It is
quite refreshing to have some new topic of conversation after the
eternal routine of bears and whales which has served us for so many
months. Manson swears the ship is haunted, and that he would not
stay in her a day if he had any other place to go to. Indeed the
fellow is honestly frightened, and I had to give him some
chloral and bromide of potassium this morning to steady him
down. He seemed quite indignant when I suggested that he had been
having an extra glass the night before, and I was obliged to pacify
him by keeping as grave a countenance as possible during his story,
which he certainly narrated in a very straight-forward and matter-
of-fact way.
"I was on the bridge," he said, "about four bells in the middle
watch, just when the night was at its darkest. There was a bit of
a moon, but the clouds were blowing across it so that you couldn't
see far from the ship. John M`Leod, the harpooner, came aft from
the foc'sle-head and reported a strange noise on the starboard bow.
I went forrard and we both heard it, sometimes like a bairn crying
and sometimes like a wench in pain. I've been seventeen years to
the country and I never heard seal, old or young, make a sound like
that. As we were standing there on the foc'sle-head the moon came
out from behind a cloud, and we both saw a sort of white figure
moving across the ice field in the same direction that we had heard
the cries.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26