The Captain of the Polestar | Page 5

has locked
himself up in his room, which shows that he is still in an unamiable
mood. And so to bed, as old Pepys would say, for the candle is burning
down (we have to use them now since the nights are closing in), and
the steward has turned in, so there are no hopes of another one.
September 12th.--Calm, clear day, and still lying in the same position.
What wind there is comes from the south-east, but it is very slight.
Captain is in a better humour, and apologised to me at breakfast for his
rudeness. He still looks somewhat distrait, however, and retains that
wild look in his eyes which in a Highlander would mean that he was
"fey"--at least so our chief engineer remarked to me, and he has some
reputation among the Celtic portion of our crew as a seer and
expounder of omens.
It is strange that superstition should have obtained such mastery over
this hard-headed and practical race. I could not have believed to what
an extent it is carried had I not observed it for myself. We have had a
perfect epidemic of it this voyage, until I have felt inclined to serve out
rations of sedatives and nerve- tonics with the Saturday allowance of
grog. The first symptom of it was that shortly after leaving Shetland the
men at the wheel used to complain that they heard plaintive cries and
screams in the wake of the ship, as if something were following it and
were unable to overtake it. This fiction has been kept up during the
whole voyage, and on dark nights at the beginning of the seal-fishing it

was only with great difficulty that men could be induced to do their
spell. No doubt what they heard was either the creaking of the
rudder-chains, or the cry of some passing sea-bird. I have been fetched
out of bed several times to listen to it, but I need hardly say that I was
never able to distinguish anything unnatural.
The men, however, are so absurdly positive upon the subject that it is
hopeless to argue with them. I mentioned the matter to the Captain
once, but to my surprise he took it very gravely, and indeed appeared to
be considerably disturbed by what I told him. I should have thought
that he at least would have been above such vulgar delusions.
All this disquisition upon superstition leads me up to the fact that Mr.
Manson, our second mate, saw a ghost last night--or, at least, says that
he did, which of course is the same thing. It is quite refreshing to have
some new topic of conversation after the eternal routine of bears and
whales which has served us for so many months. Manson swears the
ship is haunted, and that he would not stay in her a day if he had any
other place to go to. Indeed the fellow is honestly frightened, and I had
to give him some chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to
steady him down. He seemed quite indignant when I suggested that he
had been having an extra glass the night before, and I was obliged to
pacify him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his
story, which he certainly narrated in a very straight-forward and matter-
of-fact way.
"I was on the bridge," he said, "about four bells in the middle watch,
just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of a moon, but
the clouds were blowing across it so that you couldn't see far from the
ship. John M`Leod, the harpooner, came aft from the foc'sle-head and
reported a strange noise on the starboard bow.
I went forrard and we both heard it, sometimes like a bairn crying and
sometimes like a wench in pain. I've been seventeen years to the
country and I never heard seal, old or young, make a sound like that. As
we were standing there on the foc'sle-head the moon came out from
behind a cloud, and we both saw a sort of white figure moving across
the ice field in the same direction that we had heard the cries. We lost

sight of it for a while, but it came back on the port bow, and we could
just make it out like a shadow on the ice. I sent a hand aft for the rifles,
and M`Leod and I went down on to the pack, thinking that maybe it
might be a bear. When we got on the ice I lost sight of M`Leod, but I
pushed on in the direction where I could still hear the cries. I followed
them for a mile or maybe more, and then running round a hummock I
came right on to