University of Virginia Library

55. CHAPTER LV.
STRANGE HAPPENINGS IN THE “SPRING-BIRD.”

IT was on Thursday that the Court adjourned, leaving
not only the accused acquitted of the crime with
which they had been charged, but the fate of Skipper
George's daughter as dark as ever. The verdict was
the only one that could have been brought in upon the
evidence; and the Attorney-General said that he could
not wonder at the result. “He had proof enough,” he
said, “that Crampton had been a villain to others; but
he could not prove that he had made way with Lucy
Barbury, whatever he might think about it.”

The Chief-Justice left Bay-Harbor for the Capital, in
a private boat, on Thursday afternoon. Judge Bearn
and his other associate waited for the “packet” of the
next day. Mr. Wellon, having passed the night with his
brother clergyman at Bay-Harbor, went homewards next
morning.

Half-way upon the road the Minister encountered the
carrier, who had two letters for him, which had come
from the other end of the Bay, and which the man said
he had brought on to Bay-Harbor, where he heard that
Mr. Wellon was, because he thought they had something
to do with Skipper George's daughter; for he had sent
in one from the River-head to her father, as he came
along.

The Parson hastened to break the seal of one of them,
and, after reading a little way, with a look of interest and
wonder, as he sat upon his horse, turned to the signature;
then opened the other, and looking first to the name of
the writer, read it eagerly, with occasional words of astonishment,
riding, at the same time, back towards Bay-Harbor,
with the letter-carrier at his side.

The substance of the two letters (which were from
Captain Nolesworth and his second mate) we put into a
narrative form, for it belongs to our story, and is an account
of certain strange things which happened in the
brig of which Captain Nolesworth and Mr. Keefe were
Master and second officer.

The “Spring-Bird” sailed, it will be remembered, on the
night of the nineteenth of August, the same in which, as
had been suspected, Lucy Barbury was murdered in Bay-Harbor.

At about eleven o'clock that night,—a fine wind having
sprung up,—officers and men were all on board, and with
the merry breeze she went down Conception Bay, along
by Bacaloue Island, and so out toward sea.

Thereabouts the wind falls baffling, and soon heads
round and round, until it comes in from the ocean. She
tacks over to Cape St. Francis, and clears Newfoundland.
There is a thick fog outside; but between it and the land
is a street of clear water, with the tall cliffs on one hand,
and that unsubstantial wall upon the other; and across
this open water she lies, until she buries herself so completely
that one end of the brig can scarcely be seen from
the other. So she works her way by long stretches, out
into the great waste of waters across which she is bound.
All sail is set that will draw:—topsails, topgallant-sails,
and royals, fore and aft,—those square sails that, in daylight

or moonlight, sit so jauntily upon these wanderers
of the sea. Away aloft, they look as if they were taken
out of the strongest of the mist, and cut to shape and tied
down to the yards. The high, full moon can do little
with this fog; and by way of warning to any ship that
may be near, a sort of thunder is beaten out of the hollow
of a cask, and a sharp look-out kept. “Eight bells,” for
four o'clock! The second mate's watch is turned up; the
man at the wheel gives up the helm to a new hand, telling
him how to steer, when the Captain, who stood smoking
forward of the companion-way, or opening to the cabin
stairs, feels his arm squeezed in such a way as makes him
start and turn round suddenly. He asks, at the same
time,—

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Captain,” answered a voice, which he recognized as
that of the late helmsman, though his face was so strange
that, in the dimness, he did not at first know it, “there's
something round there to leeward.”

“Why, man alive! what are you talking about? and
what makes you look so?” said the Captain, turning
round to leeward, and straining his eyes over the quarter-rail,
to make out the strange sight; “Tom, look out on
the lee quarter; do you see any thing?”

“It's aboard of us, Cap'n,” said the man who had
brought the alarm.

“Why, you're standing up and dreaming with your two
eyes open; don't you think we should have felt it by this
time?”

At this instant a cry came from among the men forward,
which made the Captain leap from his place to go
toward them. A strange sort of cry it was, of several
voices in one; but all suppressed by fear.

“What ails ye, there?” he called out. “What is 't?
speak out?”

As he came abreast of the cook's galley, the second
mate came right in front of him, holding up his two arms,
without saying a word.

“Why, what's the matter? For mercy's sake, Mr.
Keefe, are you mad?” the Captain shouted to him.

“'Bide a minute, Cap'n Nolesworth,” said the mate,
breathing hard, and bending over himself to recover
breath and strength. “'Bide a minute, sir! The brig's
all right, sir,” he said, keeping his seaman's presence of
mind; “but there's more aboard than ever shipped in
her! I'll show you,” said he; and, holding by the
weather bulwarks, he went forward.

A few steps brought him to a stand; and saying, in a
husky voice, “There, sir!” he pointed with his left hand.

The Captain followed the direction of his hand, and,
looking steadily a while, made out a figure, white and
ghastly, standing near the lee bulwarks where the pale,
misty shimmer of the moon fell on it, under the foresail.
It seemed, to a long, searching sight, a female figure; and
it almost seemed as if two eyes were gazing, with a dull
glare, out of the face. At this dim hour, in misty moonlight,
amid the fright of men, perhaps Captain Nolesworth
would have found it hard to keep out of his mind
that overmastering fear that, in the minds of most of us,
lies rather hidden than dead, and starts up some time,
suddenly, when we feel as if we were breaking through
into the land of spirits, or its inhabitants were forcing or
feeling their way to us. The first words spoken were of
a kind to turn the scale, if it were balanced, down to the
side of awe and dread.

“I sid un come in over the side,” said the man who

had first spoken to the Captain, of the strange thing, and
who had now followed the two officers of the vessel to the
spot where they had taken stand. “'Xac'ly as the watch
changed, it comed.”

The man who said this slunk, like a living mass of
fright, behind the second mate.

“What are you talking, man?” said the Captain, in a
low voice, and keeping his place.

As the mist changed and fleeted momentarily, so the
figure changed; growing now dimmer and now more distinct,
much like the thicker substance of a nebula, while
many eyes were gazing, at their widest, on it.

The Captain had not lost himself, old sailor as he was;
for he called out, peremptorily, to the man now at the
helm, “What are you doing with the brig, there, you?
Keep her a good full! Can't you see you've got her all
shaking? Put your helm up, sir, and if you want me to
take you away from the wheel, let me know it.”

Even the Captain's voice, speaking so much to the purpose,
had a strange, thin sound; it was not like itself. It
took effect, indeed, upon the helmsman, who managed to
get the vessel on her course again, although with a good
deal of unsteadiness of steering, after that; but it had not
the effect of clearing the air of its unearthly influences, or
reassuring those who had been struck with terror by the
phantom.

“We must see into this thing,” the Captain said; “I
must be master of my own ship.”

The watch on deck,—the whole crew, perhaps,—are
clustered in the close neighborhood of the captain and
second mate, except the helmsman; who, in answer to
another caution of the master, says that he is doing his
best; but that the brig will not steer, while That is

there; and there, in the mist, as a white shell in deep
water, gleams the slight apparition.

In the same instant with all this, the misty shape itself
moved from its place;—its misty robes floating, and the
mist around it waving, horribly.

A sort of shudder seized the men, and they crowded
together, still more closely.

“Mr. Keefe, will you go aft and take the helm?” said
the Captain.

“Ay, ay, sir,” said the second mate, aloud; and then
drawing close to Captain Nolesworth, he said privately,
“As sure as I live, sir, that's Lucy Barbury's ghost!”
and he hurried to relieve the frightened man at the wheel.

The master glanced hastily up at the sails, and out
upon the sea. “Go forward, men!” said he to the crew.
The unsubstantial shape had swayed itself, instantly, back,
and seemed leaning against the bulwark, and still gazing
through the mist.

“She'll bring a gale!” said one of the trembling
crew, from where they had clustered, by the forward
hatch.

“Keep still there, with your foolishness! John Ayers!
you and Thompson lay out, with all hands, on the weather
yard-arms, and rig out our studding-sail-booms, alow and
aloft! Cheerily, now! Away with ye!” said the Captain;
but even the Captain's voice sounded foggy; and
the men climbed lubberly.

Again the figure moved as if to come forward, or
seemed to move. Intense fear seemed to strike the men
motionless, each man where he was.

“Look out, Cap'n!—behind you!” shouted Keefe, the
second mate. A murmur arose, also, from the men in
the rigging.

“Where did you come from, my man?” said the Captain,
turning short, and seizing a handspike from a
tall, strong fellow who had it lifted in air with both
hands.

“I 're goun to heave it at un!” cried the man.

“Wait till I bid you, or take care I don't heave
you overboard!” said Captain Nolesworth. “Go forward!”

Again there was an exclamation from the men; the
Captain turned, and the figure was gliding fast from the
waist of the vessel, where it had been, toward the stern.
The mist waved about it, as if the two were of one. Its
head seemed bound up with a misty band, as that of a
corpse is bound.

A movement behind him made the Captain turn
quickly; the man whom he had disarmed had his huge
weapon raised, again, with both his hands, ready to throw
it, as before.

The Captain rushed upon him; but the ugly handspike,
ere Captain Nolesworth reached him, was whirled
across the deck;—and then a cry, such as had not yet
been heard or uttered there, went up; a strange ghostly
woman's cry; not made of words, and, as it were, half
stifled in the utterance.

The Captain uttered an answering cry, himself, and
there were confused voices of the crew, as Captain Nolesworth,
in an instant, throttled and threw down the thoughtless
ruffian. When he sprang up, and to the lee-side,
nothing was there but the bulwarks with thick dew upon
them; aft was the hatch over the companion-way; the
wheel, deserted,—and, beyond, two dark, human figures
against the stern-railing. There was mist everywhere;
but of the animated form of mist, which, slight and unsubstantial

itself, had made stout men to shake, there was no
trace. He hastily looked over at the vessel's wake; but
human eye could see only a very little way; no glittering
bubbles were there; the great waves rose and fell, under
a close cloud of fog.

The Captain took the deserted helm in time to prevent
the ship from getting herself taken all aback.

—“I had to run, to keep this fellow, here, from making
way with himself, sir,” said the second mate.

“He wouldn't have gone any further than the sternboat,
I don't think,” said the master; then, dropping the
sneer, his voice became changed and sad, as he said, as
if he were continuing a conversation,—“and what became
of her?”

“I don't know, sir,” answered the second mate. “I
couldn't see the last of it; but, as sure as I'm standing
on this quarter-deck, sir,” he continued, in a low voice,
apart, to the Captain, “I saw that face, and it was Lucy
Barbury's.”

Keefe was a Peterport man; the Captain was a Peterport
trader.

“It did look like it!” said he, looking up at the sails
and then down into the binnacle. All was still, but the
rising wind and washing waves.

A spirit, out of another state of being coming back,
cold and disembodied, but wearing still an unsubstantial
likeness to the body that it used to wear, among quick
men, of flesh and blood,—the hair will creep, and the
flesh crawl, at thought of it.

The men,—most, or all of them, for their remissness
had been tolerated, for the moment,—drew aft; and all
was silent, but the whirring wind and washing waves.
By-and-by, a voice among them murmured,—

“Ef we had akept out o' this 'am fog! They things
are made of it.”

“Ef we hadn' asailed tull to-morrow!” said another.
“We got a warnun, ef we 'd give heed to it, when we
found our boat aboard, last evenun, with ne'er a hand to
row her!”

“Mr. Keefe,” said the Captain, “you will get your
watch together, if you please; and let's have things
orderly, again; and men!” he added, in a steady tone
of authority, “if you're afraid, I'm not. I know you're
good fellows; but you'd best leave talking, and let me
and the officers of the brig, manage our own business.
You can go about your work; I don't think many of you
know where you've been, this last while.—You'll put a
man at the wheel, sir, if you can find one.—Come now,”
said he, by way of putting heart into the crew, who had
not yet recovered their composure, “which of ye 's got
his sense about him?”

“Captain Noseworth,” said one of the men, “I sid un
go over the side just like a great white bird, in a manner,
and that was the last of un. It was about so big as a
eagle; much the same.”

“When did you ever see an eagle,” inquired the Captain.

“Oh! sir, I never did see one, but a portray—”

“And where were you, sir?” asked the master,
again.

“I were just hereabouts, sir, as you may say,” returned
the man.

“And standing up on your feet?” asked the master.

The sight-seer was silent. The first mate, whom the
Captain now saw, for the first time since he had turned
in,—being sick,—at twelve o'clock, answered for him; he

wasn't on his feet, when I picked him up off the deck,
face down, a while ago.”

“I'm afeared you'll laugh on me,” said another, “but I
was on my feet, and, to the best o' my notion, it went right
down through the deck, and never went over the side,
at all.”

The mate on being asked, said that he turned out of his
berth, when all that running was on deck. “He didn't
know what was to pay, unless the foremast was walking
off and the men after it.”

Captain Nolesworth was a plain, matter-of-fact seaman,
of fifty years' age, or upwards, and very sensible and
well-informed. The suns of many climes had not in
vain, done each its part in giving to his face its deep, dark
hue; nor had the winds of many countries breathed and
blown upon him, and the various foliage waved, and the
many-shaped and colored houses and towns of men shut
him in, and the many-tongued race of men under all different
governments, and with all different manners, dealt
and talked with him in vain. He was a listening man,
and at the same time, hearty and cheery, where it fell
to him to be so, and always ready to have it fall to
him.

He was no Newfoundlander, though trading for so
many years into and out of Newfoundland. He was not
superstitious, and never in his life (so he wrote) had seen
so much as an approach to confirmation of the hundred
stories of supernatural appearances that he had heard and
read. Still he was a man; and man is sure that there
are angels and spirits, or ghosts and disembodied shapes;
at least there is a fear, where there is not belief, that in
the smooth, unbroken wall that bounds between the world
of flesh and that of spirit, there are doors, where we

cannot see them, that open from the other side. Moreover,
the very faith of Christian people assures them that
intercourse has been, and therefore may be, between the
beings of another state and those of ours; the question,
in any case, is, therefore, as to the fact and reason of the
special case, and not the reason or fact of such things
generally. That they are of the rarest, and only for
God's special purpose, (unless men can contrive to be
familiar with the devil's ministers,) we know. The sacred
common sense of men, where it may use its nostrils and
its eyes, laughs at, or is disgusted with the legendary
marvels of the Romish Breviary, and the attempted
systems of the dealers with familiar spirits!

“The very time!” the Captain said; “and you met
nothing on the companion-ladder?”

“No sir, not a thing. The first I heard was after I
came on deck. I see you was busy and I've only heard
what the men had to say.—It's an uncommon queer piece
of business!”

“Well now, boys, we've had enough of this,” said the
Captain. “The fog 's clearing off; let this thing go with
it;” then looking at his watch by the binnacle light, (for
day was not yet begun,) he said, “Let them strike one
bell there, forward, Mr. Keefe.” A half-hour had passed
since this strange scene began, although the phantom had
been seen for a few minutes only.

“Get those studding-sail-booms rigged out, sir, if you
please, as they ought to be;” added the master; and
from that time forward, he kept the men for hours occupied
in different ways, until the day had been long clear
and bright, and the brig was fifty miles away from Newfoundland.

The wind came fresher and fresher; the wind of all

winds for them; and the tumbling waves tried to keep
up with the swift vessel, as she ran through the water,
carrying all sail that she could carry, because the Captain
said they would be likely to want wind before they saw
Madeira.