The fifth night was calm and beautiful--too calm for us, as the wind had almost died away, and a clear moonlight was shining on the silent sea, when a singular and startling event occurred--one that filled us with vague terror and awe.
Six of us, faint, worn, and half-asleep, were tugging monotonously at our oars; four slept in the bottom of the boat, and Reeves was steering by a star, while honest Cuffy Snowball, whose native good-humour and cheerfulness even the horrors of our situation could not repress, was playing sweetly on his violin, and, to keep our spirits from sinking, sang a negro song which he had picked up during the years of his slavery in South Carolina--and sung it while his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth with thirst. I leave the reader to judge how in such a time and place the soft melody and grotesque pathos of a hackneyed popular air sounded in the ears of the starving and the dying!
"All round de leetle farm I wandered, When I was young; Den my 'appy days I squandered, Many de songs I sung.
"When I was playing wid my brudder, 'Appy was I; Oh take me to my kind old mudder, Dere let me lib and die.
"All the world am sad and dreary, Ebberywhere I roam; Oh darkies, how my 'art grows weary, Far from de old folks at home!"
The calmness of the night, the sickness of my heart, the weakness of my limbs, and the sweetness of the violin as its notes floated far over the moonlit sea, together with the monotonous sound of the oars, made me fall into a waking doze--yet I still tugged mechanically on, though dreaming.
At times I imagined that I was in a dense fog off the harbour mouth of St. John. I heard the booming of the fog-guns from the battery on the mountains, though they sounded faint and far off. Then followed the welcome voice of the gunner on the low rocky point of Fort Amherst, challenging as usual--
I strove to answer as we ran in through the Narrows, but my tongue refused its office.
Again, I was at my desk, engrossing in giant ledgers, with the snorting voice of old Uriah Skrew grating on my ear. Anon I was in my father's rose-covered villa at Peckham--in London, amid the roar and gaiety of its streets--its evening bustle and lights--in the theatre--at the opera--galloping out of town on the Derby-day. Then I was in a silent forest--but lo!