CHAPTER VI
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
24 July. Whitby.-Lucy met me at the station, looking
sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the
house at the Crescent in which they have rooms. This is a
lovely place . The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep
valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour.
Agreat viaduct runs across, with high piers, through which
the view seems somehow further away than it really is . The
valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you
are on the high land on either side you look right across it,
unless you are near enough to see down. The houses of the
old town-the side away from us-are all red- roofed , and
seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures
we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of
Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which
is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built
up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size ,
and full of beautiful and romantic bits ; there is a legend
that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it
and the town there is another church, the parish one, round
which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to
my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over
the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the
bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out
into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that
part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves
have been destroyed. In one place part of the stonework of
the graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below.
There are walks, with seats beside them, through the
churchyard ; and people go and sit there all day long look-
ing at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze. I shall
come and sit here very often myself and work. Indeed, I
6970
DRACULA
am writing now with my book on my knee, and listening to
the talk of three old men who are sitting beside me. They
seem to do nothing all day but sit up here and talk.
The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one
long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve
outwards at the end of it , in the middle of which is a light-
house. A heavy sea-wall runs along outside of it. On the
near side, the sea-wall makes an elbow crooked inversely,
and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two piers
there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then
suddenly widens.
It is nice at high water ; but when the tide is out it shoals
away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the
Esk, running between banks of sand, with rocks here and
there. Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about
half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs .
straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end
of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather,
and sends in a mournful sound on the wind. They have a
legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at
sea. I must ask the old man about this ; he is coming this
way.
He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his
face is all gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He
tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a
sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was
fought. He is , I am afraid, a very sceptical person, for
when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White
Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely : -
" I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things
be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but
I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well
for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice
young lady like you. Them feet - folks from York and Leeds
that be always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea an'
lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder
masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them-even the
newspapers, which is full of fool-talk. " I thought he would
be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I
asked him if he would mind telling me something aboutMINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 71
the whale- fishing in the old days . He was just settling him-
self to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he
laboured to get up, and said : -
"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-
daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is
ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for
there be a many of ' em ; an' , miss, I lack belly- timber sairly
by the clock."
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well
as he could, down the steps . The steps are a great feature
on the place. They lead from the town up to the church,
there are hundreds of them-I do not know how many-
and they wind up in a delicate curve ; the slope is so gentle
that a horse could easily walk up and down them. I think
they must originally have had something to do with the
abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out visiting with her
mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did not go .
They will be home by this.
I August. I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and
we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the
two others who always come and join him. He is evidently
the Sir Oracle of them , and I should think must have been
in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit
anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can't out-argue
them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agree-
ment with his views. Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in
her white lawn frock ; she has got a beautiful colour since
she has been here . I noticed that the old men did not lose
any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat
down. She is so sweet with old people ; I think they all fell
in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed
and did not contradict her, but gave me double share in-
stead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went
off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember
it and put it down : -
"It be all fool- talk, lock, stock, and barrel ; that's what it
be, an' nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an'
barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set
bairns an' dizzy women a- belderin'. They be nowt but air-1
72 DRACULA
blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all in-
vented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway
touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do
somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me fret-
ful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with
printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does
want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all
around you in what airt ye will ; all them steans, holdin' up
their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant—
simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on
them, ' Here lies the body' or ' Sacred to the memory' wrote
on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't
no bodies at all ; an' the memories of them bean't cared a
pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them,
nothin' but lies of one kind or another ! My gog, but it'll be
a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they
come tumblin' up in their death- sarks, all jouped together
an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how
good they was ; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin' , with
their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea
that they can't even keep their grup o' them."
I could see from the old fellow's self - satisfied air and
the way in which he looked round for the approval of his
cronies that he was "showing off," so I put in a word to
keep him going : -
"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these
tombstones are not all wrong? "
" Yabblins ! There may be a poorish few not wrong,
savin' where they make out the people too good ; for there
be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it
be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you
here ; you come here a stranger, an' you see this kirk-
garth." I nodded , for I thought it better to assent, though
I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had some-
thing to do with the church. He went on : "And you con-
sate that all these steans be aboon folk that be happed here,
snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be just where
the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these lay- beds
that be toom as old Dun's ' bacca-box on Friday night." He
nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "AndMINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 73
my gog! how could they be otherwise ? Look at that one,
the aftest abaft the bier-bank : read it ! " I went over and
read : -
" Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pi-
rates off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, æt . 30." When I
came back Mr. Swales went on :—
" Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here !
Murdered off the coast of Andres ! an' you consated his
body lay under ! Why, I could name ye a dozen whose
bones lie in the Greenland seas above" -he pointed north-
wards "or where the currents may have drifted them.
There be the steans around ye. Ye can, with your young
eyes, read the small-print of the lies from here. This
Braithwaite Lowrey-I knew his father, lost in the Lively
off Greenland in '20 ; or Andrew Woodhouse, drowned in
the same seas in 1777 ; or John Paxton, drowned off Cape
Farewell a year later ; or old John Rawlings, whose grand-
father sailed with me, drowned in the Gulf of Finland in
'50. Do ye think that all these men will have to make a
rush to Whitby when the trumpet sounds ? I have me
antherums aboot it ! I tell ye that when they got here they'd
be jommlin' an' jostlin' one another that way that it ' ud be
a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one
another from daylight to dark, an' tryin ' to tie up our cuts
by the light of the aurora borealis. " This was evidently
local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his
cronies joined in with gusto.
"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you
start on the assumption that all the poor people, or their
spirits, will have to take their tombstones with them on the
Day of Judgment. Do you think that will be really neces-
sary ? "
" Well, what else be they tombstones for ? Answer me
that, miss !"
" To please their relatives , I suppose. "
" To please their relatives, you suppose !" This he said
with intense scorn. "How will it pleasure their relatives to
know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in
the place knows that they be lies ? " He pointed to a stone
at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on which74 DRACULA
the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. "Read the
lies on that thruff- stean, " he said . The letters were upside
down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite
to them, so she leant over and read :-
"Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in
the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873 , fall-
ing from the rocks at Kettleness , This tomb was erected
by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. ' He
was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. '
Really, Mr. Swales, I don't see anything very funny in
that !" She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat
severely.
"Ye don't see aught funny ! Ha ! ha ! But that's because
ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that
hated him because he was acrewk'd—a regular lamiter he
was- -an' he hated her so that he committed suicide in order
that she mightn't get an insurance she put on his life. He
blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that
they had for scarin' the crows with. 'Twarn't for crows
then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him . That's
the way he fell off the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glori-
ous resurrection, I've often heard him say masel' that he
hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that
she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle
where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate" —he ham-
mered it with his stick as he spoke—" a pack of lies ? and
won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin'
up the grees with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and
asks it to be took as evidence !"
I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conver-
sation as she said, rising up :-
"Oh, why did you tell us of this ? It is my favourite seat,
and I cannot leave it ; and now I find I must go on sitting
over the grave of a suicide."
"That won't harm ye, my pretty ; an' it may make poor
Geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap.
That won't hurt ye. Why, I've sat here off an' on for nigh
twenty years past, an' it hasn't done me no harm. Don't ye
fash about them as lies under ye , or that doesn' lie there
either ! It'll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye seeMINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 75
the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as
a stubble-field . There's the clock, an' I must gang. My
service to ye, ladies !" And off he hobbled.
Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before
us that we took hands as we sat ; and she told me all over
again about Arthur and their coming marriage. That made
me just a little heart- sick, for I haven't heard from Jona-
than for a whole month.
The same day. I came up here alone, for I.am very sad.
There was no letter for me. I hope there cannot be any-
thing the matter with Jonathan. The clock has just struck
nine. I see the lights scattered all over the town, sometimes
in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly ; they
run right up the Esk and die away in the curve of the val-
ley. To my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof
of the old house next the abbey. The sheep and lambs are
bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a clat-
ter of a donkey's hoofs up the paved road below. The band
on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and fur-
ther along the quay there is a Salvation Army meeting in a
back street. Neither of the bands hears the other, but up
here I hear and see them both. I wonder where Jonathan
is and if he is thinking of me ! I wish he were here.
Dr. Seward's Diary.
5 June. The case of Renfield grows more interesting
the more I get to understand the man. He has certain
qualities very largely developed ; selfishness , secrecy, and
purpose. I wish I could get at what is the object of the lat-
ter. He seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but
what it is I do not know. His redeeming quality is a love
of animals, though, indeed , he has such curious turns in it
that I sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. His
pets are of odd sorts. Just now his hobby is catching flies .
He has at present such a quantity that I have had myself to
expostulate. To my astonishment, he did not break out into
a fury, as I expected, but took the matter in simple serious-
ness. He thought for a moment, and then said : "May I76 DRACULA
have three days ? I shall clear them away. " Of course, I
said that would do. I must watch him.
18 June. He has turned his mind now to spiders, and
has got several very big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding
them with his flies, and the number of the latter is becom-
ing sensibly diminished, although he has used half his food
in attracting more flies from outside to his room.
I July.--His spiders are now becoming as great a nui-
sance as his flies , and to-day I told him that he must get rid
of them. He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must
clear out some of them, at all events. He cheerfully
acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same time as before
for reduction. He disgusted me much while with him, for
when a horrid blow-fly, bloated with some carrion food,
buzzed into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a
few moments between his finger and thumb, and, before I
knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and ate
it. I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was
very good and very wholesome ; that it was life, strong life ,
and gave life to him. This gave me an idea, or the rudiment
of one. I must watch how he gets rid of his spiders. He has
evidently some deep problem in his mind, for he keeps a
little note-book in which he is always jotting down some-
thing. Whole pages of it are filled with masses of figures,
generally single numbers added up in batches, and then the
totals added in batches again, as though he were "focus-
sing" some account, as the auditors put it.
8July. There is a method in his madness, and the rudi-
mentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole
idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration ! you will
have to give the wall to your conscious brother. I kept away
from my friend for a few days, so that I might notice if
there were any change. Things remain as they were except
that he has parted with some of his pets and got a new one.
He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already par-
tially tamed it . His means of taming is simple, for already
the spiders have diminished . Those that do remain, how-
1MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 77
ever, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by tempt-
ing them with his food.
19 July. We are progressing. My friend has now at
whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are al-
most obliterated. When I came in he ran to me and said he
wanted to ask me a great favour-a very, very great fav-
our ; and as he spoke he fawned on me like a dog. I asked
him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his
voice and bearing : -
"A kitten, a nice little, sleek playful kitten, that I can
play with, and teach, and feed-and feed-and feed !" I
was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how
his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did
not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be
wiped out in the same manner as the flies and the spiders ;
so I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would
not rather have a cat than a kitten. His eagerness betrayed
him as he answered : -
"Oh, yes, I would like a cat ! I only asked for a kitten
lest you should refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a
kitten, would they ?" I shook my head, and said that at
present I feared it would not be possible, but that I would
see about it. His face fell, and I could see a warning of
danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look
which meant killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal
maniac. I shall test him with his present craving and see
how it will work out ; then I shall know more.
10 p.m.—I have visited him again and found him sitting
in a corner brooding. When I came in he threw himself on
his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat ;
that his salvation depended upon it. I was firm, however,
and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went
without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the
corner where I had found him. I shall see him in the morn-
ing early.
20 July. Visited Renfield very early, before the attend-
ant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune.78 DRACULA
He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in
the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly-catching
again ; and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. I
looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked
him where they were. He replied , without turning round,
that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers
about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood . I said
nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if
there were anything odd about him during the day.
II a. m. —The attendant has just been to me to say that
Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot
of feathers. "My belief is, doctor, " he said, "that he has
eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw ! "
II p. m. -I gave Renfield a strong opiate to-night,
enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocket-
book to look at it. The thought that has been buzzing about
my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved . My
homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind . I shall have to in-
vent a new classification for him, and call him a zoöpha-
gous (life-eating ) maniac ; what he desires is to absorb as
many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve
it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider
and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat
the many birds. What would have been his later steps ? It
would almost be worth while to complete the experiment.
It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men
sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results to-day !
Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital
aspect-the knowledge of the brain ? Had I even the secret
of one such mind-did I hold the key to the fancy of even
one lunatic-I might advance my own branch of science to
a pitch compared with which Burdon- Sanderson's physi-
ology or Ferrier's brain-knowledge would be as nothing.
If only there were a sufficient cause ! I must not think too
much of this, or I may be tempted ; a good cause might
turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an excep-
tional brain, congenitally?
How well the man reasoned ; lunatics always do withinMINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 79
their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a
man, or if at only one. He has closed the account most ac-
curately, and to -day begun a new record . How many of us
begin a new record with each day of our lives ?
To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended
with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record.
So it will be until the Great Recorder sums me up and
closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss.
Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be
angry with my friend whose happiness is yours ; but I
must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! work!
If I only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad
friend there—a good, unselfish cause to make me work-
that would be indeed happiness.
Mina Murray's Journal.
26 July. -I am anxious, and it soothes me to express
myself here ; it is like whispering to one's self and listening
at the same time. And there is also something about the
shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I
am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not
heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very con-
cerned ; but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always
so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking
him if he had heard , and he said the enclosed had just been
received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and
says that he is just starting for home. That is not like
Jonathan ; I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.
Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well , has lately taken to
her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has
spoken to me about it , and we have decided that I am to
lock the door of our room every night. Mrs. Westenra has
got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of
houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly
wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all
over the place. Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about
Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy's father, had
the same habit ; that he would get up in the night and dress
himself and go out, if he were not stopped. Lucy is to be80 DRACULA
married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her
dresses and how her house is to be arranged. I sympathise
with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start
in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make
both ends meet. Mr. Holmwood-he is the Hon. Arthur
Holmwood, only son of Lord Godalming-is coming up
here very shortly-as soon as he can leave town, for his
father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is counting
the moments till he comes. She wants to take him up to the
seat on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of
Whitby. I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her ; she
will be all right when he arrives.
27 July. No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite
uneasy about him, though why I should I do not know ; but
I do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line.
Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened
by her moving about the room. Fortunately, the weather is
so hot that she cannot get cold ; but still the anxiety and
the perpetually being wakened is beginning to tell on me,
and I am getting nervous and wakeful myself . Thank God,
Lucy's health keeps up. Mr. Holmwood has been suddenly
called to Ring to see his father, who has been taken seri-
ously ill. Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but
it does not touch her looks ; she is a trifle stouter, and her
cheeks are a lovely rose- pink . She has lost that anæmic look
which she had. I pray it will all last .
3 August. -Another week gone, and no news from Jona-
than, not even to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard .
Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written.
I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not sat-
isfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing.
There is no mistake of that. Lucy has not walked much in
her sleep the last week, but there is an odd concentration
about her which I do not understand ; even in her sleep she
seems to be watching me. She tries the door, and finding it
locked, goes about the room searching for the key.
6 August.-Another three days, and no news. This sus-
pense is getting dreadful . If I only knew where to write toMINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 81
or where to go to , I should feel easier ; but no one has
heard a word of Jonathan since that last letter. I must only
pray to God for patience. Lucy is more excitable than ever,
but is otherwise well. Last night was very threatening, and
the fishermen say that we are in for a storm . I must try to
watch it and learn the weather signs. To-day is a grey day,
and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over
Kettleness. Everything is grey-except the green grass,
which seems like emerald amongst it ; grey earthy rock ;
grey clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang
over the grey_sea, into which the sand-points stretch like
grey fingers. The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and
the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drift-
ing.inland. The horizon is lost in a grey mist. All is vast-
ness ; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks , and there is
a "brool" over the sea that sounds like some presage of
doom . Dark figures are on the beach here and there, some-
times half shrouded in the mist, and seem " men like trees
walking." The fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise
and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the har-
bour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old Mr. Swales.
He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way
he lifts his hat, that he wants to talk. · · •
I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old
man. When he sat down beside me, he said in a very gen-
tle way :
"I want to say something to you, miss. " I could see he
was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in
mine and asked him to speak fully ; so he said, leaving his
hand in mine : -
"I'm afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by
all the wicked things I've been sayin' about the dead, and
such like, for weeks past ; but I didn't mean them, and I
want ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks
that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal,
don't altogether like to think of it, and we don't want to
feel scart of it ; an' that's why I've took to makin' light of
it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit . But, Lord love
ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin' , not a bit ; only I don't82 DRACULA
· want to die if I can help it . My time must be nigh at hand
now, for I be aud, and a hundred years is too much for
any man to expect ; and I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man
is already whettin' his scythe. Ye see, I can't get out o' the
habit of caffin' about it all at once ; the chafts will wag as
they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of Death will
sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an' greet, my
deary! "-for he saw that I was crying- "if he should
come this very night I'd not refuse to answer his call. For
life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what
we're doin' ; and death be all that we can rightly depend
on. But I'm content, for it's comin' to me, my deary, and
comin' quick. It may be comin' while we be lookin' and
wonderin' . May be it's in that wind out over the sea that's
bringin' with it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad
hearts. Look ! look ! " he cried suddenly. "There's some-
thing in that wind and in the hoast beyont that sounds, and
looks, and tastes, and smells like death. It's in the air ; I
feel it comin' . Lord, make me answer cheerful when my
call comes !" He held up his arms devoutly, and raised
his hat. His mouth moved as though he were praying.
After a few minutes' silence, he got up, shook hands with
me, and blessed me, and said good- bye, and hobbled off.
It all touched me, and upset me very much.
I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his
spy-glass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as
he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange
ship.
"I can't make her out," he said ; " she's a Russian, by the
look of her ; but she's knocking about in the queerest way.
She doesn't know her mind a bit ; she seems to see the
storm coming, but can't decide whether to run up north in
the open, or to put in here. Look there again ! She is
steered mighty strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand
on the wheel ; changes about with every puff of wind.
We'll hear more of her before this time to-morrow."