The Ghost Ship/Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Eleven. In the Gulf Stream.

“It’s a dead calm, sir!” I heard Mr Fosset sing out next morning outside the door of the skipper’s state room, which opened out of the saloon, close to my berth, when he went to call him at four bells, in obedience to orders given overnight. “The gale has completely blown itself out, and there’s only a little cat’s-paw of a breeze from the south’ard.”

“Humph!” yawned the skipper from within. “That’s a good job, Fosset. I think we’ve had enough wind to last us for a blue moon!”

“So say I, sir,” agreed the other with much heartiness. “I wouldn’t like to go through the same experiences again, by Jingo!”

“Nor I,” came from the other, evidently about to turn out from his bunk. “I’ll be on deck in five minutes or so, Fosset.”

The first mate, however, would not take this for a dismissal, having apparently further important information to give and which he at once proceeded to disclose.

“Do you know, sir, I think we’re in the Gulf Stream,” he said in an impressive tone. “There’s a lot of the weed knocking about round the ship.”

“Gulf-weed?” exclaimed the skipper’s voice again from the cabin, sounding a bit muffled as if he were in the act of pulling his shirt over his head. “Are you certain?”

“Aye,” affirmed the other. “There’s not the slightest doubt about it. It’s as plain as a pike staff, sir.”

“The deuce it is!” said the skipper in a louder key, showing that my surmise had been correct as to the progress of his toilet, and that his head was now unloosed from its bag-like envelope. “By George, I can’t make it out at all!”

“There’s no getting over the fact, sir,” persisted the first mate. “We’re quite surrounded by the weed. I saw it well the first streak of light at two bells, on suddenly looking over the side, sir. There’s Mr O’Neil up on the bridge now, and he has noticed it too!”

The skipper, to judge from the voice that came from his cabin and the way he was banging his boots and other things about, was as much mystified by Mr Fosset’s unexpected announcement as he had been the previous evening by the sight he and I and the boatswain had seen.

He was also angry, I know, so I thought it good for me to turn out likewise from my bunk as speedily as possible, it not being advisable under the circumstances to be “caught napping.”

“By George, I can’t understand it!” repeated Captain Applegarth crossly. “If we’re in the Gulf Stream, all I can say is, we must have drifted a wonderful distance in the last two or three days. Why, man, the current is seldom perceptible above the fortieth parallel!”

“I know that, sir,” replied the first mate; “but if you recollect, sir, from the lunar observation Mr O’Neil took on the night of the breakdown, we were then as far south as 41° 30 minutes, and we’ve been drifting south-east by east ever since.”

“Well, Fosset, I’m hanged if I know where we are, after the bucketting-about we’ve had since last Friday!” said the skipper, who now came into the saloon, where I, already dressed, was hurriedly having a cup of cocoa and bite of biscuit Weston had just brought me in from the pantry. “I feel half inclined to believe now in the old superstition about it being an unlucky day, though I always used to laugh at the notion!”

“There are plenty aboard who believe queerer things than that!” said Mr Fosset drily, with a meaning glance in my direction, eyeing my cocoa as if he rather fancied a cup himself. “I say, Haldane, that cocoa smells good!”

“It’s not half bad, sir,” I replied grinning. “Perhaps you would like some too, sir. Weston’s got a lot more inside here, hot, just fetched from the galley!”

“I don’t mind if I do have a cup,” said he. “Will you join me, cap’en?”

“No, thanks; I’m too worried. I’ll wait till breakfast,” said the skipper, turning to go up on deck by the companion-way and hitching his cap off the hook by his cabin door. “You won’t be long, I hope, eh?”

“I’ll follow you up in a jiffey, sir, as soon as I have swallowed a toothful of this warm stuff to keep out the cold. Hi, steward?”

“Aye, aye, sir?” answered Weston, promptly putting his head out of his pantry, where he had been listening. “Cup of cocoa, sir?—yezzir.”

“I say, Fosset,” said the captain, who had lingered near awhile, as if in deep thought, as he stood with one foot on the lower step of the companion as if he were trying to recollect something, “I say, we must make some points to-day on the chart, you know!”

“Yes, sir. I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty about that. Do you?”

“No; the sun ought to be pretty clear at noon with a morning like this—clear enough, at all events, for us to find out the latitude and longitude.”

“Just what I said to Spokeshave, sir, before I came down to call you awhile ago.”

“Quite so.”

“Aye, ‘quite so,’ sir.”

Whereupon both sniggered at the skipper’s apt mimicry of Master Conky’s pet phrase, which Captain Applegarth pronounced in the little beggar’s exact tone of voice, so like indeed being the imitation that I nearly choked myself while swallowing the balance of my cocoa, as I hastily drained my cup and rose to follow the skipper up the companion-ladder to the deck.

As Mr Fosset had said, there was a dead calm on the bosom of the deep, for the slight swell that remained after the gale on the previous evening, even up to the time of my going down below, had quite disappeared, the surface of the water being as smooth as glass as far as the horizon line and all aflash now with the rosy hue of sunrise to the eastward. The sky still preserved, however, the pale neutral tints of night in the west, and up to the zenith, where it merged into a faint and beautiful seagreen that lost itself imperceptibly in the warm colouring of the orient, which each moment became more and more intense in hue, heralding the approach of morn.

At last, up jumped the glorious orb of day, proudly, from his ocean bed, came with one bound as it were, a veritable globe of liquid fire, flooding the vast distant heaven and sea with a wealth of light and radiance that seemed to give life to everything around.

“There, Haldane,” said Captain Applegarth, pointing over the taffrail at a lot of straggling masses of quasi-looking stringy stuff that came floating on top of the water close by the ship, resembling vegetable refuse discarded from Neptune’s kitchen garden. “That’s the gulf-weed Mr Fosset was just speaking about to me.”

“Indeed, sir, I can’t say much for its appearance. It looks more like a parcel of cauliflowers run to seed than anything else, sir!”

“Yes, that’s not a bad simile of yours, my lad,” he replied, moving nearer to the side and sending his keen sailorly glance alow and aloft, examining our old barquey to see how she fared after the storm. “If I can remember rightly, I think one of our best naturalists has given a similar description of it. Yes, that’s the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or fucus natans, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo. A rum sort of tackle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir,” said I, for I had never had the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the uncanny looking gulf-weed. “Does it grow in the sea, sir? It looks so fresh and green.”

“Well, that depends how you take it, my lad,” returned the skipper rather absently, his attention being fixed on something forward, about which he evidently could not quite make up his mind, as there was a slight puzzled expression on his face. “You see, it is all through those long-winded chaps who won’t be content with what the Creator gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God’s own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle, Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of years—I’d be sorry to say how many—without their precious help! Now these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to us.”

“How strange, sir,” said I. “Just like an aquarium plant. It is strange!”

“It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!”

“That is not likely, then,” I observed in reply to this—“I mean, sir, the fact of its growing up from the bottom of the sea.”

“Certainly not, my boy. Another wise man, of the same kidney as the long-winded chap of the theory I’ve just explained, says that the gulf-weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and promontories of the Florida coast and that it is torn thence by the action of the great Atlantic current that bears it many miles from its home; though, strangely enough, I have never seen any gulf-weed growing on rocks in the Gulf of Florida or in any of the adjacent seas, nor has any one else to my knowledge!”

“Then you do not believe it grows to anything at all, do you, sir?”

“No, I don’t. My opinion is that it is a surface plant of old Neptune’s rearing and that the warm water of the Gulf Stream breeds it and nourishes it, for at certain times it seems partly withered, and this could not be due to accident. The weed, I believe, is a sailor, like you and I, my lad, and lives and has its being on the sea, no matter what your longshore naturalists, who don’t know much about it from personal observation, may say to the contrary. Hullo! though, my boy, look forrad there! Where has our spar anchor gone? I thought I noticed something and could not make out at first what it was. Look, youngster, and see whether you can see it!”

I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our hawser as then.

Where could our wonderful floating anchor have gone?

The next moment, however, I saw what had happened, the mystery being easily explained by the calm.

“They’ve floated alongside, sir,” I said. “I can see them under the counter on the port side, sir.”

“Yes, of course, there they are, exemplifying the attraction of gravitation or some other long-winded theory of your scientific gentlemen,” replied the skipper, who seemed to have got science on the brain this morning, being violently antagonistic to it, somehow or other. “Ah, Fosset, see, our anchor’s come home without weighing. I think you’d better have the spars hauled on board and rig up the sticks again, now that they’ve served our time in another way—aye, and served it well, too.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the first mate, who had come up after us on the poop, looking, I couldn’t help noticing, all the better for the good and early breakfast he had just finished. “I thought of getting them in just now, but waited to call you first.”

“Well, you needn’t wait any longer, Fosset,” rejoined the skipper. “Pass the word for the bo’sun forrad.”

“Yes, yes, sir. Quartermaster, call Masters!”

“Bo’sun, pipe all hands to hoist spars aboard!” These orders were roared out by Mr Fosset in rapid succession, and then in equally rapid sequences came the boatswain’s whistle and hail to the men down the hatchway just along the deck.

All had a rare time of it, and an amount of “yoho-hoes-hoing” went round that it would have done anybody’s heart good to hear; the first mate was bellowing out his orders and old Masters seeing to their proper execution by the busy hands and active feet, the skipper meanwhile standing on the poop, superintending matters with his keen eye, and woe to the lubber who bungled at a hitch or left a rope’s end loose or brace slack!