William Hope Hodgson by Collected Fiction Vol. 03

Author:Collected Fiction Vol. 03 [03, Collected Fiction Vol.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-12T20:21:26+00:00

The Stone Ship

Rum things!— Of course there are rum things happen at sea— As rum as ever there were. I remember when I was in the Alfred Jessop, a small barque, whose owner was her skipper, we came across a most extraordinary thing.

We were twenty days out from London, and well down into the tropics. It was before I took my ticket, and I was in the fo’cas’le. The day had passed without a breath of wind, and the night found us with all the lower sails up in the buntlines.

Now, I want you to take good note of what I am going to say:—

When it was dark in the second dog-watch, there was not a sail in sight; not even the far off smoke of a steamer, and no land nearer than Africa, about a thousand miles to the Eastward of us.

It was our watch on deck from eight to twelve midnight, and my lookout from eight to ten. For the first hour, I walked to and fore across the break of the fo’cas’le head, smoking my pipe and just listening to the quiet…. Ever heard the kind of silence you can get away out at sea? You need to be in one of the old-time windjammers, with all the lights dowsed, and the sea as calm and quiet as some queer plain of death. And then you want a pipe and the lonesomeness of the fo’cas’le head, with the caps’n to lean against while you listen and think. And all about you, stretching out into the miles, only and always the enormous silence of the sea, spreading out a thousand miles every way into the everlasting, brooding night. And not a light anywhere, out on all the waste of waters; nor ever a sound, as I have told, except the faint moaning of the masts and gear, as they chafe and whine a little to the occasional invisible roll of the ship.

And suddenly, across all this silence, I heard Jensen’s voice from the head of the starboard steps, say:—

“Did you hear that, Duprey?”

“What?” I asked, cocking my head up. But as I questioned, I heard what he heard—the constant sound of running water, for all the world like the noise of a brook running down a hill-side. And the queer sound was surely not a hundred fathoms off our port bow!

“By gum!” said Jensen’s voice, out of the darkness. “That’s damned sort of funny!”

“Shut up!” I whispered, and went across, in my bare feet, to the port rail, where I leaned out into the darkness, and stared towards the curious sound.

The noise of a brook running down a hill-side continued, where there was no brook for a thousand sea-miles in any direction.

“What is it?” said Jensen’s voice again, scarcely above a whisper now. From below him, on the main-deck, there came several voices questioning:— “Hark!” “Stow the talk!” “…there!” “Listen!” “Lord love us, what is it?” …And then Jensen muttering to them to be quiet.

There followed a full

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