Chapter 20

Noises And Portents

I longed for day. For however now inclined to believe that the
brigantine was untenanted, I desired the light of the sun to place
that fact beyond a misgiving.

Now, having observed, previous to boarding the vessel, that she lay
rather low in the water, I thought proper to sound the well. But
there being no line-and-sinker at hand, I sent Jarl to hunt them up
in the arm-chest on the quarter-deck, where doubtless they must be
kept. Meanwhile I searched for the "breaks," or pump-handles, which,
as it turned out, could not have been very recently used; for they
were found lashed up and down to the main-mast.

Suddenly Jarl came running toward me, whispering that all doubt was
dispelled;--there were spirits on board, to a dead certainty. He had
overheard a supernatural sneeze. But by this time I was all but
convinced, that we were alone in the brigantine. Since, if otherwise,
I could assign no earthly reason for the crew's hiding away from a
couple of sailors, whom, were they so minded, they might easily have
mastered. And furthermore, this alleged disturbance of the atmosphere
aloft by a sneeze, Jarl averred to have taken place in the main-top;
directly underneath which I was all this time standing, and had heard
nothing. So complimenting my good Viking upon the exceeding delicacy
of his auriculars, I bade him trouble himself no more with his
piratical ghosts and goblins, which existed nowhere but in his own
imagination.

Not finding the line-and-sinker, with the spare end of a bowline we
rigged a substitute; and sounding the well, found nothing to excite
our alarm. Under certain circumstances, however, this sounding a
ship's well is a nervous sort of business enough. 'Tis like feeling
your own pulse in the last stage of a fever.

At the Skyeman's suggestion, we now proceeded to throw round the
brigantine's head on the other tack. For until daylight we desired to
alter the vessel's position as little as possible, fearful of coming
unawares upon reefs.

And here be it said, that for all his superstitious misgivings about
the brigantine; his imputing to her something equivalent to a purely
phantom-like nature, honest Jarl was nevertheless exceedingly
downright and practical in all hints and proceedings concerning her.
Wherein, he resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley--
truly, one of your lords spiritual--who, metaphysically speaking,
holding all objects to be mere optical delusions, was, notwith-
standing, extremely matter-of-fact in all matters touching
matter itself. Besides being pervious to the points of pins, and
possessing a palate capable of appreciating plum-puddings:--which
sentence reads off like a pattering of