now, my dear Careless," said he, with unusual gravity, "if you can be serious for a few minutes, I will relate to you this infernal dream, which so preys upon my spirits that I do not feel like myself this morning, and must unburden my mind. I dreamt, then, that I was on the second dog-watch, as you know I shall be this evening; it was between seven and eight bells, the night pitch-dark, with the wind blowing fresh from the northeast, the ship under double-reefed topsails, and foresail close hauled on the starboard tack, running at the rate of five knots as I had found upon heaving the log. Suddenly the sea became like one sheet of flame; its appearance was awfully grand; the head of every wave, as it curled over and broke, diffused itself in broad streaks and flashes of blue and white flame; and I involuntarily repeated to myself the two lines of that singular, soul-freezing rhapsody, the 'Ancient Mariner,' which, though descriptive of a very different state of the ocean from that now presented to my imagination, I felt to be most applicable to what I saw before me —
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white;
and then, referring to the two preceding lines of the stanzas —
About, about, in reel and rout,
The death-fires danced at night.
For that strangely wild and beautiful poem had taken a powerful hold on my sleeping fancy. I asked myself, with a shudder, can there be 'death-fires?' And it seemed that the question uttered half aloud, had no sooner passed my lips, than it received its answer in a most strange and fearful manner; for a voice, like no human voice that I ever yet heard, shrieked out, in a tone of horror and distress, that made my blood run cold, 'Ship a-hoy – ship a-hoy!' I turned toward the lee quarter, whence the voice came; and, jumping on a carronade-slide, I saw the body of a man appearing out of the sea, from the waist upward, of gigantic size, and of most forbidding – and at the same time woeful – countenance. His body appeared covered with scales, like that of a fish, which reflected the ghastly phosphoric light of the waters in radiating hues of green and gold, and purple and violet. His ample jaws, which opened from ear to ear, and which were furnished with a triple row of saw-shaped teeth, like those of a shark, were fringed with a thick curled beard and mustache, of pale sea-green, which fell in wavy masses, mingling with long elf-locks of the same sickly hue, over his broad breast and shoulders; his deep sunk eyes flashed out with a strange unearthly light from beneath thick, overhanging eyebrows of that self-same sea-green hue, and his head was surrounded and surmounted with a waving diadem of 'green, and blue and white' flames, flashing upward, and radiating sideways, and curling over their waving tops, so as to ape the exact form of ostrich feathers. Awful as the figure was, and though it made my flesh creep, yet dreaming as I was, I felt conscious that there was something of the ridiculous attached to the bizarrerie of its appearance. You know my vein, Careless, and will give me credit for a true exposition of my feelings, when I tell you that, though in a most awful funk, I could not help adopting the words of Trinculo, and asking myself, half aloud,
What have we here – a man or a fish?
I had not, till that moment, noticed the quarter-master of the watch, a fine old weather-beaten seaman, who stood close to my side, and was, like myself, attentively watching the movements of the strange demon-like merman, who continued to follow the ship within a few fathoms of the lee quarter-gallery, with a continual bowing or nodding motion of the head, which caused his plumes of livid flame to flash and corruscate, so that, to my eyes, they appeared to assume various forms of terror, as of 'fiery flying serpents,' entwining his temples and thence shooting upward, hissing and protruding their forked tongues, and lashing the air with their wings and tails of flame; and then, again, they subsided as before into the form of gracefully-curling ostrich plumes; meanwhile he kept opening his terrific jaws, from which issued a thin blue luminous vapor, as if in act to speak, but uttered no audible sound, except that every now and then he would wring his huge hands, which appeared to be webbed to the second joint of the fingers, like the feet of a water fowl, and furnished with long, crooked nails like an eagle's claws, and utter a wailing shriek so like the cry of a drowning man, that it nearly drove me mad to hear it, and seemed to freeze my very blood in my veins. Whether old Bitts, the quarter-master, had really heard me quote the words of Trinculo, or whether, as all things seem to work by supernatural influences in dreams, he had divined my question by intuition, I know not, but he answered me at once.
"'No, sir; believe an old sailor, that 'ere critter is neither man nor fish; it is somebody far more terrible-like, and one that few living sailors have ever set eyes on, though, mayhap, I may have seen him before; mayhap, d'ye see, I can't tell when nor where, nor whether it were sleeping or waking; howsomedever, be that as it will, I knows him well enough, for sure that 'ere's old Davy himself – old Davy Jones – he's come for some poor fellow's soul on board this here ship; and if you wants to get rid of him, you'd better go down at once, and call the captain up, that he may tell him to take what he wants and be off; for, till that's done, he'll keep alongside the ship, and if he's kept too long waiting, there's no saying but he may send a hurricane which may sweep the Old Lucifer and all her officers and crew, away down into his locker.'
"This hint was no sooner given, than I thought I went down into the captain's cabin, where I found Captain Dure seated at the cabin-table, just under the swinging lamp, as pale as death, and trembling from head to foot like an aspen-leaf.
"'Please, sir,' I said, touching my hat, as in duty bound, 'Davy Jones has come alongside, and is waiting for somebody's soul; will you please to come on deck, and tell him to take what he wants?'
"'I know it,' said the captain, who seemed utterly unnerved with terror, while the presence of the unearthly visitant seemed to
– harrow up his soul, freeze his young blood;
Make his two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres;
His knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
"'I had a glimpse of him,' continued he, 'out of the quarter-gallery window, and that's enough for me. Let the officer of the watch, or the first lieutenant, tell him to take what he wants, and get rid of him.'
"Now, it seemed to me in my dream that I was dreadfully annoyed at the conduct of the captain in shrinking in such a dastardly manner from his duty; for, from the moment that Bitts had informed me who the stranger was and what he required, I had gone down and reported his advent to the skipper, with as much coolness and unconcern as I should have done the coming alongside of the admiral or any other great personage, and all my terror seemed, for the time, to have vanished as soon as the strange vision became connected with matters of routine or ship's duty. I, therefore, addressed the captain again, as it seemed to me, in a tone more authoritative than respectful: 'But, sir, you must come on deck; for old Bill Bitts says that Davy Jones will hearken to nobody but the captain or commander of the ship for the time being, and he knows Davy of old; and says, that if you don't come up on deck soon and let him go, the old fellow will send a hurricane that will blow the Old Lucifer out of the water, and that we shall find ourselves all, men and officers, down in Davy Jones's locker before you can say Jack Robinson. And I can tell you, sir, that the sky looks very ugly to windward.'
"'Well, Ralph, my boy!' said the captain, apparently quite convinced by my eloquent speech, which seemed to go down capitally in my dream, though I guess I should soon be looking out for squalls at the main-top-gallant-mast head, if I were to venture to address such a cavalier harangue to the skipper in waking earnest. 'Well, Ralph, my boy! give me your arm, and we'll go on deck, and give old Davy his due, since it must be so.' And with my assistance the captain mounted the companion-ladder, still trembling in every limb.
"As soon as we came on deck, I led him over to the lee side of the quarter-deck, and begged him to mount the carronade slide, and give his unwelcome visitor the congé
