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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 22, 1892)
THE HESPERIAN II Ml rll something of the feeling Unit moved us. lie had mounted the dock again, and ho paced restlessly to and fro upon the un steady bridge, his hands locked behind his back. I had no fear of anything real. A real peril to face would havo been welcome. It was the iinhwxon, the unseen, that terri fied us. Old sailors as we were, often as wo had felt that great sea-loneliness that makes men mad, yet never had any of us experienced such a feeling as came upon us with that sunset. There was the sense of a presence, of a hostile, powerful volition lurking in the black sea spaces about us, a sense that our ship was not the sole possessor of that wide tract of mist. In those over-chanjnnK, dimly-luminous stretches there waited this power, waited only till the last red retlection of the sun had died from the clouds, to descend upon us and take us unto his deadly irresistible domination. You havo been, at some time, alone, in a strange place, in ab solute midnight darkness; you havo sat up right in the dead midnight silence, with the sense of uncanny terrifying presences stirring in every corner; you have felt the very dark ness, perhaps, take form and malign per sonality, and close sullenly about you with threatening persistence till you sprang up for light, or hid your face and sought to drown fear in the dense oblivion of slumber. We, a little shipful of men, were alone upon a cloudy, wide wilderness of sea, with no hope or help on hand, save in the coming of day, and heaven only might know if, out of the dark enrooting of that night we should again emerge into the light of morning. Panic everywhere! Inside the lighted cabin it came the stagnant oppression of the dank, starless darkness, and our laughter was hushed in its beginning, and wo drew close, and whispered, and shuddered. On deck it was worse. The air seemed foul with dense and sulphurous corruption, as if the sea itself rotted with putric exhalations. There was not a breath of wind save what our pusu.gc raised as we rushed on into the dark. All stories wo had over heard of strange and monstrous things of the Bea, camo into our minds and crowded them with unreasoning anticipation, till it sccMned that wo could never face tho night-long suspense, that it would bo bettor, almost, to plunge then and there into tho sea and end it; and yet wo shrank from tho black water spotted with morbid phosphorescence, beneath which might hide we know not what writhing, un formed horrors. I stood with ono of the sailors at the foot of tho foremast, holding by the belaying pins; for now the growing swell swung the ship high in swift, long, breathless soarings, from which wo would swoon again into deep hollows where the air was stagnant and the blue iire of the phosphorus burned like writhing serpents along the wavering ridges of the seas. There were no stars. We could not tell how far above us stretched the dense mist; through which at times there flushed a soundless blue spread of sultry lightning, faintly reflected on the nearer surface of tho sea. Wo did not speak, 1 and the sailor by my side. The silence was absolute, except for tho roar, at long intervals, of tho parted seas thundering from tho ship's bows, and the croak of her beams and spars as she swung up a dizzy sea-slopo. Suddenly, as we stood there, there came from the dark of the forecastle a cry a cry of absolute terror tho cry of a man whose whole self-control is shattered by some ap parition of incarnate horror. I caught the sailor's hand, and wo held fast together looking in each other's faces by the reflected gleam of tho white upturned swathe of sea. Then, with a second cry, a figure sprang from tho dark door of tho forecastle and ran towards us, stumbling with his fright and with the sidelong hoavo of the ship. I"tn dim light wo saw that ho was ono of tho negroes. He caught at my knees and clung to me, frantically panting, like a man who has run for his life. "Wo were no longer