Tales of terror
I approached him. He straightened himself up, turned his back to the
rail, folded his arms across his breast, and puffing at his cigar as
he cast a scrutinising eye aloft at the flapping sails, he said in a
cheerful tone:
‘Quite a contrast to a little while ago, isn’t it, Mr. Gibling? But
it’s the sort of weather we must expect in these latitudes.’
I was struck by his changed manner. He seemed so cheerful and
light-hearted. He wasn’t like the same man I had seen down in the cabin
half an hour ago.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I remarked, for the sake of saying something.
‘It’s not your first voyage to sea, is it?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Have you been to Cuba before?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Ah! then you will know pretty well what kind of voyage it is.’
I told him that I knew fairly well what one might expect on such a
voyage at that time of the year, and we continued to chat pleasantly
for a little while until six bells struck (eleven o’clock). ‘All’s
well!’ came in solemn tones from the look-out man on the fo’c’stle.
‘Well, I think I shall turn in,’ said the captain, as he threw the
stump of his cigar overboard, glanced up aloft, then at the binnacle,
and calling the second officer who was on watch, and telling him to
keep the ship on the same course until the morning, he moved towards
the companion-way, and I followed. When we reached the saloon he put
out his hand. As I took it he said ‘Good-night,’ and immediately added
in lower tones, ‘Don’t forget your promise.’
I turned in and tried to sleep, but for a long time tossed about,
thinking of what had passed, and trying to account for the captain’s
strange behaviour; but the more I thought the more I got puzzled, and I
came to the conclusion there was some strange mystery about him. I saw
through my port the sun beginning to redden the eastern horizon before
sleep came to me. I did not waken until long after the usual breakfast
hour, so I breakfasted alone. The steward had kept something hot for me.
When I went on deck I noticed the Spanish lady reclining in a deck
chair, near the companion-way. She was reading a book, and perhaps
that accounted for her taking no notice of me as I bowed and said
‘Good-morning.’
The sun was shining brilliantly. The sky was cloudless save on the
horizon, where there were woolly banks. A steady little breeze just
kept the sails full, and the short, choppy waves danced and flashed in
the sunlight with a suggestiveness of joy and gladness. The captain
was not on deck, and I was informed by the second mate, who had the
morning watch, that he had not turned out yet. Wishing to propitiate
the Spanish lady passenger, I carried a camp stool to where she was
sitting, and in the most fascinating manner I was capable of commanding
I asked if I could sit beside her. She smiled sweetly, and accorded her
gracious permission. We said some commonplace things about the weather;
she descanted on the tropical beauties of Cuba, and criticised rather
severely the English climate; while as for London, she spoke of it with
scorn and much shrugging of shoulders; and to my amusement, although
I must admit the truth of some of her strictures, she described it as
a grim and grimy city of revolting ugliness, a city without poetry,
without music, without sun. A city where the people struggled and
cursed and jostled each other for bare existence. A city where the
rich disdained to sniff the same air as the poor. A city of gin
palaces and churches, of hypocrisy and smug self conceit. A city of
leprous sores and devilish wickedness, of hateful shams and heartless
indifference, where the poor debtor was regarded as a criminal, and the
rich despoiler of the widow and orphan as a saint. A city of moans and
groans. A joyless, dark city, where Mammon was the only god that was
truly worshipped.
These things, and many more of the same kind, she gave free vent to;
and as they seemed to afford her satisfaction and did me no harm, I
made no attempt to stop her flow of invective. Nor should I have noted
them down here were it not that they to some extent represent the
opinions which the majority of foreigners hold with regard to London.
When at last she paused from sheer exhaustion, I embraced the
opportunity to turn the trend of conversation by saying:
‘I am afraid, do you know, that I was a little rude to you last night,’
but I hardly expected such a blunt reply as she made.
‘Yes, you were exceedingly rude, and I hate rude men.’
‘I hope you don’t hate me,’ I cried, laughingly.
‘Oh no, not quite. You’re a Londoner, you see.’
This was very severe. I confess I was hardly prepared for it, and I was
tempted to say something cutting in reply, but checked myself, bowed,
and merely remarked:
‘Which is not my fault. Therefore pity me rather than blame me.’
‘Certainly I do that,’ she replied, with an amusing seriousness. ‘But
look here; answer me this. Why should you have been rude last night
when I said what I did about the captain?’
‘Madame,’ I said, as I laid my hand on my heart and bowed, ‘believe
me I had no intention of being rude; but the fact is, I am a somewhat
commonplace, matter-of-fact man, and I have no belief in anything that
is said to be due to supernatural causes.’
‘Supernatural or not supernatural,’ she retorted, ‘there are things
going on around us which certainly cannot be explained by any known
laws.’
‘Possibly, and yet I doubt it,’ I replied, with a sceptical smile.
‘Well, your obtuseness is your own affair,’ she said, with a shrug of
her shoulders; ‘but now, look here, Mr. Gibling, permit me to make a
little prophecy. Captain Tredegar has something awful on his mind. He
sees visions, and will ultimately go mad.’
Her words startled me. For the first time I was inclined to regard her
seriously, in one respect at least; that was the ultimate madness of
the skipper. That thought had haunted me, but I had tried to put it
away. Even to my somewhat dulled perception it had been made evident
that a man who could act as Tredegar had acted on the previous night
was a victim to some obscure form of mental disease which might
ultimately destroy him. Now the lady spoke with such an absence of
vagueness, such a cocksureness, that I asked her if she had known the
captain long, and if she was acquainted with his past history.
‘Indeed, no,’ she exclaimed. ‘I never saw the man in my life until I
joined the ship in Liverpool.’
‘Then why do you speak with such an air of self-conviction?’
‘I speak as I think. I think as I know.’
‘But how do you know?’
‘Well, you are stupid,’ she exclaimed, with a show of exasperation. ‘I
know, because I have a sense you don’t possess. You are a soot-sodden
Londoner. I was born where the sun shines. I have beliefs, you have
not. I believe that men who do evil in this world can be haunted into
madness by the disembodied spirits of those they injure. Now you may
laugh and sneer as much as you like, sir, but I tell you this: when
Captain Tredegar came down to the cabin last night his face clearly
indicated that he had been terrified by something not human, and I saw
madness written large in his eyes.’
I should be wanting in common honesty if I failed to say that this
woman’s remarks, rude as they were to some extent, put certain rambling
thoughts of my own into shape, impressed me in a way that a short
time previously I should have been ashamed to own to. They set me
pondering, and I tried to recall every act, word, look and gesture of
the captain’s, with the result that I had to admit there was something
strange about him. At that moment Captain Tredegar himself came on
deck, with his sextant in his hand, in order to take the noonday sights
for the reckoning. His breezy, jovial manner, and smiling bronzed
face, seemed to make the conversation about him ridiculous, and tended
to confound the prophet who had talked of madness.
He bowed politely to the lady, and chatted to her pleasantly. He
greeted me with a cheery ‘Good-morning,’ and expressed a hope that
neither of us had been much alarmed by the squall of the previous
evening. He said the passage was going to be a splendid one; one of
the best he had ever made; and if, as he anticipated we should do, we
picked up a good slant of wind when we had made a little more westing,
we should reach Cuba several days before the time we were expected.
The mate now came on deck also with his sextant, and he and the captain
walked to the break of the poop to take the sights. When he was out of
earshot I turned to the lady and said:
‘He doesn’t look much like a man who is given to seeing visions and is
doomed to madness, does he?’
‘You cannot see beneath the mask,’ she replied, with another
contemptuous curl of her lip, and laying great stress on the ‘you’;
and she added somewhat mysteriously, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ repeating the
word three times, with a rising inflection on each repetition. Then she
turned to her book again, as if she wished me to understand that she
had said her say and would say no more. I took the hint, and making a
show of stretching my limbs, I rose and began to pace up and down. The
subject of the conversation between me and the lady continued to occupy
my thoughts against my will and desire, and the more I thought the more
like a riddle did the captain appear to me. I was really astonished to
find myself taking so much interest in him. A passing interest in one
with whom you happen to be a fellow voyager is easily understood. But
if Captain Tredegar had been a relative of mine, my own brother, in
fact, I could hardly have felt more anxious or more desirous to solve
the mystery that seemed to surround him. His appearance that morning,
and his appearance and behaviour of the night before, were in such
violent contrast that to put it down to the merely varying moods to
which we are all liable was not satisfactory enough. What puzzled me
more than anything else was his behaviour during the storm. To suppose
that he was a coward and lost his nerve in a passing squall was absurd
on the face of it. In the very height of the storm he delivered his
orders with coolness and judgment, as I could testify, but what did he
mean by exclaiming: ‘There it is again! There, out there on the crest
of that wave’? Then again, why the appeal to God to pity him? Having
perplexed and fretted myself until I felt quite confused, I found
myself unable to alter the original opinion I had formed, which was
that Captain Tredegar was liable to attacks of mental aberration, and
that being so he was not a fitting person to have charge of a valuable
vessel and her living freight.
Viewing the matter from this point, I came to the conclusion, rightly
or wrongly, that it was my bounden duty as an honest man to make
representations to his owners as to the skipper’s state of mind; for
surely no one would say that a man liable to attacks of temporary mania
was the proper person to be in charge of a ship. As I came to this
decision I heard the captain call out from the break of the poop:
‘Make eight bells.’
The boatswain struck the hour on the bell, and ‘eight bells’ was roared
out by the men about the decks, while from the galley came the smell of
duff and pea soup as the cook put out the dinner for those now going
off duty. I was recalled to a sense of my surroundings by these little
matters, and as the skipper passed me as he was about to descend to
work out his sights and prick the chart, he said cheerily:
‘Well, Mr. Gibling. It’s time to splice the main brace, isn’t it?’
I may explain for the benefit of those who have not made a voyage to
sea that it is customary in most passenger vessels for the passengers
to partake of a glass of liquor of some kind at noon, eight bells.
This, in nautical phraseology, is termed ‘splicing the main brace.’