 Chapter 7 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Molly Griffin. The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell. Chapter 7. A Nightmare of the Doldrums. The Justicia was a smart little bark of 395 tons. I had viewed her with something of admiration as she lay in midstream in the Hoogley, somewhere off the Cooley Bazaar I think it was. There was steam then, coming to Calcutta, though not as steam now is, very little of it was in any sense palatial, and some of the very best of it was to be as promptly distanced under given conditions of weather by certain of the clippers, clouded with studding sails and flying kites to the starry buttons of their sky-sail mast heads, as the six-knot ocean tramp of today is to be outrun by the four-masted Leviathan, thrashing through it to Windward with her yards fore and aft. I, representing in those days a large Birmingham firm of dealers in the fallow industries, had wished to make my way from Calcutta to Cape Town. I saw the Justicia and took a fancy to her. I admired the long, low, sporadic run of her hull as she lay with straining haws pipes on the rushing stream of the Hoogley, upon which, as he watched, there might go by in the space of an hour some half-score at least of dead natives made ghastly canoes of by huge birds erect upon the corpses, burying their beaks as they sailed along. I found out that the Justicia was one of the smartest of the Thames and East India traders of that time, memorable on one occasion for having reeled off a clean seventeen knots by the log under a main top gallant sail set over a single reef top sail. It was murmured, indeed, that the mate who hoved that log was drunk when he counted the knots, yet the dead reckoning tallied with the next day's observations. I called upon the agents, was told that the Justicia was not a passenger ship, but that I could hire a cabin for the run to Cape Town if I chose. A sum in rupees, trifling compared with the cost of transit by steam was named. I went on board, found the captain walking up and down under the yawning, and agreeably killed an hour in a chat with as amiable a seamen as ever it was my good fortune to meet. We sailed in the middle of July. Nothing worth talking about happened during our run down the Bay of Bengal. The crew, aforemassed, were all of them Englishmen. There were twelve counting the cook and steward. The captain was a man named Kaser. The only mate of the vessel was one William Perkins. The bosson, a rough, short, hairy, immensely strong man, acted as second mate and kept a lookout when Perkins was below. But he was entirely ignorant of navigation and owned to me that he read with difficulty words of one syllable and could not write. I was the only passenger. My name, I may as well say here, is Thomas Barron. Our run to the South Salon Parallels was slow and disappointing. The monsoon was light and treacherous, sometimes dying out in a sort of laughing, mocking gust till the whole ocean was a sheet calm surface as though the dependable trade wind was never again to blow. Oh yes, said Captain Kaser to me. We're used to the unexpected hereabouts. Monsoon or no monsoon, I'll tell you what. You're always safe and standing by for an Irishman's hurricane down here. And what sort of a breeze is that? I asked. An up and down calm, said he, is hard to know where it begins as to guess where it'll end. However, thanks to the frequent trade puffs and other winds which tasted not like the monsoon, we crawled through those latitudes which Salon spans and fetched within a few degrees of the equator. In this part of the waters we were to be thankful for even the most trifling donation of Katzba or for the equally small and short lived mercy of the gust of the electric cloud. I forget how many days we were out from Calcutta, the matters of no moment. I left my cabin one morning some hour after the sun had risen by which time the decks had been washed down and were already dry with a salt sparkle as a bright white sand on the face of the planks. So roasting was it. I went into the head to get a bath under the pump there. I feel in memory, as I write, the exquisite sensation of that luxury of brilliant brine, cold as snow, melting through me from head to foot to the nimble plying of the pump break by a seaman. It was a true tropic morning. The sea of a pale lilac flowed in a long-drawn, gentle heave of swell into the southwest. The glare of the early morning brooded in a sort of steamy whiteness in the atmosphere. The sea went working to its distant reaches and floated into a dim blending of liquid air and water so that you couldn't tell where the sky ended. A weak hot wind blew over the taffrel, but it was without weight. The courses swung to the swell without response to the breathing of the air and on high the light cotton-white royals were scarcely curved by the delicate passage of the draft. Yet the bark had steerage away. When I looked through the grating at her meddled forefoot, I saw the ripples plentiful as harp strings, threading aft. And whilst I'd dried myself, I watched the slow approach of a piece of timber, horry with barnacles, and venerable with long hairs of seaweed, amid and around which a thousand little fish were sporting, many colored as though a rainbow had been shivered. I returned to my cabin, dressed and stepped on to the quarter-deck, where I found some men spreading the awning, and the captain in a white straw hat viewing an object out upon the water through a telescope and talking to the bosson who stood alongside. What do you see? I asked. Something that resembles a raft, answered the captain. The thing he looked at was about a mile distant, some three points on the starboard bow. On pointing the telescope, I distinctly made out the fabric of a raft, fitted with a short mast to which midway a bundle that resembled a parcel was attached. A portion of the raft was covered by a white sheet or cloth, when strangled a short length of something chocolate-colored, indistinguishable even with the glass, lifting and sinking as the raft rose and fell upon the flowing heave of the sea. This ocean, said the captain, taking the glass from me, is a big volume of tragic stories, and the artist who illustrates the book does it in that fashion, and he nodded in the direction of the raft. What do you make of it, bosson? I asked. It looks to me, he answered, in his strong, harsh, deep voice, like a religious job, one of them rafts the Burma-Covies float away their dead on. I never seen one afore, sir, but I've heard tell-as-such things. We sneaked stealthily towards the raft. It was seven bells, half past seven, and the sailors ate their breakfast on the four-castle that they might view the strange contrivance. The mate, Mr. Perkins, came on deck to relieve the bosson, and, after inspecting the raft through the telescope, gave it as his opinion that it was a Malay floating beer, a muscle-man trick of ocean burial anyhow, said he. There should be a jar of water aboard the raft and cakes and fruit for the corpse to regale on if he hadn't been dead long. The steward announced breakfast. The captain told him to hold it back awhile. He was as curious as I to get a close view of the queer object with its white cloth and mast and parcel and chocolate-colored fragment half in and half out like a barge's lee board. And he bade the man at the helm put the wheel over by a spoke or two. But the wind was nearly gone. The bark scarcely responded to the motion of her rudder. The thread-like lines that cut water had faded, and a roasting, oppressive calm was upon the water, whitening it out into a tingling sheen of quicksilver with a fiery shaft of blinding dazzle, solitary and splendid, working with the swell like some monstrous serpent of light right under the sun. The raft was about six cables length off us when the bark came to a dead stand with a soft universal hollowing in of her canvas from royal to course. As though, like something sentient, she delivered one final sigh before the swoon of the calm seized her. But now we were near enough to resolve the floating thing with the naked eye into details. It was a raft formed of bamboo canes. A mast about six feet tall was erected upon it. The dark thing over the edge proved a human leg, and when the fabric lifted with a swell and raised the leg clear, we saw that the foot had been eaten away by fish, a number of which were swimming about the raft, sending little flashes of foam over the pale surface as they darted along with their back or dorsal fins exposed. They were all little fish. I saw no sharks. The body to which the leg belonged was covered by a white cloth. The captain called my attention to the parcel attached to the mast and said that it possibly contained the food which the malaise leave to their dead after burial. But let's go to breakfast now, Mr. Baron, said he, with a slow, reproachful, impatient look around the breathless scene of ocean. If there's any amusement to be got out that thing yonder, there's a precious, long, quiet day before us I fear for the entertainment. We breakfasted, and in due course returned on deck. The slewing of the bark had caused the raft to shift its bearings, otherwise its distance remained as it was when we went below. Mr. Perkins, said the captain, lower a boat and bring aboard that parcel from the raft's jury mast and likewise take a peep at the figure under the cloth and report its sex and what it looks like. I asked to go in the boat and when she was lowered, with three men in her, I followed. Mr. Perkins and we rode over to the raft. All about the frail bamboo contrivance, the water was beautiful with the colors and movements of innumerable fish. As we approached, we were greeted by an evil smell. The raft seemed to have been a float for a considerable period. Its submerged portion was green with the marine adhesions or growths. The fellow in the boughs of the boat, maneuvering with the boat hook, cleverly snicked the parcel from the jury mast and handed it along to the mate, who put it beside him without opening it, for that was the captain's privilege. Off with the cloth, said Mr. Perkins, and then backwater bit out of this atmosphere. The bowman jerked the cloth clear of the raft with his boat hook. The white sheet floated like a snowflake upon the water for a few breaths, then slowly sank. The body exposed was stark naked and tawny. It was a male. I saw nothing revolting in the thing. It would have been otherwise, perhaps, had it been white. The hair was long and black, the nose aquiline, the mouth puckered into the aspect of a hair lip. The gleam of a few white teeth painted a ghastly contemptuous grin upon the dead face. The only shocking part was the footless leg. Shall I hook him overboard, sir? said the bowman. No, let him take his ease as he lies, answered the mate, and with that we returned to the bark. We climbed over the side, the boat was hoisted to the davits, and Mr. Perkins took the parcel out of the stern sheets and handed it to the captain. The cover was a kind of fine canvas, very neatly stitched with white thread. Captain Kaser ripped through the stitching with his knife and exposed a couple of books bound in some kind of skin or parchment. They were probably the Quran, but the characters none of us knew. The captain turned them about for a bit, and I stood by looking at them. He then replaced them in their canvas cover and put them down upon the skylight, and by and by, on his leaving the deck, he took them below to his cabin. The moon rose about ten that night. She came up hot, distorted with a sullen face, belted with vapor, but was soon clear of the dewy thickness over the horizon and showering a pure greenish silver upon the sea. She made the night lovely and cool, her reflection sparkled in the dew along the rails, and her beam whitened out the canvas into the tender softness of wreaths of cloud motionless upon the summit of some dark heap of mountain. I looked for the raft and saw it plainly, and it is not in language to express how the sight of that frail cradle of death deepened the universal silence and expanded the prodigious distances defined by the stars and accentuated the tremendous spirit of loneliness that slept like a presence in that wide region of sea and air. There had not been a stir of wind all day, not the faintest breathing of breeze had tarnished the sea down to the hour of midnight when, feeling weary, I withdrew to my cabin. I slept well, despite of the heat and the cockroaches, I found the steward in the cabin. His face were a look of concern, and on seeing me he instantly exclaimed, the captain seems very ill, sir. Might you know anything of physics? Neither Mr. Perkins nor me can make out what's the matter. I know nothing of physics, I answered, but I'll look in on him. I stepped to his door, knocked, and entered. Captain Kaser lay in a bunk under a middling-sized porthole. The cabin was full of the morning light. I started and stood at gaze, scarce crediting my sight, so shocked and astounded was I by the dreadful change which had happened in the night in the poor man's appearance. His face was blue, and I remarked a cadaverous sinking in of the eyeballs. The lips were livid, the hands likewise blue, and it wrinkled like a washerwoman's. On seeing me he asked me a husky whispering voice for a drink of water. I handed him a full panicin, which he drained feverishly, then began to moan and cry out, making some weak miserable efforts to rub first one arm than the other than his legs. The steward stood in the doorway. I turned to him, but my face was ashen and asked some questions. I then said, where is Mr. Perkins? He was on deck. I bade the steward attend to the captain and passed through the hatch to the quarter-deck where I found the mate. Do you know that the captain is very ill? said I. Do I know it, sir? Why, yes. I've been sitting by him, chafing his limbs and giving him water to drink and sending to him in other ways. What is it, do you know, sir? Cholera, said I. Oh my God, I hope not, he exclaimed. How could it be Cholera? How could Cholera come aboard? A friend of mine died of Cholera at Rangoon when I was there, said I. I recognized the looks and will swear to the symptoms. But how could it have come aboard? he exclaimed quite slow but agitated. My eyes, as he asked the question, were upon the raft. I started and cried, is that thing still there? I, said the mate, we haven't budged a foot all night. The suspicion rushed upon me whilst I looked at the raft and ran my eyes over the bright hot morning sky in the burnished surface of the sea, sheeting into dimness in the misty junction of heaven and water. I shouldn't be surprised, said I, to discover that we have brought the Cholera aboard with us yesterday from that dead man's raft yonder. How is Cholera to be caught in that fashion? exclaimed Mr. Perkins, pale and a bit wild in his way of staring at me. We may have brought the poison aboard in the parcel of books. Cholera to be caught so? Undoubtedly. The disease may be propagated by a human intercourse. Why not then by books which have been handled by Cholera poison people or by the atmosphere of a body dead of the plague? I added, pointing to the raft. No man amongst us is safe then now, cried the mate. I'm no doctor, said I, but I know this, contagious poisons such as scarlet fever and glanders may retain their properties in a dormant state for years. I've heard tell of scores of instances of Cholera being propagated through articles of dress. Depend upon it, said I, that we brought the poison aboard with us yesterday from that accursed death raft yonder. Aren't the books in the captain's cabin? said the mate. Are they? He took them below yesterday, sir. The sooner they're overboard, the better, I exclaimed and returned to the cabin. I went to the captain and found the steward rubbing him. The disease appeared to be doing its work with horrible rapidity. The eyes were deeply sunken red. Every feature had grown sharp and pinched as after a long wasting disease. The complexion was thick and muddy. Those who have watched beside Cholera know that terrific changes may take place in a few minutes. I cast my eyes about for the parcel of books and, spying it, took a stick from the corner of the berth, hooked up the parcel, and, passing it through the open porthole, shook it overboard. The captain followed my movements with a languid rolling of his eyes, but spoke not, though he groaned often and frequently cried out. I could not in the least imagine what was proper to be done. He was the most important life on board the ship, and yet I could only look on and helplessly watch him expire. He lived till the evening and seldom spoke, safe to call upon God to release him. I had found an opportunity to tell him that he was ill of the Cholera and explained how it happened that the horrible distemper was on board for I was absolutely sure we had brought it with us in that parcel of books. But his anguish was so keen, his death so close then that I cannot be sure he understood me. He died shortly after seven o'clock and I have since learned that time is one of the critical hours in Cholera. When the captain was dead, I went to the mate and advised him to cast the body overboard at once. He called to some of the hands. They brought the body out just as the poor fellow had died and, securing a weight to the feet, they lifted the corpse over the rail and dropped it. No burial service was read. We were all too panic-stricken for reverence. We got rid of the body quickly, the men handling the thing as though they felt the death in it stealing into them through their fingers, hoping and praying that with it the Cholera would go. It was almost dark when this hurried funeral was ended. I stood beside the mate looking around the sea for a shadow of wind in any quarter. The bosson, who had been one of the men that handled the body, came up to us. Ain't there nothing to be done with that corpus out there, he exclaimed, pointing with a square hand to the raft. The men are agreed that there'll come no wind while that there dead blackie keeps afloat need he enough to make a disease of the atmosphere itself from horizon to horizon? I waited for the mate to answer. He said gloomily, I'm of the poor captain's mind. You'll need to make something fast to the body to sink it. Who's to handle it? I'll ask no man to do what I wouldn't do myself and rat me if I do that. We brought the poison aboard in the raft, bosson, said I. Best leave the thing alone. The corpus is too far off to corrupt the air, as you suppose, though the imaginations nigh as bad as the reality, said I, spitting. If there's any of them gained to sink the thing, may they do it, said the bosson, for there's nair a breeze of wind to come while it's there. Cha, said the mate, they may take the boat when the moon's up, should there come no wind first. An hour later, the steward told me the two of the sailors were seized with cramps and convulsions. After this, no more was said about taking the boat and sinking the body. The mate went into the forecastle. On his return, he begged me to go and look at the man. Better make sure that it's cholera with them too, sir, said he. You know the signs. And, folding his arms, he leaned against the bulwarks in a posture of profound dejection. I went forward and descended the forescuttle and found myself in a small cave. The heat was overpowering. There was no air to pass through the little hatch. The place was dimly lighted by an evil-smelling lamp hanging under a beam. But, poor as the illumination was, I could see by it. And when I looked at the two men and spoke to them, I saw how it was and came away sick at heart and half dead with the foul air of the forecastle and in deepest distress of mind, moreover, through perceiving that the two men had formed a part of the crew of that boat when we visited the raft. One died at six o'clock the next morning and the other at noon. But before this second man was dead, three others had been attacked and one of them was the mate. And still never a breath of air stirred the silver surface of the sea. The mate was a strong man and his fear of death made the conflict dreadful to behold. I was paralyzed at first by the suddenness of the thing and the tremendous character of our calamity and never doubting that I must speedily prove a victim as being one who had gone in the boat, I cast myself down upon a sofa in the cabin and there sat waiting for the first signal of pain, sometimes praying or striving to pray and seeking hard to accustom my mind to the fate I regarded as inevitable. But a keen and biting sense of my cowardice came to my rescue. I sprang to my feet and went to the mate's birth and nursed him till he died, which was shortly before midnight of the day of his seizure, so swift and sure was the poison we had brought from the raft. He was dropped over the side and in a few hours later he was followed by three others. I cannot be sure of my figures, it was a time of delirium and I recall some details of it with difficulty but I am pretty sure that by the morning of the fourth day of our falling in with the accursed raft the ship's company had been reduced to the bosson and five men making, with myself seven survivors of 15 souls who had sailed from Calcutta. It was some time about the middle of the fifth day two men were then lying stricken in the forecastle. The bosson and a couple sea men came af to the quarter-deck where I was standing. The wheel was deserted. No man had grasped it since the captain's death. Indeed there was nothing to be done at the helm. There was no liquid glass. The smell of frying paint bubbled into cinders by the roasting rays rose like the stench of a second plague to the nostrils. The bosson and his companions had been drinking. No doubt they had broached the rum casks below. They had never entered the cabin to my knowledge nor do I believe they got their liquor from there. The bosson carried a heavy cart bound in canvas with a long lanyard attached to it. He flung the parcel into the quarter boat and roared out. If that don't drag the blistered cuss out of sight I'll show the fired carcass the road myself. Cholera or no cholera, here goes. What are you going to do? said I. Do! he cried, while I sink that their plague out of it so as to give us the chance to freeze. Ain't this hell's delight? What's going to blow us clear whilst he keeps watch? And he nodded with a fierce drunken gesture towards the raft. You'll have to handle the body to sink it, said I. You're well men now. Keep well, won't you? The two who are going may be the next taken. The three of them roared out drunkenly together so muddling their speech with but I did not understand them. I walked aft not liking their savage looks shouting and cursing plentifully they lowered the boat got into her by descending the falls and shoved off for the raft. They drew alongside the bamboo contrivance and I looked to see the boat capsize so wildly did they sway her in their wrath and drink as they fastened the weight to the foot of the body they then sank the corpse and with the loom of their oars hammered at the raft till the bamboos were scattered like a sheaf of walking sticks cut adrift they now returned to the bark clambered aboard and hoisted the boat. The two sick men in the four castle were at this time looked after by a seamen named Archer I have said it was the fifth day of the calm of the ship's company the bosson and five men were living but two were dying and that not counting me left three as yet well and able to get about this man, Archer when the bosson and his companions went forward came out of the four castle and drank at the scuttled butt in the waist he walked unsteadily with that effort after stateliness which is peculiar to tipsy sailors his eyes wandered and he found some difficulty in hitting the bung hole with the dipper yet he was a civil sort of man when sober I had occasionally chatted with him during his tricks at the wheel and feeling the need of someone to talk to about our frightful situation I walked up to him and asked how the sick men did dying fast he answered steadying himself by leaning against the scuttled butt and raving like screech owls what's to be done Archer oh god alone he knows answered the man and here he put his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry and sob is it possible that this calm can last much longer it may last six weeks he answered whimpering down here when the winds drawed away by the sun it may take six weeks before it comes down to blow six weeks of calm down here ain't thought nothing of and here he burst out blubbering again where'd you get your liquor from said I oh don't talk of it don't talk of it he replied with a maudlin shake of the head drinking will not help you said I you'll all be the likelier to catch the malady for drinking this is a sort of time I should think when a man most wants his senses a breeze may come and we ought to decide where to steer the bark to the vessels under all plain sail too and here we are four men and a useless passenger should have come to blow suddenly we didn't sign on under you he interrupted with a tipsy scowl and as you ain't no good either as a sailor or doctor keep your bloom and sermons to yourself till they're asked for I had now not only to fear the cholera but to dread the men my mental distress was beyond all power of words to convey I wonder it did not quickly drive me crazy and hurry me overboard I lurked in the cabin to be out of sight of the fellows and all the while my imagination was tormenting me with the first pangs of the cholera and every minute I was believing I had the mortal malady sometimes I would creep up the companion steps and cautiously peer around and always I beheld the same dead faint blue surface of sea stretching like an ocean in a dream into the faint indefinable distances but shocking as that calm was to me I very well knew there was nothing wonderful or preternatural in it our four foot five days before had struck the equatorial zone called the dull drums and had a period of the year when a fortnight or even a month of atmospheric lifelessness might be as confidently looked for as the rising and setting of the sun at nine o'clock that night I was sitting at the cabin table and a little weak brandy and water before me when I was hailed by someone at the open skylight above it was black night though the sky was glorious with stars the moon did not rise till after eleven I had lighted the cabin lamp and the sheen of it was upon the face of archer the two men are dead and gone said he and Bill are down there's Jim dead drunk in the hammock I can't stand the cries of sick men but with liquor and pain the air below suffocates me let me come after sir and keep along with you I'm sober now oh Christ have mercy upon me it's my turn next ain't it I passed a glass of brandy to him through the skylight then joined him on deck the two dead bodies must be thrown overboard and the sick men looked to for some time he refused to go forward with me saying that he was already poisoned and deadly sick and a dying man and that I had no right to expect that one dying man should wait upon another however I was determined to turn the dead out of the ship in any case for in freeing the vessel of the remains of the victims might lie my salvation he consented to help me at last and he went into the floor castle and between us got the bodies out of their bunks and dropped them weighted over the rail the boss and then the other men laid groaning and writhing and crying for water cursing at intervals a coil of black smoke went up from the lamp flame to the blackened beam under which the light was burning the atmosphere was horrible I've had Archer help me to carry a couple of mattresses onto the floor castle and we got the sick men through the hatch and they lay there in the coolness with plenty of cold water beside them and a heaven of stars above instead of a low pitched ceiling of a grimy beam and plank dark with processions of cockroaches and dim with the smoke of the stinking slush lamp all this occupied us till about half past ten when I went after I was seized with nausea and sinking upon the skylight dabbled my brow in the dew betwixt the lifted lids for the refreshment of the moisture I believed that my time had come and that this sickness was the cholera Archer followed me and seeing me in a posture of torment as he suppose concluded that I was a dead man he flung himself upon the deck with a groan and lay motionless crying out at intervals God have mercy God have mercy and that was all in about half an hour's time the sensation of sickness passed I went below for some brandy swallowed half a glass and returning with a dram for Archer but the man had either swooned or fallen asleep and I let him lie I had my senses perfectly but felt shockingly weak in body and I could think of nothing consolatory to diminish my exquisite distress of mind indeed the capacity of realization grew unendorably poignant I imagined too well I figured too clearly I pictured myself as lying dead upon the deck of the bark found a corpse with some passing vessel after many days and so I dreamt often breaking away from my horrible imaginations with moans and starts then pacing the deck to rid me of the nightmare hag of thought till I was in a fever then cooling my head by laying my cheek upon the dew-covered skylight by and by the moon rose and I sat watching it in half an hour she was a bright light in the east in the shaft of silver that slept under her stretched to the bark side it was just then that one of the two sick men on the four-castle sent up a yell the dreadful note rang through the vessel and dropped the deck in an echo from the canvas a moment after I saw a figure get onto the four-castle rail and spring overboard I heard the splash of his body moving over to Archer who lay on the deck I pulled and hauled at him roaring out that one of the sick men had jumped overboard and then rushed forward and looked over into the water in the place where the man had leapt but saw nothing not even a ripple I turned and peered close at the man who lay on the four-castle and discovered that the fellow who had jumped was the bosson I went again to the rail to look at the oil of rope from a pin ready to fling the fakes to the man should he rise the moonlight was streaming along the ocean on this side of the ship and now when I leaned over the rail for the second time I saw a figure close under the boughs I stared a minute or two the color of the body blended with the gloom yet the moonlight was upon him too and then it was that after looking a while and observing the thing I believed that it was the body that had been upon the raft no doubt the extreme horror raised in me by the sight of the poisonous thing be held in that light and under such conditions crazed me I have a recollection of laughing wildly and defying the dark floating shape in insane language I remember that I shook my fist and spat at it and that I turned to seek for something to hurl at the body in the instant of my turning my senses left me for after this I can recall no more the sequel to this tragic and extraordinary experience will be found in the following statement made by the people of the ship for for sure from Calcutta to Liverpool August 29th 1857 when in latitude two degrees 15 minutes north 39 degrees 40 minutes east we sighted a bark under all plain sail apparently abandoned the breeze was very scanty and though we immediately shifted our helm for her on judging that she was in distress it took us all the morning to approach her with inhaling distance everything looked right with her aloft but the wheel was deserted and there were no signs of anything living in her and the boat in charge of the second officer who returned and informed us that the bark was the justicia of London we knew that she was from Calcutta for we had seen her lying in the river the second officer stated that there were three dead bodies aboard one in a hammock in the forecastle a second on a mattress on the forecastle and a third against the comings of the main hatch there was also a fourth man lying at the heel of the port cat-head he did not seem to be dead on this Dr. Davison was requested to visit the bark and he was put aboard by the second officer he returned quickly with one of the men who he instantly ordered to be stripped and put into a warm bath and his clothes thrown overboard he said that the dead showed unmistakable signs of having died from cholera we proceeded not deeming it prudent to have anything further to do with the ill-fated craft the person we had rescued remained insensible for two days his recovery was then slow but sure, thanks to the skillful treatment of Dr. Davison he informed us that his name was Thomas Barron and that he was a passenger on board the justicia for Cape Town he was the traveling representative of a large Birmingham firm the bark had on the proceeding a boat was sent to bring away a parcel from the raft's mast and it is supposed that the contents of the parcel communicated the cholera there were fifteen souls when the vessel left Calcutta and all perished except the passenger Thomas Barron End of Chapter 7 Recording by Molly Griffin Chapter 8 of The Fatal End of Chapter 7 Recording by Molly Griffin Chapter 8 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Clay Beecham The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell Try for her in 50 The following extraordinary story was told to me some years ago by the commander of a steamship in which I was making a voyage for my health The captain who as we shall see had himself shared in the experience he related began his tale thus A good many years ago I was in Cape Town having been forced by illness to quit my post as second mate of a large ship bound to Bombay A fortnight after the ship sailed I recovered my health and was fit for work In those days Cape Town was without docks nor does this carry the memory very far back either Colonial progress is the foremost of the miracles of our century You visit some antipodian shore after a few years and know the growth of docks piers, warehouses and expansion of suburbs a magical embracing of the hillsides by roof upon roof of charming villas as at Natal for example And whilst you look you shall think it rational to hold that more than a century is gone to the creation of this noble scene of civilization and that the little struggling village you remember arriving at a few years before with its dockless bay and its three or four small ships blistering under the eye of a roasting sun at their poor moorings alongside a rustic wooden wharf was an imagination of your slumber I was entirely dependent upon my profession Sickness had heavily taxed my slender purse and I was exceedingly anxious when I was well enough for work to obtain a situation Ships brought up in the bay in those days and discharged for the most part in lighters The spacious breast of the waters would offer again and again a grander show than is ever likely to be seen there in these or succeeding times There was no Sue's canal Steam was by no means plentiful All the trading to the east was by way of the Cape and nearly everything bound round Aguilas looked into Table Bay for refreshment I remember one of those mornings whilst I was hunting for a birth that I counted a hundred and ten vessels at anchor in Table Bay To be sure, I had witnessed as much as five hundred ships straining at their ground tackle at one time in the Downs But that forest of spars had a wide area to distribute itself over in the waters streaming from the south Forlan down to a stretch that lies a breast of sandwich The hundred odd craft in Table Bay made a more imposing sight than the Downs picture of the solemn and magnificent scenery of mountain whose lofty silent terraces seemed in the colossal sweep of them to swell and thicken the ships into a stately rocking crowd and they lay in a tall mass of symmetric spires the rigging of one knitting that of another past her and the bright wind was painted with the colors of a dozen nations I stood at the head of a little jetty or pier Was there nothing to find me a berth worth six pounds a month in all that gallon huddle of gleaming sides and coppered flanks The water trembled like molten brass under the sun to the coral white line of the opposite shore where the land went away in strange hues of rusty red and sickly green carrying the eye into the liquid blue distance in which hung a hundred miles off a range of magnificent mountains like pale gold and the far light Their skylines is clean cut in the full and even splendor of that magical climate as the top of Table Mountain close at hand I was watching a Malay fishing boat sliding through the water with an occasional burst of spray off her weather bow which art a little rainbow for her to rush through when I was accosted I turned It was the port captain or harbour master I cannot remember the term by which his office was distinguished He had sailed with my father some years earlier and I had met him on two occasions in England He had done me some kindness whilst I lay ill in lodgings in Cape Town and it assured me of his willingness to help me to find a ship when I should be well enough to go to sea He was a Scotchman with a hard weather-coloured face and of a dry, arched expression of eye Do you see anything to fit you? said he I said I, a plenty Well now, said he You're the very man I was thinking of not half an hour ago I was in Adderley Street and met a captain who was here last year His name's Huddersfield He's in charge of a colonial trader from a South American port with a small consignment for his place and is bound for Sydney, New South Wales where his little ship's own chiefly I believe by himself Is there room for me in her? Well, yes I think you'll stand a chance She lost her chief officer overboard when six days sail from this port and she's got a ship another man Take my advice and go aboard this evening and see the captain He's ashore till five or six o'clock Which is the vessel? He pointed to a large three-masted schooner that was lying within a hundred strokes of an ore almost abreast of us She looked and exceedingly fine-craft A large Dutch India man was rolling upon the swell of the sea within a few cables' length a stern of her and just ahead rode a Russian auxiliary frigate very heavily sparred with great gleaming windows in her stern and a network of girding on either quarter so that the blue brine under her counter would dart of a sunbeam whenever she lightly swayed Yet the schooner held her own in all points as a picture of beauty and was not to be dwarfed The gilded buttons of her trucks shone high in the azure of that afternoon She was painted white in a gleam of dark red like some cold wet flash of sunset broke from her meddled bends whenever she moved by the inflowing heave of the water she lingered by the shore for the remainder of the afternoon watching the people coming and going from and to the shipping until I fancied Indeed I was certain that the man I wanted dressed in white clothes and a wide-brimmed straw hat had been put aboard the schooner by her own boat When I got on board I found the little ship a very noble flush-decked vessel with a clear sweep of sand-bright under the eyes The brasswork was full of the stars of the western sunshine The glass of her skylights was dark and shining Her ropes were Flemish coiled as though indeed she had been a man of war Everything was clean and neat I guess she was about 300 tons burden Her crew had knocked off for the day and were lounging about the windlass two or three of them stripped to the waist They had a colonial heir This might have been owing to their dress of check-shirt open at the breast, no braces here in their moleskins and here in their a cabbage tree hat The second mate a man whose name I afterwards ascertained was Curzon was walking in the gangway smoking a pipe I inquired if Captain Huddersfield was on board He asked me what my business was as though suspicious of a visit from a stranger after working hours I was about to explain the reason that had brought me to the schooner when Captain Huddersfield himself emerged through the little companion way and stepped on deck pausing a moment with the sharp of his hand to his brow to gaze in the direction of Cape Town He was a tall, gentlemanly looking person, thickly bearded the hair of a rich auburn The skin of his face was much burnt by the sun His eyes were of a liquid blue and when he approached and directed them at me, I seemed to find something glowing and tender in them as though he were an enthusiast a man of strange, perhaps high but always honest imagining a dreamer He of all the men that ever I had met at sea the least corresponded in appearance with the received image of the nautical man who, forsooth, whether in fiction or on the stage, must need to be a fraud from the land-going point of view if he be not purple with grog blossoms with eyes dim and staring with drink, with legs bent like the prongs of a pitchfork and charged to the throat with a four-castle vocabulary incommunicable even by initials I must say of Captain Huddersfield that never a float or a shore had I before beheld in any man a more placid, benevolent expression of countenance his age seemed about forty that's the captain said the second mate I lifted my cap and walked up to him in a few words I told him my business adding that I held not only at chief mates but a master's certificate of competency he eyed me critically but with kindness and nodded with something of gravity on my mentioning the name of the port captain after we had exchanged a few sentences he took me into the cabin a bright breezy little interior aromatic with a quantity of plants which had evidently been recently brought aboard and cheerful with mirrors and pictures as though in short this gentleman was in the habit when he went to sea of carrying his parlor with him and bidding me be seated he asked a number of questions all of which I saw with much pleasure by the expression of his face I answered to his satisfaction the interview ended in his offering me the post of mate of the schooner on a lump wage for the run to Sydney and early next morning I went on board with my chest and took up my quarters in the cabin I regarded this securing of a post as a fine stroke of luck and was mighty thankful plentiful as was the shipping and table bay expected ever since I went ashore a sick man that my chance of getting a situation after was small that in short I should be obliged to get clear of the cape by offering myself as a hand a trip to Sydney was just to my liking for amongst the ships there I should find no difficulty in procuring a birth owing to the gold craze which was emptying vessels of their cruise from mate to boy before they were fairly birthed four days after I had signed the schooner's articles we weighed and stood out of the bay we were just in time to escape the thrashing of a furious south-easter which came whipping and howling down Table Mountain out of the magnificent milk-white softness of vapor that half veiled to the grand height sinking and lifting upon it a wide surface of water was whitened by this strange local gale the limits of the wind were sharply and extraordinarily defined by a line of foam inside of which all was savage, popple and boiling commotion the ships in it straining wildly their loose gear curving their bunting roaring whilst outside all was of a mid-summer serenity the water rolling like knolls of polished quicksilver tarnished here and there by light breathings of wind which delicately stretched the sails of the Malay boats and sent them glancing through it till the cat's paw died out into a roasting trance of burnished brine we were, as I have said a three-masted schooner square-rigged forward with an immense hoist of lower mast for a square foresail and a length of flying jibboom that made us all wings from the golden gleam of the figurehead to the tack of the flying jib I had never before been shipmate with four-and-aft canvas all my knowledge of the sea had been picked up under square yards there was nothing I could not do with a full-rigged ship nor need a square-rigger in an old hand be charged with egotism for saying so but when it came to boom mainsails and gaff foresails and ropes and rigging with unfamiliar names I could only idly look on for a while but I did not doubt I should be able to quickly learn everything necessary to be known and, meantime when we were well out at sea with the high African land upon our port quarter blue in the air with distant mountains trembling towards their summits into silver and the mighty southern ocean stretching over our boughs away down to the white silence of the Antarctic parallels I watched the behavior of the schooner with interest the breeze was a beam the whole hot distance of the rich blue ocean was in it the land for hundreds of leagues to break or hinder it the schooner leaned over and flashed her sheathing at the northern sun and stretched along the deep with a look of a flying hare the white water poured aft from her shearing stem her ribbon of wake sparkled to midway the horizon in a soaring and sinking vein of silver full of frost-like lights and wreaths of foam bells it was like yachting and I reckoned upon a quick run to Sydney from the hour of my coming aboard officially Captain Huddersfield exhibited a very friendly, almost cordial disposition he was a man of good education a sailor, first of all but a gentleman also not highly varnished perhaps wanting in the airs and graces of the drawing room but abundantly possessed of those qualities which, when glazed and brightened by shore-going observance and habit caused men to be esteemed for their breeding and bearing he had a regard for me, I think because like himself I was not wholly a copy of the dramatic and romantic notions of the sailor I neither swore nor drank I was ever of opinion that it did not follow because a man got his living under the commercial flag of his country he must needs cultivate all qualities of laggardism as a condition of his calling I could not for the life of me understand why an officer in the merchant's surface should not be able to behave himself on board ship and ashore with as lively a sense of his duty and obligations as a gentleman as if he wore the buttons of the state possibly my friend the port captain at Cape Town had prejudiced Huddersfield in my favor then again though he lived in Sydney he was an Englishman born his native county was mine and this little circumstance alone the watery leagues away from the old home was enough to establish a bond between us nevertheless I did not observe that he was very communicative about his own affairs for the first few days until the furious weather set in we often conversed but I never found that our chats left me with any knowledge of his past or of his business as for instance how long he had lived in New South Wales the occasion that had dispatched him there the social interests were outside his schooner whether he was married and so forth it breezed up ahead after we had been at sea a few days the Cambrian looked well to windward but she was still points off her course then again the great Aguilis stream set us to leeward and our progress was slow on the 22nd day of the month we then being four days out from Table Bay the weather blackened on a sudden afternoon in the north the lightning streamed like cataracts of violent flame on those sooty sierras of storm the thunder rolled continuously but it was not till the edge of the electric stuff black as midnight was over our mass heads with sea and sky dim and frightful as though beheld in the deep shadow of a total eclipse of the sun that the hurricane took us it came along in a note of thunder dredged with a continuous shrieking of wind the sea boiled under it and it raced with a diabolic outfly in a high white wall of water it swept upon us with a flash in a whole sky full of salt smoke and the air was like a snow storm with a throbbing flight of the yeast the trifle of canvas that had been left exposed vanished as a puff of steam would the schooner lay over till her starboard shear poles were under and then it was deep enough to drown a man in the Lee's scuppers it was doubtful for some time whether she would write and I was clawing my way forward with some dim hope of getting at the carpenter's chest for an axe for the weather lanyards when the noble little craft suddenly rose buoyant with the long savage yell of the gale in her rigging as she thrashed her lofty spars to windward after this she made fairly good weather of it but for three days we lay under the bare poles sagging helplessly to Leeward in the trough of that mighty ocean the weather then moderated within six hours of the breaking of the gale it was blowing a gentle wind out of the northeast the sun shone brightly and the schooner flapped leisurely along her course under all plain sail and over a large but fast subsiding swell during the time of violent weather Captain Huddersfield had seen much depressed in spirits I had attributed his dejection to the apparel of those hours we were a small ship for that tall southern surge more over his risk in the vessel might be large for all I knew I could not guess how gravely I misjudged one of the manliest intelligences that ever informed a sailor we were seated alone at dinner on the first day of fine weather he said after regarding me said fastly for some moments do you attach any meaning to dreams I do not I answered but when they recur said he no, said I not though they should recur for a month of Sundays do you know of any superstitions in connection with dreams he asked I remember an old woman once told me that a dream of a smooth sea is a sign of a prosperous voyage but of a rough sea a stormy and unprofitable one he shook his head with a little impatience without smiling then again said I taxing my memory to oblige him for this sort of talk was sad stuff to my way of thinking a sailor once told me that if you dream of a dolphin you're bound to lose your sweetheart and the same man said that dream of drowning was a promise of good luck the hopefulist of all sea dreams I believe is the vision of an anchor to the fact said I finding myself thoughtful for a moment that I dreamt of an anchor the night before I received a letter from an uncle containing a check for two hundred pounds the only money I ever received from a relative in all my life he was silent for a while and then said speaking in a very serious voice for three nights running the same odd vision has troubled me I have thrice dreamt that I was becalmed in an icy atmosphere of Antarctic darkness the stars rode brilliantly but they made no light regularly through this black atmosphere there sounded in a note of sighing human with articulation and yet resembling the noise made by the whale when it spouts its fountain these mysterious words try for her in fifty try for her in fifty over and over again it so ran try for her in fifty now to have dreamt this once would be nothing twice makes it remarkable the third time of the same vision must affect even the most wooden of minds with a spirit as of conviction I don't believe in dreams any more than you do yet there ought to be some sort of meaning in the repetition of one in such a haunting cry repeated on several occasions of slumber as try for her in fifty well sir strange I exclaimed and that's about the amount of it I've somewhere heard of men rescued in a starving state from a desolate island through a dream the captain's nephew was the dreamer I think the same vision troubled him three times as yours did he was a young Frenchman and the dream made him important the skipper shifted his helm to oblige the lad the little company of gaunt Selkirk's upon it thus we reasoned the matter a while he conversed as though he was worried at heart when I went on deck however I flattered myself I had left him with an easier mind he did not afterwards in that day refer to the subject nor next morning when he came out of his cabin soon after sunrise did he tell me that he had again been troubled in his sleep by that mysterious haunting cry sounding across the black cold ocean of his dreams like the noise made by a whale when it spouts its fountain to the stars in some midnight hush a few days after we had that talk I've just repeated almost immediately on making eight bells by our sextant a man on the four castle hailing the quarter deck balled out that there was a small black object on the lee bow captain Huddersfield leveled the telescope and said the thing was a ship's quarter boat with a man standing up in her the weather was quiet at this time the breeze a light one the schooner was rippling leisurely forward with an occasional flap of her canvas that flashed a light as of the sun itself onto the blue air all about the masts the junction of sea and sky was in haze with here and there a dim blue shadow of cloud poise coast like upon the horizon I took the glass from the captain made out a boat with a mast but no sail the figure of a man stood erect and one arm hooked to the mast we shifted our helm and presently had the boat along side two men were in her one lay motionless under the thwarts the other though erect on his feet had barely strength to catch the ropes and that was flung the boat was of the ordinary pattern of ships quarter boat will sweet leaned over the side looking down into her the captain said what is the name written in the stearnsheets there my sight was good I answered prairie chief he started and turned pale with a look of astonishment and horror but said nothing meanwhile the two men were being got aboard one was lifeless and his look seemed to tell of his having been frozen rather than starved death they were both dressed in the plain garb of the merchant sailor the one that lived was assisted forward and disappeared in the four castle in the company of two or three sympathizing seamen of our crew nothing so pleads to the humanity of the British sailor as the misery that is expressed by the open boat in this case no appeal could have been more complete I jumped into the little craft in obedience to the captain's orders and overhauled her and found nothing to eat or drink her cargo was an empty beaker and some fragments of canvas which appeared to have been chewed the very heart within me sickened at the story of anguish that was silently related by those dusky dole-like lumps of canvas we hoisted the boat aboard the weather permitted us to do that and it was too good and useful a boat to lose in the afternoon we buried the body of the dead nameless seamen nameless because it seemed that the other was incapable of relating his story pain and famine had paralyzed the tongue in his mouth the captain read the service his manner was so subdued his whole demeanor expressed him as so effected that you would have supposed he was burying some dear friend or near relative I had often attended a burial service at sea and never won more impressive than this all the desolation of the mighty deep seemed to have centered as in a very spirit in the lifeless body that lay stitched in a hammock in the gangway when the body was overboard the captain walked to the boat we had hoisted in and stood with his first look of amazement and grief musing upon or rather staring at the name prairie chief painted in the stern sheets the man went to his cabin when he again made his appearance some time afterwards he was extraordinarily reserved and gloomy throughout the watches he would ask if the man was better I do not recollect that he addressed another word to me than that question next four noon some time about eight bells the man was sufficiently recovered to come aft I stood beside captain Huddersfield and Wilste talked to him he said his name was James Dickens and that he had been an able seaman aboard the bark prairie chief the ship was from London bound to Sydney south of the Cape they met with very heavy weather from the northward which hoeved them to and drove them south it was so thick the captain could not get an observation the wind slackened and the captain made sail defying the thickness he was impatient and had already made a long passage and was resolved have in what might to ratch north for a clear sky in the middle of the day when the smother upon the sea was so thick the flying jaboom end was out of sight from the wheel a loud and fearful cry of ice right ahead rang from the forecastle the wheel was revolved every spoke with a fury of despair by the helmsman but the ship's time was come and there was nothing in seaman ship to maneuver her clear of her fate she telescoped into the ice and went to pieces this Dickens said had happened about ten days before we fell in with the boat the disaster was not so frightfully sudden but that there was time for some to escape a number of people said the man got upon the ice amongst them where the captain his wife and a female passenger Dickens particularly noticed these people that is the commander and the two women he and three others drifted away on a boat the bark went to pieces aloft when she struck he was sure that none others saving himself and the three men escaped in the boats it was the middle of the day when the ship ran into the berg and the darkness happened so quickly after the disaster that he was unable to tell much of what followed two of his companions died whilst they were adrift and their bodies were dropped overboard Will Dickens told his story I watched the captain his features were knitted into an expression of consternation yet he never once interrupted the man when the sailor had made an end of his story Huddersfield said in a slow level voice was your commander captain Smalley yes sir was one of the female passengers Mrs Huddersfield it was her name sir the captain turned his eyes upon me and cried with a sudden wild toss of his hands that somehow gave an extraordinary pathos to his words and looks she is my wife nothing was said for some moments I was at a loss for speech it was the same as hearing of the death of one beloved by the person you are with when the news is given to him what can you say presently I said to the man did you cite any ships whilst you were adrift nothing sir but won't the ice you ran into said I be well within the limits of the ocean fairway he could not answer me this how far south did you drift he did not know if they are on the ice is it too late to rescue them sir I inquired addressing the captain after another pause he seemed too distracted by grief to heed my question I had hoped he said speaking in short breathing in broken sentences to find her safe at Sydney on my arrival here she went home last year on a visit to her mother it was arranged that captain smally an old friend should bring her out ten days ago he muttered to himself ten days ago he covered his eyes with his hand then looking vacantly at his sextant went to the rail and seemed to stare out to sea into the south I was about to question Dickens afresh when the captain rounded upon us in a very flash of white face in wild eager manner try for her in fifty he cried looking at me but as though he saw someone beyond me I viewed him with silent surprise the very memory in therefore the meaning of the words he now pronounced had gone out of my head and I did not understand him try for her in fifty he repeated I know what it means he went in a sort of a run to the wheel and brought the schooner's head to a due southerly course we'll see shouted in tones vibrating with the excitement that seemed like mania in the man then with the workings of his face I say he shouted for sail to be trimmed for the course he had brought the schooner to and the sea men fled about the decks to my commands alert and willing but as astonished as I was when sail had been trimmed the captain called Mr. Curzon to keep her steady as she went and requested me to follow him below he stood beside the table and leaned upon it his agitation was so extreme that I thought to see his mother in his eyes his breathing continued distressingly labored for some time indeed the emotions and passions which tore him appeared to have arrested the faculty of speech at last he exclaimed in a voice low with religious awe yet threaded too with a note of triumph that instantly caught my ear you'd now guess the meaning of that dream which was three times dreamt by me still I was at a loss and made no answer try for her in fifty he exclaimed that was the cry I told you about you remember that sentence surely yes clearly now sir that you recall it come let's work out the latitude he said and we'll find that iceberg situation my heart's on fire but softly in a tone that thrilled through me my wife is dear to me I pray I pray we may not be too late I still failed to grasp what was in his mind and suspected that his reason had been a little weakened by the shock of the news he had received when we had worked out our observations he exposed the chart he used to pick off the ship's course on and mused upon it and measured angles and distances it is at this season said he that the ice breaks away out of the south and comes in fleets of birds thickly crowding north there's been heavy weather will not allow for a larger drift in a league a day try for her in fifty that's it that will put the bird when the prairie chief struck it in about fifty one I thought now I began to understand him you mean fifty one degrees of south latitude of course I do he answered I measured the distance to south from the place where our ship then was and made it a few hundred miles I forget the figure it's a short run said he looking at the chart the boat did it in ten days and that's not about three knots an hour I was silent I shall strike the parallel of fifty degrees he continued after a pause and run away east if I sight nothing I shall head back I'll find her under God he added removing his cap and glancing upwards with an expression of rapt devotion this was an extraordinary undertaking prompted as it was by an impulse spread of the imagination of a mind in slumber yet by no means irrational seeking that it was certain if the seamen Dickens reported a right there was a shipwrecked company upon an iceberg within a few days sail the crew were briefly told that Captain Huddersfield's wife had been aboard the prairie chief and that the schooner was going to seek the survivors of the wreck it will be supposed however that no hint was dropped as to the mysterious voice which had spoken in the whisper of a giant in the captain's dream Kerzone the second mate said that apart from the heavy odds against our falling in the particular iceberg we wanted there was the certainty should we strangely enough encounter the mass of ice of our finding the people dead of cold and starvation I answered there was no certainty about it and quoted several instances of astonishing deliverances from floating bodies of ice as recorded in the old marine chronicles not until the fourth day did we strike the latitude of 50 degrees in which time we saw no ice the ocean was of a marvelous rich blue the heavens deep and thrilling violet with coasts of swelling white vapor of a rusty bronze in their brows lying upon the glass-like line of the horizon we now headed due east the sailors thought our quest was ended throughout the glittery frosty hours the wind blew with a piercing breath down here Captain Huddersfield kept a look out he was forever crossing the deck to peer ahead and again and again slinging a binocular glass over his shoulder he would go aloft on to the little four royal yard where he stayed till the bitter cold drove him down at midnight on this day we sighted a large ice island pale as alabaster under the moon and shortened canvas to approach it we hove too till the gray of the dawn when the rising sun gave us a magnificent picture of a floating mountain bristling with pinnacles a principality of turrets and casillated immanences majestic in solitude the man Dickon said it was not the burg we sailed round it keeping a sharp look out for the loose ice and then observing no signs of life save a number of birds proceeded the same day we fell in with different birds of different sizes all of which we approached and carefully examined but to no purpose then for some long hours we encountered no more ice but all this while we sailed steadily on at the parallel of 50 degrees south making a due east course and now comes the amazing part of this tale I went on deck at midnight to take charge of the schooner and walking to the side as my custom was and gazing steadily ahead a corner of the moon at this time hung in the sky over the port quarter I beheld a dim faintness right ahead a delicate gleam like some mysterious reflection of light in a looking glass in a darkened room a man came along from the forecastle and sung out in a quiet voice that there was ice ahead I bade him rout out Dickon's watch below but whenever ice was reported we had him up and stationed him on the forecastle to keep a look out as the one and only man in the vessel who would know the Berg we were in search of I then ran to the companion hatch and called out to the captain who was lying upon a locker below and he immediately arrived the wind was scanty and our speed through the water scarcely four knots but hardly had day broken the ice island being then about a mile distant when Dickon's who had remained on the forecastle throughout the dark hours freaked out the iceberg sir it was a fine morning the sea quiet the wind a nipping air out of the south west the sun shone full upon the iceberg and flashed it into a great moon white floating heap scored with ravines and gorges the swell rushed in thunder into deep caverns I saw many gothic archways with birds flying in them the mass was like a city of alabaster the home of sea spirits of ocean foul of mighty pinion the surf boiled in thunder on the windward points I observed a shelf of the dead white crystal sloping very gently like a beach into the wash of the water I was gazing at it the captain who was working away at the Berg with a telescope cried out fiercely then growing unarticulate he put the glass into my hand gaping at the ice and pointing to it I leveled the glass and immediately distinguished a structure contrived as I presently saw of the galley of a ship and a quantity of wreckage it stood in a great split in the ice within musket shot of the beach and wilstein looked smoke rose from it there is life there! I cried out we hauled in and then with a naked eye clearly perceived several figures making signs to us when we were as close as prudence permitted the long boat was got over and the captain and five men one of them being dickens pulled away towards the Berg I stood off to improve my offing and being full of the business of the schooner had little opportunity to remark what passed on the ice island by and by the boat returned she looked to be full of people when she was alongside I saw two women in her one was locked in the embrace of captain huddersfield he had wrapped her in his coat and held her to his heart both women were lifted over the side three of the men were also handed up the others managed to crawl on deck unaided there were seven men and two women they afterwards told us that fifteen and all had gained the ice the wife of the captain of the prairie chief he was amongst those who had perished died before our arrival in Sydney Mrs. Huddersfield a stronger woman quickly recovered and was walking the deck in the sun leaning on her husband's arm within a week of her rescue End of Chapter 8 Recording by Clay Beecham