Complete Works

Wait did not move. — ”Higher,” muttered the boatswain angrily. All the heads were raised; every man stirred uneasily, but James Wait gave no sign of going. In death and swathed up for all eternity, he yet seemed to cling to the ship with the grip of an undying fear. “Higher! Lift!” whispered the boatswain, fiercely. — ”He won’t go,” stammered one of the men, shakily, and both appeared ready to drop everything. Mr. Baker waited, burying his face in the book, and shuffling his feet nervously. All the men looked profoundly disturbed; from their midst a faint humming noise spread out — growing louder.... “Jimmy!” cried Belfast in a wailing tone, and there was a second of shuddering dismay.
    “Jimmy, be a man!” he shrieked, passionately. Every mouth was wide open, not an eyelid winked. He stared wildly, twitching all over; he bent his body forward like a man peering at an horror. “Go!” he shouted, and sprang out of the crowd with his arm extended. “Go, Jimmy! — Jimmy, go! Go!” His fingers touched the head of the body, and the grey package started reluctantly to whizz off the lifted planks all at once, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. The crowd stepped forward like one man; a deep Ah — h — h! came out vibrating from the broad chests. The ship rolled as if relieved of an unfair burden; the sails flapped. Belfast, supported by Archie, gasped hysterically; and Charley, who anxious to see Jimmy’s last dive, leaped headlong on the rail, was too late to see anything but the faint circle of a vanishing ripple.
    Mr. Baker, perspiring abundantly, read out the last prayer in a deep rumour of excited men and fluttering sails. “Amen!” he said in an unsteady growl, and closed the book.
    “Square the yards!” thundered a voice above his head. All hands gave a jump; one or two dropped their caps; Mr. Baker looked up surprised. The master, standing on the break of the poop, pointed to the westward. “Breeze coming,” he said, “Man the weather braces.” Mr. Baker crammed the book hurriedly into his pocket. “Forward, there — let go the foretack!” he hailed joyfully, bareheaded and brisk; “Square the foreyard, you port-watch!” — ”Fair wind — fair wind,” muttered the men going to the braces. — ”What did I tell you?” mumbled old Singleton, flinging down coil after coil with hasty energy; “I knowed it — he’s gone, and here it comes.”
    It came with the sound of a lofty and powerful sigh. The sails filled, the ship gathered way, and the waking sea began to murmur sleepily of home to the ears of men.
    That night, while the ship rushed foaming to the Northward before a freshening gale, the boatswain unbosomed himself to the petty officers’ berth: — ”The chap was nothing but trouble,” he said, “from the moment he came aboard — d’ye remember — that night in Bombay? Been bullying all that softy crowd — cheeked the old man — we had to go fooling all over a half-drowned ship to save him. Dam’ nigh a mutiny all for him — and now the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump of grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better, too, than to leave a nail sticking up — hey, Chips?”
    “And you ought to have known better than to chuck all my tools overboard for ‘im, like a skeary greenhorn,” retorted the morose carpenter. “Well — he’s gone after ‘em now,” he added in an unforgiving tone. — ”On the China Station, I remember once, the Admiral he says to me...” began the sailmaker.
    A week afterwards the Narcissus entered the chops of the Channel.
    Under white wings she skimmed low over the blue sea like a great tired bird speeding to its nest. The clouds raced with her mastheads; they rose astern enormous and white, soared to the zenith, flew past, and falling down the wide curve of the sky, seemed to dash headlong into the sea — the clouds swifter than the ship, more free, but without a home. The coast to welcome her stepped out of space into the sunshine. The lofty headlands trod masterfully into the sea; the wide bays smiled in the light; the shadows of homeless clouds ran along the sunny plains, leaped over valleys, without a check darted up the hills, rolled down the slopes; and the sunshine pursued them with patches of running brightness. On the brows of dark cliffs white lighthouses shone in pillars of light. The Channel glittered like a blue mantle shot with gold and