"All right, your honour," said the old fellow, calming down at once into his usual serenity again, and giving his quid another shift as he braced himself well up against the old barge, on the half-deck of which I was seated with my legs dangling down--"All right, your honour! If it"s a yarn you"re after, why I had best weigh anchor at once and make an offing, or else we shan"t be able to see a handspike afore us!"
"Heave ahead, Jim!" said I impatiently; "you are as long as a three- decker in getting under way!"
With this encouragement, he cleared his throat with his customary hoa.r.s.e, choking sort of cough, like an old raven, and commenced his narrative without any further demur.
"It"s more"n twenty years now since I left the service--ay, thirty years would be more like it; and almost my very last cruise was on the West African station. I had four years of it, and I recollect it well; for, before I left the blessed, murdering coast, with its poisonous lagoons covered with thick green slime, and sickly smells, and burning sands, I seed a sight there that I shall never forget as long as I live, and which would make me recklect Afrikey well enough if nothing else would!"
"That"s right, Jim, fire away!" said I, settling myself comfortably on my seat to enjoy the yarn. "What was it that you saw?"
"Steady! Let her go easy, your honour; I"m a-coming to that soon enough. It was in the old _Amphitrite_ I was at the time--she"s broken- up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing!--and we was a-lying in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the day before off Whydah. She was a Brazilian schooner with nearly five hundred wretched creatures on board, so closely packed that you could not find s.p.a.ce enough to put your foot fairly on her deck in any place.
The slaves had only been a night on board her; but the stench was so awful, from so many unfortunate n.i.g.g.e.rs being squeezed so tightly together like herrings in a barrel, and under a hot sun too, that we were longing to send the schooner away to Sierra Leone, and get rid of the horrid smell, which was worse than the swamps ash.o.r.e! Well, I was in the morning watch after we had towed in the slaver to the Bights, having carried away her foremast with a round shot in making her bring to, and was just going forward to turn in as the next watch came on deck, when who should hail me but my mate, Gil Saul, coming in from the bowsprit, where he had been on the look-out--it was him as was my pardner here when I first started as a sh.o.r.e hand in letting out boats, but he lost the number of his mess long ago like our old ship the _Amphitrite_.
"As he came up to me his face was as white as your shirt, and he was trembling all over as if he was going to have a fit of the fever and ague.
""Lor", Gil Saul," sez I, "what"s come over you, mate? are you going on the sick list, or what?"
""Hush, Jim," sez he, quite terror-stricken. "Don"t speak like that; I"ve seen a ghost, and I knows I shall be a dead man afore the day"s out!"
"With that I burst into a larf.
""Bless your eyes, Gil," sez I, "tell that to the marines, my bo"! you can"t get over me on that tack. You won"t find any respectable ghosts leaving dear old England for the sake of this dirty, sweltering west coast, which no Christian would come to from choice, let alone a ghost!"
""But, Jim," he sez, leaning his hand on my arm to detain me as I was going down below, "this wasn"t a h"English ghost as I sees just now. It was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see. A long, big, black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette; with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights.
It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning, and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship. I"ve had a warning, old shipmate, and I"ll be a dead man before to-morrow morning, I know!"
"The poor chap shook with fright as he spoke, though he was as brave a man as we had aboard; so I knew that he had been drinking and was in a state of delirium tremendibus, or else he was sickening for the African fever, which those who once have never forget. I therefore tried to pacify him and explain away his fancy.
""That"s a good un, Gil Saul," I sez. "Don"t you let none of the other hands hear what you"ve told me, that you"ve seen the great sea sarpint, or you"ll never get the end of it."
"Gil got angry at this, forgetting his fright in his pa.s.sion at my doubting his word like.
""But it was the sea sarpint, I tells you, or its own brother if it wasn"t. Didn"t I see it with my own eyes, and I was as wide awake as you are, and not caulking?"
""The sea sarpint!" I repeated scornfully, laughing again in a way that made Gil wild. "Who ever heard tell of such a thing, except in a Yankee yarn?"
""And why shouldn"t there be a big snake in the sea the same as there are big snakes on land like the Bow constreetar, as is read of in books of history, Jim Newman? Some folks are so c.o.c.ksure, that they won"t believe nothing but what they sees for themselves. I wonder who at home, now, would credit that there are some monkeys here in Afrikey that are bigger than a man and walk upright; and you yourself, Jim, have told me that when you were in Australy you seed rabbits that were more than ten foot high when they stood on their hind-legs, and that could jump a hundred yards at one leap."
""So I have, Gil Saul," sez I, a bit nettled at what he said, and the way he said it, "and what I says I stick to. I have seen at Port Philip kangaroos, which are just like big rabbits with upright ears, as big as I"ve said; and I"ve seen "em, too, jump more than twice the distance any horse could."
""And why then," sez he, argumentifying on to me like a shot, "and why then shouldn"t there be such a thing as the sea sarpint?"
"This flummuxed me a bit, for I couldn"t find an answer handy, so I axed him another question to get out of my quandary.
""But why, Gil, did you say you had seed a ghost, when it was a sarpint?"
"This time _he_ was bothered for a moment.
""Because, Jim," sez he, after a while, "it appeared so awful to me when I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and terrible beak. It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn"t the sea sarpint; and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know. I"m a doomed man."
"I couldn"t shake him from that belief, though I thought the whole thing was fancy on his part, and I turned into my hammock soon after we got below, without a thought more about the matter--it didn"t stop my caulk, I know. But, ah! that was only in the early morning. Before the day was done, as Gil had said, that conversation was recalled to me in a terrible way--ah, a terrible way!" the old sailor repeated impressively, taking off his tarpaulin hat, and wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, as if the recollection of the past awed him even now. He looked so serious that I could not laugh, inclined as I was to ridicule any such story as that of the fabled sea serpent, which one looks for periodically as a transatlantic myth to crop up in dull seasons in the columns of American newspapers.
"And did you see it too?" I asked; "and Gil Saul"s prophecy turns out true?"
"You shall hear," he answered gravely; "I"m not spinning a yarn, as you call it, Master Charles; I"m telling you the truth."
"Go on, Jim," said I, to rea.s.sure him. "I"m listening, all attention."
"At eight bells that day, another man-of-war come in, bringing an empty slaver she had taken before she had shipped her cargo. In this vessel we were able to separate some of the poor wretches packed on board our Brazilian schooner, and so send them comfortably on to Sierra Leone, which was what we were waiting to do, as I"ve told you already; and now being free to go cruising again, we hove up anchor and made our way down the coast to watch for another slaver which we had heard news of by the man-o"-war that came in to relieve us.
"We had a spanking breeze all day, for a wonder, as it generally fails at noon; but towards the evening, when we had made some eighty miles or so from the Bights, it fell suddenly dead calm, as if the wind had been shut off slap without warning. It was bright before, but the moment the calm came a thick white mist rose around the vessel, just like that which came just now from seaward, and has hidden the island and Spithead from view; you see how it"s reminded me now of the west coast and the Niger river, Master Charles, don"t you?"
"Ay," said I, "Jim, I see what you were driving at."
"Those thick mists," he continued, "always rise on the sh.o.r.es of Afrikey in the early mornings--just as there was a thick one when Gil had seen his ghost, as he said--and they comes up again when the sun sets; but you never sees "em when the sun"s a-shining bright as it was that arternoon. It was the rummiest weather I ever see. By and by, the mist lifted a bit, and then there were clumps of fog dancing about on the surface of the sea, which was oily and calm, just like patches of trees on a lawn. Sometimes these fog curtains would come down and settle round the ship, so that you couldn"t see to the t"other side of the deck for a minute, and they brought a fearful bad smell with them, the very smell of the lagoons ash.o.r.e with a dash of the n.i.g.g.e.rs aboard the slave schooner, only a thousand times worse, and we miles and miles away from the land. It was most unaccountable, and most uncomfortable. I couldn"t make it out at all.
"Jest as I was a-puzzling my brains as to the reason of these fog banks and the stench they brought with them, Gil Saul came on deck too, and sheered up alongside of me as I was looking out over the side. His face was a worse sight than the morning; for, instead of his looking white, the colour of his skin was grey and ashy, like the face of a corpse. It alarmed me so that I cried out at once--
""Go down below, Gil! Go down and report yourself to the doctor!"
""No," sez he, "it ain"t the doctor an will cure me, Jim; I feel it coming over me again as I felt this morning. I shall see that sarpint or ghost again, I feel sure."
"What with his face and his words, and the bad smell from the fog, I confess I began to feel queer myself--not frightened exactly--but I"d have much rather have been on Southsea common in the broad daylight than where I was at that moment, I can tell you."
"Did you see anything, Jim?" I asked the old sailor at this juncture.
"I seed nothing, Master Charles, _as yet_ but I felt something, I can"t tell what or how to explain; it was a sort of all-overish feeling, as if something was a-walking over my grave, as folks say, summat uncanny, I do a.s.sure you.
"The captain and the first lieutenant was on the quarter-deck, the latter with his telescope to his eye a-gazing at something forward apparently, that he was trying to discern amongst the clumps of fog. I was nigh them, and being to leeward could hear what they said.
"The first lieutenant, I hears him, turns to the captain over his shoulder speaking like, and sez he--
""Captain Manter, I can"t make it out exactly, but it"s most curious;"
and then turning to me, he sez, "Newman, go down to my steward and ax him to give you my night-gla.s.s."
"I went down and fetched the gla.s.s and handed it to him, he giving me t"other one to hold; and he claps the night-gla.s.s to his eye.
""By Jove, Captain Manter," sez he presently, "I was right, it is the greatest marine monster I ever saw!"
""Pooh!" says the captain, taking the gla.s.s from him and looking himself. "It"s only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this appearance of the sea!" But presently I heard him mutter something under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, "It is best to be prepared;" and a moment after that he gave an order, and the boatswain piped up and we beat to quarters. It was very strange that, wasn"t it? And so every man on board thought.
"A very faint breeze was springing up again, and I was on the weather side of the ship, which was towards the land from which the wind came, when suddenly Gil Saul, who was in the same battery and captain of my crew, grips my arm tight. "It"s coming! it"s coming!" he said right in my ear, and then the same horrible foul smell wafted right over the ship again, and a noise was heard just as if a herd of wild horses were sucking up water together.
"At this moment the fog lifted for a bit, and we could see clear for about a couple of miles to windward, where the captain and first lieutenant and all the hands had their eyes fixed as if expecting something.
"By George! you could have knocked me down with a feather, I tell you!
I never saw such a sight in my life, and may I never see such another again! There, with his head well out of the water, shaped like a big bird, and higher in the air than the main truck of the ship, was a gigantic reptile like a sarpint, only bigger than you ever dreamt of.
He was wriggling through the water at a fearful rate, and going nearly the same course as ourselves, with a wake behind him bigger than a line- of-battle ship with paddle-wheels, and his length--judging by what I saw of him--was about half a mile at least, not mentioning what part of his body was below the water; while he must have been broader across than the largest sperm whale, for he showed good five feet of freeboard.