C&T Publications Eye On Fine Art Photography - October 2014 | Page 87

alive, and all that. But I have always felt somehow that besides being a steaming machine or a sailing machine for carrying weights, a vessel at sea
is a sensitive instrument, and a means of communication between nature and man, and most particularly the man at the wheel, if she is steered by
hand. She takes her impressions directly from wind and sea, tide and stream, and transmits them to the man's hand, just as the wireless telegraphy
picks up the interrupted currents aloft and turns them out below in the form of a message.
You see what I am driving at; I felt that something started in the cupboard, and I felt it so vividly that I heard it, though there may have' been
nothing to hear, and the sound inside my head waked me suddenly. But I really heard the other noise. It was as if it were muffled inside a box, as far
away as if it came through a long-distance telephone; and yet I knew that it was inside the cupboard near the head of my bed. My hair did not bristle
and my blood did not run cold that time. I simply resented being waked up by something that had no business to make a noise, any more than a
pencil should rattle in the drawer of my cabin table on board ship. For I did not understand; I just supposed that the cupboard had some
communication with the outside air, and that the wind had got in and was moaning through it with a sort of very faint screech. I struck a light and
looked at my watch, and it was seventeen minutes past three. Then I turned over and went to sleep on my right ear. That's my good one; I'm pretty
deaf with the other, for I struck the water with it when I was a lad in diving from the fore-topsail yard. Silly thing to do, it was, but the result is very
convenient when I want to go to sleep when there's a noise.
That was the first night, and the same thing happened again and several times afterwards, but not regularly, though it was always at the same time,
to a second; perhaps I was sometimes sleeping on my good ear, and sometimes not. I overhauled the cupboard and there was no way by which the
wind could get in, or anything else, for the door makes a good fit, having been meant to keep out moths, I suppose; Mrs. Pratt must have kept her
winter things in it, for it still smells of camphor and turpentine.
After about a fortnight I had had enough of the noises. So far I had said to myself that it would be silly to yield to it and take the skull out of the
room. Things always look differently by daylight, don't they? But the voice grew louder--I suppose one may call it a voice--and it got inside my
deaf ear, too, one night. I realized that when I was wide awake, for my good ear was jammed down on the pillow, and I ought not to have heard a
foghorn in that position. But I heard that, and it made me lose my temper, unless it scared me, for sometimes the two are not far apart. I struck a
light and got up, and I opened the cupboard, grabbed the bandbox and threw it out of the window, as far as I could.
Then my hair stood on end. The thing screamed in the air, like a shell from a twelve-inch gun. It fell on the other side of the road. The night was
very dark, and I could not see it fall, but I know it fell beyond the road The window is just over the front door, it's fifteen yards to the fence, more or
less, and the road is ten yards wide. There's a thick-set hedge beyond, along the glebe that belongs to the vicarage.
I did not sleep much more than night. It was not more than half an hour after I had thrown the bandbox out when I heard a shriek outside--like what
we've had tonight, but worse, more despairing, I should call it; and it may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that the screams came
nearer and nearer each time. I lit a pipe, and walked up and down for a bit, and then took a book and sat up reading, but I'll be hanged if I can
remember what I read nor even what the book was, for every now and then a shriek came up that would have made a dead man turn in his coffin.
A little before dawn someone knocked at the front door. There was no mistaking that for anything else, and I opened my window and looked down,
for I guessed that someone wanted the doctor, supposing that the new man had taken Luke's house. It was rather a relief to hear a human knock after
that awful noise.
You cannot see the door from above, owing to the little porch. The knocking came again, and I called out, asking who was there, but nobody
answered, though the knock was repeated. I sang out again, and said that the doctor did not live here any longer. There was no answer, but it
occurred to me that it might be some old countryman who was stone deaf. So I took my candle and went down to open the door. Upon my word, I
was not thinking of the thing yet, and I had almost forgotten the other noises. I went down convinced that I should find somebody outside, on the
doorstep, with a message. I set the candle on the hall table, so that the wind should not blow it out when I opened. While I was drawing the oldfashioned bolt I heard the knocking again. It was not loud, and it had a queer, hollow sound, now that I was close to it, I remember, but I certainly
thought it was made by some person who wanted to get in.
It wasn't. There was nobody there, but as I opened the door inward, standing a little on one side, so as to see out at once, something rolled across the
threshold and stopped against my foot.
I drew back as I felt it, for I knew what it was before I looked down. I cannot tell you how I knew, and it seemed unreasonable, for I am still quite
sure that I had thrown it across the road. It's a French window, that opens wide, and I got a good swing when I flung it out. Besides, when I went out
early in the morning, I found the bandbox beyond the thick hedge.
You may think it opened when I threw it, and that the skull dropped out; but that's impossible, for nobody could throw an empty cardboard box so
far. It's out of the question; you might as well try to fling a ball of paper twenty-five yards, or a blown bird's egg.
To go back, I shut a