The Ghost Ship/Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty. A Presentment of the Past.

After Elsie and I got “spliced,” to use the old familiar language of my boyhood, the expressive argot of the sea, for which I shall always retain a passionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fashionable world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes or desires in any respect akin to ours.

First we went up the Seine to Rouen, where I had passed a couple of years of my school life, studying French and teaching the young scions of the Gallic race with whom I was associated for the time the exigencies of football, as we play the game in Lancashire, varied by an occasional illustrative exhibition explanatory of the merits of la boxe Anglaise.

Time passed swiftly with so sweet and sympathetic a companion; our tastes were similar, both taking the greatest delight in ancient buildings and lovely scenery; the weather, too, was charming, and altogether we were as happy as two mortals can be on this earth.

Elsie and I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through la belle Normandie, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven into the life of our country, spots where artists of all nations love to linger.

We stayed anon at slow, sedate Caen, as still as the stone for which it is celebrated, and that furnished the building material of Winchester Cathedral; Bayeux, boastful of its antique tapestry; and Dol and Saint Servan, and away beyond, Sainte Michel, so like and yet unlike the like-named Saint Michael’s Mount of Cornwall, in our own sea-girt isle that it might have been chipped out of the same block by its grand handycraftsman to serve as a replica; until, entering brighter Bretaigne, in the sunny south of France, where the landmarks of the past seem to stand out in bolder relief, we visited Nantes and other places of interest, and jogging on thence through Angouleme and Poictiers, halting a day at Poictiers to fight our Plantagenet battles o’er again, we finally ended our pilgrimage at Bordeaux.

At this wonderfully picturesque port, whose semi-ancient, quaintly modern aspect strangely attracted us both, we anchored awhile, remaining many weeks in excess of the customary limit of the traditional honeymoon, ours being an indefinite one and only to be completed we trust, when Elsie and I cease to breathe.

Late in the autumn, when the leaves had begun to turn russet and brown, and the air of a morning assumed a crisper and more bracing tone, telling us plainly as these signs tell that summer had fled for good and aye, and winter was coming by-and-by, we bade adieu to dear old Bordeaux, and taking a steamer there bound for the Thames, having had enough of railways and land travel, we started to voyage home by sea, my native element.

On the evening of the second day that had elapsed since losing sight of Pointe de Graves at the mouth of the Garonne, towards sunset, we had weathered Ushant and were shaping a course up Channel, north east, so as to clear the dangerous Casquettes rocks of Guernsey, when I noticed a large ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack, steaming inwards for the French coast, as if heading for Brest, her nearest port.

At that moment the tired sun, which previously appeared to linger above the horizon, uncertain whether to go or to stay, dipped suddenly as we were looking at him, a pale, yellow radiance succeeding the dazzling beams that had well-nigh blinded us, shining straight in our eyes, while the afterglow, mounting rapidly into the western sky, became more and more vivid each moment, two purple islands of cloud which floated across this refulgent background having the lower edges dyed of a rich crimson that seemed to set the sea on fire and tipped the spars and sails of the passing ship with flame.

She was flying the French Tricolor, and as our steamer went by, saluting her with a couple of blasts from her steam whistle in friendly greeting, the stranger vessel as a return, in accordance with the time-honoured rule of nautical etiquette always observed on such occasions, dipped her ensign.

This action, coupled with the similarity of the scene and its surroundings, the ship in the distance with her flag half on the hoist, the sunset glow, and the fact of my being on board a steamer then as now, brought back to my mind at once the incidents of that memorable evening of the past, more than seven years ago now, the vraisemblance between the two being simply astounding!

“Elsie, dearest Elsie!” I cried with a start, as the strange coincidence of the presentment struck me, the date being even identical. “Do you remember what day of the month this is, querida mia?”

“Why, of course, Dick, I do,” she answered, nestling up to my side as if for protection, for we were sitting in a warm corner by the taffrail, just abaft the wheel-house, and screened from the observation of the rest of the passengers who were walking up and down the deck as usual after dinner. “Why, Dick, dear, it’s the seventh of November, your birthday, you know; surely you have not already forgotten the little present I gave you this morning, my likeness in a locket for your watch chain, a miniature done by that clever artist at Orleans, and you told me you would always wear it for my sake. Dick, my husband, where is your memory?”

“No, my little one, I have not forgotten it,” said I, kissing her, thinking she was going to cry at what she thought was forgetfulness on my part. “Here it is next my heart, like yourself,” said I laughingly. “But, Elsie, alma mia, I was thinking of another anniversary, and a Friday evening too, to make it all the more wonderful! Don’t you recollect now?”

“Oh Dick, my dear husband,” she whispered, seizing my arm and gazing out over the taffrail at the ship, all ablaze now from the reflection of the sky, and nearly hull down to leeward. “I see, I see. What a strange coincidence. It is really wonderful!”

“It is, my darling,” said I. “But it was more extraordinary still that you should have seen me that memorable evening, now more than seven years ago, and when I too saw the Saint Pierre with you on her deck, and more wonderful still, when the captain and some of the crew even to this day insist we were actually several hundreds of miles apart!”

“Ah, but you are near me now, though, thank God!” she cried, looking up into my face with the most charming expression of delight, causing me to be foolish in bestowing another little kiss on her upturned face. “I don’t know how it was, but whether the ships were as far apart as the captain and the others say, or whether they were not, I did see your ship and you on her, as I told my dear, dear father at the time, and he himself did not believe it. Dick, dear, it must have been the gift of ‘second sight,’ as the Scotch people call it. There was a nun at the convent who had it, and could tell, so she said, when anything was about to happen to any of her family, though she couldn’t predict events concerning persons who were not ‘blood relations,’ as she termed them. Don’t be frightened Dick, but I do think that I must really possess the same faculty!”

“Well, if that is the case, sweetheart,” said I, “there must be some psychological affinity between us, and we are both endowed with the same weird gift, although the possession of the same has never been brought to the knowledge of us except on that one memorable occasion. That cannot be otherwise explained; but the fact of the two ships meeting afterwards may very readily be accounted for under the circumstances. The winds and currents of the ocean drifted them together, like as they did us, dear. Don’t you think so?”

She did not answer for a moment, and, as our steamer speeded on her way, the glow in the sky gradually faded and darkness crept over the face of the sea, the flashing light of Ushant whirling its luminous arms round in rapid rotation, like some spectral windmill, away in the distance over our lee, where the French ship had long since disappeared.

Presently my Elsie, who had been looking down into the now gloomy depths alongside, musing over the bitter-sweet memories of the past, lifted her eyes to mine, glancing heavenwards.

“No, Dick, my dearest,” said she, speaking at last, a certain hesitation and catch in her throat and a tear in the broken intonation of her voice, “Dick, I’ve been thinking and—and—it was a power greater than that of the winds and seas that brought us together. It was God!”