The Ghost Ship | Page 6

all the more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first instance, "There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!"
"Where on earth are you squinting now, boy?" said he, a bit huffy at not making her out and apparently inclined to Spokeshave's opinion that I had not really seen her at all. "Where away?"
"There, sir, away to leeward," cried I, almost jumping over the bridge rail in my excitement. "She's nearly abreast of our mizzen chains and not a mile off. She seems coming up on the port tack, sir!"
For, strangely enough, although we were going ten knots good by the aid of the wind that had worked round more abeam, so that all our fore and aft sail drew, while the ship, which, when I saw her before, seemed to be running with the nor'-easter and sailing at a tangent to our course so that she ought really to have increased her distance from us, now, on the contrary, appeared ever so much nearer, as if she had either altered her helm or drifted closer by the aid of some ocean current in the interim; albeit, barely five minutes at the best, if that, had only elapsed since I first sighted her.
But, stranger still, Mr Fosset could not see her, when there she was as plain as the sun setting in the west awhile ago--at least to my eyes; and, as she approached nearer yet in some unaccountable way, for her bows were pointed from us and the wind, of course, was blowing in the opposite direction, she being on our lee, I declare I could distinctly see a female figure, like that of a young girl with long hair, on the deck aft; and beside her I also noticed a large black dog, jumping up and down!
"I'm sure I can't see any ship, youngster," said Mr Fosset at the moment. Even while he was actually speaking, I observed the sailing vessel to yaw in her course, her ragged canvas flattening against the masts as if she were coming about, although from the way her head veered about, she did not seem to be under any control. "There's nothing in sight, Haldane, I tell you. What you perhaps thought was a ship is that big black cloud rising to the southward. It looks like one of those nasty sea fogs working up, and we'll have to keep a precious sharp look- out to-night, I know."
"There's no ship there," echoed my friend "Conky," tapping his forehead in a very offensive way to intimate that I had "a screw loose in the upper storey," as the saying goes, grinning the while as I could see very well in the dim light and poking his long nose up in the air in supreme contempt. "The boy is either mad, or drunk, or dreaming, as you say, sir. It is all a cock and a bull yarn about his sighting a vessel, and he only wants to brave it out. There's no ship there!"
"Can you see anything, Atkins?" asked Mr Fosset of the man steering. "There away to leeward, I mean."
"No, sir," answered the sailor; "not a speck, sir."
"Do you see anything, lamp-trimmer?"
"No; can't say I does, sir," replied old Greazer, after a long squint over our lee in the direction pointed out, "Not a sight of a sail, nor a light, nor nothink!"
It was curious.
For, at that very moment, when the first mate and Spokeshave and the helmsman and lamp-trimmer, standing on the bridge beside me, one and all said they could see nothing, I declare to you I saw not only the ship and the figures on her deck, but I noticed that the girl on the poop waved a scarf or handkerchief, as if imploring our assistance; and, at the same time, the dog near her bounded up against the bulwarks, and I can solemnly assert from the evidence of my ears that I heard the animal distinctly bark, giving out that joyous sort of bark with which a well- dispositioned dog invariably greets a friend of his master or mistress.
I could not make it out at all.
It was most mysterious.
"Look, look, Mr Fosset!" I cried excitedly. "There she is now! There she is, coming up on our lee quarter! Why, you must be all blind! I can not only see the ship distinctly, but also right down on to her deck!"
"Nonsense, boy; you'd better go below!" said the first mate brusquely, while Spokeshave sniggered and whispered something to the lamp-trimmer and man at the wheel that made them both laugh out right. "There's something wrong with you to-night, Haldane, for you seem quite off your chump, so you'd better go below and sleep it off. There's no ship near us, I tell you! What you