The Two Figures above the Drifting Boat

I must have slept some hours before my dream commenced. I thought my eyes opened, and that the top of the cabin had become transparent, and I could see two dark figures floating in the air about the funnel. They appeared to be in earnest converse, pointing towards the mouth of the river and then at the ropes by which the boat was moored ; at last they turned to each other, and after some gestures they seemed to have resolved upon a plan of action, and each floated in the air, one to the stem and the other to the stern, holding out a forefinger, and at the same moment each forefinger touched a rope and instantly burned it like a red-hot iron. The boat thus freed at once drifted with the rapid ebb, first passed the quay under the suspension bridge, then under the iron bridge, then across the broad waters of Braydon towards Yarmouth bridge, then down between the long lines of shipping there. All this time two figures were floating in the air above the boat, and both giving forth musical sounds. I thought I tried to break the spell upon me and wake my companion, for I knew that if we drifted out to sea we should certainly be swamped crossing the bar, but I lay there helpless. My eyes apparently saw every familiar object along the two and a half miles to the sea. At last we passed Southtown, then the village of Gorleston, and we came to the sharp last turn of the river where the swift waters were hurrying and tumbling over the bar to the broad sea beyond ; and in those waters we were soon whirling, when the musical sounds, which had never ceased, were exchanged by the two dark figures for hideous screams of triumph as the boat rapidly began to sink. At last the waters appeared to reach my mouth, and I was drowning, choking. With a wild effort I bounded from the couch, burst the doors outwards, shivering them to pieces, and found myself (in my night-clothes) awake outside the ruined doors on a calm, bright moonlight night, and instinctively turned to the head rope ; to my horror, it had just parted. Turning for the boathook I saw beside me my friend C, who had been aroused by the crash, and he shouted that he saw the stern rope go at the same time. We both held on despairingly to the boathook, bruising our unprotected shins, but our cries woke up the wherryman, who came to our assistance, supplying fresh ropes, and we were made snug for the rest of the night. My friend upbraided me for the wreck of his doors, and I at once told him the whole of the above dream, by which I was then very much excited.