Daisy's necklace, and what came of it (a literary episode.) |
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| 6. | VI.
THE PHANTOM AT SEA. |
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 | VI.
THE PHANTOM AT SEA. Daisy's necklace, and what came of it |  |
6. VI.
THE PHANTOM AT SEA.
A Storm in the Tropics—The Lone Ship—The Man at
the Wheel—How he sang strange Songs—The Apparition—The
Drifting Bark.
Before the north 'twas driven like a cloud;
High on the poop a man sat mournfully:
The wind was whistling through mast and shroud,
And to the whistling wind thus did he sing aloud.
Smith's “Barbara.”
The blood-red sun had gone down into the
Atlantic. Faint purple streaks streamed up the
western horizon, like the fingers of some great
shadowy hand clutching at the world.
Huge masses of dark, agate-looking clouds were
gathering in the zenith, and the heavy, close atmosphere
told the coming of a storm. Now and
then the snaky lightning darted across the heavens
and coiled itself away in a cloud.
A lone ship stood almost motionless in the twilight.
The sails were close-reefed. Here and there on
the forecastle were groups of lazy-looking seamen;
and a man walked the quarter-deck, glancing anxiously
aloft. The sea was as smooth as a mirror,
and that dreadful stillness was in the air which so
often preludes a terrific storm in the tropics. A
rumbling was heard in the sky like the sound of
distant artillery, or heavy bodies of water falling
from immense heights.
Then the surface of the sea was broken by mimic
waves tipped with forth, and the vast expanse seemed
like a prairie in a snow fall.
The lightning became more frequent and vivid,
and the thunder seemed breaking on the very topmasts
of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk
down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering
darkness. The storm was at its height: the
wind,
“Through unseen sluices of the air,”
masts till they threatened to snap. But the
bark bore bravely through it, while the huge waves
seemed bearing her down to those coral labyrinths,
where nothing goes
Into something rich and strange.”
The thunder sent forth peal after peal, and the
heaven was like “a looming bastion fringed with
fire.” On through the slanting rain sped the ship,
creaking and groaning, with its ribs warped and
its great oaken spine trembling. The sailors on
deck clung to the bulwarks; and below not a soul
could sleep, for the thunder and the creaking of
cordage filled their ears.
At midnight the storm abated; but the sea still
ran dangerously high, and the wind sobbed through
the rigging mournfully. The heaven was spangled
with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds
hung down in gossamer folds—God's robe trailing in
the sea!
Toward morning the waves grew suddenly calm,
as if they had again heard that voice which of old
said, “Peace, be still!” There was no one above
decks, save the man at the wheel, who ever and
anon muttered to himself, or hummed bits of poetry.
He was a man in the mellow of life, in the Indian
summer of manhood, which comes a little while
before one falls “into the sere and yellow leaf.”
Once he must have been eminently handsome; but
there were furrows on his intellectual forehead not
traced by time's fingers. His eyes were peculiarly
wild and restless.
The slightest tinge of red fringed the East, and
sang snatches of those odd sea-songs which Shakspeare
scatters through his plays:
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary,
But none of us cared for Kate.
For she had a tongue with a twang,
Would cry to a sailor, go hang!
She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,—
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!”
words to the night:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade—”
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
To the haven under the hill;
But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
Suddenly he paused, while a paleness like death
overspread his face; the spokes of the wheel slipped
from his hold, and he called for help; but the wind
went moaning through the shrouds, and drowned
his voice. The sea moaned and the ship drifted
with the wind.
“It comes again!” he cried; “the graveyard face!
Go! I cannot bear those sad, reproachful eyes—
those arms outstretched, asking mercy! Send foul
fiends to torture me, and make my dreams hideous
nightmares, but not this beautiful form to mock me
with its purity, and kill me with its mild reproach.
It has gone. But it will come again! It steals on
me in the awful hours of night, when the air seems
supernatural, and the mind is accessible to fear. It
stood by my hammock last night; my conscious
soul looked through my closed eyelids, and sleep
felt its dreadful presence. If it comes again I will
throw myself into the sea! Hush!” he whispered,
Come not near me, pensive ghost. Give me help,
somebody! help! help!”
He sunk down by the wheel.
The stars, at the approach of morning, had grown
as white as pond-lilies, and the wind had died away;
but the same moan came up from the sea. On in
the morning twilight drifted the ship for an hour,
without a helmsman, save that unseen hand which
guides all things—which balances with equal love
and tenderness a dew-drop or a world.
| VI.
THE PHANTOM AT SEA. Daisy's necklace, and what came of it | |