The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain Read online

  “Eight bells, sir.”

  “Very well—make it so.”

  Then I heard the muffled sound of the distant bell, followed by a far-off cry—

  “Eight bells and a cloudy morning—anchor watch turn out!”

  I saw the glow of a match photograph a pipe and part of a face against a solid bank of darkness, and groped my way thither and found the second mate.

  “What of the weather, mate?”

  “I don’t see that it’s any better, sir, than it was the first day out, ten days ago; if anything it’s worse—thicker and blacker, I mean. You remember the spitting snow-flurries we had that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ve had them again to-night. And hail and sleet besides, b’George! And here it comes again.”

  We stepped into the sheltering lee of the galley, and stood there listening to the lashing of the hail along the deck and the singing of the wind in the cordage. The mate said—

  “I’ve been at sea thirty years, man and boy, but for a level ten-day stretch of unholy weather this bangs anything I ever struck, north of the Horn—if we are north of it. For I’m blest if I know where we are—do you?”

  It was an embarrassing question. I had been asked it very confidentially by my captain, long ago, and had been able to state that I didn’t know; and had been discreet enough not to go into any particulars; but this was the first time that any officer of the ship had approached me with the matter. I said—

  “Well, no, I’m not a sailor, but I am surprised to hear you say you don’t know where we are.”

  He was caught. It was his turn to be embarrassed. First he began to hedge, and vaguely let on that perhaps he did know, after all; but he made a lame fist of it, and presently gave it up and concluded to be frank and take me into his confidence.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, sir—and don’t give me away.” He put his mouth close to my ear and sheltered it against the howling wind with his hand to keep from having to shout, and said impressively, “Not only I don’t know where we are, sir, but by God the captain himself don’t know!”

  I had met the captain’s confession by pretending to be frightened and distressed at having engaged a man who was ignorant of his business; and then he had changed his note and told me he had only meant that he had lost his bearings in the thick weather—a thing which would rectify itself as soon as he could get a glimpse of the sun. But I was willing to let the mate tell me all he would, so long as I was not to “give it away.”

  “No, sir, he don’t know where he is; lets on to, but he don’t. I mean, he lets on to the crew, and his daughters, and young Phillips the purser, and of course to you and your family, but here lately he don’t let on any more to the chief mate and me. And worried? I tell you he’s worried plumb to his vitals.”

  “I must say I don’t much like the look of this, Mr. Turner.”

  “Well, don’t let on, sir; keep it to yourself—maybe it’ll come out all right; hope it will. But you look at the facts—just look at the facts. We sail north—see? North-and-by-east-half-east, to be exact. Noon the fourth day out, heading for Sable island—ought to see it, weather rather thin for this voyage. Don’t see it. Think the dead reckoning ain’t right, maybe. We bang straight along, all the afternoon. No Sable island. Damned if we didn’t run straight over it! It warn’t there. What do you think of that?”

  “Dear me, it is awful—awful—if true.”

  “If true. Well, it is true. True as anything that ever was, I take my oath on it. And then Greenland. We three banked our hopes on Greenland. Night before last we couldn’t sleep for uneasiness; just anxiety, you know, to see if Greenland was going to be there. By the dead reckoning she was due to be in sight along anywhere from five to seven in the morning, if clear enough. But we staid on deck all night. Of course two of us had no business there, and had to scuttle out of the way whenever a man came along, or they would have been suspicious. But five o’clock came, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, ten o’clock, and at last twelve—and then the captain groaned and gave in! He knew well enough that if there had been any Greenland left we’d have knocked a corner off of it long before that.”

  “This is appalling!”

  “You may hunt out a bigger word than that and it won’t cover it, sir. And Lord, to see the captain, gray as ashes, sweating and worrying over his chart all day yesterday and all day to-day, and spreading his compasses here and spreading them there, and getting suspicious of his chronometer, and damning the dead-reckoning—just suffering death and taxes, you know, and me and the chief mate helping and suffering, and that purser and the captain’s oldest girl spooning and cackling around, just in heaven! I’m a poor man, sir, but I could buy out half of each of ’em’s ignorance and put it together and make it a whole, blamed if I wouldn’t put up my last nickel to do it, you hear me. Now—”

  A wild gust of wind drowned the rest of his remark and smothered us in a fierce flurry of snow and sleet. He darted away and disappeared in the gloom, but first I heard his voice hoarsely shouting—

  “Turn out, all hands, shorten sail!”

  There was a rush of feet along the deck, and then the gale brought the dimmed sound of far-off commands—

  “Mizzen foretop halyards there—all clue-garnets heave and away—now then, with a will—sheet home!”

  And then the plaintive notes had told that the men were handling the kites—

  “If you get there, before I do—­

  Hi-ho-o-o, roll a man down;

  If you get there before I do,

  O, give a man time to roll a man down!”

  By and by all was still again. Meantime I had shifted to the other side of the galley to get out of the storm, and there Mr. Turner presently found me.

  “That’s a specimen,” said he. “I’ve never struck any such weather anywhere. You are bowling along on a wind that’s as steady as a sermon, and just as likely to last, and before you can say Jack Robinson the wind whips around from weather to lee, and if you don’t jump for it you’ll have your canvas blown out of the cat-heads and sailing for heaven in rags and tatters. I’ve never seen anything to begin with it. But then I’ve never been in the middle of Greenland before—in a ship—middle of where it used to be, I mean. Would it worry you if I was to tell you something, sir?”

  “Why, no, I think not. What is it?”

  “Let me take a turn up and down, first, to see if anybody’s in earshot.” When he came back he said, “What should you think if you was to see a whale with hairy spider-legs to it as long as the foretogallant backstay and as big around as the mainmast?”

  I recognized the creature; I had seen it in the microscope. But I didn’t say so. I said—

  “I should think I had a little touch of the jimjams.”

  “The very thing I thought, so help me! It was the third day out, at a quarter to five in the morning. I was out astraddle of the bowsprit in the drizzle, bending on a scuttle-butt, for I don’t trust that kind of a job to a common sailor, when all of a sudden that creature plunged up out of the sea the way a porpoise does, not a hundred yards away—I saw two hundred and fifty feet of him and his fringes—and then he turned in the air like a triumphal arch, shedding Niagaras of water, and plunged head first under the sea with an awful swash of sound, and by that time we were close aboard him and in another ten yards we’d have hit him. It was my belief that he tried to hit us, but by the mercy of God he was out of practice. The lookout on the foc’sle was the only man around, and thankful I was, or there could have been a mutiny. He was asleep on the binnacle—they always sleep on the binnacle, it’s the best place to see from—and it woke him up and he said, “Good land, what’s that, sir?” and I said, “It’s nothing, but it might have been, for any good a stump like you is for a lookout.” I was pretty far gone, and said I was sick, and made him help me onto the foc’sle; and then I went straight off and took the pledge; for I had been going it pretty high for a week before we sailed, and I
made up my mind that I’d rather go dry the rest of my life than see the like of that thing again.”

  “Well, I’m glad it was only the jimjams.”

  “Wait a minute, I ain’t done. Of course I didn’t enter it on the log—”

  “Of course not—”

  “For a man in his right mind don’t put nightmares in the log. He only puts the word ‘pledge’ in, and takes credit for it if anybody inquires; and knows it will please the captain, and hopes it’ll get to the owners. Well, two days later the chief mate took the pledge!”

  “You don’t mean it!”

  “Sure as I’m standing here. I saw the word on the hook. I didn’t say anything, but I felt encouraged. Now then, listen to this: day before yesterday I’m dumm’d if the captain didn’t take the pledge!”

  “Oh, come!”

  “It’s a true bill—I take my oath. There was the word. Then we begun to put this and that together, and next we began to look at each other kind of significant and willing, you know; and of course giving the captain the preceedence, for it wouldn’t become us to begin, and we nothing but mates. And so yesterday, sure enough, out comes the captain—and we called his hand. Said he was out astern in a snow-flurry about dawn, and saw a creature shaped like a woodlouse and as big as a turreted monitor, go racing by and tearing up the foam, in chase of a fat animal the size of an elephant and creased like a caterpillar—and saw it dive after it and disappear; and he begun to prepare his soul for the pledge and break it to his entrails.”

  “It’s terrible!”

  “The pledge?—you bet your bottom dollar. If I—”

  “No, I don’t mean the pledge; I mean it is terrible to be lost at sea among such strange, uncanny brutes.”

  “Yes, there’s something in that, too, I don’t deny it. Well, the thing that the mate saw was like one of these big long lubberly canal boats, and it was ripping along like the Empire Express; and the look of it gave him the cold shivers, and so he begun to arrange his earthly affairs and go for pledge.”

  “Turner, it is dreadful—dreadful. Still, good has been done; for these pledges—”

  “Oh, they’re off!”

  “Off?”

  “Cert’nly. Can’t be jimjams; couldn’t all three of us have them at once, it ain’t likely. What do you want with a pledge when there ain’t any occasion for it? There he goes!”

  He was gone like a shot, and the night swallowed him up. Now all of a sudden, with the wind still blowing hard, the seas went down and the deck became as level as a billiard table! Were all the laws of Nature suspended? It made my flesh creep; it was like being in a haunted ship. Pretty soon the mate came back panting, and sank down on a cable-tier, and said—

  “Oh, this is an awful life; I don’t think we can stand it long. There’s too many horribles in it. Let me pant a little, I’m in a kind of a collapse.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Drop down by me, sir—I mustn’t shout. There—now you’re all right.” Then he said sorrowfully, “I reckon we’ve got to take it again.”

  “Take what?”

  “The pledge.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you see that thing go by?”

  “What thing?”

  “A man.”

  “No. What of it?”

  “This is four times that I’ve seen it; and the mate has seen it, and so has the captain. Haven’t you ever seen it?”

  “I suppose not. Is there anything extraordinary about it?”

  “Extra-ordinary? Well, I should say!”

  “How is it extraordinary?”

  He said in an awed voice that was almost like a groan—

  “Like this, for instance: you put your hand on him and he ain’t there.”

  “What do you mean, Turner?”

  “It’s as true as I’m sitting here; I wish I may never stir. The captain’s getting morbid and religious over it, and says he wouldn’t give a damn for ship and crew if that thing stays aboard.”

  “You curdle my blood. What is the man like? Isn’t it just one of the crew, that you glimpse and lose in the dark?”

  “You take note of this: it wears a broad slouch hat and a long cloak. Is that a whaler outfit, I’ll ask you? A minute ago I was as close to him as I am to you; and I made a grab for him, and what did I get? A handful of air, that’s all. There warn’t a sign of him left.”

  “I do hope the pledge will dispose of it. It must be a work of the imagination, or the crew would have seen it.”

  “We’re afraid they have. There was a deal of whispering going on last night in the middle watch. The captain dealt out grog, and got their minds on something else; but he is mighty uneasy, because of course he don’t want you or your family to hear about that man, and would take my scalp if he knew what I’m doing now; and besides, if such a thing got a start with the crew, there’d be a mutiny, sure.”

  “I’ll keep quiet, of course; still, I think it must be an output of imaginations overstrung by the strange fishes you think you saw; and I am hoping that the pledge—”

  “I want to take it now. And I will.”

  “I’m witness to it. Now come to my parlor and I’ll give you a cup of hot coffee and—”

  “Oh, my goodness, there it is again! . . . It’s gone. . . . Lord, it takes a body’s breath . . . It’s the jimjams I’ve got—I know it for sure. I want the coffee; it’ll do me good. If you could help me a little, sir—I feel as weak as Sabbath grog.”

  We groped along the sleety deck to my door and entered, and there in the bright glare of the lamps sat (as I was half expecting) the man of the long cloak and the slouch hat, on the sofa,—my friend the Superintendent of Dreams. I was annoyed, for a moment, for of course I expected Turner to make a jump at him, get nothing, and be at once in a more miserable state than he already was. I reached for my cabin door and closed it, so that Alice might not hear the scuffle and get a fright. But there wasn’t any. Turner went on talking, and took no notice of the Superintendent. I gave the Superintendent a grateful look; and it was an honest one, for this thing of making himself visible and scaring people could do harm.

  “Lord, it’s good to be in the light, sir,” said Turner, rustling comfortably in his yellow oilskins, “it lifts a person’s spirits right up. I’ve noticed that these cussed jimjam blatherskites ain’t as apt to show up in the light as they are in the dark, except when you’ve got the trouble in your attic pretty bad.” Meantime we were dusting the snow off each other with towels. “You’re mighty well fixed here, sir—chairs and carpets and rugs and tables and lamps and books and everything lovely, and so warm and comfortable and homy; and the roomiest parlor I ever struck in a ship, too. Land, hear the wind, don’t she sing! And not a sign of motion!—rip goes the sleet again!—ugly, you bet!—and here? why here it’s only just the more cosier on account of it. Dern that jimjam, if I had him in here once I bet you I’d sweat him. Because I don’t mind saying that I don’t grab at him as earnest as I want to, outside there, and ain’t as disappointed as I ought to be when I don’t get him; but here in the light I ain’t afraid of no jimjam.”

  It made the Superintendent of Dreams smile a smile that was full of pious satisfaction to hear him. I poured a steaming cup of coffee and handed it to Turner and told him to sit where he pleased and make himself comfortable and at home; and before I could interfere he had sat down in the Superintendent of Dreams’ lap!—no, sat down through him. It cost me a gasp, but only that, nothing more. [The] Superintendent of Dreams’ head was larger than Turner’s, and surrounded it, and was a transparent spirit-head fronted with a transparent spirit-face; and this latter smiled at me as much as to say give myself no uneasiness, it is all right. Turner was smiling comfort and contentment at me at the same time, and the double result was very curious, but I could tell the smiles apart without trouble. The Superintendent of Dreams’ body enclosed Turner’s, but I could see Turner through it, just as one sees objects through thin smoke. It was interesting and pr
etty. Turner tasted his coffee and set the cup down in front of him with a hearty—

  “Now I call that prime! ’George, it makes me feel the way old Cap’n Jimmy Starkweather did, I reckon, the first time he tasted grog after he’d been off his allowance three years. The way of it was this. It was there in Fairhaven by New Bedford, away back in the old early whaling days before I was born; but I heard about it the first day I was born, and it was a ripe old tale then, because they keep only the one fleet of yarns in commission down New Bedford-way, and don’t ever re-stock and don’t ever repair. And I came near hearing it in old Cap’n Jimmy’s own presence once, when I was ten years old and he was ninety-two; but I didn’t, because the man that asked Cap’n Jimmy to tell about it got crippled and the thing didn’t materialize. It was Cap’n Jimmy that crippled him. Land, I thought I sh’d die! The very recollection of it—”

  The very recollection of it so powerfully affected him that it shut off his speech and he put his head back and spread his jaws and laughed himself purple in the face. And while he was doing it the Superintendent of Dreams emptied the coffee into the slop bowl and set the cup back where it was before. When the explosion had spent itself Turner swabbed his face with his handkerchief and said—

  “There—that laugh has scoured me out and done me good; I hain’t had such another one—well, not since I struck this ship, now that’s sure. I’ll whet up and start over.”

  He took up his cup, glanced into it, and it was curious to observe the two faces that were framed in the front of his head. Turner’s was long and distressed; the Superintendent of Dreams’ was wide, and broken out of all shape with a convulsion of silent laughter. After a little, Turner said in a troubled way—

  “I’m dumm’d if I recollect drinking that.”

  I didn’t say anything, though I knew he must be expecting me to say something. He continued to gaze into the cup a while, then looked up wistfully and said—