For a little while, the Old Man stared. Then I heard him speak.
"I don"t see anything," he said.
At that, the Second Mate bent more forward and peered down. So did I; but the thing, whatever it was, had gone completely.
"It"s gone, Sir," said the Second. "It was there right enough when I came for you."
About a minute later, having finished shipping the gangway, I was going forrard, when the Second"s voice called me back
"Tell the Captain what it was you saw just now," he said, in a low voice.
"I can"t say exactly, Sir," I replied. "But it seemed to me like the shadow of a ship, rising up through the water."
"There, Sir," remarked the Second Mate to the Old Man. "Just what I told you."
The Skipper stared at me.
"You"re quite sure?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir," I answered. "Tammy saw it, too."
I waited a minute. Then they turned to go aft. The Second was saying something.
"Can I go, Sir?" I asked.
"Yes, that will do, Jessop," he said, over his shoulder. But the Old Man came back to the break, and spoke to me.
"Remember, not a word of this forrard!" he said.
"No Sir," I replied, and he went back to the Second Mate; while I walked forrard to the fo"cas"le to get something to eat.
"Your whack"s in the kettle, Jessop," said Tom, as I stepped in over the washboard. "An" I got your lime-juice in a pannikin."
"Thanks," I said, and sat down.
As I stowed away my grub, I took no notice of the chatter of the others.
I was too stuffed with my own thoughts. That shadow of a vessel rising, you know, out of the profound deeps, had impressed me tremendously. It had not been imagination. Three of us had seen it--really four; for Plummer distinctly saw it; though he failed to recognise it as anything extraordinary.
As you can understand, I thought a lot about this shadow of a vessel.
But, I am sure, for a time, my ideas must just have gone in an everlasting, blind circle. And then I got another thought; for I got thinking of the figures I had seen aloft in the early morning; and I began to imagine fresh things. You see, that first thing that had come up over the side, had come _out of the sea_. And it had gone back. And now there was this shadow vessel-thing--ghost-ship I called it. It was a d.a.m.ned good name, too. And the dark, noiseless men ... I thought a lot on these lines. Unconsciously, I put a question to myself, aloud:
"Were they the crew?"
"Eh?" said Jaskett, who was on the next chest.
I took hold of myself, as it were, and glanced at him, in an apparently careless manner.
"Did I speak?" I asked.
"Yes, mate," he replied, eyeing me, curiously. "Yer said sumthin" about a crew."
"I must have been dreaming," I said; and rose up to put away my plate.
XIV
_The Ghost Ships_
At four o"clock, when again we went on deck, the Second Mate told me to go on with a paunch mat I was making; while Tammy, he sent to get out his sinnet. I had the mat slug on the fore side of the mainmast, between it and the after end of the house; and, in a few minutes, Tammy brought his sinnet and yarns to the mast, and made fast to one of the pins.
"What do you think it was, Jessop?" he asked, abruptly, after a short silence.
I looked at him.
"What do you think?" I replied.
"I don"t know what to think," he said. "But I"ve a feeling that it"s something to do with all the rest," and he indicated aloft, with his head.
"I"ve been thinking, too," I remarked.
"That it is?" he inquired.
"Yes," I answered, and told him how the idea had come to me at my dinner, that the strange men-shadows which came aboard, might come from that indistinct vessel we had seen down in the sea.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, as he got my meaning. And then for a little, he stood and thought.
"That"s where they live, you mean?" he said, at last, and paused again.
"Well," I replied. "It can"t be the sort of existence _we_ should call life."
He nodded, doubtfully.
"No," he said, and was silent again.
Presently, he put out an idea that had come to him.
"You _think_, then, that that--vessel has been with us for some time, if we"d only known?" he asked.
"All along," I replied. "I mean ever since these things started."
"Supposing there are others," he said, suddenly.
I looked at him.