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Wreck of the Corsaire

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<h2>II.</h2> There were thirty-two cabin passengers in all, and we had a poopful, as you will suppose. There were more than a dozen girls, dark and fair, most of them pretty enough. There were a few young married ladies too and a little mob of dignified mammas. The men were of the old-fashioned mixture, a few military officers, a sprinkling of Civil Service young gentlemen, fierce old men with white whiskers and gleaming eyes, with peppercorns for livers and with a capacity of putting on the tender aspects of Bengal tigers when anything went wrong—merchants, judges, planters—I can scarce remember now what they were. There were lanterns enough to make a bright light and some of them being of{16} colored glass threw bars of ruby and of emerald against the yellow radiance of the clear flame and the ivory streaks of moonlight. Far aft was the wheel with the brass upon it reflecting the lustre till it glowed out against the blackness over the stern like a circle of dull fire upon the liquid obscurity. Grasping the spokes of it was the figure of a seaman, smartly apparelled in flowing duck and a grass hat on “nine hairs”; his shape, dim in the distance, floated up and down against a bright star or two; but there was little need for him to keep his eye on the course. The calm was dead as dead could be. Half-an-hour since the ship’s head was northwest and now it was west, and the swell was under the bow with a strange melancholy sob of water breaking into the pauses betwixt the music and sounding like the sigh of a weeping giant somewhere in the blackness over the side.{17} And black the water was spite of the air being brimful of the soft silver of the moonlight. On either hand the planet’s wake the ocean ran in ebony to the indigo of the night sky; but you only needed to steal to the break of the poop clear of the awning to mark how gloriously the luminary was limning the ship as if she had no magic for the deep that night. Every sail was a square of pearl, every shroud and backstay, every brace and halliard a rope of silver wire; the yards of ivory, with hundreds of stars of moonlight splendor sparkling and flashing in the dew along the rails. The Jacks had rigged up lanterns forward and were cutting capers on the forecastle and in the waist to some queer music that was coming out of the darkness upon the booms. It was strange enough to see their whiskered faces revolving in the weak, illusive light, to witness apparitions of knobs and warts and wrinkles storm-darkened{18} to the hue of the shell of a walnut showing out for an instant to the glare of a lantern. There was great laughter that way and a jovial growling of voices. I believe the sailors had got, with the captain’s leave, some of the women of the steerage passengers to dance with, and their happiness was very great; for give Jack a fiddle, and a girl to twirl to the sawing of it, and a drink of rum and water to fill up the short measures for his breathing-times, and he will ask for no other paradise ashore or afloat. Much was made of old Captain Bow. He looked as if he had taken all day to dress himself, so skewered was he in a garb of the old school; tail-coat, a frill, a collar half-way the height of the back of his head, buff waistcoat, tight pantaloons, shoes like pumps, and a heavy ground-tackle of seals dangling from the rim of his vest. “Captain shows nobly to-night, sir,” said the chief mate to me.{19} “Ay!” said I, “little enough of the salt in him you’d think.” “He dances well enough for an old shellback,” said the mate. “A man needs a ship for a dancing-master to teach him how to spread his toes as the Captain does.” “Aren’t you dancing?” I asked. “No, it’s my watch on deck. I’ve got the ship to look after. But it’s little watching she wants. Oh, blow, my sweet breeze, blow!” he whispered, with a pensive cock of his eye at the sea through a space between the flags. “It isn’t to be the only birthday aboard us, I allow, Mr. Catesby. If the cockroaches below aren’t celebrating some festival of their own, then are we manned with marines, sir. Phew! the Hooghley of a dead night with bodies foul of the cable and the gangway ladder is a joke to this. What’s become of the wind? What’s become of the wind?{20}” and he stole away to the wheel softly whistling between his teeth. It was too sultry to eat; the very drink you got was so warm that you swallowed it only for thirst, and put down the glass with a sort of loathing. When I took a peep through the after skylight and saw the tables laid out for supper for the special birthday feast that was to be eaten, my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and I felt as if I should never be able to eat another blessed morsel of food this side the grave. Every dish looked exhausted with perspiration; the hams were melting, the fowls shone like varnish, much that had come solid to the table was now fluid. However I was one of the committee and it would not do for me to be absent, so when the bell rang to announce supper and the music stopped, I stepped up to the wife of a colonel and, giving her my arm, fell in with the procession and entered the cabin.{21} It is a picture I need but close my eyes to vividly witness anew. There were two tables, one athwartships well aft, and the other running pretty nearly down the whole length of the cabin. The interior was lighted with elegant silver lamps, and along the length of the ceiling there was a plentiful embellishment of ferns, goldfish in globes, and so forth. On either hand went a range of berths, the bulkheads richly inlaid, the panels hand-painted, and there was many another little touch full of grace and taste. Far aft, at the centre of the athwartship table—his quaint, old-fashioned figure showing like a cameo upon the dull ground of the bulkhead behind him—sat the captain, talking to right and left, with a dry, kind smile lying wrinkled upon his face like the meshes of a South African spider’s web. On either side of him went a row of passengers, and on down to the foot of the table that was over against the cuddy{22} front. The ladies’ dresses were handsome; we were a rich assemblage of folks for the most part, and had thoroughly overhauled our wardrobes that we might do fitting honor to this very interesting occasion. Jewels sparkled in white ears, and upon white wrists and fingers. We were not lacking in turbans and feathers, in thick gold chains, immense brooches bearing the heads of the living or of the departed. There was much popping of champagne corks, much rushing about of stewards, much laughter, and a busy undertone of talk. The memory of the picture dwells in me with an odd pertinacity. I had shared in more than one festive scene on board ship in my time, but in none do I recall the significance which the framework of vast ocean solitude outside, of the deep mystery of the wide moonlit shadow, and the oppressive peace of the tropical night, communicated to this one. It might have been the number of the folks{23} assembled; their gay, and in many instances, even splendid attire, the essentially shore-going qualities of the merry-making, clearly defining themselves in the heart of the deep—like the sight of a house in a flood. In fact the scene completely dominated all ship-board habits, and the thoughts which grew out of them. It made every heave of the fabric upon the weak, black, invisible swell a sort of wonder, as though some novel element were introduced; the familiar creak of a bulkhead, the faint jar of the rudder upon its post made one start as one would to such things ashore. “You are refusing everything the stewards offer you, Mr. Catesby,” said the colonel’s lady by my side. “You are in love.” “I am in a fever, madam,” I replied: “the tropics usually affect me as a profound passion. In fact I feel as if I could drown myself.{24}” “Why make a voyage to India, then, Mr. Catesby? Is there not the North-West Passage left to explore, with the great Arctic Circle to keep ye cool?” “Madam,” said I, “I perceive your husband in the act of rising to make a speech.” A short, fiery-faced Irishman, with whiskers like silver wires projecting cat-like from his cheeks, stood up to propose the captain’s health. Glasses were filled, and the little colonel blazed away. When he had made an end (old Bow steadfastly watching him all the while with a smile of mingled incredulity and delight), the skipper’s health was drunk with cheers and to the song of “He’s a jolly good fellow,” the air of which was caught up by the ship’s company forward, and re-echoed to the cuddy with hurricane lungs from the forecastle. Then old Bow rose straight and unbending in his tightly-buttoned coat on to his thin shanks; but at that moment{25} there was a movement of a little group of the stewards at my end of the table; the colonel’s lady by my side was whispering with animation to what was in those days called a “griffin,” a handsome young fellow seated on her left; and being half dead with heat, and in no temper to listen to old Bow, whose preliminary coughs and slow gaze around the table threatened a very heavy bestowal of tediousness, I slipped off my chair, sneaked through the jumble of stewards, and in a moment was ascending the poop ladder, breathing with delight the night atmosphere of the sea, that tasted cold as a draught of mountain water after the hot, food-flavored air of the cuddy.{27}{26} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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