels and whistling his infernal tune, always the same. He wasn’t washed away nor moved by the action of the water; indeed, we heartily hoped and expected to see both him and the water cask floated overboard at every minute; but, as the captain said,—
“Confound the binnacle! the old water tub seems as if it were screwed on to the deck, and won’t move off and he on the top of it.”
There was a strong inclination to throw him overboard, and the men conversed in low whispers, and came round the captain, saying,—
“We have come, captain, to ask you what you think of this strange man who has come so mysteriously on board?”
“I can’t tell what to think, lads; he’s past thinking about—he’s something above my comprehension altogether, I promise you.”
“Well, then, we are thinking much of the same thing, captain.”
“What do you mean?”
“That he ain’t exactly one of our sort.”
“No, he’s no sailor, certainly; and yet, for a land lubber, he’s about as rum a customer as ever I met with.”
“So he is, sir.”
“He stands salt water well; and I must say that I couldn’t lay a top of those water casks in that style very well.”
“Nor nobody amongst us, sir.”
“Well, then, he’s in nobody’s way, is he?—nobody wants to take his berth, I suppose?”
The men looked at each other somewhat blank; they didn’t understand the meaning at all—far from it; and the idea of any one’s wanting to take the stranger’s place on the water casks was so outrageously ludicrous, that at any other time they would have considered it a devilish good joke and have never ceased laughing at it.
He paused some minutes, and then one of them said,—
“It isn’t that we envy him his berth, captain, ’cause nobody else could live there for a moment. Any one amongst us that had been there would have been washed overboard a thousand times over.”
“So they would,” said the captain.
“Well, sir, he’s more than us.”
“Very likely; but how can I help that?”
“We think he’s the main cause of all this racket in the heavens—the storm and hurricane; and that, in short, if he remains much longer we shall all sink.”
“I am sorry for it. I don’t think we are in any danger, and had the strange being any power to prevent it, he would assuredly do so, lest he got drowned.”
“But we think if he were thrown overboard all would be well.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, captain, you may depend upon it he’s the cause of all the mischief. Throw him overboard and that’s all we want.”
“I shall not throw him overboard, even if I could do such a thing; and I am by no means sure of anything of the kind.”
“We do not ask it, sir.”
“What do you desire?”
“Leave to throw him overboard—it is to save our own lives.”
“I can’t let you do any such thing; he’s in nobody’s way.”
“But he’s always a whistling. Only hark now, and in such a hurricane as this, it is dreadful to think of it. What else can we do, sir?—he’s not human.”
At this moment, the stranger’s whistling came clear upon their ears; there was the same wild, unearthly notes as before, but the cadences were stronger, and there was a supernatural clearness in all the tones.
“There now,” said another, “he’s kicking the water cask with his heels.”
“Confound the binnacle!” said the captain; “it sounds like short peals of thunder. Go and talk to him, lads.”
“And if that won’t do, sir, may we—”
“Don’t ask me any questions. I don’t think a score of the best men that were ever born could move him.”
“I don’t mind trying,” said one.
Upon this the whole of the men moved to the spot where the water casks were standing and the stranger lay.
There was he, whistling like fury, and, at the same time, beating his heels to the tune against the empty casks. We came up to him, and he took no notice of us at all, but kept on in the same way.
“Hilloa!” shouted one.
“Hilloa!” shouted another.
No notice, however, was taken of us, and one of our number, a big, herculean fellow, an Irishman, seized him by the leg, either to make him get up, or, as we thought, to give him a lift over our heads into the sea. However, he had scarcely got his fingers round the calf of the leg, when the stranger pinched his leg so tight against the water cask, that he could not move, and was as effectually pinned as if he had been nailed there. The stranger, after he had finished a bar of the music, rose gradually to a sitting posture, and without the aid of his hands, and looking the unlucky fellow in the face, he said,—
“Well, what do you want?”
“My hand,” said the fellow.
“Take it then,” he said.
He did take it, and we saw that there was blood on it.
The stranger stretched out his left hand, and taking him by the breech, he lifted him, without any effort, upon the water-cask beside him.
We all stared at this, and couldn’t help it; and we were quite convinced we could not throw him overboard, but he would probably have no difficulty in throwing us overboard.
“Well, what do you want?” he again exclaimed to us all.
We looked at one another, and had scarce courage to speak; at length I said,—
“We wish you to leave off whistling.”
“Leave off whistling!” he said. “And why should I do anything of the kind?”
“Because it brings the wind.”
“Ha! ha! why, that’s the very reason I am whistling, to bring the wind.”
“But we don’t want so much.”
“Pho! pho! you don’t know what’s good for you—it’s a beautiful breeze, and not a bit too stiff.”
“It’s a hurricane.”
“Nonsense.”
“But it is.”
“Now you see how I’ll prove you are wrong in a minute. You see my hair, don’t you?” he said, after he took off his cap. “Very well, look now.”
He got up on the water-cask, and stood bolt upright; and running his fingers through his hair, made it all stand straight on end.
“Confound the binnacle!” said the captain, “if ever I saw the like.”
“There,” said the stranger, triumphantly, “don’t tell me there’s any wind to signify; don’t you see, it doesn’t even move one of my grey hairs; and if it blew as hard as you say, I am certain it would move a hair.”
“Confound the binnacle!” muttered the captain as he walked away. “D—n the cabouse, if he ain’t older than I am—he’s too many for me and everybody else.”
“Are you satisfied?”
What could we say?—we turned away and left the place, and stood at our quarters—there was no help for it—we were compelled to grin and abide by it.
As soon as we had left the place he put his cap on again and sat down on the water-casks, and then took leave of his prisoner, whom he set free, and there lay at full length on his back, with his legs hanging down. Once more he began to whistle most furiously, and beat time with his feet.
For full three weeks did he continue at this game night and day, without any interruption, save such as he required to consume enough coffee royal, junk, and biscuit, as would have served three hearty men.
Well, about that time, one night the whistling ceased and he began to sing—oh! it was singing—such a voice! Gog and Magog in Guildhall, London, when they spoke were nothing to him—it was awful; but the wind calmed down to a fresh and stiff breeze. He continued at this game for three whole days and nights, and on the fourth it ceased, and when we went to take his coffee royal to him he was gone.
We hunted about everywhere, but he was entirely gone, and in three weeks after we safely cast anchor, having performed our voyage in a good month under the usual time; and had it been an old vessel she would have leaked and started like a tub from the straining; however, we were glad enough to get in, and were curiously inquisitive as to what was put in our vessel to come back with, for as the captain said,—
“Confound the binnacle! I’ll have no more contraband articles if I can help it.”
