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- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.534Z
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- 2199
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- CHAPTER XX.
Noises And Portents
I longed for day. For however now inclined to believe that the
brigantine was untenanted, I desired the light of the sun to place that
fact beyond a misgiving.
Now, having observed, previous to boarding the vessel, that she lay
rather low in the water, I thought proper to sound the well. But there
being no line-and-sinker at hand, I sent Jarl to hunt them up in the
arm-chest on the quarter-deck, where doubtless they must be kept.
Meanwhile I searched for the “breaks,” or pump-handles, which, as it
turned out, could not have been very recently used; for they were found
lashed up and down to the main-mast.
Suddenly Jarl came running toward me, whispering that all doubt was
dispelled;—there were spirits on board, to a dead certainty. He had
overheard a supernatural sneeze. But by this time I was all but
convinced, that we were alone in the brigantine. Since, if otherwise, I
could assign no earthly reason for the crew’s hiding away from a couple
of sailors, whom, were they so minded, they might easily have mastered.
And furthermore, this alleged disturbance of the atmosphere aloft by a
sneeze, Jarl averred to have taken place in the main-top; directly
underneath which I was all this time standing, and had heard nothing.
So complimenting my good Viking upon the exceeding delicacy of his
auriculars, I bade him trouble himself no more with his piratical
ghosts and goblins, which existed nowhere but in his own imagination.
Not finding the line-and-sinker, with the spare end of a bowline we
rigged a substitute; and sounding the well, found nothing to excite our
alarm. Under certain circumstances, however, this sounding a ship’s
well is a nervous sort of business enough. ’Tis like feeling your own
pulse in the last stage of a fever.
At the Skyeman’s suggestion, we now proceeded to throw round the
brigantine’s head on the other tack. For until daylight we desired to
alter the vessel’s position as little as possible, fearful of coming
unawares upon reefs.
And here be it said, that for all his superstitious misgivings about
the brigantine; his imputing to her something equivalent to a purely
phantom-like nature, honest Jarl was nevertheless exceedingly downright
and practical in all hints and proceedings concerning her. Wherein, he
resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley—truly, one of your
lords spiritual—who, metaphysically speaking, holding all objects to be
mere optical delusions, was, notwith- standing, extremely
matter-of-fact in all matters touching matter itself. Besides being
pervious to the points of pins, and possessing a palate capable of
appreciating plum-puddings:—which sentence reads off like a pattering
of hailstones.
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