"We ought to have come up with her by now, Haldane," he said, addressing me, as I stood with Spokeshave on the other side of the wheel-house.

"Don't you think so from the course she was going when you sighted her?"

"Yes, sir," I answered, "if she hasn't gone down!"

"I hope not, my boy," said he; "but I'm very much afraid she has, or else we've pa.s.sed ahead of her."

"That's not likely, sir," I replied. "She looked as if crossing our track when I last saw her; and, though we were going slower then, we must be gaining on her now, I should think."

"We ought to be," said he. "We must be going seventeen knots at the least with wind and steam."

"Aye, aye, sir, all that," corroborated old Masters, the boatswain, who had come up on the bridge unnoticed. "Beg pardon, sir, but we can't carry on much longer with all that sail forrad. The fore-topmast is a- complainin' like anythink, I can tell ye, sir. Chirvell, the carpenter, and me's examinin' it and we thinks it's got sprung at the cap, sir."

"If that's the case, my man," said Captain Applegarth to this, "we'd better take in sail at once. It's a pity, too, with such a fine wind.

I was just going to spare the engines and ease down for a bit, trusting to our sails alone, but if there's any risk of the spars going, as you say, wrong, we must reduce our canvas instead."

"There's no help for it, sir," returned the boatswain quickly. "Either one or t'other must go! Shall I pa.s.s the word, sir, to take in sail?"

"Aye, take in the rags!"

"Fo'c's'le, ahoy there!" yelled Masters instantly, taking advantage of the long-desired permission. "All hands take in sail!"

We had hauled the trysails and other fore and aft canvas, which was comparatively useless to a steamer when running before the wind at the time we had altered course towards the south, in quest of the ship in distress, the _Star of the North_ speeding along with only her fore- topsail and fore-topgallantsail set in addition to her fore-topmast staysail and mizzen staysail and jib.

The gale, however, had increased so much, the wind freshening as it shifted more and more to the north that this sail was too much for her, the canvas bellying out, and the upper spars "buckling" as the vessel laboured in the heavy sea, the stays taut as fiddle-strings and everything at the utmost tension.

The skipper perceived this now, when almost too late.

"Let go your topgallant bowline, and lee sheet and halliards," he roared out, holding on with both hands to the rail and bending over the bridge cloth as he shouted to the men forward who had tumbled out of the forecastle on the boatswain's warning hail. "Stand by your clewlines and by your boat lines!"

The men sprang to the ropes with a will, but ere they had begun to cast them off from the cleats an ominous sound was heard from aloft, and, splitting from clew to earring, our poor topgallantsail blew clean out of the boltropes with a loud crack as if a gun had been fired off, the fragments floating away ahead of us, borne on the wings of the wind like a huge kite, until it disappeared in the dark _chiaraoscura_ of the distant horizon, where heaven and sea met amid the shadows of night.

Just then a most wonderful thing happened to startle us further!

While all of us gazed at the wreck aloft, expecting the topsail to follow suit before it could be pulled, though the hands were racing up rigging for the purpose, the halliards having been at once let go and the yard lowered, a strange light over the topsail made us look aft, when we saw a huge ball of fire pa.s.s slowly across the zenith from the east to the west, illuminating not only the northern arc of the sky, but the surface of the water also, immediately beneath its path, and making the faces of the men in the rigging and indeed any object on board, stand out in relief, shining with that corpse-like glare or reflection produced by the electric light, the effect being weird and unearthly in the extreme!

At the same instant one of the lookouts in the bows who had still remained at his post and had probably been awakened from a quiet "caulk"

by the awful portent, suddenly shouted out in a ringing voice, that thrilled through every heart on board--

"Sail ho!"

Captain Applegarth and the rest of us on the bridge faced round again at once.

"Where away, where away, my man?" cried the skipper excitedly. "Where away?"

"Right ahead of us, sir," replied the man in an equally eager tone.

"And not half a cable's length away!"

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed old Masters, the boatswain, whose grey hair seemed to stand on end with terror as we all now looked in the new direction indicated and saw a queer ghost-like craft gliding along mysteriously in the same direction as ourselves, and so close alongside that I could have chucked a biscuit aboard her without any difficulty. "That there be no mortal vessel that ever sailed the seas. Mark my words, Cap'en Applegarth, that there craft be either _The Flying Dutchman_, as I've often heard tell on, but never seen meself, or a ghost-ship; and--Lord help us--we be all doomed men!"

CHAPTER SIX.

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.

"Nonsense, man!" cried Captain Applegarth. "Don't make such an a.s.s of yourself! _Flying Dutchman_ indeed! Why, that c.o.c.k and bull yarn was exploded years ago, and I didn't think there was a sailor afloat in the present day a.s.s enough to believe in this story!"

"I may be a ha.s.s, sir; I know I am sometimes," retorted old Masters, evidently aggrieved by the skipper speaking to him like this before the men. "But, sir, seein' is believin'. There's this ship an' there's that there craft a-sailin' alongside in the teeth o' the gale. Ha.s.s or no ha.s.s, I sees that, captain!"

"Hang it all, man, can't you see that it is only the mirage or reflection of our own vessel, produced by the light of the meteor throwing her shadow on to the ma.s.s of cloud leeward? Look, there are our two old sticks and the funnels between, with the smoke rushing out of them! Aye, and there, too, you can see this very bridge here we're standing on, and all of us, as large as life. Why, bo'sun, you can see your own ugly mug reflected now opposite us, just as it would be in a looking gla.s.s. Look, man!"

"Aye, I sees, sir, plain enuff, though I'm a ha.s.s," said Masters at length. "But it ain't nat'rel, sir, anyhow; an' I mis...o...b..s sich skeary things. I ain't been to sea forty years for nothin', Captain Applegarth, an' I fears sich a sight as that betokens some danger ahead as 'ill happen to us some time or other this voyage. Even started on a Friday, sir, as you knows on, sir!"

"Rubbish!" cried the skipper, angry at his obstinacy. "See, the mirage has disappeared now that the meteor light has become dispersed. Look smart there, aloft, and furl that topsail! It's just seven bells and I'm going to ease down the engines and bear up on our course again. Up with you, men, and lay out on the yard!"

The hands who had stopped half-way up the fore-rigging, spell-bound at the sight of the mirage, now bestirred themselves, shaking off their superst.i.tious fears; old Masters, in the presence of something to be done, also working, and soon the sail was furled, the bunt stowed, and the gaskets pa.s.sed.

"It's no use our keeping on any longer after that ship of yours, Haldane," observed the skipper, turning to me when the men had all come in from the topsail yard and scrambled down on deck again after making everything snug aloft. "If she were still afloat we must have overhauled her before this. I really think, youngster, she must have been only a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, like that we saw just now--an optical illusion, as I told you at the time, recollect, caused by some cross light from the afterglow of the sunset thrown upon the white mist which we noticed subsequently rising off the water. Eh, my boy?"

"Ah, no, captain," I replied earnestly. "The ship I saw presented a very different appearance to that reflection of ours! _She_ was full- rigged, I told you, sir, and though her canvas was torn and she looked a bit knocked about in the matter of her tophamper, she was as unlike our old _Star of the North_ as a sailing vessel is unlike a steamer!"

"She might have been a derelict."

"I saw a girl on her deck aft, sir, with a dog beside her, as distinctly as I see you, sir, now!"

"Well, well, be that as it may, my lad, though I'm very sorry for the poor young thing, if she is still in the land of the living, I can't carry on like this for ever! If she were anywhere in sight it would be quite another matter; but, as it is, not knowing whether we're on her right track or not, we might scud on to the Equator without running across her again. No, no; it wouldn't be fair to the owners or to ourselves, indeed, to risk the ship as well as the lives of all on board by continuing any longer on such a wild-goose chase."

"Very good, sir," said I, on his pausing here, as if waiting for me to say something. "We've tried our best to come up with her, at any rate."

"We have that, and I daresay a good many would call us foolhardy for carrying on as we've done so long. However, I'm going to abandon the chase now and bear up again on our proper course, my boy, and the devil of a job that will be, I know, in the teeth of this gale!"

So saying, the skipper, grasping the handle of the engine-room telegraph, which led up through a tube at the end of the bridge, signalled to those in charge below to slow down to half speed.

"Down with the helm, quartermaster!" he cried to the man at the wheel, and, at the same moment holding up his hand to attract the attention of old Masters, who had returned to his station on the fo'c's'le, greatly exercised in his mind by what had recently occurred, he sang out in a voice of thunder that reached the knightheads and made the boatswain skip: "Haul in your jib sheet and flatten those staysails sharp! I want to bring her round to the wind handsomely, to prevent taking in another of those green seas aboard when we get broadside-on. Look smart, bo'sun, and keep your eye on her. Keep your eye on her, d'you hear?

It's ticklish work, you know. Look-out sharp or she'll broach to!"

Far as the eye could reach, the storm-tossed surface of the deep was white with foam, white as a snowfield, and boiling with rage and fury.

The bank of blue-black cloud that had rested along the horizon to leeward had now melted away in some mysterious fashion or other, and the sky became as clear as a bell, only some wind-driven sc.r.a.p of semi- transparent white vapour sweeping occasionally across the face of the pale, sickly-looking moon that looked down on the weird scene in a sort of menacing way; while, in lieu of the two or three odd sentinels that had previously peeped out from the firmament, all the galaxies of heaven were, at this moment, in their myriads above, spangling the empyrean from zenith to pole.

But the gale!

While running before the wind, the wind, although it had ballooned our sails out to bursting point, brushing us along at a wild, mad-cap rate, and buffeting the boisterous billows on either hand, scooping them up from the depths of the ocean and piling them in immense waves of angry water that rolled after us, striving to overwhelm us, we could hardly, even while taking advantage of it, appreciate its awful and tremendous force.

On coming about, however, and facing it, the case was vastly different, the wind increasing tenfold in its intensity.

Where it had sung through the rigging it now shrieked and howled, as if the air were peopled with demons, while the waves, lashed into fury, dashed against our bows like battering rams, rising almost to the level of our masthead where their towering crests met overhead.

Round came the old barquey's head slowly, and more slowly still as she staggered against the heavy sea, until, all at once, she stopped in stays, unable apparently, though struggling all she could, to face her remorseless foe.