Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/95

Rh "It's quite true, sir, I was kicking my heels and stammering and stuttering as I spoke. 'No, no, it is not a fit, it is the Buchold. Did you not see her?'

"'See what?'

"'The Buchold; there she was playing about in the water and in the fire like a salamander; she was calling me and enticing me and dragging me overboard she was, the cursed siren! '

"'What's that you are talking about sirens, eh?'

"'Oh, nothing, nothing . . .'

"Look you, sir," Père Olifus interrupted himself to say, " if you are going long voyages, you must never talk to the hands about sirens or nereids or mermaids or mermen or any such things. On shore it is all right; on shore they make a joke of it, sailor-men do, but at sea they don't like it, it frightens them.

"Anyway, I had precious nearly gone overboard, and, but for the boatswain's mate, I should certainly have been in Davy Jones's locker. I went and sat down by the mizzen-mast; I passed my arm round a stay and waited for morning. When daylight came, I thought it was all a dream; only as I was in a high fever I saw there must have been some reality in it after all. It was plain enough; I had given the Buchold one over the head, and such a good one it had killed her dead, and it was her soul had come to claim my prayers.

"Unfortunately the boats of the East India Company do not carry Chaplains; if there had been a Chaplain on board, I should have got him to sing a mass, and that would have settled it. As it was I thought of another dodge sailors are familiar with. I took a nutmeg, wrote the Buchold's name on it, wrapped it up in a bit of rag, and clapped the whole thing in a tin box, scratched two crosses on the lid with a star between them, and when darkness came on, threw the talisman into the sea, saying a De profundis; then I went below and turned into my hammock.

"I was no sooner there than I heard a shout of 'Man overboard!'

"You know, when you hear that cry, it is meant for everybody; on board ship, if it is my mate's turn to-day, it may very likely be mine to-morrow. I leapt out of my hammock, and ran up on deck.

"There was a moment's confusion, everybody speaking at once, and asking a hundred questions. However, in every well-found ship there is always a man with a knife told off to cut loose the lifebuoy and pitch it into the sea; the fellow had done his duty, and the buoy was now tossing in the ship's wake.

"Meantime the Captain was shouting: 'Put your helm down; let go your topsails; slack away your halliards and topgallantsail sheets.'

"That's how it's done, you know, when a man falls overboard. The ship is hove to, and to do this, if you didn't slack off sheets and halliards, while she was falling away, you would have some of your stu'n-sail booms carried away for certain, and your studding-sails split—especially if she was running free.

"At the same time they were hoisting out a boat by the tackles. They took a rope strong enough to bear the strain, passed it down and through a block attached to the falls, and so got her launched.

"Meanwhile all hands were crowded astern. It was a regular life-buoy that had been dropped, carrying a port fire, which burned merrily, so that we could see someone swimming away, swimming away for the buoy!

"When I say we could see, I'm wrong. I w^as the only one that could. I kept saying, ' Do you see, do you see? ' but the others only answered, 'No, we don't see anything.'

"Then presently they began to look about them and mutter, ' It's all mighty funny, we seem to be all here! Who was it saw a man tumble overboard?' but everybody said 'I didn't, I didn't.'

"'Well then, who shouted man overboard! 'but everybody said the same, 'I didn't, I didn't.'

"Meantime the swimmer had reached the buoy, I could distinctly see someone clinging to it, clinging on top of it.

"'Good,' said I, 'he has got hold of it.'

"'Got hold of what?'

"'Why, the buoy.'

"'Who has got hold of it?'

"'The man overboard, to be sure.'

"'You can see someone on the buoy?'

"'Good Lord, of course I can!'

"'Oh ho! it is Olifus who sees someone on the buoy,' muttered the boatswain's mate. 'I always thought that I had good eyes until now, but I suppose I was wrong.'