‘What’s there to laugh at in this conceited manner, Mr Burner?’ he snarled. ‘Supernatural visitations have terrified better men than you. Don’t you allow me enough soul to make a ghost of?’
I think it was the nasty tone that caused Burner to stop short and turnabout.
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ went on the angry fanatic of spiritism, ‘if you weren’t one of them people that take no more account of a man than if he were a beast. You would be capable, I don’t doubt, to deny the possession of an immortal soul to your own father.’
And then Burner, being bored beyond endurance, and also exasperated by the private worry, lost his self-possession.
He walked up suddenly to Captain Johns, and, stooping a little to look close into his face, said, in a low, even tone:
‘You don’t know what a man like me is capable of.’
Captain Johns threw his head back, but was too astonished to budge. Bunter resumed his walk; and for a long time his measured footsteps and the low wash of the water alongside were the only sounds which troubled the silence brooding over the great waters. Then Captain Johns cleared his throat uneasily, and, after sidling away towards the companionway for greater safety, plucked up enough courage to retreat under an act of authority:
‘Raise the starboard clew of the mainsail, and lay the yards dead square, Mr Bunter. Don't you see the wind is nearly right aft?'
Bunter at once answered ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ though there was not the slightest necessity to touch the yards, and the wind was well out on the quarter. While he was executing the order Captain Johns hung on the companion-steps, growling to himself: ‘Walk this poop like an admiral and don’t even notice when the yards want trimming!’ - loud enough for the helmsman to overhear. Then he sank slowly backwards out of the man’s sight; and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he stood still and thought.
‘He’s an awful ruffian, with all his gentlemanly airs. No more gentleman mates for me. ’
Two nights afterwards he was slumbering peacefully in his berth, when a heavy thumping just above his head (a well-understood signal that he was wanted on deck) made him leap out of bed, broad awake in a moment.
‘What’s up?’ he muttered, running out barefooted. On passing through the cabin he glanced at the clock. It was the middle watch. ‘What on earth can the mate want me for?’ he thought.
Bolting out of the companion, he found a clear, dewy moonlit night and a strong, steady breeze. He looked around wildly. There was no one on the poop except the helmsman, who addressed him at once.
‘It was me, sir. I let go the wheel for a second to stamp over your head. I am afraid there’s something wrong with the mate. ’
‘Where’s he got to?’ asked the captain sharply.
The man, who was obviously nervous, said:
‘The last I saw of him was as he fell down the port poop-ladder.’
‘Fell down the poop-ladder! What did he do that for? What made him?’
‘I don’t know, sir. He was walking the port side. Then just as he turned towards me to come aft. . .’
‘You saw him?’ interrupted the captain.
‘I did. I was looking at him. And I heard the crash, too -something awful. Like the mainmast going overboard. It was as if something had struck him.’
Captain Johns became very uneasy and alarmed.
‘Come,’ he said sharply. ‘Did anybody strike him? What did you see?’
‘Nothing, sir, so help me! There was nothing to see. He just gave a little sort of hallo! threw his hands before him, and over he went - crash. I couldn’t hear anything more, so I just let go the wheel for a second to call you up.’
‘You’re scared!’ said Captain Johns.
‘I am, sir, straight!’
Captain Johns stared at him. The silence of his ship driving on her way seemed to contain a danger - a mystery. He was reluctant to go and look for his mate himself, in the shadows of the main-deck, so quiet, so still.
All he did was to advance to the break of the poop, and call for the watch. As the sleepy men came trooping aft* he shouted to them fiercely:
‘Look at the foot of the port poop-ladder, some of you! See the mate lying there?’
Their startled exclamations told him immediately that they did see him. Somebody even screeched out emotionally:
‘He’s dead!’
Mr Bunter was laid in his bunk and when the lamp in his room was lit he looked indeed as if he were dead, but it was obvious also that he was breathing yet. The steward had been roused out, the second mate called and sent on deck to look after the ship, and for an hour or so Captain Johns devoted himself silently to the restoring of consciousness. Mr Bunter at last opened his eyes, but he could not speak. He was dazed and inert. The steward bandaged a nasty scalp-wound while Captain Johns held an additional light. They had to cut away a lot of Mr Bunter’s jet-black hair to make a good dressing. This done, and after gazing for a while at their patient, the two left the cabin.
‘A rum go, this, steward,’ said Captain Johns in the passage.
‘Yessir.’
'A sober man that’s right in his head does not fall down a poop-ladder like a sack of potatoes. The ship’s as steady as a church.'
‘Yessir. Fit of some kind, I shouldn’t wonder.’
'Well, I should. He doesn’t look as if he were subject to fits and giddiness. Why, the man’s in the prime of life. I wouldn’t have another kind of mate - not if I knew it. You don’t think he has a private store of liquor, do you, eh? He seemed to me a bit strange in his manner several times lately. Off his feed, too, a bit, I noticed. ’
‘Well, sir, if he ever had a bottle or two of grog in his cabin, that must have gone a long time ago. I saw him throw some broken glass overboard after the last gale we had; but that didn’t amount to anything. Anyway, sir, you couldn’t call Mr Burner a drinking man.’
‘No,’ conceded the captain, reflectively. And the steward, locking the pantry door, tried to escape out of the passage, thinking he could manage to snatch another hour of sleep before it was time for him to turn out for the day.
Captain Johns shook his head.
‘There’s some mystery there.’
‘There’s special Providence that he didn’t crack his head like an eggshell on the quarter-deck mooring-bits, sir. The men tell me he couldn’t have missed them by more than an inch.*
And the steward vanished skilfully.
Captain Johns spent the rest of the night and the whole of the ensuing day between his own room and that of the mate.
In his own room he sat with his open hands reposing on his knees, his lips pursed up, and the horizontal furrows on his forehead marked very heavily. Now and then raising his arm by a slow, as if cautious movement, he scratched lightly the top of his bald head. In the mate’s room he stood for long periods of time with his hands to his lips, gazing at the half-conscious man.
For three days Mr Bun ter did not say a single word. He looked at people sensibly enough but did not seem to be able to hear any questions put to him. They cut off some more of his hair and swathed his head in wet cloths. He took some nourishment, and was made as comfortable as possible. At dinner on the third day the second mate remarked to the captain, in connection with the affair:
‘These half-round brass plates on the steps of the poop-ladders are beastly dangerous things!’
‘Are they?’ retorted Captain Johns, sourly. ‘It takes more than a brass plate to account for an able-bodied man crashing down in this fashion like a felled ox. ’
The second mate was impressed by that view. There was something in that, he thought.
‘And the weather fine, everything dry, and the ship going along as steady as a church!’ pursued Captain Johns, gruffly.
As Captain Johns continued to look extremely sour, the second mate did not open his lips any more during the dinner. Captain Johns was annoyed and hurt by an innocent remark, because the fitting of the aforesaid brass plates had been done at his sugge
stion only the voyage before, in order to smarten up the appearance of the poop-ladders.
On the fourth day Mr Bunter looked decidedly better; very languid yet, of course, but he heard and understood what was said to him, and even could say a few words in a feeble voice.
Captain Johns, coming* in, contemplated him attentively, without much visible sympathy.
‘Well, can you give us your account of this accident, Mr Burner?’
Bunter moved slightly his bandaged head, and fixed his cold blue stare on Captain Johns’ face, as if taking stock and appraising the value of every feature; the perplexed forehead, the credulous eyes, the inane droop of the mouth. And he gazed so long that Captain Johns grew restive, and looked over his shoulder at the door.
‘No accident,’ breathed out Bunter, in a peculiar tone.
‘You don’t mean to say you’ve got the falling sickness,’ said Captain Johns. ‘How would you call it signing as chief mate of a clipper ship with a thing like that on you?’
Bunter answered him only by a sinister look. The shipper shuffled his feet a little.
‘Well, what made you have that tumble, then?’
Bunter raised himself a little, and, looking straight into Captain Johns’ eyes said, in a very distinct whisper:
‘You - were - right!’
He fell back and closed his eyes. Not a word more could Captain Johns get out of him; and, the steward coming into the cabin, the skipper withdrew.
But that very night, unobserved, Captain Johns, opening the door cautiously, entered again the mate’s cabin. He could wait no longer. The suppressed eagerness, the excitement expressed in all his mean, creeping little person, did not escape the chief mate, who was lying awake, looking frightfully pulled down and perfectly impassive.
‘You are coming to gloat over me, I suppose,’ said Bunter without moving, and yet making a palpable hit.
‘Bless my soul!’ exclaimed Captain Johns with a start, and assuming a sobered demeanour. There’s a thing to say!’
‘Well, gloat, then! You and your ghosts, you’ve managed to get over a live man.’
This was said by Bunter without stirring, in a low voice, and with not much expression.
‘Do you mean to say,’ inquired Captain Johns, in awe-struck whisper, ‘that you had a supernatural experience that night? You saw an apparition, then, on board my ship?’
Reluctance, shame, disgust, would have been visible on poor Bunter’s countenance if the great part of it had not been swathed up in cotton-wool and bandages. His ebony eyebrows, more sinister than ever amongst all that lot of white linen, came together in a frown as he made a mighty effort to say:
‘Yes, I have seen.’
The wretchedness in his eyes would have awakened the compassion of any other man than Captain Johns. But Captain Johns was all agog with triumphant excitement. He was just a little bit frightened, too. He looked at that unbelieving scoffer laid low, and did not even dimly guess at his profound, humiliating distress. He was not generally capable of taking much part in the anguish of his fellow-creatures. This time, moreover, he was excessively anxious to know what had happened. Fixing his credulous eyes on the bandaged head, he asked, trembling slightly:
‘And did it - did it knock you down?’
‘Come! Am I the sort of man to be knocked down by a ghost?’ protested Bunter in a little stronger tone. ‘Don’t you remember what you said yourself the other night? Better men than me - Ha! You’ll have to look a long time before you find a better man for a mate of your ship.’
Captain Johns pointed a solemn finger at Bunter’s bed-place.
‘You’ve been terrified,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s the matter. You’ve been terrified. Why, even the man at the wheel was scared, though he couldn’t see anything. He felt the supernatural. You are punished for your incredulity, Mr Bunter. You were terrified.’
‘And suppose I was,’ said Bunter. ‘Do you know what I had seen? Can you conceive the sort of ghost that would haunt a man like me? Do you think it was a ladyish, afternoon call, another-cup-of-tea-please apparition that visits your Professor Cranks and that journalist chap you are always talking about? No; I can’t tell you what it was like. Every man has his own ghosts. You couldn’t conceive. . .’
Bunter stopped, out of breath; and Captain Johns remarked, with the glow of inward satisfaction reflected in his tone:
‘I’ve always thought you were the sort of man that was ready for anything; from pitch-and-toss to wilful murder, as the saying goes. Well, well! So you were terrified.’
‘I stepped back,’ said Bunter, curtly. ‘I don’t remember anything else.’
‘The man at the wheel told me you went backwards as if something had hit you.’
‘It was a sort of inward blow,’ explained Bunter. ‘Something too deep for you, Captain Johns, to understand. Your life and mine haven’t been the same. Aren’t you satisfied to see me converted?’
‘And you can’t tell me any more?’ asked Captain Johns, anxiously.
‘No, I can’t. I wouldn’t. It would be no use if I did. That sort of experience must be gone through. Say I am being punished. Well, I take my punishment, but talk of it I won’t.’
‘Very well,’ said Captain Johns; ‘you won’t. But, mind, I can draw my own conclusions from that.’
‘Draw what you like; but be careful what you say, sir. You
don't terrify me. You aren’t a ghost.'
'One word. Has it any connection with what you said to me on that last night, when we had a talk together on spiritualism?'
Bunter looked weary and puzzled.
‘What did I say?’
‘You told me that I couldn’t know what a man like you was capable of.’
‘Yes, yes. Enough!’
‘Very good. I am fixed, then,’ remarked Captain Johns. ‘All I say is that I am jolly glad not to be you, though I would have given almost anything for the privilege of personal communication with the world of spirits. Yes, sir, but not in that way.’
Poor Bunter moaned pitifully.
‘It has made me feel twenty years older. ’
Captain Johns retired quietly. He was delighted to observe this overbearing ruffian humbled to the dust by the moralizing agency of the spirits. The whole occurrence was a source of pride and gratification; and he began to feel a son of regard for his chief mate. It is true that in further interviews Bunter showed himself very mild and deferential. He seemed to cling to his captain for spiritual protection. He used to send for him, and say, ‘I feel so nervous,’ and Captain Johns would stay patiently for hours in the hot little cabin, and feel proud of the call.
For Mr Bunter was ill, and could not leave his berth for a good many days. He became a convinced spiritualist, not enthusiastically - that could hardly have been expected from him - but in a grim, unshakable way. He could not be called exactly friendly to the disembodied inhabitants of our globe, as Captain Johns was. But he was now a firm, if gloomy, recruit of spiritualism.
One afternoon, as the ship was already well to the north in the Gulf of Bengal, the steward knocked at the door of the captain’s cabin, and said, without opening it:
‘The mate asks if you could spare him a moment, sir. He seems to be in a state in there.’
Captain Johns jumped up from the couch at once.
‘Yes. Tell him I am coming.’
He thought: Could it be possible there had been another
spiritual manifestation - in the daytime too!
He revelled in the hope. It was not exactly that, however. Still, Bunter, whom he saw sitting collapsed in a chair - he had been up for several days, but not on deck as yet - poor Bunter had something startling enough to communicate. His hands covered his face. His legs were stretched straight out, dismally.
‘What’s the news now?’ croaked Captain Johns, not unkindly, because in truth it always pleased him to see Bunter - as he expressed it - tamed.
‘News!’ exclaimed the crushed sceptic through his h
ands. ‘Ay, news enough, Captain Johns. Who will be able to deny the awfulness, the genuineness? Another man would have dropped dead. You want to know what I had seen. All I can tell you is that since I’ve seen it my hair is turning white.’
Bunter detached his hands from his face, and they hung on each side of his chair as if dead. He looked broken in the dusky cabin.
‘You don’t say!* stammered out Captain Johns. ‘Turned white! Hold on a bit! I’ll light the lamp!’
When the lamp was lit, the startling phenomenon could be seen plainly enough. As if the dread, the horror, the anguish of the supernatural were being exhaled through the pores of his skin, a sort of silvery mist seemed to cling to the cheeks and the head of the mate. His short beard, his cropped hair, were growing, not black, but gray - almost white.
When Mr Bunter, thin-faced and shaky, came on deck for duty, he was clean-shaven, and his head was white. The hands were awe-struck. ‘Another man,’ they whispered to each other. It was generally and mysteriously agreed that the mate had ‘seen something,’ with the exception of the man at the wheel at the time, who maintained that the mate was ‘struck by something.’ This distinction hardly amounted to a difference. On the other hand, everybody admitted that, after he picked up his strength a bit, he seemed smarter in his movements than before.
One day in Calcutta, Captain Johns pointing out to a visitor his white-headed chief mate standing by the main-hatch, was heard to say oracularly:
‘That man’s in the prime of life. ’
Of course, while Burner was away, I called regularly on Mrs Bunter every Saturday, just to see whether she had any use for my services. It was understood I would do that. She had just his half-pay to live on - it amounted to about a pound a week. She had taken one room in a quiet little square in the East End.
And this was affluence to what I had heard that the couple were reduced to for a time after Bunter had to give up the Western Ocean trade - he used to go as mate of all sorts of hard packets after he lost his ship and his luck together - it was affluence to that time when Bunter would start at seven o’clock in the morning with but a glass of hot water and a crust of dry bread. It won’t stand thinking about, especially for those who know Mrs Bunter. I had seen something of them, too, at that time; and it just makes me shudder to remember what that born lady had to put up with. Enough!
Mysterious Sea Stories Page 15