An Ocean Dream by Hume Nisbet
“An Ocean Dream” is taken from the Hume Nisbet anthology The Haunted Station and Other Stories, first published in 1894 by F. V. White and Co. Set on a ship travelling through dangerous waters, “An Ocean Dream” may best be described as a nautical adventure story with supernatural elements.
About Hume Nisbet
Hume Nisbet was an artist and novelist who was born in Stirling , Scotland, in 1849. When he was 16 years old, Nisbet traveled to Australia and remained there for around seven years pursuing creative and artistic pursuits.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of Nisbet’s tales are set in Australia. Although his poetry and stories had a variety of themes, he produced an impressive number of ghost stories, many of which he included in his anthologies The Haunted Station (1894) and Stories Weird and Wonderful (1900).
An Ocean Dream
by Hume Nisbet
(Online Text)
CHAPTER I
THE TEMPEST
“The streets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand,
The decks were like a slide where a seaman scarce could
stand!”
“ Christmas at Sea. (Ballads.)”—By R. L. Stevenson.
She was nearing Cape Horn, that is, the good old Aberdonian clipper Christiana, which carried as passengers Ralf Grimshaw and a little French officer from the convict colony of Cayenne, coming home on sick leave, who had occupied most of his time trying to master English with the aid of a dictionary and Sir Walter Scott’s romance “Waverley.”
Ralf Grimshaw, artist, age twenty-two, means uncertain, hopes infinite and blood considerably thinned by mosquito bites and a lengthened sojourn in tropical countries, in figure also he was elongated and fragile, so that as the wind freshened day by day it took him most of his time to keep himself from being blown overboard whenever he ventured on deck.
It had been hot summer when he left Sydney, and gradually he had put on shirt after shirt, and suit over suit of his light colonial clothing, in the vain effort to keep out the cold, increasing with such fearful rapidity and intensity as they ploughed through the antarctic waters.
He had been abroad for nine years, and during that time had not seen ice thicker than a sixpence, but he is both seeing and feeling it now with a vengeance; the seamen come down from the rigging hanging masses of icicles, the briny waves, as they break over the gunwales, crack and shiver into pieces like glass sheets upon the deck, the foam rattles down like masses of coral, and the spray strikes like hail against the smarting cheeks as it dashes against them.
Ralf Grimshaw is utterly demoralized by this unaccustomed cold; he courts the black cook assiduously, and almost lives in his galley, and will not be driven out by that functionary in spite of his African taunts and American curses—even the roasted cayenne pepper only sends him choking away for a little while—that glowing stove has too great a fascination for him to be able to resist its vicinity.
Day after day the wind blows harder and colder as they drive south, until even the captain admits that they are in for a furious gale; the waves rise in too dense masses any longer to freeze, they deluge the decks and drown the fires in the galley—thus misery sets in unutterable.
“I say, Grimshaw, come down and help me to draw the rum from the store, it’s warmer down there than anywhere.” This from the third mate, who is passing with his measure at the moment Ralf emerges from, or rather gets washed out of the cook’s premises.
They stagger along the slippery deck, with their clothing stiff as paste-boards, and for a moment feel like getting into Paradise as they leave the cutting blast outside and breathe the warm if damp and musty atmosphere of the dark provision store between decks.
“Take a good swig while you’re at it, Grimshaw, there’s nothing like rum for curing the cold.”
Ralf follows the advice of his friend the young mate and purser, and drinks in until he has forgotten the present, and now he has managed to get under his crackling blankets in the cabin, sleeping heavily and dreaming that he is once again in sunny Australia, while the ship rolls and groans wearily under him and the waves rise savagely as the hours pass on.
All at once he wakes up, choking with salt water and slushy ice paste; a wild struggle, the flinging up of arms aimlessly, and then the water rushes from his head and he gasps for life.
The waves are pouring along the passage into the saloon, breaking in the doors, tossing the harmonium of the captain like an orange from end to end, until the sides part and the keys float loosely amongst other flotsam going to waste.
Ralf Grimshaw and the other passenger—the French officer—make up portion of that waste, and as they toss aimlessly about with the drift, mixing with the mashed potatoes and dissolving flour from the steward’s pantry, while plates, cruet-stands, salt-cellars and glasses are transformed into animation and rush recklessly to their destruction.
Then, after a while, the half-drowned passengers manage to clear the soup-like mess from their smarting eyes and see dimly, as through a dark glass, their surroundings.
Ralf Grimshaw hangs on like grim despair to the burst-in door, and swings about, as it does, to every roll of the ship; the steward still floats about, making frantic clutches at the legs of the table as he passes; the second mate has jammed himself against the sides of the passage with the water waist-high rushing past him, while the little French officer, having climbed upon the table—as the doomed races choose the highest mountains in the time of the great deluge clings, like a half-drowned rat, drippingly to the brass rods of the ceiling, a soaking cigarette between his chattering teeth and the infinite misery of a hopeless despair making his claret-tinted visage purple as a ripe plum.
Then down the companion steps from the deck rolls the swarthy old skipper, and as he looks at the severed keyboard and floating pieces of his pet instrument, with which he was wont to beguile a spare hour, he snorts heavily like a bull-walrus, and says, wearily:
“Pick up the bits, lad, as carefully as you can; and as for you, Grimshaw, if you can face the open air, come up on deck if you want to see a real Cape Horn wave!”
As the planks were for the moment quiet enough to permit Ralf Grimshaw to leave his anchorage, he stumbled after the captain to the top of the companion way, where he could get a sight of the ocean, while before him were three sailors, clinging to, rather than controlling, the wheel.
Behind them reared a dense black precipice of water, butting cliffs that rose far above the lower yards and toppled over their heads, solid and straight as a wall, rushing after them with the deadly speed of an express train, growing every instant bigger: bending every instant further over them, casting its great shadow—the dark shadow of death—along the poop, main deck and portions of the forecastle, and leaving only the straining, ice-clogged sheets and bulging sails at the bow glittering like snow in that ghastly sunshine.
The vessel is head-reaching, and running a stern race with death; all their hopes are centered in the torn narrow strips of bulging dark canvas on the upper yards, and the two glittering ribbons at the jibs, if they are blown away, then farewell to hope and England, for ten thousand solid tons will fall upon them, and in an instant dash them to atoms without a whole plank left to tell of their dismal doom in that icy, antarctic ocean.
They are sliding gradually down the sides of a steep mountain as they drive along, a mountain which races under as they fly over it, with fearful velocity—a mountain as smooth as glass, with the surge steadfast on its breast, and the ice-lumps and frozen spike ends pointing as if stationary towards the base, never swerving from their lightning course towards the gulf, the weather-worn hull are reflected over the lumps, and with the darkness far down to that gulf of whirling and boiling spume.
In front of them rears another great wall of water, spreading out triangularly and solid as that wall closing in behind, only instead of being black with shadow, it glitters greenly with the glare of the white, mid-day sun, while the sky above it is flashing like a polished steel shield, clear, coldly blue, gloating in sunshine and pitiless.
The three men at the wheel keep staring upon the compass-box in front of them, their oilskins close up to their throats and their sou’westers tied down over their ears, their teeth firmly clenched beneath their tangled and frozen mustaches and their dusky cheeks pallid with the intense cold.
And through all this ominous stillness, for they cannot hear the wind which swells out the canvas, the hardy old skipper never utters a word, but stands in front of them and motions with his arm the direction they have to give to the wheel. He stands facing them and the black enemy behind, with his gray eyes fixed sternly upon the three forward bent heads, and a brace of pistols in his hands, ready to blow out the brains of the first who may be tempted to look behind him on what rushes after them, and so become nerveless and loosen his grasp of the spokes.
“You’ve been here about long enough,” hoarsely roared the captain into Ralf Grimshaw’s ear, after a moment on deck. “Get below while you have time—before we have reached the trough of this wave.”
Ralf turns to obey the order of the skipper, but he is spared the trouble, for the vessel has reached the foot of the billow, and is now amongst the boiling fury of the spume, and rushing butt at the greeny-white wall that wedges them in. A savage yell of torn-up waters rings through his brains as he is caught up and flung head first down the companion steps, an ocean avalanche about and after him.
The steward, poor fellow, had found his legs and been moved by the natural curiosity of the landsman to have a look also at the great wave, and at the precise instant of that hasty descent, had been slowly climbing the steps.
Unfortunate curiosity for him, although providential for the more lucky Ralf Grimshaw, for the head of the one met the mouth of the other with such resistless force, that while Ralf was half-stunned by the concussion, three of the front teeth of the steward were knocked out as swiftly as if they had been a false set, as they both shot downwards into the confusion of the crowded saloon, amongst the remnants of flour dishes and harmonium, where, along with the little French officer from Cayenne, and the general rubbish, they wallowed and danced about from end to end.
And after them broke wave behind wave like an ocean being emptied out, covering them all up, and filling the saloon to the ceiling, while they choked and fought madly for breath, swallowing quarts of brine before they finally gave it up.
CHAPTER II
THE CATASTROPHE
“Now, mark you, Jack, even a sailor is but flesh and
blood.” —R. Buchanon,
When life came back, or rather the consciousness of their misery, the vessel had passed through that valley of death and left in her rear those three great mountains of waves now dashed into pieces.
The dauntless old skipper having completed his most trying task, had resigned his post to the first mate, and was now again in the saloon toiling his way waist deep in water to his comfortless cabin.
For the past two days that the gale had raged he had watched on deck, drinking every half hour a pint of champagne, a habit of his when on extra duty, and he had now completed his long vigil with this most daring and splendid strategy of seamanship, cutting literally through the deadly wedge, and guessing the tiniest wave by instinct, as being the only way out of the awful trap, so that while the passengers and steward were struggling for breath in the saloon, the vessel had been driving through the midst of the ocean propelled only by the impetus of her former speed.
Now, once again caught up by the terrific blast, she was flying over the lessening waves at a rate which could hardly be calculated.
A very few seconds had done all this, although it seemed long enough to the sufferers, and while they were still trying to find out which was the warmest under the water or out of it, a hoarse call from above startled them all into sudden activity, a cry appalling to every ear that heard it.
“Man overboard.”
In an instant the saloon was deserted and the freezing deck occupied by a little crowd of excited men, the sense of feeling cold banished from every nerve in that tingling thrill of sickened horror.
There he was already miles behind them, striking out bravely, although weighed down with his oilskins and heavy sea-boots, in full sight of every one on deck, while they could only watch his vain efforts and see him sink, as the vessel, like a startled swallow, darted from him along the ocean, one of the three brave fellows who had been at the wheel.
On she flew, and he became a dark brown spot amidst that waste of steel-blue waters; onwards she flew, while those who watched, waited with the gloom of death upon them and their hearts’ yearnings in their eyes; onwards, without the power to stop, although forty thousand souls depended upon it instead of one; with the sunny blue sky overhead, and the seething masses of tumbling billows around and scurrying after them.
Onward, onward, and the dusky spot has become a hazy purple speck in the clear distance ; and onward, onward, and the purple speck has become blue and microscopic; onward, and the blue-purple point has vanished into the general cold blue of the heaving, ice-charged waves.
“Who was it?” asked the skipper, as he drew his wet hand across his blurred eyes, when the last had been seen of the doomed sailor.
“Charley the Swede,” replied the boatswain huskily.
“Poor fellow!”
“Ay, sir. He was to have been spliced this time if he had reached home, but I know’d that he would never see home.”
“How could you know, boatswain?”
“Cos I dreamt it thrice running, and he carried the marks of it on him.”
“Tut, man, that kind of nonsense is exploded long since,” growled the captain.
“Perhaps so, sir; only that it was so.”
“Hush, man, it’s downright blasphemy at such a time. Say, rather, that the Almighty had fore-ordained it, and His will be done, Amen.”
“Amen be it, sir. I ain’t agoing to say that the Almighty hadn’t His fingers in the pie, only I will stick to it that I knowed about it also.”
“And, if so, why did you not warn the young man?”
“I did, sir, last time I dreamt it, I told the lads there all about it as well, as they can back me up if so be as they likes.”
“Ay, ay, sir. The boatswain is right in his yarn. He told us all that Charley would never see his sweetheart again,” cried two or three of the men in a chorus.
“It’s very strange, but there are strange things happen at sea that do not happen ashore. But come, lads, who are not on watch, into the cabin, and let us read a verse for the poor lad’s soul.”
Then all who were not wanted on deck followed the old skipper, and with the reverence which sailors are proverbial for, they listened, with uncovered heads, while the master read over the service for the dead, muttering the responses when they came to them, while the wind howled around them, and the planks creaked and groaned dismally.
They all listened as he read and prayed, with the cold water rolling over their boots, as the ship lurched heavily from side to side; prayed, with chattering teeth and hearts heavy as lead, each mourner moved more there, in that swamped cabin, than ever cathedral service, with its mighty organ, could have moved them, for the music of this service was the wailing of waters, half-spent with their late fury, waters wailing over the destruction they had wrought in their insanity, accompanied by the mournful shrieking of that dying blast.
After they had finished, each went forth in silence, the sailors to their forecastle to think it out, the second and third mates into the captain’s cabin to consult, and the two passengers to their ice-starched blankets.
We must all sleep, whether we are miserable, or whether we are happy, or else we would go mad. We lie down and toss about, or sit up and shiver, thinking that sleep has left us. Then, even as we are thinking or wishing for it, we merge into slumber as we do into death, without the consciousness of how it comes upon us.
That evening, as the daylight faded from the sky, and the waves heaved lumpy and black, the conditions were about as unfavorable for sleep as they could possibly have been. Ralf Grimshaw was drenched to the skin, or would have been if his clothes had not frozen stiff upon him. So also were his bed, box, and all it contained, drenched and ice-locked, so that there was no inducement for him to attempt to undress had it been possible, yet so fagged out was he with the excitement and dangers and discomfort, that no sooner had he laid his head down, than he forgot it all and felt warm, for he was asleep.
CHAPTER III
A STRANGE DREAM
“They came and passed, and backward flew,
Like floods of blossoms gliding on.”
Ralf Grimsuaw had a very strange dream on this night after the tempest. He dreamt that the third mate came into his cabin and called upon him to get up as quickly as he could.
As he rose and looked back at the bunk which he had left, he saw his body still lying there as if asleep.
His fellow passenger’s cabin was opposite to his and as he passed the open door he glanced in and saw the little Frenchman lying on his back, yet when he entered the saloon, he found him standing there with one or two of the sailors as if waiting on the mate and him.
They were all ghastly pale, and upon him remarking this and inquiring what was the matter, the mate told him to look at his own face, which he did in the panel mirror nearest to him, when he discerned that he was like the others, white as chalk and bloodless.
“Make haste,” cried the mate impatiently and at the words they all passed on to the deck. Ralf did not ask why they were to make haste, or where they were going, with his last question his curiosity seemed to be at rest, or rather as if he knew all about it.
From the deck, they drifted into the night; he noticed, as they passed along, that the half moon was lying on its back, wallowing amongst dark clouds as the vessel behind them lay wallowing in heaving masses of dark waters, a very faint glitter fell down the sides of the waves, and danced under their feet.
The vessel was out of sight, when from the glittering line of moon-lustre rose the drowned sailor and joined their ranks without a word of explanation on his part, or surprise on theirs, and so in company they went along.
The half moon was still behind them, but now the stars were coming out, more and more luminous from a cloudless sky, while the waves were settling into repose until they only rose and fell with gentle murmurings.
Suddenly a glare of light fell over the waters and faded out again, and then Ralf knew where they were.
The white fringe of surf against the black shadow of the beetling cliffs as they entered Sydney Heads, and then the countless gas jets of the city flashing and rippling over the harbor greeted him like old friends.
After this, he neither looked to right nor left, but passed eagerly on, each familiar street or building being noticed. He no longer saw any of his shipmates, but felt alone amongst the crowds of pedestrians, the cabs on the street, and the brilliantly-lighted shop windows, still open, for he saw from a clock over a watchmaker’s door that it was quite early.
When he reached the house where he had last lived, he did not knock at or open the door, but went in as he had gone over the waves, easily and unconsciously.
He was once more near to those friends whom he had left not so many weeks before, and as he hurried from room to room, memory became active, and from the sight of trifling objects, acted over again hours of pain and pleasure—pain for the pleasure gone, for the pains of the past are pleasures when contrasted with the present joys.
The gleam of sunshine is not nearly so bright when it is falling upon the details at our feet as it appears to be on the broad hillside away in the distance.
The house was not occupied, yet he felt no surprise at this, but lingered over the familiar objects, trying to touch books that he could not feel, for his fingers seemed impalpable.
Then he went into another house, where he knew his friends would most likely be passing the evening, and there he found them all assembled as on the night he had left them.
He entered easily, and stood amongst them, listening to their conversation and trying to join in also, but without success; they were talking about him and wondering where he was, while he stood with them unnoticed.
He could hear their voices and see them quite distinctly as he heard his own voice and saw himself, but he was invisible and his voice had no sound to them; then, for the first time in his life, he began to comprehend the wild yearnings which disembodied spirits may feel if they ever revisit earth.
He tried to touch them, but they were impalpable to him as he was invisible to them, bodies and objects solid enough to look at, but through which his hands passed as if they were pictures cast by a magic lantern upon a vapour cloud—were they only mirages or was he ?—he could not decide which.
One young lady friend sat at the piano and sang, accompanying herself—it was a song which they had often joined in together during the past, so now he passed over to her side to take part with her and turn the music; alas! her fingers passed through his as she carelessly tossed the page over.
He stood upright, for there was no object of furniture in that room, full of realities, upon which he could sit, or against which he could lean, and as he stood amongst them he tried to analyze his emotions of the moment, which predominated—the pain of being there and unable to communicate with them in any way, or the pleasure of being there and seeing them all around him.
So he stood watching and listening to them while he pondered, until a slight touch at his elbow and a word in his ear made him turn about quickly to see his ship companions waiting for him.
In the room? No, that had faded, so had the gas-lit streets of Sydney with the shimmering lights over the harbor and the revolving glare of the South Head lighthouse.
They were speeding high up amongst the sparkling stars with the boundless ocean below them, as Ariel sped.
Passing over ships which ploughed the surge sluggishly and drifted behind like water-logged wrecks, while the mate told their nationality and criticized their build as sailors will.
“That’s a Dutchman down there.” The bulky craft was swaying gently under the faint radiance of the crescent moon. “Let’s see what they are doing aboard.”
At the word they all alighted on to the deck of the Dutchman, near to where the heavily-built skipper was keeping his watch, and stood directly in his way, a compact mass, and joining hands allowed him no room to get past.
Nearer he tramped on, all unconscious of the impediment, steadily he passed through the chain and back again, yet they felt no sensation as he broke through them.
“Come, boys, let’s make haste, or we shall be late,” cried the mate, and once more they were off.
It was a glorious passage, seeming to stand still while the world flew round; at one point Charley the drowned sailor left them, or rather he seemed to drop behind, and after that they altered their course, making towards the land.
There it loomed up sterile and cold, jagged peaks upstarting from the furious waves and yeasty froth, steep black walls at parts, with rugged outlines of snow-covered mountains behind as they skimmed above that long winding strait, and then they were once more aboard of the Christiana.
Ralf Grimshaw and the French officer went in together and arm in arm through the saloon towards their cabin, then at the Frenchman’s door they parted, and while he entered and approached his sleeping body, Ralf waited to see the result of this meeting of the doubles.
There it lay with its double bending over it fora moment, and becoming merged into one before the young fellow could see how the union had taken place.
“I must watch myself more carefully,” he muttered as he went over to his own berth.
Everything was perfectly distinct and as he had left them, the sloppery [1] passages, the closed-in hatches, his box which had broken from its moorings, and still lay on its side half open, with the stiffened contents bulging out in all sorts of odd shapes, his own body peacefully lying in the bunk face upwards, and himself bending over it, wondering which was the best way to get in.
He meant to experiment upon this body, and so had no intention to hurry matters, try the effect of a hand or foot upon the corresponding member before committing himself altogether, as a bather might try the temperature of the ocean before risking a header, and so he very carefully lifted his left leg and letting it down very gently towards the left leg of the prostrate figure—awoke.
Awoke, to find the steward with his broken front teeth standing beside him with a pannikin of steaming black coffee; the cook had at last managed to light the galley fire, and this was the first hot meal for the past thirty hours.
After warming himself with the coffee he went in search of the captain, whom he found in his cabin with his charts and log book beside him, looking gloomy enough and trying to divert himself by work; as he was a favorite with the old man he was made welcome, and very soon unburdened his mind of this strange dream.
“Could you give me some description of the landmarks of that place you passed through before joining the ship?” asked the captain with sudden interest, after he had concluded his story.
“Yes, or better I will sketch it for you, captain,” replied Ralf, tearing a leaf out of his damp pocket book, and with his pencil making a few rugged sketches of some points which had impressed him most strongly.
“Very strange,” muttered the captain, looking over the sketches with a moody eye. ‘‘Have you ever been in this part of the world before?”
“Never, why do you ask?”
“Because, young man, that is Magellan Straits which you have sketched out, and which I ought to know, having gone through it seven times.”
“But why should we take Magellan Straits on our way back from Sydney, seeing that you did not think of taking it this voyage?”
“Because it is the most direct course from Sydney if you wanted to reach the vessel where she now lies, if the weather had been favorable enough, for we have now rounded Cape Horn.”
Hume Nisbet (1849 — 1923)
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1. The word sloppery can be used in several ways. In the context of the story it indicates the area in question was slippery and messy. ↩
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