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CHAPTER 6

Priority Queues (Heaps)

6.1 Yes. When an element is inserted, we compare it to the current minimum and change the minimum if the new

element is smaller. deleteMin operations are expensive in this scheme.

6.2

6.3 The result of three deleteMins, starting with both of the heaps in Exercise 6.2, is as follows:

6.4 (a) 4N

(b) O(N2)

(c) O(N4.1)

(d) O(2N)

6.5 public void insert( AnyType x )

{
if ( currentSize = = array.length - 1 )
enlargeArray( array.length * 2 + 1 );

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 // Percolate up
int hole = + + currentSize;
for ( ; hole > 1 && x.compareTo( array[ hole / 2 ] ) < 0; hole
/ = 2)
array[ hole ] = array[ hole/2 ];
array[ 0 ] = array[ hole ] = x;
}

6.6 225. To see this, start with i = 1 and position at the root. Follow the path toward the last node, doubling i

when taking a left child, and doubling i and adding one when taking a right child.

6.7 (a) We show that H(N), which is the sum of the heights of nodes in a complete binary tree of N nodes, is

N − b(N), where b(N) is the number of ones in the binary representation of N. Observe that for N = 0 and

N = 1, the claim is true. Assume that it is true for values of k up to and including N − 1. Suppose the left and

right subtrees have L and R nodes, respectively. Since the root has height  log N  , we have

H (N ) = log N  + H (L) + H (R )
= log N  + L − b(L) + R − b(R)
= N − 1 + (  Log N  − b(L) − b(R) )

The second line follows from the inductive hypothesis, and the third follows because L + R = N − 1. Now the

last node in the tree is in either the left subtree or the right subtree. If it is in the left subtree, then the right

subtree is a perfect tree, and b(R) = log N  − 1 . Further, the binary representation of N and L are identical,

with the exception that the leading 10 in N becomes 1 in L. (For instance, if N = 37 = 100101, L = 10101.) It

is clear that the second digit of N must be zero if the last node is in the left subtree. Thus in this case,

b(L) = b(N), and

H(N) = N − b(N)

If the last node is in the right subtree, then b(L) =  log N  . The binary representation of R is identical to

N, except that the leading 1 is not present. (For instance, if N = 27 = 101011, L = 01011.) Thus

b(R) = b(N) − 1, and again

H(N) = N − b(N)

(b) Run a single-elimination tournament among eight elements. This requires seven comparisons and

generates ordering information indicated by the binomial tree shown here.

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 The eighth comparison is between b and c. If c is less than b, then b is made a child of c. Otherwise, both

c and d are made children of b.

(c) A recursive strategy is used. Assume that N = 2k. A binomial tree is built for the N elements as in part (b).

The largest subtree of the root is then recursively converted into a binary heap of 2 k − 1 elements. The last

element in the heap (which is the only one on an extra level) is then inserted into the binomial queue

consisting of the remaining binomial trees, thus forming another binomial tree of 2 k − 1 elements. At that

point, the root has a subtree that is a heap of 2 k − 1 − 1 elements and another subtree that is a binomial tree of

2k−1 elements. Recursively convert that subtree into a heap; now the whole structure is a binary heap. The

running time for N = 2k satisfies T(N) = 2T(N/2) + log N. The base case is T(8) = 8.

6.9 Let D1, D2, . . . ,Dk be random variables representing the depth of the smallest, second smallest, and kth

smallest elements, respectively. We are interested in calculating E(Dk). In what follows, we assume that the

heap size N is one less than a power of two (that is, the bottom level is completely filled) but sufficiently

large so that terms bounded by O(1/N) are negligible. Without loss of generality, we may assume that the kth

smallest element is in the left subheap of the root. Let pj, k be the probability that this element is the jth

smallest element in the subheap.

Lemma.

k −1
For k > 1, E (Dk ) =  p j ,k (E (D j ) + 1) .
j =1

Proof.

An element that is at depth d in the left subheap is at depth d + 1 in the entire subheap. Since

E(Dj + 1) = E(Dj) + 1, the theorem follows.

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 Since by assumption, the bottom level of the heap is full, each of second, third, . . . , k − 1th smallest

elements are in the left subheap with probability of 0.5. (Technically, the probability should be half − 1/(N −

1) of being in the right subheap and half + 1/(N − 1) of being in the left, since we have already placed the kth

smallest in the right. Recall that we have assumed that terms of size O(1/N) can be ignored.) Thus

1  k − 2
p j ,k = pk − j ,k = k −2  
2  j −1 

Theorem.

E(Dk)  log k.

Proof.

The proof is by induction. The theorem clearly holds for k = 1 and k = 2. We then show that it holds for

arbitrary k > 2 on the assumption that it holds for all smaller k. Now, by the inductive hypothesis, for any

1  j  k − 1,

E (D j ) + E (Dk − j )  log j + log k − j

Since f(x) = log x is convex for x > 0,

log j + log k − j  2 log ( k 2 )

Thus

E (D j ) + E (Dk − j )  log( k 2 ) + log ( k 2 )

Furthermore, since pj, k = pk − j, k,

p j ,k E (D j ) + pk − j ,k E (Dk − j )  p j ,k log ( k 2 ) + pk − j ,k log ( k 2 )

From the lemma,

k −1
E (Dk ) =  p j , k (E (D j ) + 1)
j =1
k −1
=1+  p j, k E(D j )
j =1

Thus

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 k −1
E ( Dk )  1 +  p j , k log ( k 2)
j =1
k −1
 1 + log ( k 2)  p j , k
j =1

 1 + log ( k 2)
 log k

completing the proof.

It can also be shown that asymptotically, E(Dk)  log(k − 1) − 0.273548.

6.10 (a) Perform a preorder traversal of the heap.

(b) Works for leftist and skew heaps. The running time is O(Kd) for d-heaps.

6.12 Simulations show that the linear time algorithm is the faster, not only on worst-case inputs, but also on

random data.

6.13 (a) If the heap is organized as a (min) heap, then starting at the hole at the root, find a path down to a leaf by

taking the minimum child. The requires roughly log N comparisons. To find the correct place where to move

the hole, perform a binary search on the log N elements. This takes O(log log N) comparisons.

(b) Find a path of minimum children, stopping after log N − log log N levels. At this point, it is easy to

determine if the hole should be placed above or below the stopping point. If it goes below, then continue

finding the path, but perform the binary search on only the last log log N elements on the path, for a total of

log N + log log log N comparisons. Otherwise, perform a binary search on the first log N − log log N

elements. The binary search takes at most log log N comparisons, and the path finding took only log N − log

log N, so the total in this case is log N. So the worst case is the first case.

(c) The bound can be improved to log N + log*N + O(1), where log*N is the inverse Ackerman function (see

Chapter 8). This bound can be found in reference [17].

6.14 The parent is at position (i + d − 2) d  . The children are in positions (i − 1)d + 2, . . . , id + 1.

6.15 (a) O((M + d N) logd N).

(b) O((M + N) log N).

(c) O(M + N2).

(d) d = max(2, M/N). (See the related discussion at the end of Section 11.4.)

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
6.16 Starting from the second most signficant digit in i, and going toward the least significant digit, branch left for

0s, and right for 1s.

6.17 (a) Place negative infinity as a root with the two heaps as subtrees. Then do a deleteMin.

(b) Place negative infinity as a root with the larger heap as the left subheap, and the smaller heap as the right

subheap. Then do a deleteMin.

(c) SKETCH: Split the larger subheap into smaller heaps as follows: on the left-most path, remove two

subheaps of height r − 1, then one of height r, r + 1, and so one, until l − 2. Then merge the trees, going

smaller to higher, using the results of parts (a) and (b), with the extra nodes on the left path substituting for

the insertion of infinity, and subsequent deleteMin.

6.19

6.20

6.21 This theorem is true, and the proof is very much along the same lines as Exercise 4.20.

6.22 If elements are inserted in decreasing order, a leftist heap consisting of a chain of left children is formed. This

is the best because the right path length is minimized.

6.23 (a) If a decreaseKey is performed on a node that is very deep (very left), the time to percolate up would be

prohibitive. Thus the obvious solution doesn’t work. However, we can still do the operation efficiently by a

combination of remove and insert. To remove an arbitrary node x in the heap, replace x by the merge of its

left and right subheaps. This might create an imbalance for nodes on the path from x’s parent to the root that

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
 would need to be fixed by a child swap. However, it is easy to show that at most logN nodes can be affected,

preserving the time bound.

This is discussed in Chapter 11.

6.24 Lazy deletion in leftist heaps is discussed in the paper by Cheriton and Tarjan [10]. The general idea is that if

the root is marked deleted, then a preorder traversal of the heap is formed, and the frontier of marked nodes is

removed, leaving a collection of heaps. These can be merged two at a time by placing all the heaps on a

queue, removing two, merging them, and placing the result at the end of the queue, terminating when only

one heap remains.

6.25 (a) The standard way to do this is to divide the work into passes. A new pass begins when the first element

reappears in a heap that is dequeued. The first pass takes roughly 2*1*(N/2) time units because there are N/2

merges of trees with one node each on the right path. The next pass takes 2*2*(N/4) time units because of the

roughly N/4 merges of trees with no more than two nodes on the right path. The third pass takes 2*3*(N/8)

time units, and so on. The sum converges to 4N.

(b) It generates heaps that are more leftist.

6.26

6.27

6.28 This claim is also true, and the proof is similar in spirit to Exercise 4.20 or 6.21.

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
6.29 Yes. All the single operation estimates in Exercise 6.25 become amortized instead of worst-case, but by the

definition of amortized analysis, the sum of these estimates is a worst-case bound for the sequence.

6.30 Clearly the claim is true for k = 1. Suppose it is true for all values i = 1, 2, . . . , k. A Bk + 1 tree is formed by

attaching a Bk tree to the root of a Bk tree. Thus by induction, it contains a B0 through Bk − 1 tree, as well as the

newly attached Bk tree, proving the claim.

6.31 Proof is by induction. Clearly the claim is true for k = 1. Assume true for all values i = 1, 2, . . . ,k. A Bk + 1

k 
tree is formed by attaching a Bk tree to the original Bk tree. The original thus had   nodes at depth d. The
d 

 k 
attached tree had   nodes at depth d−1, which are now at depth d. Adding these two terms and using a
 d − 1

well-known formula establishes the theorem.

6.32

6.33 This is established in Chapter 11.

6.38 Don’t keep the key values in the heap, but keep only the difference between the value of the key in a node

and the value of the parent’s key.

6.39 O(N + k log N) is a better bound than O(N log k). The first bound is O(N) if k = O(N/log N). The second

bound is more than this as soon as k grows faster than a constant. For the other values (N/log N) = k = (N),

the first bound is better. When k = (N), the bounds are identical.

©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.
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receive you and carry you to England. It is the only remedy I can
suggest.’
He bowed very meekly and with a manner of respectful gratitude;
nevertheless, something in him seemed to tell me that he was not
very much obliged by my suggestion, and that if he quitted Wilfrid’s
service it would not be in the manner I recommended.
Nothing worth noting happened till next day. It was in the afternoon.
The Scillies were astern and the broad Atlantic was now stretching
fair under our bows. A strong fine wind had bowled us steadily down
Channel, and the utmost had been made of it by Captain Finn, who,
despite his talk of studdingsails and stowed anchors, had sent his
booms aloft ere we had brought Prawle Point abeam and the ‘Bride’
had swept along before the strong wind that would come in slaps at
times with almost the spite of a bit of a hurricane in them, under a
foretopmast studdingsail; whence you will gather that the yacht was
prodigiously crowded; but then Finn was always under the influence
of the fear of Wilfrid’s head in the companion hatch; for I learnt that
several times in the night my cousin unexpectedly made his
appearance on deck, and his hot incessant command to both Finn
and old Jacob Crimp, according as he found one or the other in
charge, was that they were to sail the yacht at all hazards short of
springing her lower masts, for in the matter of spare booms and
suits of canvas she could not have been more liberally equipped had
her errand signified a three years’ fighting voyage.
Well, as I have said, it was the afternoon of the third day of our
leaving Southampton. The breeze had slackened much about the
time that Finn stood ogling the sun through his sextant, and then it
veered in a small puff and came on to blow a gentle, steady wind
from south-south-east, which tautened our sheets for us and
brought the square yards fore and aft. There was a long broad-
browed swell from the southward that flashed under the hazy
sunlight like splintered glass with the wrinkling of it, over which the
yacht went rolling and bowing in a rhythm as stately and regular as
the swing of a thousand-ton Indiaman, with a sulky lift of foam to
her cutwater at every plunge and a yeasty seething spreading on
either quarter, the recoiling wash of it from the counter as snappish
as surf. Suddenly from high above, cleaving the vaporous yellow of
the atmosphere in a dead sort of way, came a cry from the look-out
man on the topgallant yard, ‘Sail ho!’ and the sparkle of the
telescope in his hands as he levelled the glittering tube at the sea,
over the starboard bow, rendered the customary echo of ‘Where
away?’ unnecessary.
There was nothing however to take notice of in this; the cry of ‘Sail
ho!’ had been sounding pretty regularly on and off since the look-out
aloft had been established, as you will suppose when you think of
the crowded waters we were then navigating; though everything
thus signalled so far had hove into view broad on either bow or on
either beam. We were all on deck; that is to say, Miss Jennings, snug
in a fur cloak,—for the shift of wind had not softened the
temperature of the atmosphere,—in a chair near the skylight; Wilfrid
near her, lying upon the ivory-white plank smoking a cigar, with his
head supported on his elbow, and I stumping the deck close to
them, with Finn abreast of the wheel to windward. We were in the
midst of some commonplace chatter when that voice from aloft
smote our ears, and when we saw the direction in which the fellow
was holding his glass levelled we all looked that way, scarce thinking
for the moment that if the stranger were heading for us she would
not be in sight from the deck for a spell yet, and as long again if she
were travelling our course.
Miss Jennings resumed her seat; Wilfrid stretched his length along
the deck as before; and I went on pacing to and fro close beside
them.
‘It will be a Monday on which we sight the “Shark,”’ said Wilfrid.
‘How do you know?’ said I.
‘I dreamt it,’ he answered.
Miss Jennings looked at him wistfully as if she believed in dreams.
‘It was an odd vision,’ he continued, with a soft far-away expression
in his eyes, very unlike the usual trouble in them. ‘I dreamt that on
hearing of the—of the——’ he pushed his hair from his forehead and
spoke with his hand to his brow—‘I say that I dreamt I flung myself
on horseback—it was a favourite mare—Lady Henrietta, Laura’—she
bowed her head—‘and gave chase. I did not know which way to go,
so I let fall the reins on the animal’s neck and left the scent to the
detection of her instincts. She carried me to the sea-coast, a
desolate bit of a bay, I remember, with the air full of the moaning of
vexed waters and a melancholy crying of wind in the crevices and
chasms of the cliff, and the whole scene made gaunter than it
needed to have been, as I fancied, by a skeleton that was one
moment that of a big fish and the next of a man, fluctuating upon
the sight like an image seen three fathoms deep floating in such
glass-clear water as you get in the West Indian latitudes.’ He
paused. ‘Where was I?’ he inquired, with an air of bewilderment.
‘Your horse had carried you to the sea-shore,’ said Miss Laura, with
her face full of credulity. I love a superstitious girl, and who is the
woman that does not believe in dreams?
‘Ha!’ he cried, after a brief effort of memory; ‘yes, the mare came to
a stand on the margin of the beach, and heaven knows whence the
apparition rose: but there was an empty boat tossing before me,
with a sort of sign-post erected in her, a pole with a black board
upon it on which was written, in letters that glowed as though
wrought by a brush dipped in a sunbeam, the single word Monday!’
‘Pooh!’ said I, scornfully, and fancying at the moment that something
stirred in the companion-way, I moved a step or two in that direction
and saw Muffin with his head a trifle above the level of the top step
apparently taking the air, though no doubt he was diverting himself
too, by listening to our talk. On seeing me he descended, stepping
backwards with a sickly respectful smile of apology.
‘Why do you say pooh, Mr. Monson?’ asked Miss Jennings. ‘Wise
people never ridicule dreams until they have been disproved.’
I admired her arch air that floated like a veil of gauze over her
sympathy with Wilfrid.
‘I don’t want to believe in dreams,’ said I, ‘my own dreams are much
too uncomfortable to make me desire faith in that direction.’
I glanced at Wilfrid; his eyes were staring right up at the vane at the
maintopmast-head, and it was easily seen that he was no longer
thinking of what we had been talking about. Miss Jennings opened
the novel that lay in her lap and seemed to read; there was a store
of this sort of literature in the yacht, laid in, I dare say, by Sir Wilfrid
for Lady Monson, who, I don’t doubt, was a great devourer of
novels; the trash in one, two, and three volumes of an age of trashy
fiction, of a romantic literature of gorgeous waistcoats, nankeen
breeches, and Pelham cravats. I don’t think Miss Jennings had read
much of the book she held. It was called ‘The Peeress,’ and I believe
it had taken her two days to arrive at the end of the first chapter.
But then, who can read at sea? For my part I can never fix my
attention. In a dead calm I am prone to snooze; in a brisk breeze,
every sweep of surge, every leap of frothing head, every glance of
sunshine, every solemn soaring of white cloud up the slope of the
liquid girdle is an irresistible appeal to me to quit my author for
teachers full of hints worth remembering; and then, indeed, I yield
myself to that luxury of passivity Wordsworth rhymes about—that
disposition to keep quiet until I am visited with impulses—the
happiest apology ever attempted by a home-keeping poet for an
unwillingness to be at the trouble to seek beyond his hillside for
ideas.
‘Here is a flowery fancy!’ exclaimed Miss Jennings, and she began to
read. It was something—I forget what—in the primitive Bulwerian
vein; plenty of capitals, I dare say, and without much sense that I
could make out to linger upon the ear; but one sentence I
remember: ‘He had that inexpressible air of distinction which comes
as a royal gift from heaven to members of old families and only to
them.’
‘Stupid ass!’ exclaimed Wilfrid, whom I had imagined to be wool-
gathering.
‘But there is truth in it, though,’ said Miss Jennings.
‘What is an old family?’ I exclaimed.
‘Why a good family, surely, Mr. Monson,’ she answered.
‘No, no, Laura,’ grumbled Wilfrid. ‘I could introduce you to a
longshore sailor who can’t sign his name, and whose sole theory of
principle lies in successfully hoodwinking the revenue people, who
will tell you that his forefathers have been boatmen and smugglers
for over three hundred years, and who could feel his way back along
a chain of Jims, Dicks, and Joes without a link missing, down,
maybe, to a time when the progenitors of scores of our Dukes, Earls,
and the rest of them were—tush! That boatman belongs to an old
family.’
‘Then, pray, what is a good family?’ inquired Miss Jennings.
‘Yonder’s the sail that was sighted awhile gone, Sir Wilfrid,’ sung out
Captain Finn in his leather-lunged voice.
My cousin sprang to his feet, and the three of us went to the rail to
look.
 CHAPTER VIII.
WE SPEAK THE ‘WANDERER.’

On the lee-bow was a dash of orange light, much less like the sails
of a ship than a feather of vapour bronzed by a sunset and vanishing
in the tail of a cloud.
‘How does she head, Finn?’ cried Wilfrid to the skipper, who was
viewing her through a long, heavy, powerful glass of his own.
‘Coming dead on end for us, sir.’
‘What’ll she be, captain?’ said I.
He eyed her a bit, and answered, ‘A square rig, sir; a bit of a barque,
I dare say.’
My cousin suddenly slapped his leg—one of his favourite gestures
when a fit of excitement seized him. ‘Charles,’ he bawled, ‘we’ll
speak her. D’ye hear me, Finn? We’ll speak her, I say!’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ cried the captain.
‘She may have news for us,’ Wilfrid proceeded; ‘it is about time we
fell in with something that has sighted the “Shark.”’
‘A bit betimes, sir,’ said Finn, touching his cap and approaching to
give me his telescope which I had extended my hand for.
‘Confound it, man!’ cried Wilfrid, in a passion, ‘everything’s always
too soon with you. Suppose by this time to-morrow we should have
the schooner in sight—what then, hey? What would be your
arguments? That she had no business to heave in sight, yet?’
Finn made no answer, but pulled his cap off to scratch his head, with
his lips muttering unconsciously to himself to the energy of his
secret thoughts, and his long face, which his mouth seemed to sit
exactly in the middle of, working in every muscle with protest.
The distant vessel was showing in the glass as high as the curve of
her fore-course, with now and again a dim sort of refractive glimmer
of wet black hull rising off a head of sea into an airy, pale length of
light that hung in a low gleam betwixt the junction of sea and sky.
The sun was westering though still high, but his orb was rayless, and
the body of him looked no more than an oozing of shapeless yellow
flame into the odd sky that seemed a misty blue in places, though
where it appeared so you would notice a faint outline of cloud; and
as he waned, his reflection in the wind-wrinkled heave of the long
head-swell, seemed as if each broad soft brow was alive with
runnings of flaming oil.
There was to be no more argument about good and bad families.
Wilfrid now could think of nothing but the approaching vessel, and
the child-like qualities which went to the creation of his baffling,
unfixable nature showed in an eager impatience, in which you
seemed to witness as much of boyish desire for something fresh and
new to happen as of anything else. For my part, I detest arguments.
They force you to give reasons and to enter upon definitions. I
fancied, however, I was beginning to detect Miss Laura’s little
weakness. There was a feminine hankering in her after ancient
blood, sounding titles, high and mighty things. As I glanced at her
sweet face I felt in the humour to lecture her. What but this
weakness had led to her sister’s undoing? Wilfrid was a worthy,
honest, good-hearted, generous-souled creature, spite of his being a
bit mad: but I could not imagine he was a man to fall in love with;
and in this queer chase we had entered upon there was justification
enough of that notion. His wife had married him, I suppose, for
position, which she had allowed the first good-looking rogue she met
to persuade her was as worthless as dust and ashes unless a human
heart beat inside it. And the scoundrel was right, though he
deserved the halter for his practical illustration of his meaning. I met
Miss Jennings’ eye and she smiled. She called softly to me:
‘You are puzzling over the difference between a good and an old
family!’
‘I wish my countenance were less ingenuous,’ said I.
‘Hadn’t you better run up some signal,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, turning
upon Finn, ‘to make yonder craft know that we want her to stop?’
‘Lay aft here a couple of hands,’ shouted Finn in a sulky note.
Two seamen instantly came along. The flag-locker was dragged from
its cleats or chocks under the small, milk-white grating abaft the
wheel; Finn, with a square, carrot-coloured thumb ploughed into the
book of directions; then, after a little, a string of butterfly bunting
soared gracefully to the topmost head, where the flags were to be
best seen, a long pennant topping the gay colours like a tongue of
flame against the rusty yellow of the atmosphere; the dip of the
yacht to the swell became a holiday curtsey, and you thought of her
as putting on a simper like some pretty country wench newly
pranked out by her sweetheart with a knot of ribbons.
‘Aft and haul up the main-tack; round in on the weather fore braces
and lay the topsail to the mast; down hellum! so—leave her at that!’
and the ‘Bride,’ with the wide ocean heave lifting to the bow, came
to a stand, her way arrested, the wind combing her fore and aft
canvas like the countless invisible fingers of giant spirits, and a dull
plash and sulky wash of water alongside, and a frequent sharp
clatter of wheel chains to the jar of the churning rudder. There was
the true spirit of the deep in this picture then, for the seamen had
dropped the various jobs they were upon, and stood awaiting orders
about the decks, every man’s shadow swaying upon the salt
sparkling of the spotless planks, and all eyes directed at the
approaching craft that had now risen to her wash streak and was
coming along in a slow stately roll with her canvas yearning from
flying jib to fore royal, every cloth yellow as satin, and flashes of
light like the explosion of ordnance breaking in soft sulphur-coloured
flames from her wet side as she lifted it sunwards from the pale blue
brine that melted yeastily from her metalled forefoot into two salival
lines, which united abaft and went astern in a wake that looked as if
she were towing some half mile length of amber-tinctured satin. Yet
there was no beauty in her as in us; it was the sweetness and grace
of airy distance working in her and the mild and misty gushing of the
afternoon radiance, and the wild enfolding arms of the horizon
sweeping as it were the very soul of the mighty ocean loneliness into
her solitary shape and into her bland and starlike canvas, until you
found her veritably spiritualised out of her commonplace meaning
into a mere fairy fancy, some toy-like imagination of the deep; but
she hardened rapidly into the familiar prosaics of timber, sailcloth
and tackling, as she came floating down upon us, sinking to her
narrow white band, then poised till a broad width of her green
sheathing was exposed, with a figure in a tall chimney-pot hat
standing on the rail holding on by a backstay.
She was a slow old waggon, and one saw the reason of it as she
came sliding along, rolling like an anchored galliot in a sea-way, in
her bows as round as an apple and her kettle-bottom run; and
Wilfrid’s impatience grew into torture to us to see almost as much as
to him to feel as he’d pace the deck for a minute or two
tumultuously, then fling against the rail with a wild stare at the
approaching craft as if indeed he was cocksure she was full of news
for him, though for my part it seemed mere trifling with the yacht’s
routine to back her yard that we might ask questions at that early
time of day. She steered so as to come within easy hail and then
boom-ending her foretopmast studdingsail she backed her main
topsail and floated the full length of her out abreast of us within
pistol shot, pitching clumsily and bringing her bows out of it with the
white brine frothing like lacework all about her there, her line of
bulwarks dotted with heads watching us, the sounds of the creaking
of her aloft very clear along with a farmyard noise of several cocks
crowing one after the other lustily, and the lowing of bulls or cows.
‘Barque ahoy?’ sung out Captain Finn, funnelling his hands as a
vehicle for his voice.
‘Halloa?’ cried the figure that stood upon the rail in the most cheery,
laughing voice that can be conceived.
‘What ship is that?’
‘The “Wanderer.”’
‘Where are you from? and where are you bound to?’
‘From Valparaiso to Sunderland,’ answered the other, in a way that
made one think he spoke with difficulty through suppressed mirth.
‘Will you tell us,’ bawled Finn, ‘if you’ve sighted an outward bound
fore and aft schooner-yacht within the past week?’
‘Sighted a fore and aft schooner-yacht? ay, that I have, master, fine
a vessel as yourn pretty nigh,’ shouted the other as though he must
burst in a moment into a roar of laughter.
‘Ask him aboard! ask him aboard!’ cried Wilfrid wild with excitement,
slapping his knee till it was like a discharge of pistols. ‘Beg him to do
me the favour of drinking a bottle of champagne with me; ask him—
ask him—but first ascertain if he has made an entry of the meeting
in his log-book.’
‘Ay, ay, sir. Ho the barque ahoy!’
‘Halloa?’
‘Can you tell us when and whereabouts ye fell in with that there
schooner?’
‘Tell ye! to be sure I can; got it in black and white, master. Ha! ha!
ha!’ and here the old figure in the tall hat clapped his hand to his
side and laughed outright, toppling and reeling about on the rail in
such a manner that I took it for granted he was drunk and expected
every moment to see him plunge overboard.
‘Ask him aboard! ask him aboard!’ shrieked Wilfrid. ‘Request him to
bring his log-book with him. We will send a boat.’
Finn hailed the barque again. ‘Sir Wilfrid Monson’s compliments to
you, sir, and will be pleased to see you aboard to drink a bottle of
champagne with him. Will you kindly bring your log-book with you?
We will send a boat.’
‘Right y’are,’ shouted the old chap with a humorous flourish of his
hand, and so speaking he sprang inboard, laughing heartily, and
disappeared down his little companion hatch.
A boat was lowered with four men in charge of surly old Crimp. My
cousin’s excitement was a real torment to witness. He smote his
hands violently together whilst he urged the men at the top of his
voice to bear a hand and be off or the barque would be swinging her
topsail and sailing away from us. He twitched from head to foot as
though he must fall into convulsions; he bawled to the sailors not to
wait to cast anything adrift but to put their knives through it as
though somebody were drowning astern and the delay of a single
moment might make all the difference between life or death. ‘By
heaven!’ he cried, halting in front of me and Miss Jennings with a
fierceness of manner that was rendered almost delirious by the
quality of savage exultation in it, ‘I knew it would fall out thus! They
cannot escape me. Of course it is the “Shark” that that fellow has
sighted.’ He broke from us and ran to the rail and overhung it,
gnawing his nails whilst he watched the receding boat with his
eyelids quivering and his face working like that of a man in acute
pain.
‘I fear,’ said I, in a low voice, to Miss Jennings, ‘that it would not
require more than two or three incidents of this sort to utterly
dement him. His resolution is strong enough. Why in the name of
pity will not he secure his mind to it? It’s bound to go adrift else, I
fear.’
‘But realise what he has suffered, Mr. Monson,’ she answered gently,
‘such a blow might unseat a stronger reason than his. I cannot
wonder at his excitement. Look how I am trembling!’ She lifted her
little hand, which shook as though she had been seized with a chill,
but there was tremor enough in her voice to indicate her agitation.
‘The mere idea that the “Shark” may be much nearer to us than we
imagine—that this chase may very shortly bring her within sight of
us——’ a strong shiver ran through her. ‘Do you believe it is the
“Shark” that that old man saw?’
‘I shall be better able to judge when he comes aboard,’ said I. ‘See,
our boat is alongside. They must fend her off handsomely, by
George, if she is not to be swamped. Heavens! how that old cask
wallows!’
In a few moments the little old man in the tall hat came to the
gangway and looked over; there was apparently some discussion; I
imagined the elderly humourist was going to funk it, for I fancied I
saw him wag his head; but on a sudden, all very nimbly, he dropped
into the wide main chains, whence, watching his opportunity, he
toppled into the boat, which immediately shoved off. Wilfrid went to
the gangway to receive him. I was a little apprehensive of the effect
of my cousin’s behaviour—which had something of the contortions
and motions of a galvanised body—upon the old sea-dog that was
coming, and I say I rather hoped that this captain might be a bit too
tipsy to prove a nice observer. I took a view of him as he sat in the
stern sheets, the boat sinking and rising from peak to hollow as she
burst through the water to the gilded, sparkling sweep of the
admirably handled oars, and could have laughed out of mere
sympathy with the broad grin that lay upon his jolly, mottled
countenance. His face was as round as the full moon, and of the
appearance of brawn; his nose was a little fiery pimple; small white
whiskers went in a slant in the direction of his nostrils, coming to an
end under either eye. His hat was too big for him, and pressed down
the top of his ears into the likeness of overhanging flaps under the
Quaker-like breadth of brim; his mouth was stretched in a smile all
the time he was approaching the yacht, and he burst into a loud
laugh as he grasped the man-ropes and bundled agilely up the side
of the ‘Bride.’
‘You are very good to come on board, sir,’ cried Wilfrid, bowing with
agitation, and speaking as though suffering from a swollen throat,
with the hurry, anxiety, impatience, which mastered him. ‘I thank
you for this visit. I see you have your log-book with you. Let me
inquire your name?’
‘Puncheon, sir. Ha! ha! ha! Toby Puncheon, sir; a rascally queer
name, ho! ho! And your honour’s a lord, ain’t ye? I didn’t quite catch
the words. He! he! he!’ rattled out the old fellow, laughing after
almost every other word, and staring at us one after another as he
spoke without the least diminution of his prodigious grin.
‘No, no; not a lord,’ exclaimed Wilfrid; ‘but pray step this way,
Captain Puncheon. Charles, please accompany us. Captain Finn, I
shall want you below.’
He led the road to the companion, calling to the steward, whilst he
was yet midway down the steps, to put champagne and glasses
upon the table.
Captain Puncheon’s grin grew alarmingly wide as he surveyed the
glittering cabin. ‘My eye!’ he cried, after a rumbling laugh full of
astonishment, ‘them’s looking-glasses and no mistake! and pickle me
blue if ever I see the likes of such lamps afore on board ship!’
growing grave an instant to utter a low whistle. ‘Why, it’s finer than
a theaytre, ain’t it?’ he exclaimed, turning to me, once more grinning
from ear to ear, and addressing me as if I was his mate that had
come off with him. His glass was filled; he drank to us, and pulled
his log-book out of the piece of newspaper in which he had brought
it wrapped up.
‘Will you kindly give us,’ said Wilfrid, ‘the date on which you passed
the schooner-yacht?’
‘Aye, that I will,’ cried Puncheon, turning back the pages of his log,
and then pouncing upon an entry with a forefinger curled by
rheumatism into the aspect of a fish-hook as though the piece of
writing would run away if he did not keep it squeezed down upon
the page. He felt about his coat with his other hand, and then
bursting into a laugh exclaimed: ‘Gents, you must read for
yourselves. Blow’d if I ain’t gone and forgot my glasses.’
The entry was perfectly ship-shape, and written in a round,
somewhat trembling old hand. There were the usual records of
weather, courses steered, and the like, and under the heading of
observations was: ‘Passed large schooner-yacht steering west-south-
west. Hoisted our ensign, but she showed no colours.’ The log gave
the latitude and longitude of this encounter as 16° West longitude,
41° 30′ North latitude.
I hurriedly made certain calculations after reading aloud this entry,
and addressing Finn said, ‘If that vessel be the “Shark” she has
managed to hold her own so far.’
‘Ay, sir,’ answered Finn, peering at my figures, ‘but what’s been her
weather?’
‘Are you chasing of her, gents?’ whipped out Puncheon, smiling as
though he only waited for us to answer to break into a roar of
laughter.
‘Yes,’ cried Wilfrid fiercely, ‘and we mean to catch her;’ then,
controlling himself, ‘Captain, will you be so good as to describe the
vessel you met?’
‘Describe her? ’Course I will,’ answered the old chap, and forthwith
he gave us a sailorly picture of a yacht apparently of the burthen of
the ‘Shark’: a fore and aft schooner, a long, low, black, handsome
vessel, loftily rigged even for a craft of her kind. She passed within a
mile and a half of the ‘Wanderer’; it was about eight o’clock in the
morning, the sunshine bright, the wind north-east, a pleasant air. I
asked Puncheon if he examined her with his glass? ‘Examine her
through my glass? Ay, that I did,’ he answered in his hilarious way. ‘I
see some figures aboard aft. No lady. No, ne’er a hint of a female
garment. Happen if there was women they was still abed, seeing
how young the morn was for females as goes to sea for pleasure. I
took notice of a tall gent in a white cap with a naval peak and a
white jacket.’ That was about as much as he could tell us, and so
saying he regaled himself with a hearty laugh. Finn questioned him
as one sailor would another on points of the yacht’s furniture aloft,
but the old fellow could only speak generally of the impression left
upon him. Wilfrid’s face was flushed with excitement.
‘Finn,’ he exclaimed, ‘what do you think?’
‘Why, your honour,’ said the man deliberately, ‘putting two and two
together, and totalling up all sarcumstances of rig, haspect, time and
place, I don’t doubt that the schooner-yacht Captain Puncheon here
fell in with was the “Shark.”’
Puncheon rose.
‘Empty this bottle,’ cried Wilfrid to him. ‘By heaven, man, the news
you give me does me good, though!’
The old chap filled up, grinning merrily.
‘Gents,’ he cried, holding the foaming glass aloft and looking at it
with one eye closed, ‘your errand’s an honest one, I’m sure, and so
here’s success to it. The craft I fell in with has got legs, mind ye.
Yes, by thunder, ha! ha! ha! she’s got legs, gents, and’ll require all
the catching I expects your honours have stomachs for. ’Tain’t to be
done in the inside of a month, he! he! he! and so I tells ye. See her
slipping through it under her square sail! God bless my body and
soul, ’twas like the shadow of a cloud running ower the waters. But
give yourselves a long course, gents all, and you’ve got a beauty
here as must lay her aboard—in time, ha! ha! ha! Your honours, my
respects to you.’
Down went the wine and up he got, pulling his hat to his ears and
stepping with a deep sea roll up the companion ladder. We followed
him to the gangway.
‘Is there nothing more to ask, Charles?’ cried Wilfrid.
But Puncheon had given us all he had to tell, and though I could
have wished him to hint at something distinctive in the vessel’s hull,
such as her figure-head or any other point of the like kind in which
the ‘Shark’ might differ from vessels of her build and appearance,
yet there was the strongest possible reason to suppose that the craft
he reported was Lord Winterton’s schooner, with Lady Monson and
Colonel Hope-Kennedy on board.
Whilst Captain Puncheon waited for the yacht’s boat to haul
alongside Sir Wilfrid sent for a box of cigars which he presented to
the old chap. The gift produced such a grin that I saw some of the
hands forward turn their backs upon us to conceal their mirth.
‘Do you think, captain,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, once more rendered
almost alarmingly convulsive in his movements by the excitement
that filled him, ‘that there are men aboard your vessel who took note
of more than you did in the yacht’s appearance? If so——’
But Puncheon interrupted him by saying that he was the only man
who examined the schooner through a glass, and therefore neither
his mate nor any of the seamen who were on deck at the time could
possibly have observed her so fully as he.
‘Make haste and return,’ bawled my cousin to the fellows in the boat
as they shoved off with the grinning old skipper in the stern sheets.
‘Every moment is precious,’ he muttered, walking briskly in short
turns opposite Miss Jennings and me. ‘To think of them sneaking
along like the shadow of a cloud, hey!’ he sent a wildly impatient
look aloft and brought his foot with a heavy stamp to the deck.
‘It is the “Shark” then?’ whispered Miss Jennings.
‘No doubt of it,’ I answered.
She glanced at me as if she had been wounded and her lips turned
pale. Well, thought I, anticipation, to be sure, is often the worst part
of an affair of this sort, but if the mere hearing of the ‘Shark’ affects
this little sweetheart so violently, how will the sighting of the craft
serve her, and the boarding of her, if ever it comes to it? In a few
minutes the yacht’s boat was returning, whilst you saw the figure of
old Puncheon clambering out of his main chains over the bulwarks of
the ‘Wanderer.’ A little later and there were hands tailing on to the
falls, the boat rising dripping to the davits, and the foretopsail yard
slowly pointing its arm to the wind; then, to the full weight of the
breeze sweeping red with the sunset into her hollowed canvas, the
‘Bride’ leaned down, sullenly shouldering the swell into foam with
the first stubborn push of her bows, till gathering way she was once
more swinging into the west and south with the gloom of the
evening growing into a windy vagueness on her lee-beam, whilst on
the weather quarter, black as indigo against the dull western
redness, was the figure of the barque rolling with filled maintopsail
over the long Atlantic heavings, and rapidly diminishing into the
fragile beauty of some exquisitely carved toy of ebony wood on the
skirts of the rising and falling fan-shaped stretch of seething
paleness that marked the limits of the ‘Bride’s’ wake.
Wilfrid, who had been standing at the compass staring with a frown
at the card, with his arms folded, whilst the men trimmed sail and
started the yacht afresh, marched up to me when that business was
over and exclaimed, ‘What did you make the average of the
“Shark’s” daily runs according to Puncheon’s reckonings of the place
of his meeting her?’
‘About a hundred and eighty miles a day,’ I answered.
‘We haven’t been doing that though!’
‘No: but wait a little,’ said I; ‘let your “Bride” feel the trade wind
humming aloft.’
‘Finn,’ he bawled. The captain came running to us. ‘Fetch the track
chart, Finn. There’s light enough yet to see by.’
The man disappeared and very quickly returned, with a handy chart
of the world which he unrolled and laid on the top of the skylight.
We all overhung it, Miss Jennings amongst us. The men forward
watched us curiously. Something in the manner of them suggested
to the swift glance I sent their way that the perception our voyage
was more serious, with a wilder, sterner purpose in it than they had
imagined, was beginning to dawn upon them since Puncheon’s visit.
‘Mark the spot, Finn,’ exclaimed Wilfrid in the dogged voice of a man
sullenly and obstinately struggling to master a feeling of exhaustion,
‘the exact spot where the barque fell in with the “Shark.”’
Finn produced a parallel ruler, a pair of compasses, a pencil and the
like, calculated and indicated the spot by a little cross.
‘How short the distance she has sailed seems!’ exclaimed Miss
Jennings.
‘Fifteen degrees of latitude, though,’ said I; ‘these charts are mighty
deceptive. A very small pencil mark will cover a tremendously long
course.’
Wilfrid stood motionless with his eyes fixed upon the mark Finn had
made. He talked a little to himself, but voicelessly. The captain
watched him nervously. My cousin came to himself with a start.
‘What will have been the “Shark’s” course by magnetic compass,
Finn, say from the latitude of the Scillies to the spot where the
“Wanderer” met her?’
The captain put his parallel rules on the chart and named the
course; what it was I forget,—south-west by south, I believe, or
something near it.
‘Supposing the wind not to head her, Finn,’ continued my cousin,
‘would she steer the same course down to the time when the
“Wanderer” met her?’
‘No, your honour. There’s no call for Fidler any more than there is for
me to go to the westwards of Madeira.’
‘Now, Finn, show me on this chart where, steering the course you
are now heading, you will have arrived when you have run nine
hundred miles?’
‘How’s her head?’ sung out Finn to the fellow at the wheel. The man
answered. ‘You hear it, Sir Wilfrid?’ said Finn. My cousin nodded. The
captain put his rules on the chart, adjusting them to the course the
‘Bride’ was then sailing, and the measure of nine hundred miles
brought the mark he made to touch the cross that represented the
‘Shark’s’ place. ‘That’s right, I think, Mr. Monson,’ said he, turning a
sober face of triumph on me.
‘Quite right,’ I answered, and I spoke no more than the truth, for the
poor fellow had made his calculations with laborious anxiety.
Wilfrid clapped his hands together with a shout of laughter that
carried his voice to a shriek almost, and without speaking a word he
strode to the hatch and went below.
 CHAPTER IX.
A SQUALL.

Although Finn’s calculations showed very well upon the chart, it will
not be supposed I could find anything in them upon which to ground
that hope of falling in with the ‘Shark’ which had become a
conviction with Wilfrid. The look-out man at our masthead might
perhaps, on a clear day, compass a range of some twenty miles,
even thirty if it came to a gleam of lofty canvas hovering over a hull
a league or two past the slope of waters; but what was a view of
this kind to signify in so vast an ocean as we had entered? As I have
elsewhere said, the difference of a quarter of a point would in a few
hours, supposing a good breeze of wind to be blowing, carry the
‘Bride’ wide of the wake of the ‘Shark,’ and put the two yachts out of
sight fair abreast of one another.
Finn understood this as well as I; but when I fell into a talk with him
on the subject that evening—I mean the evening of the day on
which we had spoken the ‘Wanderer’—he told me very honestly that
the odds indeed were heavy against our heaving the ‘Shark’ into
view, though he was quite sure of outsailing her if the course was to
extend to the Cape of Good Hope; but that as there was a chance of
our picking her up, whether by luck, if I chose to think it so, or by
his hitting with accuracy upon the line of direction that Fidler would
take, he had made up his mind to regard the thing as going to
happen, for his own ease of mind as well as to keep my cousin’s
expectations lively and trusting.
‘A man can but do his best, sir,’ he said to me. ‘Sir Wilfrid needs a
deal of humouring; you can see that, sir. I knew all along, when he
first came and told me what had happened and gave me my orders,
that the job of keeping him pacified would have to go hand in hand
with the business of sailing the “Bride” and lighting upon the
“Shark,” if so be she’s discoverable. My notion is that if you’re called
upon so to act as to fit an employer’s taste and keep his views and
wishes gratified, though by no more than maintaining expectation in
him, the best thing is to tarn to and try to think as fur as you can
the same way as he do. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Monson, that I
allow the whole of this here voyage to be as wague as wagueness
can well be; therefore why worrit over parts of it? Suppose we
overhaul the “Shark”—then it’ll be all right; suppose we don’t—then
it won’t be for the want of trying.’
This was the substance of Finn’s opinion as he imparted it to me that
night. His sincerity touched me; besides, I saw worry enough in the
poor fellow to make me sorry for him. Indeed, I resolved from that
hour to back him up, heartily agreeing with him that the adventure
was quite too vague to justify anxiety in respect of any one detail of
the programme.
The weather was quiet when I went to bed that night. I came below
from my long yarn with Finn, leaving a windy smear of moon over
our mastheads and a dark sky going down from it to the obscured
sea-line, with here and there a pale and vapoury point of star
hovering sparely over a wing of cloud that lay still in the dusk, as
though what wind there was blew low upon the waters. The wide
sea came to the yacht in a dusky throbbing, like folds of gloom
rolling with a sort of palpitation in them to the eye; the foam
glanced in places, but there was little weight in the wind, and the
pallid spires of the yacht’s canvas floated nearly upright through the
dark atmosphere, with a sound of the sob of water coming off her
weather bow and the dead plash of the hidden billow falling without
life from her quarter, in a way that made one think there were
fellows emptying buckets over the side abreast of the wheel.
Wilfrid had been moody and reserved throughout the dinner, and
retired early to bed. I sat an hour with Miss Laura, with the mild
diversion of a draught-board between us; but we soon forgot to play
in talking. We had been but a few days together, yet I had already
made the discovery that I wonderfully enjoyed her company, and
that I immensely relished a quality of arch naïveté in her
conversation, which owed something of its effect to the contrast
between a sort of coquettish sagacity in many things she said and
the nun-like artlessness and virginal sweetness I seemed to find in
the gentle girlish regard of her charming eyes. I also observed in
myself that the more I saw of her the more her beauty gained upon
me. I never remember meeting a woman’s face that I would sooner
have taken as a frank expression of mind; there was a softness and
delicacy of feature that one instinctively accepted as an illustration of
habitual refinement and purity of thought. Her manner, save when
aroused, was of engaging gentleness and tenderness, and her smile
the most amiable of any I remember. Her position was of great
delicacy, and could not have failed to painfully distress one of your
self-conscious women. Our adventure, every reference to it, every
mention of the ‘Shark,’ every expression in Wilfrid of grief, shame,
temper, was as it were a rude withdrawal of the veil from before her
sister’s frailty. There was no other lady on board to help her to bear,
so to speak, the burthen of the inevitable topic, and yet she never
made it appear as though there was pain and shame to her in the
subject, outside her grief for Wilfrid, her eagerness that her sister
should be recovered, her resentment against the man who had
betrayed and dishonoured his friend.
I may fail to convey what I thought of her maidenly acceptance of
her share in this strange adventure, but I am certain that nobody
but a person of exquisite instincts could have acted, as she did, the
delicate and exacting part allotted her by my cousin.
The weather was still very quiet when I bade her good-night. I went
to my cabin, and do not suppose I was ten minutes in my bed
before I fell asleep. I awoke to a sound of a great roaring all about,
accompanied by the cries of men on deck, the sharp flinging down
of coils of rope and the thunder of shaking canvas trembling in every
fibre of the hull. My bunk was an athwart-ship one, and I had
turned-in, to employ the proper sea parlance, with my head to
windward; but now the yacht was lying over on t’other side, and I
awoke to find my heels in the air and the weight of my body upon
my neck; but the angle of the craft was so sharp that it was not
without a prodigious amount of heaving and floundering I managed
to get my legs over and to sit upright.
A squall! thought I, feeling for my pillow, which I placed in the port
end of my bedstead and once again lay down. A flash of sun-bright
lightning glanced through the port-hole as though a gun had been
fired into my cabin, and the interior glanced out into a noon-tide
effulgence for one breathless instant, in which, however, I managed
to catch sight of the angle formed by a coat with a stanchion, upon
which it hung by a peg. Upon my word, it was as though the yacht
was upon her beam ends—such a heel as was not to be realised by
one lying in a bunk or even sitting upright in it: then came the
darkness like a sea of ink, rolling to the sight in which the reflection
of the flash still writhed, followed by a mighty shock of thunder that
died away in a hundred rattling peals, as though ’twas high
mountainous land all around the horizon, honeycombed with caverns
and every peak as resonant as a hollow dome.
A sharp squall! thought I, but there was too much noise for sleep. It
was all hands on deck I was pretty sure by the numerous
scampering over my head; the harsh voices of the sailors bawling at
the ropes would be swept into faint cries by the rush of the wind,
and now and again a heavy lumpish sound that put a quiver into
every plank, followed by a snarling noise like the hissing of half a
dozen locomotives blowing off steam, was warrant enough to ears
not unused to such sounds that the ‘Bride’ was taking large doses of
water in pretty freely over her rail.
I lay quiet, and was presently sensible that the yacht was off the
wind; the righting of her was no small comfort; she was manifestly
going through it like a comet; the sea was now well aft, and the
suggestion of swiftness I found in the mere feel of the hull,
somehow or other, black as my cabin was and the blacker as it
remained for the flash of lightning, was accentuated by the
thunderous rush of each surge outstripping us in the race and
hurling its black length along the vessel’s side, and the fierce spitting
and crackling of the smother of spume that was raised by the
vessel’s headlong flight, and that went raging and racing astern on
top of the swelling ebony fold that swept forwards from the opposite
direction.
Humph! thought I, if this is a case of ‘up keeleg’ with friend Finn
he’ll have to enter into something shrewder and surer than dead
reckoning to find his way back again into the ‘Shark’s’ wake. I had a
mind to see what was happening, and after a spell of troublesome
groping and clawing, during which I had like to have broke my nose
by striking it against the edge of a chest of drawers built into a
corner, I succeeded in lighting my lamp, and was presently snug in a
pea coat and a sou’-wester which I had been wise enough to include
in the slender sea outfit I had purchased for this voyage. The cabin
light was always kept burning throughout the night, dimmed by one
of the stewards, after we had retired to our berths, but with plenty
of flame left to see by, and on emerging the first object I caught
sight of was the figure of a man on his knees on the cabin floor in a
posture of prayer and apparently in an agony of fright. Nothing was
to be heard of him until I had approached close, for the roaring of
the wind and the washing and foaming of seas drowned all other
noises; but on stooping to make sure of the fellow, whose hands
were clasped over his eyes whilst he held his face upturned as he
swayed upon his knees, I could hear him praying with all his might,
with an energy indeed that might of itself have accounted for the
drops of perspiration that glistened upon his brow, if it wasn’t that
his attitude of terror explained the secret of that moisture. It was
Muffin. There was something so shameful in the fellow’s cowardice
that all in an instant I lost my temper and gave him a kick which
flung him at his length, face down, upon the deck. He set up a
horrible howl.
‘Oh Lord! oh mercy! we’re gone! we’re gone! Oh, if I was only on dry
ground——’
Here I seized him by the collar. ‘Get up, you fool,’ I cried. ‘Do you
know where you are, you idiot? Cease! If you alarm Miss Jennings
——’ and I hauled him on to his legs, shaking him heartily as I did
so.
‘Oh, Mr. Monson,’ he whined, ‘is it you, sir? Tell me we ain’t all dead
and gone, sir! Oh, this is ’orrible, though! ’orrible! Never no more;
never no more for me!’
‘Be off to your berth at once,’ cried I angrily, though my temper died
out of me at the absurd sight of his yellow, working, terrified face,
rendered ugly enough to challenge the skill of a Cruikshank by the
manner in which, during his devotions, he had streaked his forehead
and nose and his cheeks past his eyes with his plaister-like lengths
of coal-black hair. He was for speaking, but I grasped him by the
shoulder and ran him towards his berth that lay some little distance
forward of mine on the starboard side, and when he had shut
himself in I made my way on deck, with a peep aft, as I went up the
steps, where all seemed quiet.
The night was still very dark, but of a clearer dusk. The moon made
a red streak low in the west amongst some ragged clouds that
seemed to fall like a short flight of steps, every one edged with
blood, to the sea-line, where the muddy crimson drained out, just
showing the lurid staining of it now and again when some surge
beneath reared an unbroken head to the lustre. The night was made
to look amazingly wilder than it was in reality by that western setting
jumble of ugly lustre and torn vapour, like a flock of giant bats
heading from the moon for ocean solitude of deeper blackness. To
windward there was a great lake of indigo-blue in the sky, in which a
number of trembling stars were floating and vast white puffs of
cloud crossing it with the swiftness of scud in the gale; but to
leeward it was just a mass of heaped-up gloom, one dye of dusk on
top of another in blocks of blackness such as a poet might dream of
in picturing the hellish walls and battlements of a beleaguered city of
demons; and upon this mass of darkness that looked as substantial
as stone to the eye there was a plentiful play and crackle of violet
lightning; but no thunder, at least none that I could hear. It was
blowing fresh, but the wind had taken off considerably within the
last ten minutes; the ‘Bride’ was close hauled; there was a strong
sea on the bow and she was plunging; smartly, with at frequent
intervals a brisk squall of spray over her head that rattled upon the
deck like a fall of hail in a thunderstorm; a dark gleam would break
first here and then there from her deck to her rolling, but the water
was draining off fast, flashing in a loud hissing through the scupper
holes at every lee send, but with weight enough yet remaining in
each rush of it to enable me to gather that it must have been pretty
nearly waist-high between the bulwarks with the first shipping of the
seas and the first downrush of the fierce squall.
They had snugged the ‘Bride’ to very small canvas; the play of the
white waters round her threw out her shape clear as black paint on
canvas; at moments she dived till you would think the tall black coil
arching at her past the creaming glare crushed out of the sea by the
smiting of her forefoot must leap right aboard her; but her staunch
and buoyant bow, the truest piece of ocean moulding I ever saw in a
ship, would regularly swing with a leap to the peak of the billow,
shattering it with a saucy disdain that seemed to be followed by an
echo of derisive laughter in the yelling ring of the wind splitting upon
the rigging or sweeping into the iron hard cavities of the diminished
spaces of wan and spectral canvas.
I took all this in as I stood a minute in the companion hatch; then
perceiving the figure of a man to windward almost abreast of me, I
crossed to him. It was Finn.
‘Very ugly squall that, Mr. Monson,’ said he after peering at me to
make sure of my identity; ‘it found us with tops’l and t’gallants’l set
and took us slap aback. It was the most onexpected thing that ever
happened to me; as onnatural as that there moon. Talk of keeping a
look-out! I was staring hard that way with the wind a pleasant air
blowing off t’other side and saw nothing and heard nothing until I
felt it.’
‘You had to run?’
‘Ay, but not for long, sir.’
‘How’s her head now, Captain Finn?’
‘Her proper course, Mr. Monson.’
‘Well, the weather is brightening. You’ll be making sail again on your
ship, I suppose, presently?’
‘Ay, but let that muck blow away first,’ he answered, pointing with a
shadowy arm into the mass of obscurity where the lightning still
winked fitfully. ‘After such a blow-me-aback job as this I ain’t going
to trust the weather till I can see more of it.’
I lingered a little, watching the slow opening of the sky to windward,
and the gradual unfolding of the stars down the velvet declivity, that
looked as though purified by the cleansing of the black wet squall,
and then bidding good-night to Finn, who seemed a bit subdued by
the wildly disconcerting attack of the weather, that to a sober,
vigilant seaman was about as uncomfortable a snub in its way as
could be administered, I went below, intending to walk straight to
my berth and go to bed again. On entering the cabin, however, I
found the lamp turned up, and Wilfrid pacing the carpet with long
strides and with an agitation of manner that was grotesquely
deepened by the occasional stagger of his gait by the plunging of
the yacht and the hurried lift of his arm to clutch the nearest thing
at hand for support. I concluded that he had been aroused by the
commotion of the squall, but thought it strange he had not stepped
on deck to see how things were. On seeing me he put his hand on
the back of a fixed revolving chair, and swung, or rather reeled,
himself into it, then leaned his cheek upon his hand in a posture of
extreme moodiness, whilst he kept his eyes bent downwards.
I took a seat opposite him, after a glance round in search of Miss
Jennings, who, I thought, might also be up.
‘The noise above disturbed you, I suppose, Wilfrid?’ said I.
‘I have not slept,’ he answered.
‘Not since half-past nine! You went to bed then, you know, and it’s
now two o’clock,’ I exclaimed, looking at the dial under the skylight.
‘I have not slept,’ he repeated.
‘I wonder that the squall did not bring you on deck.’
‘For what purpose?’ he exclaimed gloomily. ‘I could hear Finn’s voice;
I could follow what the men were doing. If every squall we are likely
to meet is to bring me from my bed, I may as well order a hammock
to be slung for me on deck.’
‘What is the matter, Wilfrid?’ said I, earnestly and soothingly.
‘Something, I fear, has happened to vex and bother you.’
He passed his hand over his eyes, and looking down said, ‘I have
had a warning.’
‘A what?’ I exclaimed.
‘A warning,’ he answered, fetching a deep sigh and making as if to
rise, retaining, however, his posture of profound melancholy, whilst
he sent a slow, wandering look around, finally fastening his eyes
upon me.
‘From whom came this warning, Wilfrid?’ said I cheerfully. ‘Muffin?
Egad, you’ll be getting a warning from him soon, I reckon. I found
the chap on his knees just now, sweating with fear and praying like
clockwork. I gave him a kick, and I wonder the howl that he raised
did not bring you running out of your cabin.’ I jabbered this off in a
reckless, laughing way, though I watched him narrowly, too, all the
time I was speaking.
‘Nothing shall hinder me, Charles,’ he exclaimed, closing his right fist
and letting it lie in a menacing way upon the table. ‘I have made up
my mind to tear the creature who still remains my wife from the side
of the man she has left me for; and before God’—he rolled his eyes
up and raised his clenched hand—‘my vow is this: that I will hunt
them from port to port, through ocean after ocean, until I meet with
them! When that shall be I know not; but this I do know—that my
time will come and I can wait. But I must be on the move. Nothing
could render life tolerable to me now but the sense of action, the
animation and hope of pursuit.’
‘But the warning——?’ said I.
‘Oh, to be vexed by ghostly exhortations—it is enough to craze one!’
he exclaimed. ‘Heaven knows, resolution grows weak enough in me
as it is to any thought of my little one that visits me. Oh no,’ he
cried, with a sarcastic shake of the head and a singular smile, ‘do
not believe that thoughts of my baby girl would cause me to falter
even for one breathless instant on this course that I have made up
my mind to pursue. But to think of the helpless lamb as alone——’
‘My dear fellow,’ I interrupted, ‘the child could not possibly be in
tenderer hands.’
‘I know, I know,’ he cried, with a sob in his voice, ‘but she is
motherless, Charles; and then how precarious is life at that age! I
may never see her again!’
He broke down at this and hid his face.
‘Come, come,’ said I, ‘your nerves have been strained by the incident
of this afternoon, or, I should say of yesterday afternoon—unduly,
though intelligibly, excited by Puncheon’s report of having passed
the “Shark.” Endeavour to get some rest, old fellow. These warnings,
these visions, mysterious voices sounding out of heaven knows
where, midnight shapes as thin as moonshine—Wilfrid, depend upon
it, they all emanate from a disordered condition of that part of the
body which the Chinese have most wisely selected as the true seat
of the soul; I mean here,’ said I, patting my waistcoat.
He regarded me somewhat vacantly and sat awhile in silence, sighed
tremulously, and stepped to the foot of the companion ladder, where
he stood staring up into the arch of black night that filled the
companion entrance. Presently Finn rumbled out an order on deck.
There was the flash of bright stars upon the gleaming ebony of the
cabin windows with every heave of the yacht; the sea was
moderating, and the loud humming of the wind aloft gradually fining
into a dull complaining noise. Ropes were thrown down overhead;
voices began to sing out. I uttered a loud yawn. Wilfrid turned and
exclaimed, ‘Don’t let me keep you up, Charles.’
‘It’s all right,’ said I, ‘but why not go to bed, too? Or first describe
this warning that you have had; express the nature of it. Perhaps,
like the proverbial onlooker who sees most of the game, I might be
able to help you with some reassuring suggestion.’
But he merely shook his head; and now, feeling quite intolerably
sleepy, and in no mood, therefore, as you will suppose, to reason
with a mind so oppressed as his with superstitious melancholy, I
called a cheery good-night to him, went to my cabin, and was soon
fast asleep.
I was awakened by the brilliant daylight that filled my berth, and at
once rose and sung out to the steward to prepare me a bath. All the
time I bathed and dressed I was thinking of Wilfrid and of what he
called his ‘warning.’ I supposed it was some voice that he had heard,
and he had made it plain that it had referred, amongst other things
maybe, to his little infant. Now, though of course I had known for
years that he was ‘touched,’ as the expression goes, I had never
understood that his craziness had risen to the height of hearing
voices and beholding visions in his waking hours; and I was,
therefore, forced to believe that his mind was far more unhinged at
present than his manners and speech, peculiar as they
unquestionably were at times, had indicated. Well, thought I,
assuredly if he gets worse, if the symptoms should grow more
defined, this chase will have to come to an end. I, for one, should
most certainly call a halt. Why, what could be fuller of madness than
his vow last night before me—to go on sailing from port to port, and
traversing ocean after ocean, until he has captured her ladyship; as
if a pursuit on such lines as these were going to end in anything
better than driving all hands daft and converting the ‘Bride’ into a
floating lunatic asylum? So far, it is true, I have found method
enough to keep my mind tolerably easy; but if poor Wilfrid is going
to become very much worse, hang me, thought I, plying a pair of
hair-brushes with very agitated hands, if Captain Finn don’t haul his
wind for the handiest port and set me ashore for one.
 CHAPTER X.
I GO ALOFT.

It was a fresh sweet ocean morning, one of the fairest I remember;

the wind, a tender fanning from the west, warm enough to make
one fancy an odour and balm of the tropics in it, leagues ahead as
those parallels yet lay. The sky was one broad surface of curls and
feathers of pearl-coloured vapour, an interweaving, as it were, of
many-shaped links of silken cloud shot with silver and amber and
gold from the early sun. I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so
tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea
spread in a firm dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty
roof of marble; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the
port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet
blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of
the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud
of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the depths.
Everything was brilliant and clean and cheerful, the decks of the
white softness of foam, brass sparkling, rigging flemish-coiled or
festooned as by an artist’s hand upon the pins; forward stood the
long cannon radiant as polished jet, a detail that gave an odd
significance to the saucy knowing ‘spring,’ as it is called, of the yacht
that way. The cocks and hens in the coops were straining their
throats and blending with their cheerful voices was a noise of pigs;
there was black smoke pouring away from the galley chimney, and
now and again you got a whiff of something good frying for the
men’s breakfasts, for my cousin fed his sailors well. The ‘Bride’ with
erect masts was sliding over the wide folds of water whose
undulations were so long drawn and regular as to be scarce
perceptible in the motion of the vessel; there was air enough to crisp
the sea, and where the sun’s light lay the tremble was blinding; on
either bow was a curl of silver and pale eddyings alongside with a
line of oil-smooth water going away astern from under the counter;
yet we were but creeping, too, spite of the yacht being a pile of
white cloths—every stitch she owned abroad to her topgallant
studdingsail.
The mate had charge, and was stumping the weather side of the
quarterdeck in his sour way when I arrived.
‘Good morning, Mr. Crimp.’
‘Marning,’ he answered.
‘Ugly squall that last night.’
‘Ugly? ay.’
The fellow gave the word sir to no man, restricting its use when
ashore to dogs as Finn once told me; but his surly tricks of speech
and manner were so wholly a part of him, so entirely natural, so
unconsciously expressed, that it would have been as idle to resent
them as to have quarrelled with him for having an askew eye or lost
one’s temper because his beard resembled rope yarns.
‘Anything in sight?’ I asked, looking round.
‘Ay,’ he answered.
‘Where?’ I exclaimed, running my eye over the sea.
‘Up yonder,’ he responded, indicating with a gesture of his chin the
topgallant-yard where was perched the inevitable figure of a look-out
man.
‘But where away, Mr. Crimp,—where away, sir?’
‘On the starboard bow,’ he answered, ‘’tain’t long been sighted.’
Breakfast would not be ready for some time yet, and having nothing
to do I thought I would make a journey aloft on my own account
and take a view of the distant sail and of the spacious field of the
glittering morning ocean from the altitude of the masthead. I
stepped below for a telescope of my own, a glass I had many a time
ogled the sea with when I was doing penance for past and future
sins in African and West Indian waters. Muffin was at the foot of the
companion steps holding a pair of Wilfrid’s boots. He cast his eyes
down and drew his figure in though there was abundance of room
for me to pass. A slow, obsequious, apologetic smile went twisting
and curling down his lips; his yellow face had a burnished look; he
was uncommonly clean-shaven, and his hair was brushed or
plastered to the smoothness of his skull.
‘Got your courage back?’ said I.
‘Thank you, yes, sir,’ he answered humbly with his eyes respectfully
cast down. ‘Richard’s himself again this morning, sir, as the saying is.
But it was a ’orrible time, sir.’
‘You came near to making it so,’ said I. ‘Have you been to Sir Wilfrid
yet?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How is he?’
‘Asleep, sir,’ he replied in a blandly confidential way.
‘Glad to hear it,’ I exclaimed, ‘don’t disturb him. He passed a bad
night down to two or three o’clock this morning.’ I was going;
suddenly I stopped. ‘By the way,’ said I, rounding upon the fellow,
‘how long have you been in Sir Wilfrid’s service?’
My question appeared to penetrate him with a consuming desire to
be exact. He partially closed one eye, cocked the other aloft like a
hen in the act of drinking, and then said with the air of one happy in
the power of speaking with accuracy, ‘It’ll be five months to the
hour, sir, come height o’clock, Friday evening next.’
‘During the time that you have been in his service,’ said I carelessly,
‘have you ever heard him speak of hearing voices or seeing visions?’