Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'You did well last night to take my advice,' said he, 'and if you
would, I should like to be with you often on the voyage, for the love of
adventure alone.' Finishing what he had to say, he again doffed his cap
and disappeared as mysteriously as he came, returning, I suppose, to
the phantom Pinta. I awoke much refreshed, and with the feeling that
I had been in the presence of a friend and a seaman of vast experience.
I gathered up my clothes, which by this time were dry, then, by inspira-
tion, I threw overboard all the plums in the vessel.'
10
A sceptic might be disposed to dismiss all this talk of a phantom
helmsman as a sailor's yarn. Only in works of imagination do dead
crewmen work ships:
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen -
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
