Floki's Blade and Other Dream Fictions by Edward Lucas White

Author:Edward Lucas White [White, Edward Lucas]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Ghost, Horror, Supernatural, Fiction
ISBN: 9781553103240
Publisher: Christopher Roden/Ash-Tree Press
Published: 2013-09-19T23:00:00+00:00

Instinctively I turned the packet face down as I handed it to him. He took it gracefully and in his totally toneless voice said:

‘Thank you very much!’

As he said the words Captain Benson appeared in the cabin companion-way, his revolver in his hands. The mate in the act of stowing with his left hand the letters in his inner breast-pocket, pointed his extended index finger at the pistol.

‘Put that thing away!’ he commanded.

The voice was as toneless as before, but far otherwise than the blurred British evenness of his acknowledgment to me, these words rang hard and sharp. Benson took the rebuke as if he had been the mate and the other his captain, turned and shuffled fumblingly back down the companion-way. As he passed the pantry door the cabin-boy whipped out of it and popped up the companion-way to see, and the big Norse mate emerged deliberately behind him.

By this time the fat negro steward and most of the crew had come aft and gathered about the prostrate Burke.

The first-mate cleared the scouse from his neck and collar, took some tarred marline from an outside pocket of his pea-jacket, and in a leisurely way went down into the waist. He had the men turn Burke over and tie his hands behind him and his ankles together. Then he had buckets of sea-water dashed over him. Burke soon regained consciousness.

‘Carry him forward and put him in his bunk,’ the mate commanded. ‘When he says he will behave cut him loose.’

Captain Benson had come on deck and was standing by the booby-hatch.

‘That man ought to be put in irons,’ he said as the mate turned.

The mate’s eyes were on his face as he said it.

‘He needs no irons,’ he retorted crisply. ‘Why make a mountain out of a mole-hill.’

I had been hoping that I was getting used to the sea, for I was only passively uncomfortable and mildly wretched. But sometime that night it came on to blow fresh and I waked acutely sea-sick and suffering violently from horrible surging qualms in every joint. I clambered out of my bunk, struggled into some clothes and crawled across the cabin and up the after companion-way to the wheel-deck. There I collapsed at full length into four inches of warm rain water against the lee-rail. At first the baffling breeze was comforting after the stuffy cabin, smelling of stale coffee, damp sea-biscuit, prunes, oilskins and what not. But I was soon too cold, for I was vestless and coatless, and before long my teeth were chattering and I had a general chill to add to my misery. It was the first-mate’s watch and coming aft on his eternal round he found me there. He at once went below and brought me not only vest and jacket but my mackintosh also. I was wet to the skin all over, but the mackintosh was gratefully warm. Forgetting that he could not hear I thanked him inarticulately, and relapsed into my shifting pond, where I slipped into oblivion, my head on the outer timber, the tearing dawn-wind across my face.

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