Author: William Clark Russell
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: It is 1796; Geoffey Fenton, a young second mate aboard the Saracen, outward bound from Cape Town, is lost overboard, and rescued by a strange, decaying. antiquated, Dutch ship named Braave, which proves to be the ship better known tp superstitious mariners as The Flying Dutchman. The ghost ship's crew, under the captain, Vanderdecken, are cursed, and believe it to be 1593; they have been at sea, undying, unknowing, for two centuries, doomed to ply the seas for eternity. On board is another rescued person, Imogene, who has been aboard now for five years. Somehow, Fenton and Imogene must leave t

THE DEATH SHIP

W. Clark Russell

An Account of a Cruise In "The Flying Dutchman," Collected From the Papers of the Late Mr. Geoffrey Fenton, of Poplar, Master Mariner.

In Three Volumes

1888

Contents Vol 1

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Volume 2

Volume 3

__________

Chapter 1

I Sail as Second Mate in the Saracen.

I WILL PASS BY all the explanations concerning the reasons of my going to sea, as I do not desire to forfeit your kind patience by letting this story stand. Enough if I say that after I had been fairly well grounded in English, arithmetic and the like, which plain education I have never wearied of improving by reading everything good that came in my way, I was bound apprentice to a respectable man named Joshua Cox, of Whitby, and served my time in his vessel, the Laughing Susan— a brave, nimble brigantine.

We traded to Riga, Stockholm, and Baltic ports, and often to Rotterdam, where, having a quick ear, which has sometimes served me for playing upon the fiddle for my mates to dance or sing to, I picked up enough of Dutch to enable me to hold my own in conversing with a Hollander, or Hans Butterbox, as those people used to be called; that is to say, I had sufficient words at command to qualify me to follow what was said and to answer so as to be intelligible; the easier, since, uncouth as that language is, there is so much of it resembling ours in sound that many words in it might easily pass for portions of our tongue grossly and ludicrously articulated. Why I mention this will hereafter appear.

When my apprenticeship term had expired, I made two voyages as second mate, and then obtained an appointment to that post in a ship named the Saracen, for a voyage to the East Indies. This was anno 1796. I was then two-and-twenty years of age, a tall, well-built young fellow, with tawny hair, of the mariner's complexion from the high suns I had sailed under and the hardening gales I had stared into, with dark blue eyes filled with the light of an easy and naturally merry heart, white teeth, very regular, and a glad expression as though, forsooth, I found something gay and to like in all that I looked at. Indeed it was a saying with my mother that "Geff,"— meaning Geoffrey— that "Geff's appearance was as though a very little joke would set the full measure of his spirits overflowing." But now, it is as an old poet finely wrote:

My golden locks time hath to silver turn'd,

(O time, too swift, and swiftness never ceasing!)

My youth, 'gainst age, and age at youth have spurn'd,

But spurn'd in vain!

And here it is but right to myself that I should say, though as a sailor I am but an obscure person, yet as a man I may claim some pride and lustre of descent, an ancestor being no less a worthy than one of the boldest of Queen Elizabeth's sea-captains and generals— Edward Fenton, I mean, who was himself of a sound and ancient Nottingham stock; illustrious for his behaviour against the Spaniards in 1588, and for his explorations of the hidden passage of the North Sea, mentioned with other notable matters in the Latin inscription upon his monument by Richard, Earl of Cork, who married his niece.

But enough of such parish talk.

The master of the Saracen was one Jacob Skevington, and the mate's name Christopher Hall. We sailed from Gravesend— for with Whitby I was now done— in the month of April, 1796. We were told to look to ourselves when we should arrive in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, for it was rumoured that the Dutch, with the help of the French, were likely to send a squadron to recover Cape Town, that had fallen into the hands of the British in the previous September. However, at the time of our lifting our anchor off Gravesend, the Cape Settlement lay on the other side of the globe; whatever danger there might be there, was too remote to cast the least faint shadow upon us; besides, the sailor was so used to the perils of the enemy and the chase, that nothing could put an element of uneasiness into his plain, shipboard life, short of the assurance of his own or his captain's eyes that the sail that had hauled his wind and was fast growing upon the sea-line, was undeniably an enemy's ship, heavily armed, and big enough to cannonade him into staves.

So with resolved spirits, which many of us had cheered and heartened by a few farewell drams— for of all parts of the seafaring life the saying good-bye to those we love, and whom the God of Heaven alone knows whether we shall ever clasp to our breasts again, is the hardest— we plied the capstan with a will, raising the anchor to a chorus that fetched an echo from the river's banks up and down the Reach; and then sheeting home our topsails, dragging upon the halliards with piercing, far-sounding songs, we gathered the weight of the pleasant sunny wind into those spacious hollows, and in a few minutes had started upon our long journey.

Yet, though my parting with my friends had not been of a nature to affect my spirits, and though I was accounted to be, and indeed was, a merry, careless fellow, I was sensible of an unaccountable depression as, amidst the duties which occupied me, I would cast glances at the houses of Gravesend and the shore sliding by, and hear, in momentary hushes, tremulous tinkling sounds raised by the water wrinkling, current-like under our round and pushing bows.

Chapter 2.

We Meet And Speak The Lovely Nancy, Snow.

FOR DAYS AND DAYS after we had cleared the Channel and entered upon those deep waters, which, off soundings sway in brilliant blue billows, sometimes paling into faint azure or weltering in dyes as purely dark as the violet, according as the mood of the sky is, nothing whatever of consequence befell. We were forty of a company. Captain Skevington was a stout but sedate sailor, who had used the sea for many years, and had confronted so many perils there was scarce an ocean-danger you could name about which he could not talk from personal experience. He was, likewise, a man of education and intelligence, with a manner about him at times not very intelligible, though his temper was always excellent and his skill as a seaman equal to every call made upon it. We carried six twelve-pounders and four brass swivels and a plentiful store of small-arms and ammunition. Our ship was five years old, a good sailer, handsomely found in all respects of sails and tackling, so that any prospect we might contemplate of falling in with privateers and such gentry troubled us little; since with a brave ship and nimble heels, high hot hearts, English cannon and jolly British beef for the working of them, the mariner need never doubt that the Lord will own him wherever he may go and whatever he may do.

We crossed the Equator in longitude thirty degrees west, then braced up to the Trade Wind that heeled us with a brisk gale in five degrees south latitude, and so skirted the sea in that great African bight 'twixt Cape Palmas and the Cape of Good Hope, formerly called, and very properly, I think, the Ethiopic Ocean; for, though to be sure it is all Atlantic Ocean, yet, methinks, it is as fully entitled to a distinctive appellation as is the Bay of Biscay, that is equally one sea with that which rolls into it.

One morning in July, we being then somewhat south of the latitude of the island of St. Helena, a seaman who was on the topsail-yard hailed the deck, and cried out that there was a sail right ahead. It was an inexpressibly bright morning; the sun had been risen two hours, and he stood— a white flame of the blinding and burning brilliance he seems to catch up from the dazzling sands of Africa as he soars over them— in a sky of the most dainty sapphire fairness; not a cloud— no, not so big as a fading wreath of tobacco smoke anywhere visible, so that the ends of the sea went round with the clearness of the circle of a glass table, only that a small wind, very sweet and pleasant to every sense, blowing a little off our starboard bow, fluttered the ocean into a sort of hovering look, and its trembling caused the wake of the sun to resemble the leaping and frolicking of shoals of wet and sparkling mackerel.

We waited with much expectation and some anxiety for the stranger to approach near enough to enable us to gather her character, or even her nationality; for the experienced eye will always observe a something in the ships of the Dutch and French nations to distinguish the flags they belong to. It was soon evident that she was standing directly for us, shown by the speed with which her sails rose; but when her hull was fairly exposed, Captain Skevington, after a careful examination of her, declared her to be a vessel of about one hundred tons, probably a snow— her mainmast being in one with her foremast— and so we stood on, leaving it to her to be wary if she chose.

Whether she had at once made sure of us as an honest trader, I cannot say; she never budged her helm by so much as the turn of a spoke, but came smoothly along, a very pretty shining object, rolling on the soft, long-drawn swell in such a way as to dart shadows across the moonlike gleaming of her canvas with the breathings of their full bosoms— so that the sight reminded me of the planet Venus as I once beheld her after she had passed from the tincture of the ruby into the quick light of the diamond, lightly troubled by the swift passage of a kind of gossamer scud, as though the winds on high sought to clothe her naked beauty with a delicate raiment of their own wearing, from which she was forever escaping into the liquid indigo she loves to float in.

After a little the English ensign was seen to flutter at her fore-topgallant-masthead. To this signal we instantly replied by hoisting our colour; and shortly after midday, arriving abreast of each other, we backed our topsail-yard, she doing the like, and so we lay steady upon the calm sea, and so close, that we could see the faces of her people over the rail, and hear the sound, though not the words, of the voice of the master giving his orders.

It was Captain Skevington's intention to board her, as he suspected she was from the Indies, and capable therefore of giving us some hints concerning the Dutch, into whose waters, in a manner of speaking, we were now entering; accordingly the jolly boat was lowered and pulled away for the stranger, that proved to be the snow, Lovely Nancy, of Plymouth— name of cruel omen as I shall always deem it, though I must ever love the name of Nancy as being that of a fair-haired sister who died in her fifteenth year.

As many of my readers may not be acquainted with sea terms, it may be fit to say here, that a snow is nothing more than a brig, with the trifling addition of a thin mast abaft her mainmast, upon which her trysail or boom mainsail sets. I guess these vessels will always bear this name until their trysail-masts go out of fashion.

But to return.

I know not why I should have stood looking very longingly at that Plymouth ship whilst our captain was on board her; for though to be sure we had now been at sea since April, whilst she was homeward bound, yet I was well satisfied with the Saracen and all on board. I was glad to be getting a living and earning in wages money enough to put away; my dream being to save so much as would procure me an interest in a ship, for out of such slender beginnings have sprung many renowned merchant princes in this country. But so it was. My heart yearned for that snow as though I had a sweetheart on board. Even Mr. Hall, the mate, a plain, literal, practical seaman, with as much sentiment in him as you may find in the first Dutchman you meet in the Amsterdam fish-market, even he noticed my wistful eyes, and clapping me on the back, cries out—

"Why, Fenton, my lad, I believe you'd be glad to go home in that little wagon yonder if the captain would let ye."

"I believe I would, sir," I replied; "and yet if I could, I don't know that I would, either."

He laughed and turned away, ridiculing what he reckoned a piece of lady-like sentiment; and that it was no more, I daresay I was as sure as he, though I wished the depression at the devil, for it caused me to feel, whilst it was on me, as though a considerable slice of my manhood had slipped away overboard.

It is one of the few pleasures time permits to old men to recall the sweet, or gay, or fair pictures which charmed them when young. And which of all our faculties is more wonderful as a piece of mechanism, and more Divine in its life-giving properties, than Memory, which enables the Spirit to quicken dust that has lain for many years in the womb of time; to attire it and to return to it its passions, emotions, and all other qualities; to put back the cycles the sun has run and oblige him to shine on forms which were then infants, but are now grass-hidden ridges; on houses then stately but now long since swept away; on meadows and orchards then bright with daisies, ruddy with fruit, but now covered with houses and busy streets whose sidewalks echo to the tread of generations more dream-like in that past to which the aged eye turns than ever can be the dead who then lived.

'Tis thus when I think of that Plymouth snow; for leaning back in my chair and closing these eyes, that morning shines all around me; the tremulous sea of blue, of a satin sheen in its tiny ripplings, shot with milder tints where the currents run as though they were the thin fingers of the wind toying with the bosom of the deep, bends to the distant sky upon whose lowermost reaches it flings the same opal lustre it gathers at its horizon; the air blows fitfully, like the warm breathings from a woman's sweet lips, and sometimes stills our sails and sometimes suffers them to flutter in sounds soothing as the murmurs of a midsummer night breeze amid the high branches of a sleeping oak. The snow had black sides but was painted white from her water-line; and though there was no lack of draining weeds and clustered shells upon her bilge and run, yet, with every slow roll from us, the wet whiteness, taking the meridian effulgence, broke out in a glory as of virgin silver, enriched by the marine adhesions, into the very likeness of a resplendent mosaic of precious metal and green glass.

Such magic has the sea to beautify whatever it is permitted to possess long enough for its powers of enrichment to work their way!

Her canvas flashed out of shadow into brightness with every lift of the swell; the ripples ran a dissolving tracery along her bends, as dainty to see as the choicest lace; the weather-clouded faces of her men looked at us over the stout bulwark-rail that was broken by a few open ports through which you spied the mouths of little cannon; and it was laughable to mark her figurehead, that represented an admiral in a cocked hat— a cheap dockyard purchase, no doubt, for the effigy was ridiculously out of character and foolishly too big for the vessel— bowing to the blue surface that flowed in lines of azure light to the cutwater, as though there were some mermaid there to whom he would be glad to "make a leg," as the old saying was.

Chapter 3

The Captain And I Talk Of The Death Ship.

After three-quarters-of-an-hour, or thereabouts, Captain Skevington returned. We then trimmed to our course again, and, ere long, the Plymouth snow was astern of us, rolling her spread of canvas in a saluting way that was like a flourish of farewell.

Whilst the jolly boat was being hoisted, the captain stood gazing at the snow with a very thoughtful face, and then burying his hands in his pockets, he took several turns up and down the deck with his head bowed, and his whole manner not a little grave. He presently went to the mate, and talked with him, but it looked as though Mr. Hall found little to raise concern in what the captain said, as he often smiled, and once or twice broke into a laugh that seemed to provoke a kind of remonstrance from the master, who yet acted as though he were but half in earnest too; but they stood too far away for me to catch a syllable of their talk.

It was my watch below at eight o'clock that evening. I was sitting alone in the cabin, sipping a glass of rum and water, ready to go to bed when I had swallowed the dose. There was but one lamp, hanging from a midship beam, and the cabin was somewhat darksome. The general gloom was deepened by the bulkhead being of a sombre, walnut colour, without any relief— such as probably would have been furnished had we carried passengers— from table-glass or silver, or such furniture. I mention these matters because they gave their complexion to the talk I am now to repeat.

Presently, down into this interior through the companion hatch comes Captain Skevington. I drained my glass and rose to withdraw.

"Stop a minute, Fenton," says he; "what have you been drinking there?"

I told him.

"Another drop can't hurt you," said he; "you have four hours to sleep it off in." With which he called to the boy to bring him a bottle of brandy from his cabin. He bid me help myself whilst he lighted a pipe of tobacco, and then said: "The master of the snow we met to-day warns us to keep a bright look-out for the Dutch. He told me that yesterday he spoke an American ship that was short of flour, and learnt from the Yankee— though how Jonathan got the news I don't know— that there's a Dutch squadron making for the Cape, in charge of Admiral Lucas, and that among the ships is the Dordrecht of sixty-six guns and two forty-gun frigates."

"But should we fall in with them will they meddle with us, do you think, sir?" said I.

"Beyond question," he answered.

"Then," said I, "there is nothing for it but to keep a sharp look-out. We have heels, anyway."

He smoked his pipe with a serious face, as though not heeding me; then looking at me steadfastly, he exclaimed, "Fenton, you've been a bit of a reader in your time, I believe. Did your appetite that way ever bring you to dip into magic, necromancy, the Black Art, and the like of such stuff?"

He asked me this with a certain strangeness of expression in his eyes, and I thought it proper to fall into his humour. So I replied that in the course of my reading I might have come across hints of such things, but that I had given them too little attention to qualify me to reason about them or to form an opinion.

"I recollect when I was a lad," said he, passing my answer by, so to speak, "hearing an old lady that was related to my mother, tell of a trick that was formerly practised and credited, too; a person stood at a grave and invoked the dead, who made answer."

I smiled, thinking that only an old woman would talk thus.

"Stop!" cried he, but without temper. "She said it was common for a necromancer to invoke and obtain replies; but that though answers were returned, they were not spoken by the dead, but by the Devil. The proof being that death is a separation of the soul from the body, that the immortal soul cannot inhabit the corpse that is mere dust, that therefore the dead cannot speak, themselves, but that the voices which seem to proceed from them are uttered by the Evil One."

"Why the Evil One?" said I.

"Because he delights in whatever is out of nature, and in doing violence to the harmonious fabric of the universe."

"That sounds like a good argument, sir," said I, still smiling.

"But," continued he, "suppose the case of men now living, though by the laws of Nature they should have died long since. Would you say that they exist as a corpse does when invoked— that is, by the possession and voice of the Devil, or that they are informed by the same souls which were in them when they uttered their first cry in this life."

"Why, sir," I answered, "seeing that the soul is immortal, there is no reason why it should not go on inhabiting the clay it belongs to, so long as that clay continues to possess the physical power to be moved and controlled by it."

"That's a shrewd view," said he, seemingly well-pleased. "But see here, my lad! our bodies are built to last three score and ten years. Some linger to an hundred; but so few beyond, that every month of continued being renders them more and more a sort of prodigies. As the end of a long life approaches— say a life of ninety years— there is such decay, such dry-rot, that the whole frame is but one remove from ashes. Now, suppose there should be men living who are known to be at least a hundred and fifty years old— nay, add an average of forty to each man and call them one hundred and ninety years old— but who yet exhibit no signs of mortality; would not you say that the bounds of Nature having been long since passed, their bodies are virtually corpses, imitating life by a semblance of soul that is properly the voice and possession of the Devil?"

"How about Methusaleh, and others of those ancient times?"

"I'm talking of to-day," he answered. "'Tis like turning up the soil to work back into ancient history; you come across things which there's no making anything of."

"But what man is there now living who has reached to a hundred-and-ninety?" cried I, still struck by his look, yet, in spite of that, wondering at his gravity, for there was a determination in his manner of reasoning that made me see he was in earnest.

"Well," said he, smoking very slowly, "the master of that snow, one Samuel Bullock, of Rotherhithe, whom I recollect as mate of a privateer some time since, told me that when he was off the Agulhas Bank, he made out a sail upon his starboard bow, braced up, and standing west-sou'-west. There was something so unusual and surprising about her rig that the probability of her being an enemy went clean out of his mind, and he held on, influenced by the sort of curiosity a man might feel who follows a sheeted figure at night, not liking the job, yet constrained to it by sheer force of unnatural relish. 'Twas the first dogwatch; the sun drawing down; but daylight was yet abroad, when the stranger was within hail upon their starboard quarter, keeping a close luff, yet points off, on account of the antique fit of her canvas. Bullock, as he talked, fell a-trembling, though no stouter-hearted man sails the ocean, and I could see the memory of the thing working in him like a bloody conscience. He cried out, 'May the bountiful God grant that my ship reaches home in safety!' I said, 'What vessel was she, think you?' 'Why, captain,' says he, 'what but the vessel which 'tis God's will should continue sailing about these seas?' I started to hear this, and asked if he saw any of the crew. He replied that only two men were to be seen— one steering at a long tiller on the poop deck, and the other pacing near him on the weather side. 'I seized the glass,' said he, 'and knelt down, that those I viewed should not observe me, and plainly catched the face of him who walked.'"

"How did Bullock describe him, sir?" said I.

"He said he wore a great beard and was very tall, and that he was like a man that had died and that when dug up preserved his death-bed aspect; he was like such a corpse artificially animated, and most terrible to behold from his suggestions of death-in-life. I pressed him to tell me more, but he is a person scanty of words for the want of learning. However, his fears were the clearest relation he could give me of what he had seen."

"It was the Phantom Ship he saw, you think, sir?" said I.

"I am sure. He bid me dread the sight of it more than the combined navies of the French and the Dutch. The apparition was encountered in latitude twenty miles south of thirty-six degrees. 'Tis a spectre to be shunned, Fenton, though it cost us every rag of sail we own to keep clear."

"Then what you would say, captain," said I, "is, that the people who work that ship have ceased to be living men by reason of their great age, which exceeds by many years our bodies' capacity of wear and tear; and that they are actually corpses influenced by the Devil— who is warranted by the same Divine permission we find recorded in the Book of Job, to pursue frightful and unholy ends?"

"It is the only rational view," he answered. "If the Phantom Ship be still afloat, and navigated by a crew, they cannot be men in the sense that this ship's company are men."

"Well, sir," said I, cheerfully, "I reckon it will be all one whether they be fiends, or flesh and blood miraculously wrought to last unto the world's end, for it is a million to nothing that we don't meet her. The Southern Ocean is a mighty sea, a ship is but a little speck, and once we get the Madagascar coast on our bow we shall be out of the Death Ship's preserves."

However, to my surprise, I found that he maintained a very earnest posture of mind in this matter. To begin with, he did not in the least question the existence of the Dutch craft; he had never beheld her, but he knew those who had, and related tales of dismal issues of such encounters. The notion that the crew were corpses, animated into a mocking similitude of life, was strongly infixed in his mind; and he obliged me to tell him all that I could remember of magical, ghostly, supernatural circumstances I had read about or heard of, until I noticed it was half-an-hour after nine, and that, at this rate, my watch on deck would come round before I had had a wink of sleep.

However, though I went to my cabin, it was not to rest. I lay for nearly two hours wide awake. No doubt the depression I had marked in myself had exactly fitted my mind for such fancies as the captain had talked about. It was indeed impossible that I should soberly accept his extraordinary view touching the endevilment of the crew of the Death Ship. Moreover, I hope I am too good a Christian to believe in that Satyr which was the coinage of crazy, fanatical heads in the Dark Ages, that cheaply-imagined Foul Fiend created to terrify the weak-minded with a vision of split-hoofs, legs like a beast's, a barbed tail, flaming eyes, and nostrils discharging the sickening fumes of sulphur.

But concerning the Phantom Ship herself— the Flying Dutchman as she has been styled— 'tis a spectre that has too often crossed the path of the mariner to admit of its existence being questioned. If there be spirits on land, why not at sea, too? There are scores who believe in apparitions, not on the evidence of their own eyes— they may never have beheld such a sight— but on the testimony of witnesses sound in their religion and of unassailable integrity; and why should we not accept the assurance of plain, honest sailors, that there may be occasionally encountered off the Agulhas Bank, and upon the southern and eastern coast of the African extremity, a wild and ancient fabric, rigged after a fashion long fallen into disuse, and manned by a crew figured as presenting something of the aspect of death in their unholy and monstrous vitality?

I turned this matter freely over in my mind as I lay in my little cabin, my thoughts finding a melancholy musical setting in the melodious sobbing of water washing past under the open port, and snatching distressful impulses from the gloom about me, that was rendered cloud-like by the moon who was climbing above our mastheads, and clothing the vast placid scene outside with the beauty of her icy light; and then at seven bells fell asleep, but was called half-an-hour later, at midnight, to relieve Mr. Hall, whose four hours' spell below had come round.

Chapter 4

We are Chased and Nearly Captured

WE TALKED OCCASIONALLY of the Phantom Ship after this for a few days, the captain on one occasion, to my surprise, producing an old volume on magic and sorcery which it seems he had, along with an odd collection of books, in his cabin, and arguing and reasoning out of it. But he never spoke of this thing in the presence of the mate who, to be sure, was a simple, downright man, without the least imaginable flavour of imagination to render sapid the lean austerity of his thoughts, and who, therefore, as you may suppose, as little credited the stories told of the Dutchman's ship as the Ebrew Jew believes in our Lord.

Hence, as there were but the captain and me to keep this shuttlecock of a fancy flying, it fluttered before long to the ground; perhaps the quicker, because on the Sunday following our speaking with the Plymouth snow, there happened a piece of work, sharp and real enough to drive all ideas of visions and phantasms out of our heads.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when a sail was descried broad on the larboard beam. We gave her no heed at first. It being the Sabbath, and a warm sweet morning, the men having nothing to do, hung about the decks, smoking, telling stories and the like; and being cleanly attired in jackets and white trousers, they contributed a choice detail to the general structure of well-kept decks, shining brass work, massive shrouds soaring from the black dead-eyes to the great round tops, with further rigging of a similar kind ruling the topmasts to the cross-trees, and on yet to the topgallant heights, ropes crossing ropes and ratline following ratline, till the tracery, both in its substance aloft and its shadows below and in the inclined hollows of the sails, puzzled the eye with the complexity of a spider's web; whilst from the water-ways to the lower yard-arms and thence to the ends of the yards above, mounted the vast sheets of canvas, each central surface arching in snow to the raining light of the sun, like the fair full breasts of a virgin, passed the taut bolt-ropes, narrowing as they rose till, the royal-yards being reached, the sails there swelled yearning skywards as though they were portions of the prismatic ribbed and pearly beds of cloud directly over the ship, rent from them by the sweep of our trucks and knitted by our seamen to those lofty spars.

It was not long, however, before we made out that the vessel down in the eastern quarter was steering large, and at the time the appearance of her canvas assured us of this, she slackened away her larboard braces to head up for us, hauling upon a bowline with a suddenness that left her intention to parley with us questionless.

We hoisted the English ensign and held on a bit, viewing her with an intentness that brought many of our eyes to a squint; then the captain, observing that she showed no colours and was a big ship, put his helm up for a run.

No sooner had we braced in our yards, when the fellow behind us squared away too, and threw out lower and topmast studding-sails with a rapidity that satisfied us she was a man-of-war, apparently a liner. This notion, joined to the belief that she was a Dutchman, was start enough for us all. Our small company were not likely to hold their own against the disciplined masses of a two or three decker, even though she should prove a Spaniard. Our guns were too few to do anything with tiers of batteries heavy enough to blow us out of water. So as there was nothing for it but a fair trial of speed, we sprung to our work like hounds newly unleashed, got her dead before it, ran out studding-sail booms on both sides and sent the sails aloft soaking wet for the serviceableness of the weight the wetness would give, and stationing men in the tops and cross-trees we whipped up buckets of water to them, with which they drenched the canvas, till our cloths must have looked as dark as a collier's to the ship astern of us.

It was very slow work at first, and we were thankful for that; for every hour carried us nearer to the night into which the moon now entered so late and glowed with such little power, even when she had floated high, that we could count, after sundown, upon several hours of darkness; but it was not long before it became evident to us all that, spite of the ceaseless wetting of our sails, the ship in our wake was growing. Then, satisfied of her superiority, and convinced of our nationality, she let fly a forecastle gun at us, of the ball of which we saw nothing, and hoisted the Dutch colours at her fore-royal masthead, where, at all events, we could not fail to distinguish the flag.

"Confound such luck!" cries Skevington at this. "How can our apple-bows contend with those pyramids of sails there? What's to be done?" he says, as if thinking aloud. "It's clear she's our master in running, and I fear she'll be more than our match on a bowline— with the weather gage too! And yet, by the thunder of Heaven, Mr. Hall, it does go against the current of any sort of English blood to haul down that piece of bunting there," says he, casting his eyes at the peak where our flag was blowing, "to the command of a Dutchman's cannon!"

"The wind's coming away more easterly," said the mate, with a slow turning of his gaze into the quarter he mentioned, "and it'll be breezing up presently, if there's any signification in the darker blue of the sea that way."

It happened as he said; but the Dutchman got the first slant of it, and you saw the harder pulling of his canvas in the rounded rigidity of light upon the cloths, whilst the dusky line of the wind, followed by the flashings of the small seas, whose leaping heads it showered into spray, was yet approaching our languid ship, whose lower and heavy canvas often flapped in the weak air.

A couple of shot came flying after us from the man-of-war's bowchasers ere the breeze swept to our spars; and now the silvery line of the white water that her stem was hewing up and sending in a brilliant whirl past her was easy to be seen; aye, 'twas even possible to make out the very lines of her reef-points upon the fore-course and topsail, whilst through the glass you could discern groups of men stationed upon her forecastle, and mark some quarter-deck figure now and again impatiently bound on to the rail and overhang it like a davit, with an arm round a backstay, in his eagerness to see how fast they were coming up with us.

With all element of terror in it extinguished by time, it is a sight to recall with a sailor's fondness; for indeed the Dutchman was a fine ship, very tall, with port-lids painted red inside, so that with the guns projecting from them, in two tiers, the aspect was that of rows of crimson, wolfish jaws, every beast with his tongue out; her yards were immensely square, and her studding-sail booms extending great spaces of canvas far over the side, she showed upon the dark blue frothing ocean like some Heaven-seeking hill, fleecily clad with snow to twenty feet above the water-line, where it was black rock down to the wash of the froth. In the freshening wind, as it came up to us, I seemed to catch an echo of the drum-like roll of the briskening gale in those airy heights, and to hear the seething of the boiling stuff at her forefoot. But, thanks be to Heaven, there was now a swift racing of foam from under our counter, whence it streamed away with a noise delicious to hearken to, as though it was the singing of the rain of a thunder-cloud upon hard land; for whenever the breeze gathered its weight in our canvas the Saracen sprang from it meteor-fashion, and away we sped with helm right amidships, and the wind flashing fair over the taffrail.

The excitement of this chase was deep in us when the captain gave orders to train a couple of guns aft and to continue firing at the pursuing craft; which was done, the powder-smoke blowing like prodigious glistening cobwebs into our canvas forward. Meanwhile, the English colours flew hardily at our peak, whilst preventer guys were clapped on the swinging-booms and other gear added to give strength aloft; for the wind was increasing as if by magic, the ribbed clouds had broken up and large bodies of vapour were sailing overhead with many ivory-white shoulders crowding upon the horizon, and the strain upon the studding-sail tacks was extremely heavy. But you saw that it was Captain Skevington's intention to make the Saracen drag what she could not carry, and to let what chose blow away before he started a rope-yarn, whilst we had that monster astern there sticking to our skirts; and by this time it was manifest that with real weight in the wind our heels were pretty nearly as keen as hers, which made us hope that should the breeze freshen yet we might eventually get away.

Well, at three o'clock it was blowing downright hard, though the weather was fine, the heavens mottled, the clouds being compacted and sailing higher, stormy in complexion and moving slowly; the sea had grown hollow and was most gloriously violet in colour, with plumes of snow, which curled to the gale on the head of each liquid courser; the sun was over our fore-topgallant yard-arm and showered down his glory so as to form a golden weltering road for us to steer beside. The ship behind catched his light and looked to be chasing us on wings of yellow silk. But never since her keel had been laid had the Saracen been so driven. The waters boiled up to the blackfaced turbaned figure under the bowsprit, and from aft I could sometimes observe the glassy curve of the bow sea, arching away for fathoms forward, showing plain through the headrails. A couple of hands hung grinding upon the wheel with set teeth, and the sinews in their naked arms stood out like cords; others were at the relieving-tackles; and through it we pelted, raising about us a bubbled, spuming and hissing surface that might have answered to the passage of a whirlwind, repeatedly firing at the Dutch man-of-war when the heave of the surge gave us the chance, and noticing the constant flash in his bows and the white smother that blew along with him, though the balls of neither appeared to touch the other of us.

Yet, that we should have been ultimately overhauled and brought to a stand I fully believe but for a providential disaster. For no matter how dark the dusk may have drawn around at sundown, the Dutchman was too close to us to miss the loom of the great press of canvas we should be forced to carry: at least, so I hold; and then, again, there was the consideration of the wind failing us with the coming of the stars, for we were still in the gentle parallels. But let all have been as it might, I had just noted the lightning-like wink of one of the enemy's fore-chasers, when to my exceeding amazement, ere the ball of smoke could be shredded into lengths by the gale, I observed the whole fabric of the Dutchman's towering foremast, with the great course, swelling topsail, topgallant-sail and royal, and the fore-topmast staysail and jibs melt away as an icicle approached by flame; and in a breath, it seemed, the huge ship swung round, pitching and foaming after the manner of a harpooned whale, with her broadside to us, exhibiting the whole fore-part of her most grievously and astonishingly wrecked.

A mighty cheer went up from our decks at the sight, and there was a deal of clapping of hands and laughter. Captain Skevington seized the telescope, and talked as he worked away with it.

"A rotten foremast, by the thunder of Heaven!" he cried, using his favourite adjuration; "it could be nothing else. No shot our guns throw could work such havoc. By the height that's left standing the spar has fetched away close under the top. And the mess! the mess!"

With the naked eye one could see that. The foremast had broken in twain; its fall had snapped off the jibbooms to the bowsprit cap, and I do not doubt a nearer view would have shown us the bowsprit itself severely wrenched. I could not imagine the like of that picture of confusion— her studding-sails, having been set on both sides, drowned all her forward part in canvas, a goodly portion of which had been torn into rags by the fall; immense stretches of sail lay in the water, sinking and rising with the rolling of the ship, and dragging her head to the wind; her main topmast studding-sails, and all the canvas on that mast and the mizzen— the yards lying square— were shaking furiously, owing to the posture in which she had fallen; every moment this terrible slatting threatened her other spars; and it needed not a sailor's imagination to conceive how fearfully all that thunderous commotion aloft must heighten the distracting tumult on deck, the passionate volleys of commands, the hollow shocks of seas smiting the inert hull, the shouting of the seamen, and, as we might be sure, the cries and groans of the many upon whom that soaring fabric of yards, sails, and rigging had fallen with the suddenness of an electric bolt from the clouds.

For a whole hour after this we touched not a rope, leaving our ship to rush from the Dutchman straight as an arrow from a bow. But, Lord!— the storming aloft!— the fierce straining of our canvas till tacks and guys, sheets and braces rang out upon the wind like the clanking of bells, to a strain upon them tauter than that of harp-strings; the boiling noises of the seas all about our bow and under our counter, where the great bodies of foam roared away into our wake, as the white torrent raves along its bed from the foot of a high cataract! There was an excitement in this speed and triumph of escape from what must have proved a heavy and inglorious disaster to us all which put fire into the blood, and never could I have imagined how sentient a ship is, how participant of what stirs the minds of those she carries, until I marked the magnificent eagerness of our vessel's flight— her headlong domination of the large billows which underran her, and the marble-hard distention of her sails, reminding you of the tense cheeks of one who holds his breath in a run for his life.

Distance and the sinking of the sun, and the shadows which throng sharply upon his heels in these climes, left the horizon in course bare to our most searching gaze. We then shortened sail, and under easy canvas, we put our helm a-lee, and stood northwards on a bowline until midnight, when we rounded in upon our weather-braces and steered easterly, Captain Skevington suspecting that the Dutchman would make all haste to refit and head south under some jury contrivance, in the expectation that as we were bound that way when he fell in with us so we should haul to our course afresh when we lost sight of him. Yet in the end we saw him no more, and what ship he was I never contrived to learn; but certainly it was an extraordinary escape, though whether due to our shot, or to his foremast being rotten, or to its having been sprung and badly fished, or to some earlier wound during an engagement, must be left to conjecture.

Chapter 5

We Arrive at Table Bay and Proceed Thence On Our Voyage

BUT THOUGH, after this piece of severe reality, Captain Skevington had very little to say about such elusive and visionary matters as had before engaged us, it was clear from some words which he let fall that he regarded our meeting with the Dutch battleship as a sort of reflected ill-luck from the snow that had passed the Phantom Dutchman, and the idea possessing him— as indeed it had seized upon me— that the Lovely Nancy was sure to meet with misadventure, and might have the power of injuring the fortune of any vessel that spoke with her intimately, as we had, caused him to navigate the ship with extraordinary wariness. A man was constantly kept aloft to watch the horizon, and repeatedly hailed from the deck that we might know he was awake to his work; other sharp-eyed seamen were stationed on the forecastle; at night every light was screened, so that we moved along like a blot of liquid pitch upon the darkness. On several occasions I heard Captain Skevington say that he would sooner have parted with twenty guineas than have boarded, or had anything to do with, the snow. Happily, the adventure with the Dutchman led the seamen to suppose that the master's anxiety wholly concerned the ships of the enemy; for had it got forward that the Lovely Nancy had sighted Vanderdecken's craft off the Agulhas, I don't question that they would have concluded our meeting with the snow boded no good to us, that we were likely ourselves to encounter the spectral ship— if indeed she were a phantasm, and not a substantial fabric, as I myself deemed— and so perhaps have refused to work the Saracen beyond Table Bay.

At that Settlement it was necessary we should call for water, fresh provisions and the like; and on the sixth of July, in the year 1796, we safely entered the Bay and let go our anchor, nothing of the least consequence to us having happened since we were chased, the weather being fine with light winds ever since the strong breeze before which we had run, died away.

After eighty-one days of sea and sky the meanest land would have offered a noble refreshment to our gaze; judge then of the delight we found in beholding the royal and ample scenery of as fair and spacious a haven as this globe has to offer. But as Captain George Shelvocke, in the capital account he wrote of his voyage round the world in 1718, there points out, the Cape of Good Hope, by which he must intend Table Bay, has been so often described, that, says he, "I can say nothing of it that has not been said by most who have been here before."

We lay very quietly for a fortnight, feeling perfectly secure, as you may conclude when I tell you that just round the corner, that is to say, in Simon's Bay, there were anchored no less than fourteen British ships of war, in command of Vice-Admiral Sir George Elphinstone, of which two were seventy-fours, whilst five mounted sixty-four guns each. Meeting one of the captains of this squadron, Captain Skevington told him how we had been chased by a Dutch liner, and he replied he did not doubt it was one of the vessels who were coming to retake— if they could— the settlement we had captured from the nation that had established the place. But I do not think the notion probable, as the Dutch ships did not show themselves off Saldanha Bay for some weeks after we had sailed.

This, however, is a matter of no moment whatever.

We filled our water casks, laid in a plentiful stock of tobacco, vegetables, hogs, poultry, and such produce as the country yielded, and on the morning of the eighteenth of July hove short, with a crew diminished by the loss of one man only, a boatswain's mate, named Turner, who, because we suffered none of the men to go ashore for dread of their deserting the ship, slipped down the cable on the night of our departure, and swam to the beach naked with some silver pieces tied round him in a handkerchief. Behold the character of the sailor! For a few hours of such drunken jollity as he may obtain in the tavern and amid low company, he will be content to forfeit all he has in the world. It was known that this man Turner had a wife and two children at home dependent upon his earnings; yet no thoughts of them could suppress his deplorable, restless spirit. But I afterwards heard he was punished even beyond his deserts; for being pretty near spent by his swim, he lay down to sleep, but was presently awakened by something crawling over him that proved a venomous snake called a puff-adder, which, on his moving, stung him, whereof he died.

It was the stormy season of the year off South Africa; but, then, a few days of westerly winds would blow us into mild and quiet zones, and, come what might, the ship we stood on was stout and honest, all things right and true aloft, the provision-space hospitably stocked, and the health of the crew of the best.

'Twas a perfectly quiet, cheerful morning when we manned the capstan; the waters of the bay stretched in an exquisite blue calm to the sandy wastes on the Blaawberg side, and thence to where the town stands; the atmosphere had the purity of the object-lens of a perspective glass, and the far distant Hottentot Holland Mountains, with summits so mighty that the sky appeared to rest upon them, gathered to their giant slopes such a mellowness and richness of blue, that they showed as a dark atmospheric dye which had run and stained before being stanched, that part of the heavens, rather than as prodigious masses of land of the usual complexion of mountains when viewed closely. That imperial height called Table Mountain, guarded by the amber-tinted couchant lion, reared a marvellously clear sky-line, and there the firmament appeared as a flowing sea of blue, flushing its full cerulean bosom to the flat altitude as though it would overflow it. But I noticed a shred of crawling vapour gather up there whilst the crew were chorussing at the capstan, and by the time our topsails were sheeted home there was a mass of white vapour some hundred feet in depth, foaming and churning atop, with delicate wings of it circling out into the blue, where they gyrated like butterflies and melted. The air was full of the moaning noises of the south-east wind flying out of that cloud down the steep abrupt full of gorges, scars, and ravines; and what was just now a picture of May-day peace became, on a sudden, a scene of whipped and creaming ripples; and the flashing on shore of the glass of shaken window-casements through spiral spirtings of reddish dust; hands aloft on the various ships at anchor, hastily furling the canvas that had been loosed to hang idly to the sun; flags, quite recently languid as streaks of paint, now pulling fiercely at their halliards; and Malay fishing-boats, darting across the bay in a gem-like glittering of water sliced out by their sharp stems and slung to the strong wind.

Under small sail we stormed out toward the ocean, with a desperate screaming of wind in the rigging; but there was no sea, for the gale was off the land; and after passing some noble and enchanting bays on whose shores the breakers as tall as our ship flung their resounding Atlantic thunder, whilst behind stood ranges of mountains putting a quality of solemn magnificence into the cheerful yellow clothing of the sunshine, with here and there a small house of an almond whiteness against the leaves of the silver trees and sundry rich growths thereabouts, in a moment we ran sheer out of the gale into a light wind, blowing from the north-west.

I don't say we were astonished, since some-while before reaching the calm part we could see it clearly defined by the line where the froth and angry blueness and the fiery agitation of the wind ended. Still, it was impossible not to feel surprised as the ship slipped out of the enraged and yelling belt into a peaceful sea and a weak new wind which obliged us to handle the braces and make sail.

Here happened an extraordinary thing. As we passed Green Point, where the weather was placid and the strife waged in the bay no longer to be seen, a large ship of six hundred tons, that we supposed was to call at Cape Town, passed us, her yards braced up and all plain sail set. She had some soldiers aboard, showed several guns, had the English colours flying and offered a very brave and handsome show, being sheathed with copper that glowed ruddy to the soft laving of the glass-bright swell, and her canvas had the hue of the cotton cloths which the Spaniards of the South American main used to spread, and which in these days form a distinguishing mark of the Yankee ships. Having not the least suspicion of the turmoil that awaited her round Mouille Point, she slipped along jauntily, ready to make a free wind of the breeze then blowing. But all on a sudden, on opening the bay, she met the whole strength of the fierce south-easter. Down she lay to it, all aback— stopped dead. Her ports being open, I feared if she were not promptly recovered, she must founder. They might let go the halliards, but the yards being jammed would not travel. It swept the heart into the throat to witness this thing! We brought our ship to the wind to render help with our boats; but happily her mizzen topmast broke, and immediately after, her main topgallant-mast snapped short off, close to the cross-trees; then— though it must have been wild work on those sloping decks— they managed to bring the main and topsail yards square; whereupon she paid off, righting as her head swung from the gale, and with lightened hearts, as may be supposed, they went to work to let go and clew up and haul down, whilst you saw how severe was the need of the pumps they had manned, by the bright streams of water which sluiced from her sides.

It was a cruel thing to witness, this sudden wrecking of the beauty of a truly stately ship, quietly swinging along over the mild heave of the swell, like a full-robed, handsome princess seized and torn by some loathsome monster, as we read of such matters in old romances. It was like the blighting breath of pestilence upon some fair form, converting into little better than a carcase what was just now a proud and regal shape, made beauteous by all that art could give her of apparel, and all that nature could impart of colour and lustre.

Chapter 6

The Captain Speaks Again of the Death Ship

I HAD THE FIRST watch on the night of the day on which we left Table Bay: that is, from eight till midnight; and at two bells— nine o'clock— I was quietly pacing the deck, full of fancies struck into me by the beauty of the stars, among which, over the starboard yard-arms, hung the Southern Cross, shining purely, and by the mild glory of the moon that, though short of a day or two of being full, rained down a keen light that had a hint of rosiness in it, when Captain Skevington came out of the cabin, and stepping up to me stood a minute without speaking, gazing earnestly right around the sea-circle.

There was a small wind blowing and the ship, under full sail, was softly pushing southwards with a pleasant noise as of the playing of fountains coming from the direction of her bows.

"A quiet night, Fenton," said the captain, presently.

"Aye, sir; quiet indeed. There's been a small show of lightning away down in the south-west. The wind hangs steady but a little faint."

"The sort of night for meeting with the Demon Ship, eh, Fenton?" cried he, with a laugh that did not sound perfectly natural.

"There's no chance of such a meeting, I fear, sir."

"You fear?"

"Well," I exclaimed, struck by his quick catching up of me, "I mean that as the Demon Ship, as you term her, is one of the wonders of the world, the seeing of her would be a mighty experience— something big enough in that way to keep a man talking about it all his life."

"God avert such a meeting!" said he, lifting his hat, and turning up his face to the stars.

I suppose, thought I, that our drawing close to the seas in which the Phantom cruises has stirred up his superstitious fears afresh.

"Did you speak to any one at Cape Town about Vanderdecken, sir?" said I.

"No," he answered. "I had got my bellyfull from the master of the snow. What is there to ask?"

"Whether others have lately sighted the ship."

"Why, yes, I might have inquired, certainly, but it didn't enter my head. Tell ye what, though, Fenton, do you remember our chat t'other day about bodies being endevilled after they pass an age when by the laws of great Nature they should die?"

"Perfectly well, sir."

"Now," continued he, "I was in company a few nights since where there was one Cornelius Meyer present, a person ninety-one years old, but surprisingly sound in all his faculties, his sight piercing, his hearing keen, memory tenacious, and so forth. He was a Dutch Jew, but his patriotism was coloured by the hue of the flag flying at Cape Castle: I mean he would take the King of Great Britain and the States-General as they came. When he left we talked of him, and this led us to argue about old age. One gentleman said he did not know but that it was possible for a man to live to a hundred-and-fifty, and said there were instances of it. I replied, 'Not out of the Bible,' where the reckoning was not ours. He answered, 'Yes, out of the Bible;' and going to a bookshelf, pulled down a volume, and read a score of names of men with their ages attached. I looked at the book and saw it was honestly written, and being struck by this collection of extraordinary examples, begged the gentleman's son, who was present, to copy the list out for me, which he was so obliging as to do. I have it in my pocket," said he, and he pulled out a sheet of paper, and then going to the hatch called to the boy to bring a lamp on deck.

This was done, the lamp put on the skylight, and putting the paper close to it, the captain read as follows: "Thomas Parr, of Shropshire, died Nov. 16, 1635, aged one hundred and fifty-two; Henry Jenkins, of Yorkshire, died Dec. 8, 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine; James Sands, of Staffordshire, died 1770, aged one hundred and forty; Louisa Truxo, a negress in South America, was living in 1780, and her age was then one hundred and seventy-five."

I burst into a laugh. He smiled too, and said, "Here in this list are thirty-one names, the highest being that negress, and the lowest one, Susannah Hilliar, of Piddington, Northamptonshire, who died February 19th, 1781, aged one hundred. The young gentleman who copied them said they were all honestly vouched for, and wrote down a list of the authorities, which," said he, peering and bringing the paper closer to his eyes, "consist of 'Fuller's Worthies,' 'Philosophical Transactions,' 'Derham's Physico-Theology,' several newspapers, such as the 'Morning Post,' 'Daily Advertiser,' 'London Chronicle,' and a number of inscriptions."

I could have been tolerably sarcastic, I daresay, when he mentioned the authority of the newspapers, always understanding that those sheets flourish mainly on lies, and I should have laughed again had I not been restrained by the sense that Captain Skevington was clearly "bitten" on this subject, actually worried by it, indeed, to such lengths, that if he did not mind his eye it might presently push into a delusion, and earn him the disconcerting reputation of being a madman; so I thought I would talk gravely, and said, "May I ask, sir, why you should have been at the pains to collect that evidence in your hand about old age?"

"A mere humour," said he, lightly, putting the paper away, "though I don't mind owning it would prodigiously gratify me if I could be the instrument of proving that men can overstep the bounds of natural life by as many years again, and yet possess their own souls and be as true to their original as they were when hearty young fellows flushed with the summer colours of life."

Some fine rhymes coming into my head, I exclaimed, "Cowley has settled that point, I think, when he says:—

'To things immortal time can do no wrong,

And that which never is to die for ever must be young.'"

"A noble fancy indeed!" cried the captain. He reflected a little, and said, "It would make a great noise among sailors, and perhaps all men, to prove that the mariners who man the Death Ship are not ghosts and phantoms as has been surmised, but survivors of a crew, men who have outlived their fellows, and are now extremely ancient, as these and scores of others who have passed away unnoticed have been," said he, touching his pocket where the paper was.

"When, sir, did Vanderdecken sail from Batavia?" I asked.

"I have always understood about the year 1650," he replied.

"Then," said I, calculating, "suppose the average age of the crew to have been thirty when the Curse was uttered— we'll name that figure for the sake of argument— in the present year of our Lord they will have attained the age of hard upon one hundred and eighty."

"Well?" said he, inquiringly, as though there was yet food for argument.

I shook my head.

"Then," he cried, with heat, "they are endevilled, for it must be one of two things. They can't be dead men as the corpse in the grave is dead."

"One could only judge by seeing with one's eyes," said I.

"I hope that won't happen," he exclaimed, taking a hasty turn; "though I don't know— I don't know! A something here," pressing his brow, "weighs down upon me like a warning. I have struggled to get rid of the fancy; but our being chased by the Dutchman shows that we did not meet that Plymouth snow for nothing; and, by the thunder of Heaven, Fenton, I fear— I fear our next bout will be with the Spectre."

His manner, his words, a gleam in his eye, to which the lantern lent no sparkle, sent a tremor through me. He caused me to fear him for a minute as one that talked with certainty of futurity through stress of prophetic craze. The yellow beams of the lantern dispersed a narrow circle of lustre, and in it our figures showed black, each with two shadows swaying at his feet from the commingling of the lamplight and the moonshine. The soft air stirred in the rigging like the rustle of the pinions of invisible night-birds on the wing; all was silent and in darkness along the decks, save where stood the figure of the helmsman just before the little round-house, outlined by the flames of the binnacle lamp; the stillness, unbroken to the farthest corners of the mighty plain of ocean, seemed as though it were some mysterious spell wrought by the stars, so high it went, even— so one might say— as a sensible presence to the busy, trembling faces of those silver worlds.

In all men, even in the dullest, there is a vein of imagination; whilst, like an artery, it holds sound, all is well. But sometimes it breaks, God knows how, for the most part, and then what is in it floods the intelligence often to the drowning of it, as the bursting of a vessel of the body within sickens or kills with hemorrhage. I considered some such idea as this to be applicable to Captain Skevington. Here was apparently a plain, sturdy sailor, qualified to the life for such talk as concerns ships, weather, ladings and the like; yet it was certain he was exceedingly superstitious, believing in such a Devil as the ancient monks figured forth, also in the possession of dead bodies by demons who caused them to move and act as though operated upon by the souls they came from their mothers with, with a vast deal of other pitiful fancies; and now, through our unhappy meeting with that miserable snow, he had let his mind run on the Phantom Ship so vehemently that he was not only cocksure we should meet the Spectre, but had reasoned the whole fabric and manning of her out on two issues; either that her hands were survivors of her original crew, persons who had cheated Nature by living to an age the like of which had not been heard of since the days of Moses and the prophets, beings who,

Like a lamp would live to the last wink

And crawl upon the utmost verge of life;

or that they were mariners who, having arrived at the years when they would have died but for being cursed, had been seized upon by the Devil, quickened by him, and set a-going with their death-hour aspects upon them.

These reflections occupied my mind after he had left me, and I don't mind confessing that what with my own belief in the Death Ship, coupled with the captain's notions and the fancies they raised in me, along with the melancholy vagueness of the deep, hazy with moonshine, the stillness, and the sense of our drawing near to where the Spectre was chiefly to be met, I became so uneasy that I contrived to spend the rest of my watch on deck within a few paces of the wheel, often addressing the helmsman for the sake of hearing his voice; and I tell you I was mighty pleased when midnight came round at last, so that I could go below and dispatch the mate to a scene in which his heavy mind would witness nothing but water and sky, and a breeze much too faint to be profitable.

Chapter 7

I Converse With The Ship's Carpenter About The Death Ship.

AND NOW FOR six days it veritably seemed as if we were to be transformed into the marine phantom that, unsubstantial as she might be, yet lay with the heaviness of lead upon Captain Skevington; for, being on the parallel of Agulhas, a little to the south of that latitude, and in about sixteen degrees west longitude, it came on to blow fresh from the south-east, hardening after twenty-four hours into a whole gale with frequent and violent guns, and a veering of it easterly; and this continued, with a lull of an hour or two's duration, for six days, as I have said. 'Twas a taste of Cape weather strong enough to last a man a lifetime. The sea lay shrouded to within a musket-shot by a vapour of slatish hue that looked to stand motionless, and past the walls and along the roof of this wild, dismal, cloud-formed chamber, with its floor of vaults and frothing brows, the wind swept raving, raising a terrible lead-coloured sea, with heads which seemed to rear to the height of our maintop, where they broke, and boiled like a cauldron with foam, great masses of which the hands of the gale caught up and hurled, so that the lashing of the spray was often like a blinding snowstorm, but so smarting that the wind was as if charged with javelins.

Look upon the chart and you will see that for measureless leagues there is in these waters no land to hinder the run of the surges. Hence, when a fierce gale comes on from the east, south or west, the seas which rise are prodigious beyond such language as I have at command to express. We lay-to under a storm staysail with topgallant-masts struck, yards on deck and the lower yards stowed on the rail, the hatches battened down and everything as snug as good seamanship could provide. Our decks were constantly full of water; by one great sea that fell over into the waist there were drowned no less than six of the sheep we had taken in at the Cape, with a hog and many fowls; the carpenter's leg was broken by a fall, and an able seaman was deeply gashed in the face by being thrown against a scuttlebutt; 'twas impossible to get any food cooked, and throughout that week we subsisted on biscuit, cheese and such dry and lean fare as did not need dressing. In short, I could fill a chapter with our sufferings and anxieties during that period.

I had supposed that when brought face to face with the stern harsh prose of such weather as this, the mournful, romantic stuff that filled the captain's head would have been clean blown out of it; but no! he repeatedly said to me, and I believe on more than one occasion to Mr. Hall, that he considered this weather as part of the ill-luck that was bound to come to us from our having spoken a vessel that had been passed within hailing distance by the Phantom Ship.

On the fifth morning of the gale, the pair of us being in the cabin, he informed me that a man named Cobwebb, who was at the helm the night before, had told him that some of the crew were for putting this foul storm down to one Mulder, or some such name, who was a Russian Finn, a sober, excellent seaman, and one of the only two foreigners in our forecastle; that to neutralise any magical influence he might possess, a horse shoe had been nailed to the foremast and the mainmast pierced and scored with a black-handled knife. He smiled at these superstitions but did not seem to suspect that his own, as being received by a man of thought and tolerable education, might by many be deemed much more worthy of ridicule.

But on the sixth day the gale broke, leaving our ship considerably strained, by which time, in spite of the current and the send of the sea, we had contrived to make forty miles of southing and easting, owing to our pertinacity in making sail and stretching away on a board at every lull.

It was shortly after this, on the Tuesday following the Friday on which the gale ended, that, it being my watch on deck from eight o'clock in the evening till midnight, I carried my pipe, an hour before my turn arrived, into the carpenter's cabin, which he shared with the boatswain, to give the poor fellow a bit of my company, for his broken leg kept him motionless. It was the second dogwatch, as we term the time, 'twixt six and eight o'clock, at sea, the evening indifferently fine, the wind over the starboard quarter, a quiet breeze, the ocean heaving in a lazy swell from the south, and the ship pushing forward at five knots an hour under fore and main-royals. The carpenter lay in a bunk, wearing a haggard face, and grizzly for lack of the razor. He was a very sensible, sober man, a good artificer, and had served under Lord Howe in the fleet equipped for the relief of Gibraltar, besides having seen a deal of cruising work in earlier times.

He was much obliged by my looking in upon him, and we speedily fell to yarning; he lighted a pipe, and I smoked likewise, whilst I sat upon his chest, taking in with a half-look round, such details as a rude sketch of the bo's'n's wife nailed to the bulkhead, the slush lamp swinging its dingy smoking flame to a cracked piece of looking-glass over against the carpenter's bed, an ancient horny copy of the Bible, with type pretty nigh as big as the letters of our ship's name, a bit of a shelf wherefrom there forked out the stems of some clay pipes, with other humble furniture such as a sailor is used to carry to sea with him.

After a little, the carpenter, whose name was Matthews, says to me, "I beg pardon, sir, but there's some talk going about among the men concerning the old Dutchman that was cursed last century. My mate, Joe Marner, told me that Jimmy— meaning the cabin-boy— was telling some of the crew this morning, that he heard the captain say the Dutchman's been sighted."

"By anyone aboard us?" I asked.

"Mebbe, sir, but I didn't understand that."

Now, as every hour was carrying us further to the eastward of the Cape, away from the Phantom's cruising-ground, and as, moreover, the leaving gossip to make its own way would surely in the end prove more terrifying to the nervous and superstitious on board than speaking the truth, I resolved to tell Matthews how the matter stood, and with that, acquainted him with what the master of the snow had told Captain Skevington. He looked very grave, and withdrew his pipe from his lips, and I noticed he did not offer to light the tobacco afresh.

"I'm sorry to hear this, sir," says he.

"But," said I, "what has the Lovely Nancy's meeting with the Dutchman got to do with us?"

"Only this, sir," he exclaimed, with his face yet more clouded, and speaking in a low voice, as one might in a sacred building, "I never yet knew or heard of a ship reporting to another of having met the Dutchman without that other a-meeting of the Ghost too afore she ended her voyage."

"If that be so," I cried, not liking to hear this, for Matthews had been to sea for thirty-five years, and he now spoke with too much emotion not to affect me, "for God's sake don't make your thoughts known to the crew, and least of all to the captain, who is already so uneasy on this head that when he mentions it he talks as if his mind were adrift."

"Mr. Fenton," said the carpenter, "I never yet knew or heard of a ship reporting to another of having met the Dutchman, without that other meeting the Ghost too afore she's ended her voyage," and thus speaking he smote his bed heavily with his fist.

I was startled by the emphasis his repeating his former words gave to the assurance, and smoked in silence. He put down his pipe and lay awhile looking at me as though turning some matters over in his mind. The swing of the flame, burning from the spout of the lamp put various expressions, wrought by the fluctuating shadows, into his sick face, and it was this perhaps that caused his words to possess a power I could not feign to you by any art of my pen. He asked me if I had ever seen the Dutchman, and on my answering "No," he said that the usual notion among sailors was that there is but one vessel sailing the seas with the curse of Heaven upon her, but that that was a mistake, as it was an error in the same way to suppose that this ocean from Agulhas round to the Mozambique was the only place in which the Phantom was to be met.

"There's a ship," said he, "after the pattern of this here Dutchman, to be found in the Baltic. She always brings heavy weather, and there's small chance afterwards for any craft that sights her."

"I've been trading in the Baltic for five years without ever hearing that," said I.

"But it's true all the same, Mr. Fenton; you ask about it, sir, when you get back, and then you'll see. There's another vessel, of the same pattern, that's to be met down in the mouth of the Channel, 'twixt Ushant and the Scillies, and thereabouts. A man I know, called Jimmy Robbins, saw her, and told me the yarn. He was in a ship bound home from the Spice Islands; they were in soundings, and heading round for the Channel; it was the morning watch, just about dawn, weather slightly thickish; suddenly a vessel comes heaving out of the smother from God knows where! Jim Robbins was coiling down a rope alongside the mate, who, on seeing the vessel, screams out shrill, like a woman, and falls flat in a swound; Jim, looking, saw it was the Channel Death Ship, a large pink, manned by skeletons, with a skull for a figurehead, and a skeleton captain leaning against the mast, watching the running of the sand in an hour-glass he held. She was seen by twelve others, besides Jim and the mate, who nearly died of the fright. And the consequence of meeting her was, that the ship Jim Robbins was in was cast away on the following night on the French coast, down Saint Brihos way, and thirty-three souls perished."

The gravity with which he related this, and his evident keen belief in these and the like superstitions, now rendered the conversation somewhat diverting; for, as I have elsewhere said, though I never questioned the existence of the one spectral ship, in a belief in which all mariners are united, holding that the deep, which is full of drowned men, hath its spirits and its apparitions equally with the land, yet when it came to such crude mad fancies as a vessel manned by skeletons, why, of course, there was nothing for it but to laugh, which I did, heartily enough, though in my sleeve, for seamen are a sensitive people, easily afronted, more especially in any article of their faith. However, he succeeded, before I left him, in exciting a fresh uneasiness in me by asseverating, in a most melancholy voice, and with a very dismal face, that our having spoken with the snow that had sighted the Dutchman was certain to be followed by misfortune; and these being amongst the last words he exchanged with me before I left his cabin, I naturally carried away with me on deck the damping and desponding impression of his posture and appearance as he uttered them, which were those of a man grieved, bewildered, and greatly alarmed.

Chapter 8

A Tragical Death

FOR SOME time after I had relieved the deck, as it is termed, that is to say, after the mate had gone below and left me in charge, I had the company of the captain, who seemed restless and troubled, often quitting my side as we paced, to go to the rail and view the horizon, with the air of a man perturbed by expectation. I need not tell you that I did not breathe a word to him respecting my talk with the carpenter, not even to the extent of saying how fancies about the Dutchman were flying about among the crew, for this subject he was in no state of mind to be brought into.

The moon was rising a little before he joined me, and we stood in silence watching her. She jutted up a very sickly faint red, that brightened but a little after she lifted her lower limb clear of the horizon, and when we had the full of her plain we perceived her strangely distorted by the atmosphere of the shape— if shape it can be called— of a rotten orange that has been squeezed, or of a turtle's egg lightly pressed; she was more like a blood-coloured jelly distilled by the sky, ugly and even affrighting, than the sweet ice-cold planet that empearls the world at night, and whose delicate silver the lover delights to behold in his sweetheart's eyes. But she grew more shapely as she soared, though holding a dusky blush for a much longer time than ever I had noticed in her when rising off the mid-African main; and her wake, broken by the small, black curl of the breeze, hung in broken indissoluble lumps of feverish light, like coagulated gore that had dropped from the wound she looked to be in the dark sky.

There was a faintness in the heavens that closed out the sparkles of the farther stars, and but a few, and those only of the greatest magnitude, were visible, shining in several colours, such as dim pink and green and wan crystal; all which, together with one or two of them above our mastheads, dimly glittering amidst feeble rings, made the whole appearance of the night amazing and even ghastly enough to excite a feeling of awe in the attention it compelled. The captain spoke not a word whilst the moon slowly floated into the dusk, and then fetching a deep breath, he said—

"Well, thank God, if she don't grow round it's because of the shadow on her. Keep a bright look-out, Mr. Fenton, and hold the ship to her course. Should the wind fail call me— and call me too if it should head us."

With which he walked quietly to the hatch, stood there a moment or two with his hand upon it and his face looking up as though he studied the trim of the yards, and then disappeared.

My talk with the carpenter and the behaviour of the captain bred in me a sense as of something solemn and momentous informing the hours. I reasoned with myself, I struggled with the inexplicable oppression that weighed down my spirits, but it would not do. I asked myself, "Why should the cheap, illiterate fears of such a man as the carpenter affect me? Why should I find the secret of my soul's depression in the superstitions of Captain Skevington, whose arguments as to the endevilment of the dead exhibited a decay of his intellect on one side, as phthisis consumes one lung, leaving the other sound enough for a man to go on living with?" And I recited these comfortable lines of the poet:—

"Learn though mishap may cross our ways,

It is not ours to reckon when."

Yet in vain. There was an intelligence of my spirits that was not to be soothed, and I found myself treading about the deck, stepping lightly, as a man might who walks upon ground under which the dead lie, whilst I felt so much worried, down to the very bottom of my heart, that had some great sorrow just befallen me I could not have been sadder.

As the night wore on the moon gathered her wonted hue and shape, though her refulgence was small, for the air thickened. Indeed, at half-past ten all the lights of Heaven, saving the moon, had been put out by a mist, the texture of which was illustrated by the only luminary the sky contained, around whose pale expiring disc there was now a great halo, with something of the character of a lunar rainbow in the very delicate, barely determinable tinctures, which made a sort of shadowy prism of it, more like what one would dream of than see. The ocean lay very black, there was no power in the moon to cast a wake, the breathings of the wind rippled the water and caused a scintillation of the spangles of the phosphorus or sea-fire, the weight of the lower sails kept them hanging up and down, and what motion the ship had was from the swelling of the light canvas that rose very pale and ghostly into the gloom.

I had gone to the taffrail and was staring there away into the dark, whither our short wake streamed in a sort of smouldering cloudiness with particles of fire in it, conceiving that the wind was failing, and waiting to make sure before reporting to the captain, when I was startled by the report of a musket or some small arm that broke upon my ear with a muffled sound, so that whence it came I could not conceive. Yet, for some minutes I felt so persuaded the noise had been seawards that, spite of there having been no flash, I stood peering hard into the dark, first one side then the other, far as the sails would suffer me.

Then, but all very quickly, concluding that the explosion had happened aboard and might betoken mischief, I ran along the deck where, close against the wheel, I found a number of seamen talking hurriedly and in alarmed voices. I called out to know what that noise had been. None knew. One said it had come from the sea, another that there had been a small explosion in the hold, and a third was giving his opinion, when at that instant a figure darted out of the companion hatch, clothed in his shirt and drawers, and cried out, "Mr. Fenton! Mr. Fenton! For God's sake, where are you?"

I recognized the voice of Mr. Hall, and bawled back, "Here, sir!" and ran to him. He grasped my arm. "The captain has shot himself!" he exclaimed.

"Where is he?" said I.

"In his cabin," he answered.

We rushed down together. The great cabin, where we messed, was in darkness, but a light shone in the captain's berth. The door was open, and gently swung with the motion of the ship. I pushed in, but instantly recoiled with horror, for, right athwart the deck lay the body of Captain Skevington, with the top of his head blown away. It needed but one glance to know that he had done this thing with his own hand. He had fired the piece with his foot by a string attached to the trigger, standing upright with his brow bent to the muzzle, for the bight of the string was round his shoe, and he had fallen sideways, grasping the barrel.

The sight froze me to the marrow. Had I killed him by accident with my own hand I could not have trembled more. But this exquisite distress was short-lived. It was only needful to look at his head to discover how fruitless would be the task of examining him for any signs of life. Some of the seamen who heard Mr. Hall cry out to me about this thing had followed us below, forgetting their place in the consternation roused in them, and stood in the doorway faintly groaning and muttering exclamations of pity. Mr. Hall bid a couple of them raise the body and lay it in its bunk and cover it with a sheet, and others he sent for water and a swab wherewith to cleanse the place.

"You had better go on deck again, Fenton," says he to me; "the ship must be watched. I'll join you presently."

I was glad to withdraw; for albeit there was a ghastliness in the look of the night, the sea being black as ebony, though touched here and there with little sheets of fire, and stretching like a pall to its horizon that was drawing narrower and murkier around us minute after minute, with the wing-like shadow of vapour that was yet too thin to deserve the name of fog; though there was this ghastliness, I say, aided by the moon that was now little more than a dim, tarnished blotch of shapeless silver, wanly ringed with an ashen cincture, yet the taste of the faint breeze was as helpful to my spirits as a dram of generous cordial after the atmosphere of the cabin in which I had beheld the remains of Captain Skevington.

Chapter 9

Mr. Hall Harangues the Crew

THE NEWS had spread quickly; the watch below had roused out and most of the men were on deck, and they moved about in groups striving to find out all about the suicide. The death of a captain of a ship at sea is sure always to fill the crew with uneasiness; a sense of uncertainty is excited, and then again there is that darkening of the spirits which the shadow of death particularly causes among a slender community who have been for months associated as a family, and amid whom, every man's face, speech, and manner are, maybe, more familiar than his own brother's or father's.

Yet of all the souls on board I suspect I felt the captain's self-murder most sorely, for owing to there being in my mind much more that was akin to his own moods than he could find in Mr. Hall, we had had many and long conversations together. Then there was the Death Ship for me to recall, with his thoughts on it and his conviction that evil was sure to follow his boarding the Plymouth snow. Moreover, I was the last with whom he had exchanged words that night, and in his manner of quitting me, after looking at the moon, there was positively nothing that even my startled and imaginative mind could witness to indicate the intention that had destroyed him.

Presently Mr. Hall arrived on deck fully dressed, and stepping over to where I stood in deep thought, exclaimed, "Did you have a suspicion that the captain designed this fearful act?"

"No, not a shadow of a suspicion," I answered.

"'Tis enough to make one believe he was not far out when he talked of the ill-luck he expected from speaking a craft that had sighted Vanderdecken," said he, very uneasily, which made me see how strong was the blow his nerves had received; and running his eyes restlessly over the water here and there, as I might tell by the dim sparkle the faint moon-haze kindled in them. "Oh, but," he continued, as if dashing aside his fancies, "the mere circumstance of his being so superstitious ought to explain the act. I have often thought there was a vein of madness in him."

"I never questioned that," I replied.

"'Tis an ugly-looking night," said he, with a little tremble running through him, "there is some menace of foul weather. We shall lose this faint air presently." He shivered again and said, "Such a sight as that below is enough to make a Hell of a night of midsummer beauty! It is the suddenness of it that seizes upon the imagination. Why, d'ye know, Fenton, I'd give a handful of guineas, poor as I am, for a rousing gale— anything to blow my mind to its bearings, for here's a sort of business," looking aloft, "that's fit to suffocate the heart in your breast."

Such words in so plain and literal a man made me perceive how violently he had been wrenched. I begged his leave to go below and fetch him a glass of liquor.

"No, no," said he, "not yet, anyhow. I must speak to those fellows there."

Saying which he walked a little distance forward, calling for the boatswain.

On that officer answering, he said, "Are all hands on deck?"

"I believe most of the crew are on deck, sir," replied the boatswain.

"Pipe all hands," said Mr. Hall.

The clear keen whistling rose shrill to the sails and made as blythe a sound as could have been devised for the cheering of us up. The men gathered quickly, some lanthorns were fetched, and in the light of them stood the crew near to the round-house. A strange sight it was; the shining went no higher than half-way up the mainsail that hung steady with its own weight, and as much of it as was thus illuminated showed like cloth of gold pale in the dusk; above was mere shadow, the round-top like a drop of ink upon the face of the darkness, the sails of so weak a hue they seemed as though in the act of dissolving and vanishing away; the crowd of faces were all pale and their eyes full of gleaming; the shadows crawled at our feet, and, with the total concealment of the moon at this time, a deeper shade fell upon the sea and our ship, and the delicate rippling of the water alongside seemed to stir upon our ears in a tinkling as from out of the middle air.

Mr. Hall made a brief speech. He explained to the men how, on hearing the report of a musket, he had sprung from his bed, and perceiving powder-smoke leaking through the openings in the door of the captain's cabin, through which some rays of light streamed, he entered, and seeing the body of the captain, and the horrid condition of the head, was filled with a panic and rushed on deck. That the master had shot himself was certain, but there was no help for what had happened. The command of the ship fell upon him; but it was for them to say whether he should navigate the ship to her destination, or carry her back to Table Bay, where a fresh commander could be obtained.

He was very well liked on board, being an excellent seaman; and the crew on hearing this, immediately answered that they wanted no better master to sail under than he, and that, indeed, they would not consent to a change; but having said this with a heartiness that pleased me, for I liked Mr. Hall greatly myself, and was extremely glad to find the crew so well disposed, they fell into an awkward silence, broken after a little by some hoarse whisperings.

"What now?" says Mr. Hall.

"Why, sir," answers the boatswain, respectfully, "it's this with the men: there's a notion among us that that there Plymouth snow has brought ill-luck to the ship, one bad specimen of which has just happened; and the feeling is that we had better return to Table Bay, so as to get the influence worked out of the old barkey."

"How is that to be done?" says Mr. Hall, coming easily into the matter, partly because of his shaken nerves, and partly because of the kindness he felt towards the hands for the way they had received his address to them.

Here there was another pause, and then the boatswain, speaking somewhat shyly, said, "The carpenter, who's heard tell more about the Phantom Ship and the spell she lays on vessels than all hands of us put together, says that the only way to work out of a ship's timbers the ill-luck that's been put into them by what's magical and hellish, is for a minister of religion to come aboard, call all hands to prayer, and ask of the Lord a blessing on the ship. He says there's no other way of purifying of her."

"Can't we pray ourselves for a blessing?" says Mr. Hall.

The boatswain not quickly answering, a sailor says, "It needs a man who knows how to pray— who's acquainted with the right sort of words to use."

"Aye," cried another, "and whose calling is religion."

Mr. Hall half-turned, as if he would address me, then checking himself, he said, "Well, my lads, there's no wind now, and small promise of any. Suppose we let this matter rest till to-morrow morning; Mr. Fenton and I will talk it over, and you forward can turn it about in your minds. I believe we shall be easier when the captain's buried and the sun's up, and then we might agree it would be a pity to put back after the tough job we've had to get where we are. But lest you should still be all of one mind on this matter in the morning, we'll keep the ship, should wind come, under small sail, so as to make no headway worth speaking of during the night. Is that to your fancy, men?"

They all said it was, and thereupon went forward, but I noticed that those who were off duty did not offer to go below; they joined the watch on the forecastle, and I could hear them in earnest talk, their voices trembling through the stillness like the humming of a congregation in church following the parson's reading.

Mr. Hall came to my side and we walked the deck.

"I am sorry the men have got that notion of this ship being under a spell," said he. "This is no sweet time of the year in these seas; to put back will, I daresay, be only to anger the weather that's now quiet enough, and there's always the risk of falling into Dutch hands."

I told him of my talk with the carpenter, and said that I could not be surprised the crew were alarmed, for the old fellow had the Devil's own knack of putting his fancies in an alarming way.

"I laughed at some of his fancies," said I, "but I don't mind owning that I quitted his cabin so dulled in my spirits by his talk, that I might have come from a death-bed for all the heart there was in me."

"Well, things must take their chance," said Mr. Hall. "I'll speak to the carpenter myself in the morning, and afterwards to the men; and if they are still wishful that the ship should return to Table Bay we'll sail her there. 'Tis all one to me. I'd liefer have a new captain over me than be one."

We continued until five bells to walk to and fro the deck, talking about the captain's suicide, the strangeness of it as following his belief that ill-luck had come to the ship from the Plymouth vessel, with other such matters as would be suggested by our situation and the tragedy in the cabin; and Mr. Hall then said he would go below for a glass of rum; but he refused to lie down— though I offered to stand an hour of his watch, that is from midnight till one o'clock— for he said he should not be able to sleep.

Most of the crew continued to hang about the forecastle, which rescued the deck from the extreme loneliness I had found in it ere the report of the fatal musket startled all hands into wakefulness and movement. The lanthorns had been carried away and the ship was plunged in darkness. There still blew a very light air, so gentle that you needed to wet your finger and hold it up to feel it. From the darkness aloft fell the delicate sounds of the higher canvas softly drumming the masts to the very slight rolling of the ship. I went to the binnacle and found that the vessel was heading her course, and then stepped to the rail, upon which I set my elbows, leaning my chin in my hands, and in that posture fell a-thinking.

Chapter 10

We Draw Close to a Strange and Luminous Ship

NOW I MIGHT have stood thus for ten minutes, when I was awakened from my dream by an eager feverish muttering of voices forward, and on a sudden the harsh notes of a seaman belonging to my watch cried out, "D'ye see that sail, right broad a-beam, sir?"

I sprang from my leaning posture, and peered, but my eyes were heavy; the night was dark, and whilst I stared several of the sailors came hurriedly aft to where I stood, and said, all speaking together, "There— see her, sir? Look yonder, Mr. Fenton!" and their arms, to a man, shot out to point, as if every one levelled a pistol.

Though I could not immediately make out the object, I was not surprised by the consternation the sailors were in; for, such was the mood and temper of the whole company, that not the most familiar and prosaic craft that floats on the ocean could have broken through the obscurity of the night upon their gaze without tickling their superstitious instincts, till the very hair of their heads crawled to the inward motions. In a few moments, sure enough, I made out the loom of what looked a large ship, out on the starboard beam. As well as I could distinguish she was close hauled, and so standing as to pass under our stern. She made a sort of faintness upon the sea and sky where she was: nothing more. And even to be sure of her, it was necessary to look a little on one side or the other of her; for if you gazed full she went out, as a dim distant light at sea does, thus viewed.

"She may be an enemy!" I cried. "There should be no lack of Dutch or even French hereabouts. Quick, lads, to stations. Send the boatswain here."

I ran to the companion hatch and called loudly to Mr. Hall. He had fallen asleep on a locker, and came running in a blind sort of way to the foot of the ladder, shouting out, "What is it? What is it?" I answered that there was a large ship heading directly for us, whereupon he was instantly wide awake, and sprang up the ladder, crying, "Where away? Where away?"

If there was any wind I could feel none. Yet some kind of draught there must have been, for the ship out in the darkness held a brave luff, which proved her under command. We, on the other hand, rested upon the liquid ebony of the ocean with square yards, the mizzen furled, the starboard clew of the mainsail hoisted, and the greater number of our staysails down. Whilst Mr. Hall stared in the direction of the ship the boatswain arrived for orders. The mate turned smartly to me, and said, "We must make ready, and take our chance. Bo's'n, pipe to quarters, and Mr. Fenton, see all clear."

For the second time in my watch the boatswain's pipe shrilled clear to the canvas, from whose stretched, still folds, the sounds broke away in ghostly echoes. We were not a man-of-war, had no drums, and to martial duties we could but address ourselves clumsily. But all felt that there might be a great danger in the pale shadow yonder that had seemed to ooze out upon our eyes from the darkness as strangely as a cloud shapes itself upon a mountain-top.

So we tumbled about quickly and wildly enough, got our little batteries clear, put on the hatch-gratings and tarpaulins, opened the magazine, lighted the matches, provided the guns with spare breeches and tackles, and stood ready for whatever was to come. All this we contrived with the aid of one or two lanterns, very secretly moved about, as Mr. Hall did not wish us to be seen making ready; but the want of light delayed us, and, by the time we were fully prepared, the strange ship had insensibly floated down to about three-quarters-of-a-mile upon our starboard quarter.

At that distance it was too black to enable us to make anything of her, but we comforted ourselves by observing that she did not offer to alter her course, whence we might reasonably hope that she was a peaceful trader like ourselves. She showed no lights— her sails were all that was visible of her, owing to the hue they put into the darkness over her hull. It was a time of heavy trial to our patience. Our ship had come to a dead stand, as it was easy to discover by looking over the side, where the small, pale puffs of phosphoric radiance that flashed under water at the depth of a man's hand from our vessel's strakes whenever she rolled, no matter how daintily, to the swell, hung glimmering for a space in the selfsame spot where they were discharged. Nor was there the least sound of water in motion under our counter, unless it were the gurgling, drowning sobbing you hear there on a still night, when the stern stoops to the drop of the fold, and raises that strange, hollow noise of washing all about the rudder.

"I would to mercy a breeze would come if only to resolve her!" said Mr. Hall to me in a low voice. "There's but little fun to be got out of this sort of waiting. At this rate we must keep the men at their stations till daylight to find out what she is. Pleasant if she should prove some lump of a Dutch man-of-war! She shows uncommonly large, don't you think, Fenton?"

"So do we to her, I dare say, in this obscurity," I replied. "But I doubt that she's a man-of-war. I've been watching her closely and have never once caught sight of the least gleam of a light aboard her."

"Maybe the officer of the watch and the look-out are sound asleep," said he, with a slight and not very merry laugh; "and if she's steered on her quarter-deck she'll be too deep-waisted perhaps for the helmsman to see us."

I heard him say this without closely heeding it, for my attention at that moment was attracted by what was unquestionably the enlargement of her pallid shadow; sure proof that she had shifted her helm and was slowly coming round so as to head for us. Mr. Hall noticed this as soon as I.

"Ha!" he cried, "they mean to find out what we are, hey? They've observed us at last. Does she bring an air with her that she's under control, or is it that she's lighter and taller than we?"

It was beyond question because she was lighter and taller, and having been kept close-hauled to the faint draught had made more of it than we who carried it aft. Besides, we were loaded down to our chain-plate bolts with cargo, and the water and other stores we had shipped at the Cape. Yet her approach was so sluggish as to be imperceptible, and I would not like to say that our gradual drawing together was not as much due to the current which, off this coast, runs strong to the westward, setting us, who were deep, faster towards her than it set her from us, as it was also owing to the strange attraction which brings becalmed vessels near to each other— often indeed, to their having to be towed clear by their boats.

Meanwhile, the utter silence on board the stranger, the blackness in which her hull lay hidden, the strangeness of her bracing-in her yards to head up for us without any signal being shown that she designed to fight us, wrought such a fit of impatience in Mr. Hall, that he swung his body from the backstay he clutched in movements positively convulsive.

"Are they all dead aboard? On such a night as this one should be able to hear the least sound— the hauling taut of a tackle— the rasping of the wheel-ropes!"

"She surely doesn't hope to catch us napping?" said I.

"God knows!" cried the mate. "What would I give now for a bit of moon!"

"If it's to be a fight it'll have to be a shooting match for a spell, or wind must come quickly," said I. "But if she meant mischief wouldn't she head to pass under our stern, where she could rake us, rather than steer to come broadside on?"

Instead of responding, the mate sprang on to the bulwark-rail, and in tones such as only the practised and powerful lungs of a seaman can fling, roared out—

"Ho, the ship, ahoy!"

We listened with so fierce a strain of attention that the very beating of our hearts rung in our ears; but not a sound came across the water. Twice yet did Mr. Hall hail that pallid fabric, shapeless as yet in the dark air, but to no purpose. On this there was much whispering among the men clustered about the guns. Their voices came along in a low, grumbling sound like the growling of dogs, dulled by threats.

"Silence, fore and aft!" cried the mate. "We don't know what she is— but we know what we are! and, as Englishmen, we surely have spirit enough for whatever may come."

There was silence for some minutes after these few words; then the muttering broke out afresh, but scattered, a group talking to larboard, another on the forecastle, and so forth.

Meanwhile the vessels, all insensibly, had continued to draw closer and closer to each other. A small clarification of the atmosphere happening past the stranger, suffered a dim disclosure of her canvas, whence I perceived that she had nothing set above her topgallant-sails, though it was impossible to see whether she carried royal-masts, or indeed whether the yards belonging to those masts were crossed on them. Her hull had now also stolen out into a pitch-black shadow, and after gazing at it with painful intentness for some moments, I was extravagantly astonished to observe a kind of crawling and flickering of light, resembling that which burnt in the sea, stirring like glow-worms along the vessel's side.

I was about to direct Mr. Hall's attention to this thing, when he said in a subdued voice, "Fenton, d'ye notice the faint shining about her hull? What, in God's name, can it be?"

He had scarce uttered these words when a sailor on the starboard side of our ship, whom I recognised by the voice as one Ephraim Jacobs, an elderly, sober, pious-minded seaman, cried out with a sort of scream in his notes—

"As I hope to be forgiven my sins for Jesu's sake, yon's the ship that was curst last century."

Chapter 11

A Cruel Disaster Befalls Me.

THE MERE putting into words the suspicion that had been troubling all our minds made one man in action of the whole crew, like the firing of forty pieces of ordnance in the same instant. Whatever the sailors held they flung down, and, in a bound, came to the waist on the starboard side, where they stood, looking at the ship and making, amid that silence, the strangest noise that ever was heard with their deep and fearful breathing.

"Great thunder!" broke in one of them, presently, "d'ye know what that shining is, mates? Why, it's the glow of timbers that's been rotted by near two hundred years of weather."

"Softly, Tom!" said another; "'tis Hell that owns her crew; they have the malice of devils, and they need but touch us to founder us."

"Wait, and you shall see her melt!" exclaimed one of the two foreigners who were among our company of seamen. "If she is, as I believe, she will be manned by the ghosts of wicked men who have perished at sea; presently a bell shall strike, and she must disappear!"

As this was said there was a commotion forward, and the carpenter, borne by two stout hands, was carried into the midst of the crew, and propped up so that he might see the ship. I was as eager as any of the most illiterate sailors on board to hear what he had to say, and took a step the better to catch his words. A whole minute went by whilst he gazed; so strained and anticipative were my senses that the moments seemed as hours. He then said, "Mates, yonder's the Death Ship, right enough. Look hard, and you'll mark the steeve of her bowsprit with the round top at the end of it, and the spring of her aft in a fashion more ancient than is the ages of any two of the oldest men aboard. Note the after-rake of her mizzen-mast, and how the heel of the foremast looks to step in the fore-peak. That's the ship— born in 1650— Vanderdecken master— what I've often heard tell of— raise my head, mates!"

And here, whether through pain or weakness or horror, he fainted, but being laid upon the deck, and some water thrown over his face, he came to in a short while, and lay trembling, refusing to speak or answer questions.

A slight thinning of the vapour that hid the moon had enabled us to remark those points in the ship the carpenter had named; and whilst he was being recovered from his swoon, the moon looked down from a gulf in the mist, but her light was still very tarnished and dim, though blurred and distorted as was her appearance, yet there instantly formed round her the same halo or wan circle that was visible before she was hidden. But her apparition made a light that exquisitely answered to those two lines of Shakespeare—

"Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger washes all the air."

For such radiance as fell really seemed like a cleansing of the atmosphere after the black smother that had encompassed us, and now we could all see the ship distinctly as she lay on our quarter with her broadside somewhat to us, her yards trimmed like our own, and her sails hanging dead.

It was the solemnest sight that ever mortal eye beheld. The light left her black, so there was no telling what hue she showed or was painted. Her bows lay low in the water after the old fashion, with head-boards curling to her beak, that doubtless bore an ornament, though we could not distinguish it. There she rose like a hill, broken with the bulwarks that defined her waist, quarter-deck and short poop. This was as much as we could discern of her hull. Her foremast stood close to where the heel of her bowsprit came; her mizzen-mast raked over her stern, and upon it was a yard answering to the rig of a felucca; the clew of its sail came down clear of a huge lantern whose iron frame, for all the glass in it was broke and gone, showed like the skeleton of some monster on her taffrail. It was a sight to terrify the stoutest heart to see the creeping of thin, worm or wire-like gleamings upon the side she showed to us. I considered at first she was glossy and that those lights were the reflection of the phosphoric fires in the water under her; but it was soon made plain that this was not so, as, though to be sure a greenish glare of the true sea-flame would show against or near her when she slightly leaned, as we did, to the swell, this charnel-house or touch-wood glimmer played all along her without regard to the phosphorescence under her.

Now, ever since I was first going to sea, I had, as I have said, believed in the existence of the Spectre Ship, which all mariners I have sailed with feared to encounter; but so many imaginative stories had come of her— some feigning, as the carpenter's version showed, that she was a death ship, filled with spectres who navigated her; others that she was a spectral bark, laden with souls, against whom the gates of Purgatory were closed; others that she was a vessel for ever beating against gales of wind, sometimes appearing in a tempest that surrounded her when the rest of the ocean was smooth, sometimes rising from the waves, sometimes floating among the clouds, buffetting up there as though the masses of insubstantial vapour were solid and massy folds and acclivities; I say I had heard so many stories that they had ended in leaving me with a belief of my own, which was that the Phantom Ship— rightly so named— was an airy incorporeal thing— a vision to be encountered but rarely in these parts, a sea-ghost that had been too often beheld in the course of years to be denied, and as truly a spectre in its way as any that may be read of in Holy Writ, or that has stood at the bedsides of men and women and delivered messages from futurity.

This being my belief, then, though I was mightily terrified by the ancient shape of the ship and the mystery of her purpose, and the darkness and silence that clothed her, I could not believe that she was the true spectre that the sailor dreads; for, that she was as substantial as our vessel—"a quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs"— was undeniable, not more from her quiet, heaving motion than from the dull sounds I had now and again caught of the movement of her gear aloft, such as the scraping of a rope in a block, or the soft slap of a cloth against a spar by the heave of the fabric setting some light sail a-fanning.

"What think you of her, Fenton?" said Mr. Hall, speaking softly, but with much of his excitement and uneasiness gone. "Does she resemble the craft that the master of the snow told Captain Skevington he sighted hereabouts?"

"Why, yes, I think so," said I; "but it does not follow that she is the Phantom Ship. The Plymouth hooker's yarn owed a good deal to terror, and it would not lose in its passage through the brain of a lunatic, as I fear poor Skevington was."

"She has a very solid look— she is a real ship, but the like of her I have never seen, save in old prints. Mark those faint fiery stripes and spirals upon her. I do not understand it. The wood that yields such light must be as rotten as tinder and porous as a sponge. It could not swim."

By this time the mysterious ship had floated out her whole length, unless it were our vessel that had slewed and given us that view of her. No light save the lambent gleams on her sides was to be seen. We could hear no voices. We could discern no movement of figures or distinguish any outline resembling a human shape upon her. On a sudden, my eye was caught by an illumination overhead that made a lustre strong enough to enable me to see the face of Mr. Hall. I looked up conceiving that one of our crew had jumped aloft with a lantern, and saw at our main yard-arm a corpus sant or St. Elmo's light, that shone freely like a luminous bulb, poised a few inches above the spar. Scarce had this been kindled, and whilst it was paling the faces of our seamen who stared at it, there suddenly shone two bright meteors of a similar kind upon the strange ship; one on top of the topgallant-masthead that was the full height of the main spars, and one on the summit of a mast that stood up from the round top at the end of the bowsprit and that in olden times, before it was discontinued, would have been called the sprit-topmast. They had something of the glory of stars; their reflection twisted like silver serpents in the dark waters; and as though they had been flambeaux or lamps, they flung their spectral glow upon the strangely-cut sails of the vessel, upon her rigging and spars, sickling all things to their starry colour, dimly illuminating even the distant castle-like poop, showing clearly the dark line of bulwarks, whilst a deeper dye of blackness entered into the hull from the shadow between the corpus sants on high and their mirroring beneath.

"Thanks be to God for the sight of those lights!" exclaimed a deep voice, sounding out among the men. "It's a saint's hand as kindles them, I've heared; and there'll be a breeze with luck behind it presently."

"See, Mr. Hall!" cried I, pointing; "do you observe the figures of men? Look along the line of the forecastle— one, two, three— I count six there; and look right aft on that bit of a poop. Do you mark a couple of shapes viewing us as if with folded arms?"

"Yes!" He paused, staring, then added, "Those lights are familiar enough to me, I've seen them scores of times," speaking in whispers, which trembled back to their former notes of consternation, "but there's something frightful about them now— and yonder one," pointing to our yard-arm, "and the sight they show. She's no natural ship," he said, pulling off his cap, and passing his hand over his forehead. "Would to God a breeze would come and part us."

"Hail him again, sir!"

"Hail him you, my throat is dry."

I walked right aft to bring me more abreast of the silent motionless figures on the stranger's poop, and jumping on to the rail caught hold of the vang of the spanker-gaff to steady myself, and putting a hand to my mouth, roared out, "Ship ahoy! What ship is that?" and stopped breathless, so that I seemed to hear the echoes of my own voice among the sails of the stranger.

"What ship is that?" now came back in a deep, organ-like note, and the two figures separated, one walking forward, and the other stepping, as I had, on to the bulwark over the quarter-gallery.

"The Saracen, of London, bound to Indian ports," I responded.

"I will send a boat!" cried the man, in the same deep-throated voice.

"If you do, we'll fire into it!" screamed a seaman on our deck. "Mates— Mr. Hall, you see now what he is! Keep them off!— keep them off!" at which there was a sudden hurrying of feet, with many clicking sounds of triggers sharply cocked, by which I knew our men had armed themselves.

The corpus sant at our yard-arm vanished; in a few seconds it showed itself afresh midway up the mainmast, making a wild light all around it; those on the stranger burned steadily, and I believed a third had been kindled on her till I saw it was a lantern carried along the deck. There was a stillness lasting some minutes. What they were about we could not see; anon came a creaking, as of ropes travelling in blocks, then a light splash; the lantern dropped jerkily down the ship's side, plainly grasped by a man; flashes of phosphorus broke out of the water to the dip of oars, like fire clipped from a flint. I felt a faint air blowing, but did not heed it, being half-frenzied with the excitement and fear raised in me by what I could now see— thanks to the light of the St. Elmo fires, and the mystic crawlings of flames on the vessel's sides. I saw a boat, square at both ends, with the gunwale running out into horns, rowed by two figures, whilst a third stood upright in the bows, holding high a lighted lantern in one hand, and extending his other arm in a posture of supplication.

At this instant a yellow glare broke in a noon-tide dazzle from our own ship's rail, and the thunder of twenty muskets fired at once fell upon my hearing. I started with the violence of the shock breaking in upon me, heedlessly let go the vang that I had been grasping with my left hand, and fell headlong overboard.

Chapter 12

I am Rescued by the Death Ship

I ROSE TO THE surface from a deep plunge, but being a very indifferent swimmer it was as much as I could do— clothed as I was— to keep myself afloat by battling with my hands. I heard the rippling of the water about my ears, and I felt a deep despair settle upon my spirits, for I knew that the air that blew would carry my ship away from me and that I must speedily drown.

Indeed, to the first impulse of wind the Saracen had moved and I could see her, a great shadow, drawing away with the corpus sant, that a minute before had sparkled on her mainmast, now shining on her fore-topsail yard-arm. I had not the least doubt that, in the noise of the shooting, and amid the general alarm excited by the approach of the boat, neither the splash I had made in striking the water nor my disappearance had been noticed, and I remember thinking with the swiftness peculiar to persons in my situation— for as Cowper says—

"He long survives who lives an hour

In ocean self-upheld—"

I say I remember thinking that even if I should be immediately missed it was most unlikely the crew would suffer Mr. Hall to stop the ship and seek for me, for they would be mad not to use the new wind and sweep away from waters accurst by the presence of what was undoubtedly the Death Ship, whilst if even Mr. Hall's persuasion should prevail, yet long before that time I should have sunk.

I struggled hard to keep myself afloat, freely breaking the water in the hope that the light and whiteness of it might be seen. Four or five minutes thus passed and I was feeling my legs growing weighty as lead, when I noticed a light approach me. My eyes being full of wet, I could see no more than the light, what held or bore it being eclipsed by the spikes or fibres that shot out of it; as you notice a candle flame when the sight is damp. I could also hear the dip and trickle of oars, and tried to shout; but my brain was giddy, my mind sinking into a babbling state, and in truth I was so exhausted, that but for the sudden life darted into me by the sight of the lamp, I am sure I should then and there have clenched my hands above my head and sunk.

The lantern was flashed full upon my face and I was grasped by my hair. He who seized me spoke, and I believed it was the voice of one of the men in my watch, though I did not catch a syllable of his speech. After which I felt myself grasped under each arm and lifted out of the water, whereupon I no doubt fainted, for there is a blank between this and what followed, though the interval must have been very short.

When I opened my eyes, or rather when my senses returned to me, I found myself lying on my back, and the first thing I noticed was the moon shining weakly amid thin bodies of vapour which the wind had set in motion and which sped under her in puffs like the smoke of gunpowder after the discharge of a cannon. I lay musing a little while, conscious of nothing but the moon and some dark stretches of sail hovering above me; but my mind gathering force, I saw by the cut of the canvas that I was on board a strange ship; and then did I observe three men standing near my feet watching me. A great terror seized my heart. I sprang erect with a loud cry of fear, and rushed to the rail to see if the Saracen was near that I might hail her, but was stayed in that by being seized by the arm.

He who clutched me exclaimed in Dutch, "What would you do? If you could swim for a week you would not catch her."

I perfectly understood him, but made no reply, did not even look at him, staring about the sea for the Saracen in an anguish of mind not to be expressed. Suddenly I caught sight of the smudge of her, and perceived she was heading away on her course; she was out on our starboard beam. I cast my eyes aloft, and found the yards of the ship I was in braced up to meet the wind on the larboard tack, whence I knew that every instant was widening the space between the two vessels. On mastering this I could have dashed myself down on the deck with grief and terror. One of the group observing me as if I should fall, extended his hand, but I shrunk back with horror, and covered my face, whilst deep hysteric sobs burst from my breast, for now, without heeding any further appearances, I knew that I was on board the Phantom Ship, the Sea Spectre, dreaded of marines, a fabric accurst by God, in the presence of men dead and yet alive, more terrible in their supernatural existence, in their clothing of flesh whose human mortality had been rendered undecaying by a fate that shrunk up the soul in one to think of, than had they been ghosts— essences through which you might pass your hand as through a moonbeam!

I stood awhile as though paralysed, but was presently rallied by the chill of the night wind striking through my streaming clothes. A lantern was near where the three men were grouped, no doubt the same that had been carried in the boat, but the dim illumination would have sufficed for no more than to throw out the proportion of things within its sphere, had it not been helped by the faint moonlight and a corpus sant that shone with the power of a planet close against the blocks of the jeers of the mainyard. 'Twas a ghostly radiance to behold the men in, but I found nerve now to survey them.

There were three, as I have said: one very tall, above six feet, with a grey— almost white— beard, that descended to his waist; the second was a broad, corpulent man, of the true Dutch build without hair on his face; in the third man I could see nothing striking, if it were not for a ruggedness of seafaring aspect. I could not distinguish their apparel beyond that the stout man wore boots to the height of his knees, whereas the tall personage was clad in black hose, shoes with large buckles, and breeches terminating at the knees; their head-dresses were alike, a sort of cap of skin, with flaps for the ears.

"Do you speak Dutch?" said the tallest of the three, after eyeing me in silence whilst a man could have counted a hundred. He it was who had responded to my hail from the Saracen, as my ear immediately detected— now that I had my faculties— by the deep, organ-like melodiousness and tremor of his voice.

I answered "Yes."

"Why were your people afraid of us? We intended no harm. We desired but a little favour— a small quantity of tobacco, of which we are short."

This speech I followed, though some of the words, or the pronunciation of them, were different from what I had been used to hear at Rotterdam. He spoke imperiously, with a hint even of passion, and, rearing himself to his full stature, clasped his hands behind him, and stared at me as some Indian King might at a slave.

"Sir," said I, speaking brokenly, for I was a slow hand at his tongue, and besides, the chill of my clothes was now become a pain, "first let me ask what ship is this, and who are you and your men who have rescued me from death?"

"The name of this ship is the Braave," he answered, in his deep, solemn voice. "I, who command the vessel, am known as Cornelius Vanderdecken; the three seamen, to whom you owe your life, are Frederick Houtman, John de Bremen, and this man," indicating the rough, uncouth person who stood on his left, "the mate, Herman Van Vogelaar."

I felt a sensation as of ice pressed to my chest when he pronounced his own name, yet, recollecting he had called his ship the Braave, I asked, though 'twas wonderful he could follow my utterance—

"What port do you belong to?"

"Amsterdam."

"Where are you from?"

"Batavia."

I said, "When did you sail?"

"On the twenty-second of July in last year! By the glory of the Holy Trinity, but it is dreary work; see how the wind heads us even yet!" He sighed deeply and glanced aloft in a manner that suggested grievous weariness.

"Last year!" I thought, a sudden elation expanding my soul and calming me as an opiate might, "if that be so why, then, though this ship had made a prodigiously long voyage of it from Java to these parallels, there is nothing wildly out of nature in such tardiness." Last year! Had I caught the true signification of the words he used?

"Pray, sir," said I, speaking in as firm a voice as the shivers which chased me permitted, "what might last year be?"

The mate, Van Vogelaar, growled out some exclamation I could not catch, the captain made a gesture with his hands, whilst their burly companion said in thick, Dutch accents, "It needs not salt water, but good, strong liquor to take away a Hollander's brain."

"Last year!" exclaimed Vanderdecken, unbending his haughty, imperious manner, "why, mynheer, what should be last year but 1653?"

Chapter 13

"Wy Zyn Al Verdomd."

WHEN HE SAID THIS I felt like one in whom there is suddenly wrought a dual action of the brain; where from one side, so to say, there is darted into the mind thoughts utterly illogical and insane, which the same side marvels at, and seeks to reject, though if the fit linger the whole intelligence may be seized.

I recollect of seeking for confirmation of the words of the man who styled himself Vanderdecken, in the ship, and of noticing, for the first time, that upon the planks of the deck which were out of the reach of the corpus sant, were the same crawling, elusive fires, as of phosphorus, creeping and coming and going upon a dark wall, which I had observed on the vessel's sides. Several figures of men moved forward. Close beside me was a small gun of the kind carried by ships in the beginning of the last century, termed a light saker, and discharging a six-pound ball. There were three of these on the larboard side, and, in the haze of the moonlight and the sheen of the jelly-like star that shone with a pure, pale gold over my head, I could discern upon the bulwarks of the quarter-deck and poop several swivels furnished with handles for pointing them. I also observed a short flight of steps conducting to the quarter-deck, with two sets of a like kind leading to the poop, the front of which was furnished with a door and little window.

These matters I took in with a sweep of the eye, for the light was confusing, a faint, erroneous ray glancing from imperfect surfaces and flinging half an image; and then an indescribable fear possessing me again, I looked in the direction where I had last beheld the smudge made by the Saracen, and, not seeing her, cried out wildly, in my broken Dutch, "Sirs, for the love of God follow my ship, and make some signals that she may know I am here!"

"Skipper," exclaimed the smooth-faced, corpulent man, who proved to be the boatswain, named Antony Jans, "after their cowardly inhumanity in firing upon a small unarmed boat, and putting in peril the life of our mate, Van Vogelaar, we should have nothing more to do with her."

"Henceforth this Englishman will know that the Dutch are a merciful people," said Van Vogelaar, scornfully. "Had our nationalities been reversed, he would have been left to drown as a tribute to the courage of his comrades."

Whilst this was said, Vanderdecken continued to regard me steadfastly and with great sternness, then on a sudden relaxing his frown, he exclaimed in that wondrous voice of his, which put a solemn music into his least utterance: "Come, you shiver with the cold, and have the look of the drowned. Jans, send Prins to me; sir, please to follow."

He motioned in a haughty manner towards the poop and walked that way. One desperate look I cast round the sea, and then with a prayer to God that this experience might prove some eclipse of my reason from which my mind would float out bright afresh ere long, I followed the great figure of the captain, but with a step so faltering from weakness and grief, that he, perceiving my condition, took me by the elbow and supported me up the ladder to the cabin under the poop.

Whether it was this courtesy or owing to a return of my manhood— and I trust the reader will approve the candour with which I have confessed my cowardice— whatever might be the reason, I began now to look about me with a growing curiosity. The interior into which Captain Vanderdecken conducted me, was of a dingy yellowish hue, such as age might complexion delicate white paint with. An oil lamp of a very beautiful, elegant and rare pattern, furnished with eight panes of glass, variously and all choicely coloured with figures of birds, flowers and the like, though the opening at the bottom let the white light of the oil-flame fall fair on to the table and the deck, swung by a thin chain from a central beam. The cabin was the width of the ship, and on its walls were oval frames, dusky as old mahogany, each one, as I suspected, holding a painting. Over the door by which the cabin was entered was a clock and near it hung a cage with a parrot in it. Of ports I could see no remains, and supposed that by day all the light that entered streamed through the windows on either side the door.

The deck was dark as with age. At the after end there were two state cabins bulkheaded off from the living room, each with a door. The several colours of the lamp caused it to cast a radiance like a rainbow, and therefore it was hard to make sure of objects amid such an intricacy of illumination; but, as I have said, the sides of the cabin were a sickly dismal yellow, and the furniture in it was formed of a very solid square table, with legs marvellously carved, and a box beneath it, two benches on either hand, and a black high-backed chair— the back of withered velvet, the wood framing it cut into many devices— at the head or sternmost end of it.

All these things were matters to be quickly noticed. The captain, first removing his cap, pointed to a bench, and lifting his finger, with a glance at the starboard cabin, said in a low tone, "Sir, if you speak be it softly, if you please," and then directed his eyes towards the entrance from the deck, standing erect, with one hand on the table, and manifestly waiting for the person he had styled Prins to arrive. A ruby-coloured lustre was upon his face; his waist down was in the white lamplight. He had a most noble port, I thought, such an elevation of the head, such disdainful and determined erectness of figure, as made his posture royal. There was not the least hint in his face of the Dutch flatness and insipidity of expression one is used to in those industrious but phlegmatic people. His nose was aquiline, the nostrils hidden by the moustachios which mingled with his noble Druidical beard. His forehead was square and heavy, his hair was scanty, yet abundant enough to conceal the skin of his head; his eyes were black, impassioned, relentless, and a ruby star now shone in each which gave them a forbidding and formidable expression as they moved under the shadow of his shaggy brows. He wore a coat of stout cloth confined by buttons, and a belt round his waist. This, with his small clothes which I have described, formed a very puzzling apparel, the like of which I had never seen. There were no rents, nor darns nor patches— nothing to indicate that his attire was of great age. Yet there was something in this commanding person that caused me to know, by feelings deeper than awe or even fear, by instincts indeed not explicable, such as must have urged in olden times the intelligence to the recognition of those supernatural beings you read of in Scripture, that he was not as I was, as are other men who bear their natural parts in the procession from the cradle to the grave. The tremendous and shocking fears of Captain Skevington recurred to me, and methought as I gazed at the silent, majestic seaman, that the late master of the Saracen who, by his ending, had shown himself a madman might, as had other insane persons in their time, have struck in one of his finer frenzies upon a horrible truth; the mere fear of which caused me to press my hands to my eyes with a renewal of mental anguish, and to entreat in a swift prayer to that Being, whom he who stood before me had defied, for power to collect my mind and for quick deliverance from this awful situation.

Not a syllable fell from the captain till the arrival of Prins, a parched-faced, bearded man, habited in a coarse woollen shirt, trousers of the stuff we call fearnought, and an old jacket. He made nothing of my presence nor condition, scarce glancing at me.

"Get this Englishman a change of clothes," said the captain. "Take what may be needful from my cabin. They will hang loose on him but must serve till his own are dry. Quick! you see he shivers."

All this was expressed in Dutch, but as I have before said, of an antique character, and therefore not quickly to be followed; whence I will not pretend that I give exactly all that was spoken, though the substance of it is accurately reported.

The man styled Prins went to the larboard cabin at the end, whilst the captain, going to the table, pulled from under it a great drawer, which I had taken to be a chest, from which he lifted a silver goblet and a strangely-fashioned stone bottle.

"Drink, sir," he exclaimed, with a certain arrogant impetuosity in his way of pouring out the liquor and extending the goblet.

'Twas neat brandy, and the dose a large mouthful; I tossed down the whole of it, and placed the goblet, that was very heavy and sweetly chased, on the table with a bow of thanks.

"That will put fire into your blood," said he, returning the cup and bottle to the drawer, and then folding his arms and looking at me under his contracted brows, with his back to the lantern whilst he leaned against the table. "Are you fresh from your country?"

I told him that we had sailed in April from the Thames, and had lately come out of Table Bay.

"Is there peace between your nation and mine?" he inquired, speaking softly, as though he feared to awaken some sleeper, though, let his utterance be what it would, 'twas always melodious and rich.

I answered, "No; it grieves me to say it, but our countries are still at war. I will not pretend, sir, that Great Britain has acted with good faith towards the Batavian Republic; their High Mightinesses resent the infraction of treaties; they protest against the manner in which the island of St. Eustatia was devastated; they hope to recover the Cape of Good Hope, and likewise their possessions in the Indies, more particularly their great Coromandel factory."

Mere courtesy would have taught me to speak as soothingly as possible of such things, though, but for the brandy, I doubt if my teeth would not have chattered too boisterously for the utterance of even the few words I delivered. In honest truth, I felt an unspeakable awe and fear in addressing this man, who surveyed me with the severest, most scornful gaze imaginable from the height of his regal stature.

"Of what are you speaking?" he exclaimed, after a frowning stare of amazement; then waved his hand with a gesture half of pity, half of disdain. "You have been perilously close to death," he continued, "and this idle babble will settle into good sense when you have shifted and slept." He smiled contemptuously with a half-look around, as though he sought another of his own kind to address, and said as one thinking aloud, "If Tromp and Evertzens and De Witt and De Ruyter have not yet swept them off the seas 'tis only because they have not had time to complete the easy task!"

As he said this the clock over the door struck two. The chimes had a hollow, cathedral-like sound, as though indeed it was the clock of a cathedral striking in the distance. Glancing at the direction whence these notes issued, I was just in time to witness the acting of an extraordinary piece of mechanism, that is to say, there arose to the top of the clock-case, that was of some species of metal— the dial plate of blue enamel protected with horn instead of glass— there arose, I say, the figure of a skeleton, imitated to the life, holding in one hand an hour-glass on which he turned his eyeless sockets by a movement of the head, whilst with the other hand he grasped a lance or spear that, as I afterwards perceived, he flourished to every stroke of the clock-bell, as though he pierced something prostrate at his feet. The figure shrank into the inside of the clock when the chimes were over. As if to complete the bewilderment under which I laboured, scarce had the second chime of the clock rung its last vibration, when a harsh voice croaked out in Dutch—

"Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

I started, and cried out involuntarily and faintly, "My God!"

"It was the parrot that spoke," said Captain Vanderdecken, with a softening of his looks, though he did not smile. "Tis the only sentence she seems able to pronounce. It was all she could say when I bought her."

"Have you had her long, sir?" I inquired, feeling as though I lay a-dreaming.

"I bought her from a Chinaman of Batavia two days before we sailed as a gift for my eldest daughter—"

Here he was interrupted by the arrival of Prins. "The clothes are ready, skipper," said he.

On this Vanderdecken, motioning me to be silent— a piece of behaviour that was as puzzling as all other things— conducted me to the cabin from which Prins had emerged, and viewing the clothes upon the bed, said, "Yes, they will do; wear them, mynheer, till yours have been dried. Leave this door on the hook, you will then get light enough for your purpose from yonder lamp."

The dress consisted of warm knitted stockings, breeches of an old pattern, and a coat with a great skirt embellished with metal buttons, several of which were missing, and the remains of some gold lace upon the cuffs. In addition, there was a clean linen shirt, and a pair of South American hide boots, fawn-coloured. 'Twas like clothing myself for a masquerade to dress in such things, but for all that I was mighty pleased and grateful to escape from my own soaked attire, which by keeping the surface of the body cold prohibited my nerves from regaining their customary tone. I went to work nimbly, observing that Captain Vanderdecken waited for me, and was soon shifted, but not before I had viewed the cabin, which I found to be spacious enough. The bed was curious, being what we term a four-poster, the upper ends of the posts cleated to the ceiling, whilst the lower legs were in the form of dolphins, and had one time been gilt with gold. There were curtains to it of faded green silk— as I judged— ragged in places. There were lockers, a small table, on which lay a fore-staff, or cross-staff as it was often called, a rude ancient instrument used for measuring the altitude of the sun before the introduction of Hadley's quadrant, and formed of a wooden staff, having a scale of degrees and parts of degrees marked upon it, and cross-pieces which could be moved along it. By it stood a sand-glass for turning to tell the time by. Against the bulkhead that separated this from the adjoining cabin were hung two ox-eyed mirrors, the frames whereof had been gilt, also four small paintings in oak-coloured borders richly beaded. I could see that they were portraits of females, dim, the hues being faded. The ceiling of this cabin showed traces of having been, once on a time, very handsomely painted with the hand.

Other things I noticed were a copper speaking-trumpet and an ancient perspective glass— such as poets of Vanderdecken's time would style an optic tube— very weighty, and formed of two tubes. This thing stood on brackets, under which hung a watch, of as true a sphere as an orange, and of the size of one.

Indeed, look where you would, you could not fail to guess how stout and noble a ship this Braave, as her captain named her, must have been in those distant years which witnessed her birth.

My costume made me feel ridiculous enough, for, whereas the boots might have belonged to a period when Shelvocke and Clipperton were plundering the Spaniards in the south seas, the coat was of a fashion of about thirty years past, whilst the breeches were such as merchant captains and mates wore when I was first going to sea. However, being changed and dry, I stepped forth, bearing my wet clothes with me, but they were immediately taken from me by Prins, who had been standing near the door unperceived by me. On my appearing, Captain Vanderdecken rose from the chair at the head of the table, but seemed to find nothing in my dress to amuse him. The vari-coloured light was extremely confusing, and it was with the utmost pains that I could discern the expression of his face, but, so far as I made out, it was one of extreme melancholy, touched with lights and shades by his moods, which yet left the prevailing character unchanged. Indeed, the dreadful fancies of Captain Skevington smote me fiercely once again, for, as I live to say it, the countenance of this tall and haughty seaman did suggest to me the melancholy you notice on the face of the dead— meaningless as that look in them may be— but in his case irradiated by the tints and expressions of vitality, insomuch that I fully felt the force of the remark the master of the Plymouth snow had made to Captain Skevington touching the man he had seen on board the Death Ship, namely, that he was a corpse artificially animated and most terrible to behold for his suggestions of death-in-life.

"Will you go to rest?" said he.

"I am willing to do whatever you desire," said I. "Your kindness is great and I thank you for it."

"Ay," he replied, "spite of the war I'd liefer serve an Englishman than one of any other country. The old and the young Commonwealths should be friends. On either hand there are mighty hearts, you in your Blakes, your Ayscues, your Monks; we in our Van Tromp, whom the King of Denmark, to my great joy before I sailed, honourably justified to the people of Holland, and in Van Galen, Ruyter, with other skilled and lion-hearted men, whom I shall glory in greeting on my return."

He seemed to reflect a moment, and suddenly cried, with a passionate sparkle in his eyes, "But 'twas cowardly in your captain to order his men to fire upon our boat. What did we seek? Such tobacco as you could have spared, which we were willing to purchase. By the vengeance of Heaven, 'twas a deed unworthy of Englishmen."

I did not dare explain the true cause, and said, gently, "Sir, our captain lay dead in his cabin. The men, missing the chief, fell into a panic at the sight of this ship, for she showed large in the dusk, and we feared you meant to lay us aboard."

"Enough!" he exclaimed, imperiously. "Follow me to your cabin."

He led the way on to the deck and we descended the quarter-deck ladder.

Chapter 14

My First Night in the Death Ship

I HAD BEEN in too great a confusion of mind to heed the movements of the ship whilst I was under cover, but on emerging I now noticed that it had come on to blow very fresh. The vessel under larboard tacks— I could not see what canvas she carried— lay along very much, being light and tall, and rolled with peculiar clumsiness in the hollows. I caught sight of the water over the weather-rail, and judged with the eye of a seaman that what progress she was making was wholly leeway; so that we were being blown dead to the eastward, without probably "reaching," as it is termed, by so much as half-a-knot an hour. The moon was now deep in the west and showing a very wan and stormy disk. North-west, where the land lay, the sea looked to rise into a fluid blackness of thunder-clouds, wherefrom even as I glanced that way there fell a red gash of lightning. There was a heavy sound of seething and bombarding billows all about us, and the whole picture had a wildness past language, what with the scarlet glare of the northern levin-brands and the ghastly tempestuous paleness of the westering moon and a dingy faintness owing its existence to I know not what, if it were not the light of the foaming multitudinous surge reflected upon the sooty bosoms of the lowering clouds over our stern.

Captain Vanderdecken stood for a moment looking round upon this warring scene, and flung up his arms towards the moon with a passionate savage gesture, and then strode to a narrow hatch betwixt the limits of the quarter-deck and the mainmast, down which he went, first turning to see if I followed. I now found myself in a kind of 'tween-decks, with two cabins on either hand, in the doorway of the fore one, on the starboard side, stood the man Prins, holding a small lantern.

"This, sir," said Vanderdecken, pointing to the cabin, "must serve you for a sleeping room; it has not the comfort of an inn, but 'tis easy to see you are a sailor, and, therefore, one to whom a plank will often be a soft couch. In any case, here is accommodation warmer than the bottom of the ocean."

With a cold and condescending salute he withdrew. Prins hung the lantern on to a rail beside the door, and said he would return for it shortly. I wanted to ask the man some questions about the ship and her commander, but there was something about him so scaring and odd that I could not summon up heart to address him. He appeared as one in whom all qualities of the soul are dead, acting, in sooth, like a sleep-walker, giving me not the least heed whatever, and going about his business as mechanically as the skeleton in the cabin clock rose and darted his lance to the chimes of the bell.

The compartment in which I was to sleep was empty of all furniture saving a locker that served as a seat as well as a box, and a wooden sleeping-place, formed of planks, secured to the side, in which, in lieu of a mattress, were a couple of stout blankets, tolerably new, and a sailor's bag, filled with straw, for a pillow. I was wearied to the bone, yet not sleepy, and lay me down in my strange clothes without so much as removing my boots, and in a few minutes Prins arrived and took away the light, and there I was in pitch darkness.

And yet I should not say this, for, though to be sure no sensible reflection penetrated the blackness, yet when the lamp was removed and my eyes had lost the glare of it, I beheld certain faint crawlings and swarmings of phosphoric light upon the beams and bulkheads, such as were noticeable upon the outside of the ship, only not so strong. I likewise observed a cold and ancient smell, such as I recollect once catching the breath of in the hold of a ship that had been built in 1702 and which people in the year 1791 or thereabouts viewed as a curiosity. Otherwise there was nothing else remarkable. Whatever this vessel might be, her motion on the seas was as natural as that of the Saracen, only that her wallowing was more ponderous and ungainly. Yet, merciful Heaven! how did every bulkhead groan, how did every timber complain, how did every treenail cry aloud! The noise of the labouring was truly appalling; the creaking, straining, jarring, as though the whole fabric were being dashed to pieces. I had not immediately noticed this when I followed Captain Vanderdecken below, but it grew upon my ears as I lay in the blackness. Yet they were natural sounds, and as such they afforded a sort of relief to my strained brain and nervous, yea, and affrighted imagination. The stillness of a dead calm would have maddened me, I truly believe. Phantasms and other horrors of my fancy, rendered delirious by the situation into which I had been plunged, would have played their parts upon that stage of blackness, hideous with the vault-like stirring of the glow of rotted timber, to the destruction of my intellect, but for the homely thunder of the sea without and the crazy echoes within.

I asked myself what ship was this? That she had a supernatural life, that he who styled himself Vanderdecken— which tradition reported was the name of the master of the Phantom Ship, though it has been averred that his real name was Bernard Fokke— I say that he and the others I had seen, more particularly the man Prins, had something goblin-like about them, something that carried them far out of the range of our common humanity, spite of the majestic port, the noble presence, the thrilling tones, like the music of distant summer thunder, of the commander, I could no more question than the beating of my own heart as I lay a-thinking. I knew by what I had heard and viewed already, even in the brief hours packed full of consternation, during which I had been on her, that I was aboard of the Flying Dutchman, the Phantom Ship, the Death Ship, the Sea Spectre, as she has variously been termed.

Yet there was so much to puzzle me that I was fit to lapse into idiotcy. If Vanderdecken had sailed from Batavia in 1653, why did he speak of it as last year? If the Death Ship was a ghostly object, impalpable, an essence only as is a spirit, why was this vessel so substantial that, heavily as she resounded with the crazy echoes of her material state, no first-rate could hold a stouter conflict with the seas? If she had been battling off the Agulhas for one hundred and forty-three years, how came she to have oil and waste for her lanterns, clothes such as I wore, such as the men I had seen were habited in, brandy, blankets almost new like those I lay on, and other stores; for I might be sure, from the jar of brandy the captain had produced, that the crew ate and drank as all men do and must!

These and other points I could not reconcile to my conviction that the ship I was aboard of was the craft dreaded by all men because of the great God's ban upon her and the misfortunes she brought to others with the very winds which filled her canvas. I would have given all I owned— though, alack! that would have been small enough if I lost what belonged to me in the Saracen— for leave to keep the deck, but I did not venture for fear of incurring the displeasure of Vanderdecken. So for several hours did I lay broad awake in my black dungeon of a cabin, watching the loathsome, ghostly phosphoric glow all about me, and listening to the bellowing of the wind that had grown into a storm, and marking the furious rolling of the ship, whose wild inner creakings put a note of frenzy into the thunder of the gale; but never once hearing the sound of a human call nor the echo of a man's tread, I then fell asleep, but not before the dawn had broken, as I might tell by the radiance, which was little better than an ashen twilight, that streamed down the hatch and showed in an open space above the cabin door.

Chapter 15

I Inspect The Flying Dutchman

I HAD SCARCELY fully woke up, when the man Prins opened the cabin door and peered in, and perceiving me to be awake, he entered bearing a metal pitcher of water, an earthenware dish, and a rough cloth for drying the skin. He put down the dish so that it could not slide, for the ship was rolling very heavily, and then poured water into it, and said, as he was in the act of withdrawing with the pitcher, "The skipper is on the poop."

I answered by asking him for my clothes. He shook his bearded, parchment-coloured face and said: "They are still sodden," and immediately went out.

I might have guessed they could not be dry, but I presented so hideous a figure in the apparel that had been lent to me that I should have been glad to resume my own coat and breeches, wet or no wet; but there was no help for it. I rose and plunged my face in the cold water, used my fingers for a comb, which sufficed, since I commonly wore my hair rough, having much of it and hating a tye, and putting on my hat that had held to my head in the water, and that had not been taken from me to dry, I stepped out of the cabin, climbed the steps that led through the hatch, and gained what was in former times termed the upper deck; for let me make you understand me by explaining that, beginning right aft, first there was a poop-deck elevated above the quarter-deck, which in its turn was raised above the upper-deck, along which you walked till you arrived at the forecastle that went flush or level to the bows and was fortified by tall, stout bulwarks, with ports for fore-chasers.

For some considerable while I stood near the hatch gazing about me, as this was my first view of the ship by daylight. Right opposite soared the mainmast, an immensely thick "made" spar, weightier than we should now think of using for a craft twice this vessel's size; the top was a large circular platform, protected by a fence-work half as tall as a man, looped for the projection of pieces such as culverins, matchlocks and the like. Under the top hung the mainyard, the sail was reefed and the yard had been lowered, and it lay at an angle that made me understand that but little was to be done with this ship on a bowline. The shrouds, which were very stout, though scarce one of them was of the thickness of another, came down over the side to the channels there, and the ratlines were all in their places, only that here again there was great inequality in the various sizes of the stuff used. There were iron hoops round the masts, all of them rusty, cankered, and some of them nearly eaten up. I looked at the coaming of the hatch, and observing a splinter, put my hand to it and found the wood so rotten that methought it would powder, and I turned the piece about betwixt my thumb and forefinger, but the miraculous qualities of the accursed fabric were in it and iron could not have been more stubborn to my pinching. The guns, which I had on the previous night recognised as an ancient kind of ordnance called sakers, were as rusty and eaten into as the mast-hoops.

How am I, who have no paint but ink, no brush but a goose-quill, to convey to you an idea of the mouldiness and rottenness of this ship? 'Twas easy to guess why she glowed at night, when you saw the rail of her bulwarks and marked a rugged unevenness such as I might liken to the jagged edge you observe through a telescope in the moon on the side where the earth's shadow is, as though time had teeth, indeed, and was for ever gnawing at these banned and sea-tossed timbers as rats at a floor.

There lay a great hatchway in front of the mainmast covered with tarpaulings, handsomely mended in a score of places. These matters I took in with a sailor's quickness; also that the ship was blowing away to leeward under reefed courses, above which no canvas was shown; also that the foresail and mainsail had a very dingy, collier-like look, and had manifestly been patched and repaired many times over, though whether their capacity of standing to a gale was due to the cloth being stout and substantial still, or because of their endevilment, I could not tell, nor did I like to conjecture. There was no one to be seen, but, as I afterwards found out, that was because the crew were at breakfast below.

I ascended the quarter-deck, and, perceiving Vanderdecken standing on the poop, went up to him, touching my hat as a sailor's salute; but the coat I was rigged out in was so outrageously clumsy and ample, that the wind, which blew very hard indeed, filling and distending the skirts of it, was within an ace of upsetting me, but, happily, a lurch of the ship swept me towards a mizzen backstay, to which I contrived to cling until I had recovered my breath and the surprise I was under. There was a small house in the middle of this poop, about ten feet from where the head of the tiller would come when amidships, possibly designed for the convenience of the captain and officers for making their calculations when in narrow waters, and for the storing of their marine instruments, flags and the like. Be that as it may, Captain Vanderdecken beckoned me to it, and under the lee of it the shelter was such as to enable us to easily converse.

I looked at him as closely as I durst. His eyes were extraordinarily piercing and passionate, with the cruel brilliance in them such as may be noticed in the insane; the lower part of his face was hidden in hair, but the skin of as much of it as was visible, for his cap was dragged low down upon his brows, was pale, of a haggard sallowness, expressed best in paintings of the dead where time has produced the original whiteness of the pigment. It was impossible that I should have observed this in him in the mani-coloured lamplight of the preceding night. Yet did not his graveyard complexion detract from the majesty and imperiousness of his mien and port. I could readily conceive that the defiance of his heart would be hell-like in obstinacy, and that here was a man whose pride and passions would qualify him for a foremost place among the most daring of those fallen spirits of whom our glorious poet has written.

He was habited as when I first saw him. We stood together against this deck-house, and whilst he remained silent for some moments, meanwhile keeping his eyes fixed on me, my gaze went from him to the ship and the sea around us. It was a thick, leaden, angry morning; such weather as we had had a dose of in that storm I wrote about, and of which forerunners might have been found on the preceding night in the lightning in the north-west and in the halo that girdled the moon. The wind was west-north-west; the seas had the height and weight you find in that vast ocean, amid whose hollows we were driving; 'twas all greyness and a flying of spumy rain and a heavy roaring coming from the head of every sea as it arched its summit for the thunderous downwards rush that filled the valley at its foot with a boiling of white water. The sky was a hard leaden blankness; and whenever there came a break of faintness amid the seemingly stirless ceiling of vapour, you would see the scud, thin and brown, like drainings of smoke from a chimney-pot, flying with incredible velocity to the east and south.

But it was the sight of the ancient ship that rendered the warring ocean so strange a scene that, had I never before witnessed a storm at sea, I could not have wondered more at what I saw. She was lying to under her reefed fore and mainsail, surging dead to leeward on every scend of the billows, and travelling the faster for the great height of side she showed. From time to time a sea would strike her with a severe shock upon the bow or the waist, and often curl over in a mighty hissing and seething, though the wet quickly poured away overboard through the ports. Through the skeleton-iron frame of what had once been a great poop lantern, the blast yelled like an imprisoned maniac, and shook the metal with a sound as of clanking chains. The vessel had her topsail and topgallant-yards aloft, and the sails lay furled upon them. The height of her poop, the depth of her waist, the roundness of her great bulwarked bows, her beak, which I could just catch a glimpse of under her bowsprit, the unequal thickness of the rigging, the indescribable appearance of the sails, the hugeness of the blocks aloft; the whole plunging and rolling amidst the frothing troughs, whilst at the long tiller, the end ornamented with a lion's head, stood a strangely-attired, muffled-up man, grasping a rope wound round the tiller-head, presented such a picture of olden times, made as living as the current moment by the action of the seas, the vitality of the persons I gazed at, the solid substantiality of the aged fabric itself, that the memory of it often chills my brain with fear that I am crazed, and that my experience is but a black and melancholy fancy victorious over my understanding.

And I say would to Heaven this were so, for better that my soul should be racked by a diseased and disordered mind than that I should have suffered the heart-breaking sorrow, the irreparable loss it is my present business to relate in this narrative.

The captain, having inspected me narrowly, asked me how I had slept. I answered "Well," for I was now resolved to present a composed front to this man and his mates, be they and their ship what they would. I had given my nerves play and it was about time I recollected I was an Englishman and a sailor.

"All vessels but mine," said he, in his thrilling, organ-like voice, glancing about him with a scowl, "catch the luck of the wind. Had the weather lingered as it was for another three days, we should have had Agulhas on the beam and the ship's head north-west. 'Tis bitter hard, these encounters of storms, when a few hours of fair wind would blow us round the Cape."

He clenched his hands fiercely, and shot a fiery glance at the windward horizon.

Just then the man styled Herman Van Vogelaar, the mate, arrived, and without taking the least notice of me, said something to the captain, but what, I did not catch; it doubtless referred to some job he had been sent forward to see to. I was greatly struck by the rugged, weather-beaten look of this man; his face in the daylight discovered a mere surface of knobs, and warts, and wrinkles, with a nose the shape of one end of a plantain that has been cut in two, and little, misty eyes, deep in their holes, and surrounded by yellow lashes; his dress was that of a sailor of my own time. But what affected and impressed me even more than did the utter indifference manifested towards my presence by him and by the helmsman— as though, indeed, I was as invisible as the wind— was the pallor underlying the lineaments of this mate. Had I been asked what would be the complexion of men dug up from their graves after lying there, I should have pointed to the countenances of Vanderdecken and Van Vogelaar— yes, and to Prins and the seaman who steered. It was, in truth, as though Captain Skevington had hit the frightful reality in his dark and dreadful ideas touching the crew of this ship being men who presented the aspect they would have offered at the time of their death, and who, wearing that death-bed appearance, were doomed to complete the sentence passed upon them— no longer "pensioners on the bounty of an hour," as the poet Young terms us mortals, but wretches, rendered supernatural by the impiety of that fierce but noble figure, whose falcon-flashing eye looked curses at the gale whilst I watched him.

The mate left us and went to the helmsman, by whose side he stood as if conning the ship. The captain showed no heed of my presence for a minute or two; when, glancing at me, he said, "'Tis fortunate you speak Dutch, though your pronunciation has a strange sound. For my part, I just know enough of your tongue to hail a ship and to say, 'I will send a boat.' Where did you learn my language?"

"I picked it up during several voyages I made to Rotterdam," I replied.

"Do you know Amsterdam?"

"No, sir," said I.

He mused a little, and then said, "They will think me lost or sunk by the guns of the enemy. Add the long and tedious voyage out to the months which have passed since last July!" he sighed deeply.

"When did you sail from Amsterdam, sir?" I inquired, for I was as particular as he to say "mynheer."

"On the First of November," he answered.

"In what year?" said I.

He cried out, fiercely, "Are your senses still overboard that you repeat that question? Certainly last year— when else?"

I looked down upon the deck.

"I have reason to remember my passage through the narrow seas," continued he, speaking in a softened voice, as though his sense of courtesy upbraided him. "I sighted the squadron of your Admiral Ayscue and a frigate hauled out in chase of me, but the Braave was too fleet for her, and at dusk we had sunk the Englishman to his lower yards!"

As he said this I felt yet again the chill of a dread I had hoped to vanquish strike upon my senses like the air of a vault upon the face. It was impossible that I could now miss seeing how it was. If this man, together with his crew, were not endevilled, as Captain Skevington had surmised, yet it was certain that life was terminated in him with the Curse his wickedness had called down upon his ship and her wretched crew. Existence had come to a stand in his brain; with him it was for ever the year of our Lord 1653; time had been drowned in the eternity of the punishment that had come upon him!

I lifted my startled eyes to Vanderdecken's face and convulsively clasped my hands, whilst I thought of the mighty chapter of history which had been written since his day, and of the ashes of events prodigious in their time, and in memory still, which covered— as do the lava and scoriæ the rocks of some volcanic-created island— the years from the hour of his doom down to the moment of our meeting. The peace of 1654— the later war of 1665— Ruyter at Sheerness and Chatham and in the Hope— a stadtholder of Vanderdecken's country becoming a King of England— the peace of Ryswick— Malplaquet— the semi-Gallican founding of the Batavian Republic— with how much more that my memory did not carry? All as non-existent to this man at my side as to any human creature who had died at the hour when the Death Ship sailed on her last passage home from the island of Java!

Chapter 16

Vanderdecken Shows Me His Present For Little Margaretha

AT THIS MOMENT Prins stepped on to the poop, and informed the captain that breakfast was ready.

"Sir," said Vanderdecken to me, with a courtesy that I guessed to be as capricious as his passion, "you will have feared I meant to starve you."

"No, mynheer," I replied.

"You will find our fare poor," he continued. "Be pleased to follow me."

"Sir," said I, "forgive me if I detain you for an instant. I am too sensible of your kindness not to desire that you will enable me to merit it by serving you in the navigation of this ship in any capacity you choose to name, until we meet with a vessel that shall rid you of my presence."

"You appear to have but a poor opinion of us Dutch," said he, still speaking with courtesy; "be pleased to know that a Hollander is never happier than in relieving distress. But come, sir, the shelter of the cabin will be grateful to you after this stormy deck."

I said no more, and gathering the flapping skirts of the coat on me to my side, that the gale might not sweep me off my legs, I followed him into the cabin under the poop, marvelling, as I went, at the miracle wrought on behalf of this ship, that her hold should still yield provisions and water for her crew after a century-and-a-half of use.

Now you will have deemed by this time that I had supped full enough of surprises. But conceive of my astonishment on entering the cabin, that was less darksome than I should have conceived it, on seeing a girl of from eighteen to twenty years of age, seated at the table on the right hand of the captain's chair!

I came to a stand, struck motionless with astonishment; whilst she, uttering an exclamation of surprise, hastily rose and stood staring at me, leaning with her right hand on the table to steady herself. It was as certain that she had been as ignorant of my presence on board as I, to this instant, of her existence. The thought that instantly flashed upon me was that she was Vanderdecken's daughter, that the Curse that had fallen on the ship included her, as it had all others of the vessel's miserable company of men, and that in consonance with Captain Skevington's mad but astonishing theory, touching the people of this Death Ship, she discovered the appearance she would have presented at the hour of her death, though vitalised in that aspect by the sentence that kept the Braave afloat and her people quick and sentient. I was the more willing to suppose this by her apparel, which was of the kind I had seen in old Dutch paintings at Rotterdam, for it consisted of a black velvet jacket, very beautifully fitting her figure, trimmed with fur and enriched with many small golden buttons; a green silk gown, plain and very full, as though made for a bigger woman. There was a rope of pearls round her neck, and I spied a diamond of great splendour blazing on the forefinger of the hand on which she leaned. She wore small red shoes and her hair was undressed.

Observation and the power of comprehending what one sees are rapid, otherwise it would have been impossible for me to have mastered the details I have set before you in the short time that intervened between my entering the cabin and seating myself at the table. Yet, short as that time was, it enabled me to witness in this girl such sweetness, fairness and loveliness of face as I vow no man could conceive the truth of who had not beheld it with his own eyes. 'Tis an old poet who writes of "the still harmony, whose diapason lies within a brow," and of the "sweet silent rhetorick of persuading eyes," and another more delicately choice yet in fancy, of

"The daintie touch,

The tender flesh, the colour bright, and such

As Parians see in marble, skin more fair,

More glorious head and far more glorious hair;

Eyes full of grace and quickness, purer roses—"

but of this beauty, shining sun-like in that labouring ancient cabin, gazing at me half-wistful, half-amazed, with an inclined posture of her form as though she would on a sudden race to greet me, what could the noblest poet of them all sing, only to tell of the soft violet of her eyes, of her hair of dusky gold, self-luminous as though the gilding light of a ruddy beam of sunset lingered amid the thick abundant tresses heedlessly knotted with a riband a little lower than the line of the ears, thence falling in a bright loose shower down her back, whilst over her forehead, white as though wrought out of the sea foam, the gilded curls were gathered in a shadow only a little darker than amber.

All this I saw and more yet, for whilst I stood looking at her the mate of the ship, Van Vogelaar, arrived, and both he and the captain, and the man Prins, turning their faces towards me, the warmth, the life of her skin, the living reality of her surprise, the redness of her lips, the diamond glance of her eyes, were so defined by the paleness, the deathly hue, of the flesh of the men's skin, that the fear that she was of this doomed company fell from me, and I knew that I was face to face with one that was mortal like myself.

The captain pointed to the bench on his left hand. I approached the table, giving the girl a low bow before sitting. She curtsied and resumed her seat, but all the while looking at me with an astonishment that greatly heightened her beauty; nor could I fail to see by the slight, but visible changes in the expression of her mouth, that my presence was putting a pleasure in her that grew as perception of my actuality sharpened in her mind.

A coarse, but clean cloth, that was a kind of duck or drill, covered the table, and upon it were a couple of dishes of cold meat, a dish of dried fish, another of dried plantains, a jar of marmalade, and a plate of a singular sort of cakes— yellow and heavy— resembling the crumb of newly-baked bread. These things were kept in their places by a rude framework of wood set upon the table and lashed to it underneath. Before each person there stood a silver cup— one of one design and size, another of another; also an earthen plate, of a grey colour, of Chinese baking, and of the kind exported years since in great quantities from Batavia; and a knife and fork of a pattern I had never before seen. On our seating ourselves, Prins went round the table with two jars— one holding a spirit, which I afterwards found was a kind of gin, and the other cold water, with which he manufactured a bumper for us three men, but the girl drank the water plain.

Not a word was said whilst Prins was at this work. As he was filling my cup, the clock over the door struck eight, the skeleton appearing and flourishing his lance as before, and scarce was this ended when the parrot croaked out, "Wy zyn al Verdomd." I had forgotten this bird, and the harsh utterance and dreadful words coming upon me unawares so startled me that I half-sprang to my feet. The girl looked down on the table with a sad face, whilst Vanderdecken said, "'Tis the clock that excites that fowl; we shall have to hang her out of hearing of it."

He never offered to make me known to the fair creature opposite, but that did not signify, for, after stealing several peeps at me, she asked in Dutch, but with the artless manner of a child, and in a sweet voice, if I was a Hollander.

I answered, "No, I am an Englishman, madam," feeling the blood warm in my face through the mere speaking with so delicate a beauty.

"I, too, am English!" she cried, in our own tongue.

"Indeed!" I exclaimed, transported out of myself by hearing this, and by perceiving how warm, real and living she was. "But, in the name of Heaven, how is it that you are alone upon this strange ship, amid these mysterious men?" for that question I could no more forbear asking right out than I could conceal the admiration in my eyes, whilst I felt no diffidence in talking, as I made no doubt the English language was unintelligible to the others.

She swiftly glanced at me, but did not answer. I took this as a hint, and was silent. And yet it did not seem that Vanderdecken or Van Vogelaar heeded us. They appeared as men sunk in deep abstraction, even whilst they ate and drank. Some meat was put before me; Prins offered me a cake, and, being hard set, I fell to. I found the meat salt, but sweet and tender enough, and turning to the mate asked him what it was.

"Antelope," he replied, "yonder," pointing to the other dish, "is buffalo."

"Sir," exclaimed Vanderdecken, with a wonderful stateliness in his manner, "be pleased to despise ceremony here. Such as our fare is, you are welcome. Take as you may require, and Prins will fill your cup as often as you need."

I bowed and thanked him.

"The wind blows hard, Imogene," said he, addressing the girl. "It storms directly along the path we would take. It is miserable," he continued, turning to me, "that a change of weather should come upon us just about those parts where the breeze freshened into this gale last night. But we'll force her to windward yet— hey, Herman?— though— though—" he looked at the lady he had named Imogene and halted abruptly in his speech, but I noticed he could not quickly clear his face of the passionate mad look that darkened it, though it did not qualify the paleness of the skin, but was like the shadow of a heavy storm-cloud passing over the upward-gazing features of a dead man.

The countenances of the mate and Prins darkened to his savage mood. May Heaven pardon me for the thought, but when I considered the bitter vexation of a head wind, and how this vessel was being blown dead away to leeward faster than any line-of-battle ship hove-to, I could not but secretly feel a sailor's sympathy with these unhappy persons, though that this would have been the case had Vanderdecken expressed with his tongue the fearful thoughts which he looked with his eyes I do not think possible, if I know myself at all.

There fell a silence among us, through which we could hear the dreary howling of the wind, the falls of heavy masses of water upon the decks, and the lamentable complaining of the whole fabric, though as these noises were chiefly in the hold the notes rose somewhat dulled. Presently, feeling it indecorous in me to sit silent, I asked the captain what his cargo was.

He answered, "We have much wrought and raw silk, and cloves, musk, nutmegs, mace and pepper, wood for dyeing, drugs, calicoes, lacker-ware and such commodities, sir."

"And how many of a crew, sir?"

Van Vogelaar turned to look at me.

"Ask no questions," exclaimed the girl in English. "You will be misunderstood."

"Our guns are few, but the Braave is a swift ship," said the mate, with a very stern and sullen expression on his rugged face. "She has outsailed one English frigate, and by this time our Admirals should have left us little to fear from the fleets of your Cromwell."

"Pray," said the lady, addressing Vanderdecken, and glancing in like a sunbeam upon this sudden darkness of temper, "tell me of this gentleman— how it happens he is here; I find he is my countryman. Converse with me about him."

If it were possible for human affection to touch into softness the fierce majestic countenance of the noble looking being, whose mien as he sate at the table might have been that of some dethroned emperor, with the pride of Lucifer to sustain him, I might seem to have witnessed the tenderness of it in his ashen, bearded face when he turned the cold glitter of his eyes upon the girl.

"We spoke his ship late last night, when thou wast asleep, Imogene, and Van Vogelaar went in our boat to buy tobacco, if they were willing to sell, but on seeing the boat they fired upon her. A light air blew, and the ship moved away. Our boat was returning, when she spied this gentleman fast drowning. Van Vogelaar dragged him out of the water, and— here he is!" saluting me with a grave inclination of the head.

"Had we changed places," said the stormy-minded, rugged mate, "what would have been my fate?"

A colour flashed into Imogene's face, and she cried, "Oh, Herr Van Vogelaar, your pardon, if you please. English seamen are as humane as they are brave."

"Yes," said the mate, with a sneer that rendered his ugliness quite horrible with the distortion of it, "because English sailors are brave they fire upon an inoffensive boat, and because they are humane they leave their comrade to perish!"

"Madam," said I, softly, "the character of this ship was known to us."

She slightly raised her eyes, and such a sadness came into them that I feared to see her shed tears. Meanwhile, Vanderdecken had his gaze fixed upon me. He seemed to be musing upon what the mate had said.

"It was your Commodore Young," said he, in his resonant voice, that, to be sure, sounded grandly after the harsh pipes of the mate, "who provoked us. Why should your nation exact the honour of the flag? Has it bred greater seamen than Holland? There is my friend Willem Schouten— many a pipe, when I was a young man, have I smoked with him in his summer-house at Hoorn. Does even your Drake surpass Schouten? No, no! It was not for England to be mistress of the seas!" he exclaimed, with a solemn shake of the head, not wanting in a grave kind of urbanity.

I caught a glance from the girl, but I needed no hint to keep my tongue still. 'Twas maddening and terrifying enough to hear this man speak of Schouten as a friend— Schouten, who greatly headed the grand procession of mariners such as Dampier, Byron, Anson, and many others who, since his day, have sailed round that Cape Horn— which the stout Hollander was the first to pass and to name— into the great South Sea.

And yet, spite of the effect produced upon me by this man's speech and references, I was sensible of a distinct pricking of my conscience by my patriotism. To hear England sneered at by the natives of a country which has been described by a poet that flourished in the days of Blake and Tromp as the "off-scouring of the British sand," and as the "undigested vomit of the sea," was by no means to my liking. But to remonstrate would have been but a mere warring with the dead.

The captain appeared to delight to talk of the war between the Dutch and the English. I remember that he praised our Commodore Bodley, and said that if the States' ambassador, Adrian Paaw, had been a person of understanding, the treaty might have stood. This I recollect, but very little more, for, to be plain, it was not only a frightful thing to listen to him, but my thoughts were thrown into the utmost confusion by the loveliness of the lady who confronted me— by the assurance of the sweet eyes, warm colour, and her maidenly youth, which lived in every movement, word, smile, or sad look of hers, that she was no true member of the unholy and fearful company she lived amongst; by my wondering how she came to be in this Death Ship, and how it happened that she was finely dressed; not to speak of other speculations, such as how the food upon the table was provided, and by what means this ship, which I knew had been struggling against the will of the Omnipotent for hard upon one hundred and fifty years, should be supplied with a liberal stock of the conveniences of life.

But we had now done eating. The mate rose and quitted the table, but his place was shortly afterwards taken by another man whom I had not before seen, the second mate as I afterwards discovered, named Antony Arents. This person looked to be about fifty years of age. He wore high boots and a cloak and a soft flapping hat, which he threw down on entering. His left eye had a cast and the bridge of his nose was broken, but his countenance was of the true Dutch character, and in some points he was like the boatswain, Antony Jans, whom I had seen on deck when waking into consciousness, only that he had less flesh to his belly. But in him was the same ghastly hue of skin you saw in the others; 'twas in his hands as in his face; had you come across him in his sleep you would have said he had been dead some days. And, indeed, never did I view a corpse made ready for casting overboard that had the aspect of the dead so strong upon it as these men. He helped himself to food, taking not the least notice of me.

Prins meanwhile had put a box of tobacco and some long clay pipes upon the table, one of which Vanderdecken took and filled, asking me to smoke. I thanked him, wondering what sort of tobacco time had converted this weed into, took the tinder-box from the captain and lighted my pipe. Well, if this was an ancient tobacco age had not spoilt its qualities. It smoked very sweet and sound.

"We are on short allowance," said the captain. "Our stock has run low. It will be a hardship if we should come to want tobacco."

I made no reply, being determined to learn all I could about this ship and her people from Miss Imogene before offering suggestions, for though there is no living man whose nose I would not offer to stroke for calling me a coward, yet I am not ashamed to say this Captain Vanderdecken terrified me and I feared his wrath.

The girl, with her elbows on the table and her fair chin resting on her hands, which made an ivory cup for her face, watched me continuously with eyes whose brightness the large and sparkling diamond on her forefinger did not match by many degrees of glory.

"Are you long from England?" says she to me presently in Dutch, that Vanderdecken might know what we talked about.

"We sailed in April last," I replied. "And you, madam?"

She either did not hear the question or would not answer.

"Are you married?" asked the captain of me, smoking very slowly to get the true relish of the tobacco, whilst the second mate chewed his food with vacant eyes, squinting straight ahead or meeting in a traverse on his plate.

"No, sir," I replied.

"Are your parents living?" he said.

"My mother is alive," I answered.

"Ah!" said he, speaking as one in a reverie, "A sailor should not marry. What is more uncertain than the sea? The mariner's wife can never make sure of her husband's return. What will mine be thinking if we continue to be blown back as we are now by these westerly gales? It seems longer than months, yea, it appears to me to be years, since I last beheld her and my daughters standing near the Schreyerstoren, weeping and waving their farewells to me. My eldest girl, Geertruida, will be grown sick at heart with her long yearning for the parcel of silk I have for her. And Margaretha—" he sighed, softly. Then turning to Imogene, he said, "My dear, show this gentleman the toy I am taking home for my little Margaretha."

She rose with a look of pain in her face, and stepped to the cabin that was next the captain's. I now understood why he had desired me to speak in subdued tones last night, for that was the room in which she slept. The ease with which she moved upon that heaving deck was wonderful, and this verse of a ballad came into my head as I watched her go from the table to her cabin—

"No form he saw of mortal mould,

It shone like ocean's snowy foam;

Her ringlets waved in living gold,

Her mirror crystal, pearl her comb."

Ay, the ocean might have owned her for a child, with such dainty, elegant ease did she accommodate her form to the sweep and heave of its billows, as denoted by the motions of the ship; as some lovely gull with breast of snowy down and wings of ermine airily expresses the swing and charge of the surge by its manner of falling in each hollow and lifting above each head on outstretched pinion. Her costume too, that was so strange a thing, giving to this interior so romantic an appearance that, had the ship been still and you had looked in at the cabin door, then, with this lady's beauty and dress, the majestic figure of Vanderdecken smoking in his high-backed chair, the second mate at his food, Prins standing like one that dreams, all the faces but the girl's and mine ghastly, the strange beauty of the lamp that swung over the table, the oval frames holding paintings so bleared and dusky that it was difficult to make out the subjects, the dim and wasted colour of the cabin walls, and the bald tawdriness of what had been rich giltwork, the clock of ancient pattern, the parrot cage— I say, had you been brought on a sudden to view this interior from the door, you might have easily deemed it some large astonishing picture painted to the very height of the greatest master's perfection.

In a moment or two Miss Imogene returned, and coming to the table placed upon it a little figure about five inches tall. It was of some metal and had been gaily coloured as I supposed from what was left of the old tints. Its style was a red cloak falling down its back, a small cap with a feather, shoes almost hidden with great rosettes, hose as high as the thigh, and then a sort of blouse with a girdle. Both arms hung before in a very easy and natural posture and the hands grasped a flute.

Vanderdecken, putting down his pipe, took a key from under the cloak of the figure and wound the automaton up as a clock, when it instantly lifted the flute to its mouth, in the exact manner of life, and played a tune. The sound was very pure though piercing, the melody simple and flowing. In all, the figure played six tunes without any sound of the clock-work within, and it was undoubtedly a very curious and costly toy.

The second mate stalked out in the middle of this performance, having finished his meal, and showing no more sensibility to what was doing than did the table the figure played on. The eyes of the man Prins had a sickly, faraway look, to be imagined only, for no one could describe it. Vanderdecken lighted his pipe when the automaton struck up, and nodded gravely to the fluting with as much pleasure in his face as so fierce and haughty a countenance could express. The girl stood leaning upon the table, with a listlessness in her manner and constantly regarding me.

Scarce had the sixth tune been played, when the parrot called out from his cage, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!" clearly showing that she knew when the entertainment was over. Her pronouncing these words in Dutch robbed them somewhat, to my ear, of their tremendous import, but still it was a terrible sentence for the creature to have lighted on, and I wondered what her age was, for she could not have been newly-hatched when Vanderdecken bought her, as— he had told me— she then spoke the same words. However, the captain was full of his flute-player, and neither he nor Imogene noticed the parrot.

"This should delight my little Margaretha," said he, lifting the figure and examining it; "'tis as cunning a toy as ever I saw. I bought it at Batavia, from an old friend of mine, Meeuves Meindertszoom Bakker, who had purchased it of a sailor belonging to the company's ship, Revolutie, for eight ducats. 'Twill rejoice my child; you shall present it to her, Imogene. I would not sell it for five hundred dollars; 'tis worthy to be John Muller's work."

He ceased speaking, lifting his hand; then exclaimed, "Hark! how the wind continues to storm."

He gave the figure to the girl who returned it to her cabin.

In a few minutes he put down his pipe and bade Prins bring him his skin or fur cap, and then rose, impressing me as keenly as though I viewed him for the first time by the nobility of his stature, his great beard flowing to the waist, the sharp supernatural fires in his eyes as if the light there were living flames. In silence he quitted the cabin, acting like a man influenced by spells, without the governance of the logic of human behaviour.

Chapter 17

I Talk With Miss Imogene Dudley About The Death Ship.

BEING IN THE WAY now of enjoying a talk with Imogene, the ridiculousness of the dress I was in struck me, and I asked Prins, who was clearing the table, whether my own clothes were yet dry. He answered they were hung up in the furnace near the cookhouse, by which I suppose he meant the caboose, and that when they were dry he would bring them to my cabin.

"In these things," said I, addressing Imogene in English, whilst I turned my head about to catch a sight of my tails, "I feel like a fool in a carnival. What ages this garb represents I cannot conceive, but it surely does not represent less than a century of fashion."

"And what must you think of my attire?" said she, seating herself in the captain's chair, which her beauty made a throne of in a breath, the light of her hair gilding it. "But all things are wonderful here," she added, with a half-glance at Prins, whose movements and manner as he removed the dishes from the table were as deaf and soulless as the behaviour of the figure that had just piped to us. "You know, of course, what ship this is?"

I said "Yes," in a subdued voice, and sat down on the end of the bench near her, adding, "Will the captain take it amiss if we converse?"

"No," she answered, "but should he forbid it and then find you speaking to me, his temper would be dreadful. He is a terribly passionate man. Yet he is gentle to me, and speaks of his wife and children with exquisite tenderness."

"His wife and children! God help him!"

"Oh!" she cried, trembling, "I cannot express to you the horror and pain I feel when I hear him talk of them as though he should find them as they were— altered by the length of a year only— when he parted from them. He does not know that he is cursed— none of them on board this ship know it of themselves."

"Is that so?" I exclaimed. "Surely their repeated failures to pass the Agulhas point must convince them that the will of God is opposed to their attempts and that they are doomed men."

She leaned her fair cheek upon her hand with a thoughtful absent expression in her violet eyes, though they remained fixed upon me with a child-like simplicity extraordinarily fascinating. I particularly noticed the beautiful turn of her wrist, the fairy delicacy of her nostrils and mouth, and the enchanting curve of her chin to her throat. Her figure was full, and in the swell of her breasts and the breadth of her shoulders, fining down into a waist in admirable harmony with her stature and make, you might seem to have witnessed every assurance of robustness. But you found a suggestion rather than a character of fragility in the beauty of her face that caused the very delight you took in the gold and lilies and violets of her loveliness to grow pensive. There was a complete absence of embarrassment in her manner towards me.

"If you please, what name am I to know you by?" she asked.

"Geoffrey Fenton," I answered, "and you?"

"Imogene Dudley." I bowed to her, and she continued, "Are you a sailor?"

I raised my hands half-mockingly, and said, "Do I not look my calling?" but recollecting my apparel, I burst into a laugh and exclaimed, touching the faded finery upon the cuff of my coat, "You will have thought me a beadle or a footman."

She shook her head smiling, but instantly grew grave, and now spoke in a most earnest voice. "I will tell you all I know about this ship and about myself. My father was Captain Dudley, of Portsmouth, and nearly five years ago, as closely as I can reckon time where time has ceased to all the others, he commanded a ship named the Flying Fish, and took me and my mother with him on a voyage to China. We called at Table Bay, but when we were off the coast where Algoa Bay is situated, the ship was set on fire by one of the crew entering the hold with a lighted candle and attempting to steal some rum. The flames quickly raged, the ship was not to be saved, the boats were lowered and my mother and I and a seaman entered one of them, but suddenly the ship blew up, destroying the boats that were against its side, and when the smoke cleared off nothing was to be seen on the water but a few pieces of blackened timber. Our boat had been saved by my father ordering the man to keep her at a good distance lest a panic arose and she should be entered by too great a number. The shock so affected my mother that she lost her mind." Here Imogene hid her face. When she looked at me again her face was wet, nevertheless she continued: "She died on the night following the loss of the ship, and I was left alone with the sailor. We were many leagues from the land, we had no sail, the oars were heavy. I was too weak and ill to help him with them, and the fierce heat soon melted the strength out of him, so that he left off rowing. He was good to me, gentle and very sorrowful about me. I cried so much over losing my father and mother, and at our dreadful situation, that I thought my heart would break, and I prayed that it might, for indeed I wanted to die." She drew a deep hysteric breath, tremulous as a long bitter sob. "We drifted here and there for five days, after which thirst and hunger bereft me of my senses, and I remember no more till I awoke in this ship. I then learnt that they had passed our boat close, and had stopped the vessel to inspect her. The seaman was dead, and they supposed me dead too, but Captain Vanderdecken, fancying a likeness in me to his daughter Alida, called to his men to bring me on board. They did so and found life in me."

"And you have been in this vessel ever since!" cried I.

"Ever since!" she responded.

"That is to say," I exclaimed, scarcely realising the truth, "for hard upon five years!"

She hid her eyes and shook her sweet face in the cover of her hands, as if she could not bear to think of it. I waited a little, partly that she might have time to recover her tranquillity, and partly that Prins might make an end of his business and go, though, let me declare, he gave us no more heed than had he been the clock; much less, indeed, than did the parrot that, having rounded her head, after the manner of those birds, till her beak was uppermost, watched us with the broadside of her face, and therefore with one eye, with horrid pertinacity and gravity.

"But can it be, Miss Dudley," said I, "that Captain Vanderdecken never intends to part with you?"

She looked up quickly, and said, "My position is incredibly strange. He has a father's fondness for me, and declares that, as I have no relations, I shall be one of his children, and live with his wife and daughters at Amsterdam. But he has no sense of time. Neither he nor the miserable crew can compute. To him and the others this is the year 1654, and he supposes that he sailed from Batavia in July of last year, that is, as he conceives, in 1653. At first I tried to make him understand what century this was, but he patted my cheek, and said my senses had not returned, and, when I persisted, he grew angry, and his temper so terrified me that I feigned to agree with him, and have ever since done so."

I reflected, and said, "It must be as you say, and as I have already noted; for, did the Almighty grant him and his crew any perception of the passage of time, is it conceivable that he would talk of his wife and children as still living, and be eager to return to them? When did you discover that this was the Phantom Ship?"

"I had heard that there was such a vessel from my father, and when Captain Vanderdecken talked to me and I marked the colour of his face and the appearance of the crew, and the glow that shone upon the vessel in the dark, with other strange things, such as her ancient appearance, I soon satisfied myself."

"Father of Mercy!" I cried, "what a situation for a young girl!"

"When I felt sure of the ship," she said, "I should have drowned myself in my misery and terror, only I dreaded God's wrath. I felt that if I humbly resigned myself to His Holy Will He would suffer the spirits of my father and mother to be with me and watch over me. But, oh! what a tedious waiting has it been, what bitter weariness of sea and sky! Again and again have I entreated Captain Vanderdecken to put me on board some passing ship, but not conceiving of the years which run by, and every tempest that obstructs him melting as a memory into the last, so that the rebuffs of a century past are to him as forgotten things, or possessing the same sort of recentness that in a day or two this gale, which is now blowing, will have, he thinks to encourage me by saying that next time he is certain to round the headland, that, as he has adopted, so he must not part with me, but carry me in his own ship and under his own protection to his wife and home."

I understood her and admired the cleverness with which she rendered intelligible to me the state of mind of the captain and crew of this ship, that is to say so far as concerned their incapacity to compute the passage of the days. For is it not evident that if these men knew that they were doomed never to round the Cape, they would cease striving to do so? And would they not long ago have understood the character of the Judgment that had been passed upon them had they been permitted to comprehend that year after year rolled on, ay, even into centuries, and still found them beaten back regularly from the same part of the ocean to the passing of which their struggles had been directed? How far memory in them was suffered to go back so as to count the number of times they were driven afresh to the eastwards, I could not imagine; but no doubt Imogene, who knew Vanderdecken well, was right when she said that the recollection of the last rebuff melted into every present one, so that, in short, in this respect they were as men without memory. And this must have been so, for they worked with hope; whereas hope would have long since died in them could they have recollected.

"What are your thoughts," I asked her, "as regards their mortality? Are they human?"

"Yes, Mr. Fenton, they must be human, for they think of their homes and wives and children," she replied.

I was struck with this, though I said, "Might not their very yearning be a part of the Curse? For if you extinguish their desire of getting home, the impulse that keeps them striving with the elements would disappear, and they would say, 'Since we cannot get westwards and so to Europe, we'll head for the east and make for the Indies?'"

"It is a thing impossible to reason upon," she exclaimed, sadly, and pressing her hand to her brow. "The Great God here, in this ship, has worked in miracles and mysteries for purposes of His own. Who can explain His ways? Sometimes I have thought by the dreadful hue of the skin of their faces that they are men dead in body, but forced into the behaviour of living beings by the strength of the Curse that works in them."

I replied that in saying this she had exactly hit upon the fancy of my late captain, who had taken his own life on the previous evening, which fancy now struck me as an amazing inspiration, seeing that it was her own opinion and that my own judgment fully concurred in it.

"'Tis impossible," said she, "that they can be as we are. They are supernaturally alive. Oh! it is shocking to think of. Is it not wonderful that my long association with these people has not driven me mad? Yet the captain loves me as a father; such is his tenderness at times when he talks of his home and strives to keep up my heart by warranting that next time— it is always next time— we shall pass the Cape and all will be well with us, that I am lost in wonder he could have ever so acted as to bring the curse of an eternal life of hopeless struggle upon him and his men."

"Ay," cried I, "and why should his men be accursed?"

"I have often asked myself that whilst watching them," she replied. "But then I have answered, why should innocent little children bear in their forms, and in their minds too, the diseases and infirmities caused by the wickedness and recklessness of persons, perhaps several generations removed from them? We dare not question— 'tis impious, Mr. Fenton. In this ship especially must we be as mute spectators only, for we are two living persons standing amid shadows, and viewing so marvellous a mystery that I tremble to the depth of my soul at the thoughts of my nearness to the Majesty of an offended God!"

By this time Prins had quitted the cabin, and the girl and I were alone. There was a great weight of sea running, and the rolling of the ship was very violent. This end of the vessel was so tall that it rose buoyant from the head of every billow that leapt at her afterpart; but the thunder of the seas smiting her in the waist would roar like a tempest through the ship; you could hear the waters washing about the deck there; then the groaning and complaining below was continuous, and the sounds which penetrated the cabin from the gale in the rigging made you think of the affrighted bellowing of bulls chased by wolves in full cry.

"There seems to be a fierce storm blowing," said Imogene, who had watched my face whilst I listened; "but since I have been in this ship there have been far wilder tempests than this."

"No doubt, in all the weary years you have spent here. What has been your experience of the winds which regularly oppose the ship? Do they happen naturally, as in the case of this one, which was plentifully betokened by the look of the moon and other signs, or do they rise on a sudden— in such wise, I mean, as would make one see they were for this vessel only, and are a temporary change in the laws of nature hereabouts that the Curse may be continued?"

"I cannot answer; all that I can speak to is this: as punctually as we arrive at a given place the wind heads us, as used to be my poor father's term and as all seamen say. And sometimes it blows softly and sometimes it rises into fury. But let it come as it will the vessel is blown or driven back a great many leagues, but how far I cannot say, for Vanderdecken himself does not know."

I would not trouble her with further questions touching what I will call the nautical routine of the ship and the manœuvering of the unhappy creatures the vessel carried, because already I suspected that I should have rather more leisure than I should relish to look into these matters myself. But as she manifestly took a pleasure in conversing with me, and as I wished to obtain all the information possible about this Death Ship, and as, should Vanderdecken forbid my associating with or addressing her, there might be no one else on board of whom I could venture to make inquiries, I determined at once to push my researches as far as courtesy permitted.

"I trust, Miss Dudley," said I, finding a singular delight in the pure virginal resting of her violet eyes, sparkling like the jewels of a crown, on mine as I talked to her, "that my questions do not tease you—"

"Oh, no!" she interrupted. "If you but knew how glad I am, how it gives me fresh heart to hear you speak, to see your living face after my long desolating communion with the people of this ship!"

"Indeed I can conceive it!" said I. "May God grant that what I viewed last night as a most dreadful misfortune, full of terror, ay, even to madness, may prove the greatest stroke of good luck that could have befallen me. But of what is to be done we must talk later on. I shall require to look about me. Tell me now, madam, if you will, how is this ship provisioned? Surely these men are not miraculously fed; and 'tis certain that the meat I tasted this morning has been cured since 1653!"

She smiled and said, "When they run short of food or water they sail for some part of the coast where there is a river. There they go on shore in boats, armed with muskets, and come off with all that they can kill."

"Ha!" cried I, fetching a deep breath, "there is some plain sailing in this unholy business after all. But how do they manage for ammunition? Surely they must long ago have expended their original stock?"

"I can but guess. About a twelvemonth ago we met with an abandoned ship, out of which Vanderdecken conveyed a great quantity of tobacco, powder, money and articles of food, a few cases of marmalade and some barrels of flour. Whether these shipwrecked vessels are left lying upon the sea for him to take provisions from by the Power that has sentenced him to his fearful fate I cannot say, but since I have been in this vessel we have fallen in with three deserted ships, both floating and ashore on the coast, and this may have been their method throughout of providing themselves with what they needed, backed by such further food as I have never known them to miss of with their muskets and fowling-pieces."

"So!" cried I, greatly marvelling. "Now I understand how it happens that the captain can lend me such latter-day clothes as these from his seventeenth-century wardrobe, and that you— forgive me, madam— are attired as I see you."

She answered, "In their hold they have a great quantity of silks and materials for making gowns for women. This jacket," said she, meaning that which she was wearing, "is one article out of several chests of clothes Captain Vanderdecken was carrying home for his wife and daughters and friends. Do you notice the style, Mr. Fenton?" she added, turning about her full and graceful figure that I might see the jacket, "it is certainly of the last century. In the captain's cabin is the portrait of one of his daughters dressed in much the same way."

"You, at all events," said I, "are not likely to run short of clothes."

"Oh!" she answered, with a toss of her head, half of weariness, half of scorn as it seemed to me, "there is a chest in my cabin full of clothes fit for the grandest Duchess in England. I use such as come most readily to my hands. What need have I," she exclaimed, pushing her hair from her forehead, "to care whether the colours I take match, or whether the gown is too full. This jacket fits me as do all the clothes that were intended for Geertruida Vanderdecken." Then, noticing my eyes resting on the pearls, she said, taking the beautiful and costly rope in her hands, "There is a great stock of finery of this kind in the ship. About a fortnight or three weeks after I had been rescued, the captain ordered Prins to bring a large case into the cabin; it was put upon the table and the captain opened it. 'Twas like a jeweller's shop in miniature, containing several divisions, one full of pearl ornaments, another of rings, of which he bid me choose one to wear, and I took this," holding up her forefinger whereon the jewel blazed, "a third of earrings and many other trinkets; some, as I should fancy, more ancient than this ship, others of a later time. How he got much of this treasure I know."

"How?" asked I, deeply interested.

"Well," said she, letting fall the pearls around her neck to toy with the ring, "a fair proportion he had purchased for a merchant of Amsterdam; chiefly eastern jewellery that had made its way from Indian cities to Java; other parcels he was taking home on his own account; but much of it, too, along with a store of further treasure— some of which I have seen, and which consists of virgin silver, bars of gold, coated with pewter to deceive the pirates and buccaneers, candlesticks and crucifixes of precious metal— he found in the wreck of a great Spanish ship which lay abandoned and going to pieces on a shoal off the coast of Natal. This happened during his progress from Batavia to the Cape, before he was cursed, and therefore it falls within his memory. What other treasure there is, his men have no doubt brought away from the wrecked vessels they have examined for food, powder and the like, during the years they have been sailing about this ocean."

"So," cried I, lost in amazement by what I heard, "it is in this fashion that the Phantom Ship supplies her wants. As ships grow more numerous, her opportunities will increase, for 'tis terrible to think of the number of vessels which go a-missing; and, besides, this is the road to India, along which pass the most richly freighted of Europe's merchant fleets. Now I understand how Vanderdecken manages to keep his crew supplied with clothes, and his ship with sails and cordage. But, Lord!" cried I, "if there be nothing magical in this, yet surely the Evil Spirit must be suffered to have a hand in the keeping of the bones of this old fabric together!"

As I said this, Prins entered the cabin, and said, shortly, "Your clothes are dry, mynheer; they are below."

On which Imogene rose, and giving me a bow, went to her own cabin.

Chapter 18

The Death Ship Must Be Slow At Plying

I STOOD a moment or two at the door watching the clock whilst it struck, and greatly admiring the workmanship of the skeleton that rose and speared with his lance, keeping time to the sonorous chiming, which sang with a solemn interval between each beat. The great age of this time-keeper was beyond question, but the horn that protected the face of it prevented me from perceiving if there was any maker's name or date there.

As the skeleton sank, I could not but admire the aptness of the mechanism to the condition of the ship and her crew, for what could surpass the irony of this representation of Death perpetually foiled in his efforts to slay Time, which was yet the case of Vanderdecken and his men, whose mortality was constrained to an endless triumph over that force which drives all men born of woman through Nature into Eternity.

The parrot hanging near, I stayed yet to look at her and then spoke to the creature in my rugged Dutch, but to no purpose; with the slow motion of her kind she contorted herself until, with her beak uppermost, she brought her larboard eye to bear full upon me; and so fixed and unwinking was her stare that I greatly disliked it, nay, felt that if I lingered I should fear it, and was going when she brought me to a stand by a hollow "Ha! ha! ha!" just such a note as fancy would give to the ghost of a Dutchman, who had been large, fat and guttural when alive, could the spectre of such a one laugh in his coffin or in a vault. The age which this bird had attained made her mere appearance chilling to the blood, though I am aware these creatures are long-lived and that no man with certainty could say they might not flourish two hundred years and more. She was not bald. All her feathers were sound and smooth. Yet, as I made my way to my cabin, it terrified me into downright despondency to conceive of this parrot sharing in the Curse that Vanderdecken had provoked. For if this soulless fowl could be involved in the general fate merely because it happened to be in the ship, why might not my lot prove the same? Oh, my heart! To think of becoming one of the crew, partaking their horrid destiny, and in due course dying to live again accurst and miraculously, my soul— as theirs— existing in my body like one of those feeble lamps with which the ancients illumined their tombs!

But I was young and was not without an Englishman's courage. I could gaze backwards and perceive in my life no sin such as should fill me with remorse and hopelessness in a time like this. I believed in my Creator's goodness, and reaching my darksome cabin, I knelt down and prayed, and after awhile recollected myself and felt the warmth of my former spirit.

I was mighty pleased to recover my own clothes; they gave me back the sense of my being my true self again, whereas the masquerading attire Vanderdecken had lent me occasioned a wretched feeling as of belonging to the ship. When I had shifted myself, I neatly folded the captain's coat, breeches and the rest, and then sat down on my bed to think over my conversation with Miss Dudley. What to credit, what to make of her, I hardly knew. She was so beautiful where all was ugly, so fresh where all was decayed, so young where all was withered, so radiant where all was darksome that, on board such a ship as this, that had been consigned to the most dreadful doom the imagination of man could conceive of, how was I to know that she was not some part of the scheme of retribution— a sweet and dazzling tantaliser, a mocker of the home affections of the miserable ship's company, a lovely embodiment of the spirit of life to serve some purpose of an inscrutable nature in its influence upon such spiritual vitality as was permitted to the corpse-like beings who navigated this Death Ship.

But this was a fleeting fancy only, and was rendered utterly ridiculous by recurrence to her transporting figure, the golden warmth of her hair and complexion, and above all to the fragility of her lineaments, which stamped her mortal. No! her story was the truth itself; but this I understood, if Vanderdecken were never to comprehend his doom, there was stern assurance of his holding the girl to his ship until she died; because, as she had pointed out, he had adopted her and desired to take her home, and would never understand he was powerless to do so, even should time represent the truth to him in her face, should she ever grow old enough for wrinkles and grey hairs.

Had I been sent to deliver her? God knoweth, I thought. Yet, what was my own case? Would they refuse to let me leave them? Well, that idea did not frighten me, for he is a poor sailor who cannot find a means of escape from a ship he dislikes, even though she should be commanded by Old Nick himself. But suppose they compelled me to go, set me ashore in their boat, or hailed some unsuspecting vessel that would receive me. I should then be powerless to rescue Imogene from this frightful situation, for as to subsequently helping to succour her, first of all I doubted whether I should find a sailor in any part of the world willing to ship for a cruise in search of Vanderdecken's craft, and next, even if I should be able to range a line-of-battle ship alongside this venerable frame, how should human artillery advantage us in such a conflict? 'Twould be but another defiance of the Divine intention, and what mariner was to be found who would embark on any adventure against this dread Spectre of the Deep when, by so doing, he would feel that he was fighting a Vengeance which would swiftly deal with him for so great an act of impiety?

However, no good could come of meditations of this kind in that gloomy cabin filled with the echoes of the groaning in the hold and the washing and shocks of the seas without. I felt a seaman's curiosity to have a good look at a ship of which there were a thousand stories afloat in every forecastle throughout the world, and so I climbed through the hatch on deck, dressed in the style in which I had made my first appearance. The second mate, Antony Arents, conned the vessel, standing near the helm with his arms folded in a sullen, moody posture, even so as to resemble a man turned into stone. Vanderdecken was at the weather-rail, erect and noble-looking, his legs parted in the attitude of a stride that he might balance himself to the rolling deck. He stared fixedly to the windward, his great beard, disparted, blowing like smoke over either shoulder, and his brows lowered into a contemptuous scowl upon his sharp, burning eyes. The ship was under the same canvas I had before noticed on her. Her yards were as closely pointed to the wind as the lee braces could bring them, but whereas in our time a square-rigged vessel close-hauled can be brought to within six points, that is to say, if the gale be north she can be made to head east-north-east, yet this ship, as I easily gathered without looking at the compass, lay no closer than eight-and-a-half or nine points, the wind blowing west-north-west and we lying by as close as the trim of the yards would suffer us, at about south-by-west.

In short, we were being driven at the rate of some three or four miles an hour dead to leeward, broadside on. Now, as I am writing this in the main that all mariners may have a just and clear conception of the sort of ship Vanderdecken's vessel is, I particularly desire that this matter of her not being able to sail within eight or nine points of the wind be carefully noted; for, then you shall understand how fully with her own tackling, and yards and canvas, she helps out and fulfils her doom.

If ever you have read the account of my Lord Anson's voyage round the world, you will recollect, in the second chapter of Book II., the narrative, given at length, of the time occupied by the Gloucester in fetching and casting anchor off Juan Fernandez. She could make no way at all in beating or reaching. She was first sighted from the island on the 21st of June; she was still striving against the head wind on the 9th of July; then she was blown away, and reappeared on the 16th, and it was not until the 23rd of that month that she was seen opening the north-west point of the bay with a flowing sail, which means that she had a fair wind, and which may also be said to signify that had the wind not favoured her she might have gone on struggling for years without making the island. Think, now, of a vessel very nearly fitted as our ships are rigged, occupying thirty-two days— a whole month and a day atop— in covering a distance which, when the Gloucester was first sighted, was reckoned at four leagues!

Is it, then, surprising that a vessel constructed considerably more than a century earlier than the ships of Anson's squadron, in an age when the art of building was little understood, when a ship's hull was as tall as a great castle, when all things aloft were ponderous, when the immense beam, helped yet by the wide channels, gave such a spread to the shrouds that they could make of the breeze no more than a beam wind when braced up as sharp as the yards would come— is it surprising, I say, that this Dutchman, so constructed, should never be able to contend with a contrary wind? I am the more pleased to point this out because I have heard it particularly affirmed that if Vanderdecken were a good seaman he would laugh at a north-wester though there should be no other wind in those seas; for he need do nothing but make a long board to the south, to as far, say, as fifty degrees, in order, with his starboard tacks aboard, to pass the Cape and enter the Atlantic, where he would probably catch the south-east trade wind and so make good his return. But this presupposes no Sentence, even if the ship were capable of sailing close-hauled.

To resume. Neither the captain, nor the second mate, nor the seaman at the tiller, taking the least notice of me, I determined to keep myself to myself till it should please Vanderdecken to address me; so I got under the lee of the house where I had conversed with the captain before breakfast, and gazed about. It was as dirty a day as ever I remember— the heavens of the colour of drenched granite, the sea-line swallowed up in spray and haze, out of which there came rolling to the ship endless processions of olive-coloured, prodigious combers. The storming aloft was a perpetual thunder. Upon every rope the gale split with a shriek, and there was a dreary clattering of the cordage, and as the vessel swang her spars to windward, an edge of peculiar and hurricane-like fierceness would be put into the wind, as though it were driven outrageously mad by the stubborn swing of the masts against its howling face. Nothing was in sight save over against our weather-quarter a Cape hen, poised on such easy wings that the appearance of the bird made a wonder of the weight of the blast; its solitariness gave a heavy desolation to the aspect of the pouring, warring scene of frothing summits and roaring hollows. The reefed courses under which the vessel lay were dark with wet from the showering of the sea, of which great, green, glittering masses striking the weather-bow, raised such a smoke of crystals all about the forecastle that the vessel looked to be on fire with the steam-like, voluminous whiteness soaring there.

There were a few men on the decks that way, muffled up to their noses; but I did not see them speak to one another nor go about any kind of work. They had the same self-engrossed, nay, entranced air that was visible in those, such as the two mates and Vanderdecken, whom I had already observed. The ship offered an amazing picture as she soared and sank upon the billows, half-hidden by storms of froth swept by the wind betwixt the masts with wilder screamings than a hundred mad-houses could make. The great barricaded tops, her spritsail topmast standing up out of another top at the end of the bowsprit— she had no jibboom— and the long yard, after the lateen-style, on her mizzen-mast, gave her so true a look of the age in which she had been built that it would be impossible for any sailor to see her and not know what ship she was. None other resembling her has been afloat since the age of William III., nor is it conceivable that the like of her will ever be seen again.

Chapter 19

I Witness The Captain's Entrancement

I HAD BEEN on deck about a quarter of an hour when Vanderdecken, who all this time was standing motionless at the rail looking— as who shall tell with what fancies in him and what visions— at the windward sea, came down to the lee of the house as though he all along knew I was there, though I can swear he never once turned nor appeared to see me, and said—

"Is the lady in the cabin?"

"She went to her room, sir," I replied.

"Did she tell you her story?" he said, bringing his beard to its place with both hands, and viewing me with a severity that I began to think might be as much owing to the cast of his features as to his nature.

I replied that she had told me how he had met with her in an open boat, how her parents had perished, and how he had felt a father's pity and love for her and was taking her home.

"To adopt her," he exclaimed. "She shall be a child of mine. My wife will soon love her, and she will be a sister to my daughters. She has no relatives, and such beauty and sweetness of heart as hers must be cared for, since how does the world commonly serve such graces when they meet in a friendless woman?"

Surely, thought I, he that can talk thus cannot be endevilled! And yet does not the great Milton bestow the tenderness of a sister and a daughter on Sin when she reconciles Satan and Death? Something of human nature there must ever be even in those who most strictly merit Heaven's chastisement; and the lustre of the glory in our beginning, though it wane till its glow is no brighter than the dim, fiery crawlings upon this ship's side at night, is never utterly extinguished in the blackest spirit of us all.

I had no desire to talk of Miss Dudley lest I should put him into a passion by some remark touching the number of years she had now been on board, or by blundering in some other like manner. If she was to escape through me it behoved me to keep my thoughts mighty close and secret, for let what would be the state of being he had entered into in two centuries of existence, his eyes were like a burning-glass, as though he could focus by them the fires of suspicion and scorch a hole through your body to your soul to learn what was passing there. So putting on an easy manner and throwing a glance aloft and around, I said, "I fear, mynheer, you find weather of this kind strain your ship a good deal."

"Like all vessels she will work in such seas as this," he replied.

"How often is she careened?" I asked.

"How often should she need it, think you?" he replied, with sudden temper.

I said, warily, "I cannot imagine."

"I have commanded the Braave for five voyages," said he, softening a little, "and only once— that is during the second voyage— did she prove leaky. But this voyage she has been troublesome, and I have had to careen her twice."

Twice only, thought I; but you could see that his memory had been shaped so as to fit his doom, and that remembrance of all that befell him and his crew from the time when his sentence was first pronounced faded almost as swiftly as they happened, like clouds upon the blankness of the heavens, so that the very changes that would illustrate the passage of time to you or me, such as the alteration in the rigs and shapes of the ships he met, or the growth into womanhood of the girl he had rescued, would be as unmeaning to him and his fellows as to men without memory. Yet was it manifestly part of the Curse that he should have a keen and bright recollection of his house, his family, Amsterdam, the politics and wars of his age and the like. For if the faculty was wholly dead in him, he would be but as a corpse without that craving for home which perpetuates his doom.

"Is there any good spot for careening on the coast, east of the Cape?" said I, eager to gather all I could touching the practices and inner life of this wondrous ship without appearing inquisitive.

He answered, "Yes, there is one good place, 'tis in a bay; I cannot name it, but it is to be found by the peculiar shape of the mountains at its back. If ever you should be in these seas and need to careen, choose that place, for besides that you may refresh your crew with, and lay in a good store of— when in season— oranges, plums, wild apricot, lemons, plantains, and other fruits, with abundance of such fish as cod, hake, and mullet, and comforts and dainties such as plovers, partridges, guinea-fowl, and bustards; you will there find a salt spring, the water of which, on boiling, yields salt enough for any quantity of curing, and what should not be less useful to you as a mariner to know is, that about the shore you find scattered a kind of munjack which, when boiled with sand and tempered with oil, is as good as pitch for paying your seams with."

So, thought I, and thither, then, is it that you are led when your ship needs to be overhauled or when your provisions run low. With oakum worked from such ropes as he would find on abandoned ships, and the munjack he spoke about, he would have no trouble in keeping the frame of the vessel tight, more especially as the supernatural quality that was in his own life was in that of his ship likewise, so that the timber stood as did his skin, albeit the one would often need repairs just as the body of the other was sustained by meat and drink.

"I thank you for your information, captain," said I.

"If," he continued, "you let the plantain dry it will crush into an excellent flour. The cakes we had at breakfast were formed of plantain-flour."

"It is wonderful," said I, "how the mariner forces the sea and the land that skirts it to supply his needs."

"Ay," he exclaimed. "It is as you say. But no sailors surpass the Dutch in this particular direction."

It seemed as if he would go on speaking, but, looking, that I might attend to his words, I observed that the whole man, with amazing suddenness, appeared to undergo a change. He stood motionless, gazing at the leeward sea, his features fixed, not the faintest working in them, and nothing stirring but his beard. He was like one in a fit, save for the frightful vitality he got from the glare in his eyes, which were rooted as though they beheld a phantom. I drew away from him with a shudder, for his aspect now was the most terrible revelation of his monstrous and unearthly existence that had been made to me. The change was of the violence of a catalepsy, and this quick transition from the intelligent, if death-like, looks of a man, speaking of homely matters to a mute, petrified figure, to which the fire of the eyes imparted an inexpressible element of horror, so terrified me that I felt the sweat-drops in the palms of my hands. As to reasoning on this condition of his, why, I could make nothing of it. It looked as if the death that was in his flesh and bones, finding his spirit, or whatever it was that informed him, languid, as the senses became through grief or sickness, asserted its powers till it was driven into its hiding-place again by the re-quickening of the supernatural element that possessed him. It was also apparent that this unnatural gift of life did but give vitality to a corpse; and that even as a disinterred body that still wears the very tint of life, as though but just dead, falls into dust on the air of Heaven touching it, so do I strictly believe that Vanderdecken and his crew would instantly crumble into ashes, which the wind would disperse, were the power that keeps them intelligent and capable of moving suspended. By which I mean that they would not decay slowly, as the dead in Nature do, but that they would dissolve into dust as men who deceased a hundred years ago.

These thoughts are not gay. But what think you of the reality? Never could I so fully compass all the horror of the Curse as now, when I turned my gaze from the figure at my side, majestic in his marble motionlessness and alive in the eyes only, to the strained, grey, streaming ancient ship, tossing her forking bowsprit to the sullen gloom on high, bringing her aged, patched and dingy courses, groaning at their tacks, with a sulky thunder against the screaming gale, as though their hollows dimly reverberated yet the cannonading of the vanished fleets of Blake and Tromp; washed by seas which fled in snow-storms over her forward decks, heavily and dismally rolling broadside to the wind that was blowing her with diabolic stubbornness back along the liquid path that she had so lately sailed over! Think of such a life as this, never-ending! Great Mercy! Would not even a year of such a struggle prove to us distracting. Oh, 'tis a merciful provision indeed that these poor wretches should have had all sense of time killed in them, and that their punishment should lie in a perpetual cheating of hope too short-lived as a remembrance to break their hearts. Yet there were now two persons in this Death Ship to whom such solace as was permitted to the accurst crew would not be granted, and who, if they could not get away from the vessel, would have to lead a more terrible life than even that of the Dutch mariners, unless they destroyed themselves as Captain Skevington had. And for some time I could think of nothing but how I was to rescue Miss Dudley and make my own escape, for one thing I had already resolved: never to leave the girl alone in this ship.

Chapter 20

I Hold a Conversation With the Crew

THERE WAS nothing in sight. Indeed, in that thick gale a vessel would have had to come within a mile of us to be visible. As Vanderdecken neither stirred nor spoke to me, I feared he might take it ill if I hung by his side, for how was I to tell but that he might consider I should regard the withdrawal of his attention as a hint to begone. I therefore walked aft, the second mate no more heeding me than if I had been as viewless as the air, whilst the helmsman, after turning a small pair of glassy eyes upon me, stained with veins, directed them again at the sea over the bow, his face as sullenly thoughtful as the others, albeit he handled the tiller with good judgment, "meeting her," as we sailors say, when she needed it, and holding a very clean and careful luff.

My curiosity being great I ventured to peep into the binnacle, or "bittacle" as it was formerly called, a fixed box or case for holding the mariner's compass. The card was very old-fashioned, as may be supposed, yet it swung to the movement of the ship, and I could not suppose that it was very inaccurate since by the aid of it they periodically made the land where they hunted for meat and filled their casks. As neither Vanderdecken nor Antony Arents offered to hinder me from roaming about, I determined, since I was about it, to take a good look at this Death Ship. I examined the swivels which were very green with decay, and tried to revolve one on its pivot, but found that it was not to be stirred. The tiller had been a very noble piece of timber, but now presented the aspect of rottenness that all the rest of the wood in the ship had, yet it had been very elegantly carved, and numerous flourishes still overran it, though the meaning of the devices was not to be come at. The rudder head worked in a great helm-port, through which a corpulent man of eighteen stone might have slipped fair into the sea underneath. The gale made a melancholy screeching in the skeleton lantern, and I wondered they did not unship the worthless thing and heave it overboard. I looked over the side and as far down as I could carry my sight, and I observed that the ship was of a sickly sallow colour, not yellow— indeed, of no hue that I could give a name to, though the original tint a painter might conjecture by guessing what colour would yield this nameless pallidness after years and years of washing seas and the burning of the sun.

I then thought I would step forward, not much minding the washing of the seas there, and passed Vanderdecken very cautiously, ready to stop if he should look at me, but he remained in a trance, like a stone figure, all the life of him gone into his eyes, which glared burning and terrible at the same part of the ocean at which he stared when I first observed him stirless; so I stepped past and descended to the quarter-deck, where there was nothing to see, and thence to the upper deck.

Here, near the mainmast, were two pumps of the pattern I recollected noticing in a ship that had been built in 1722, and that was afloat and hearty and earning good money in 1791. In front of the mast lay two boats, one within the other, the under one on chocks, both of the same pattern, namely, square stern and stem, with lengths of the gunwales projecting like horns. The top one, for I could not see the inside of the lower boat, had been painted originally a bright scarlet; she contained seats and half-a-dozen of oars short and long, all with immensely broad blades, which had also been painted a bright red. The rusty guns, the ends of gear snaking in the froth along the scuppers, the cumbersomeness of the blocks of the maintack, along with the other furniture of that groaning and half-bursting sail, the grey old cask answering for a scuttlebutt lashed to the larboard side, the ancientness of the tarpauling over the great hatch; these, and a score of other details it would tease you to hear me name, gave a most dismal and wretched appearance to all this part of the tossed, drenched, spray-clouded fabric labouring under a sky that had darkened since the morning, and against whose complexion the edges of the sails showed with a raw and sickly pallor, whilst above swung the great barricaded tops and the masts and yards to and fro, to and fro, how drearily and wearily!

The bulwarks being very high, enabled me to dodge the seas as I crept forwards, and presently I came abreast of the foremast, where stood Jans, the boatswain, along with three or four seamen, taking the shelter of a sort of hutch, built very strong, whence proceeded sounds of the grunting of hogs, and the muttering of geese, hens and the like. As I needed an excuse to be here— for these fellows believed the time to be that of Cromwell and Blake, and looked upon an Englishman as an enemy, and, therefore, might round upon me angrily for offering to overhaul their ship— I said to Jans, in my civillest manner—

"Are the men who rescued me last night here? I shall be glad to thank them."

"Yonder's Houtmann," said he, bluntly; "the other's below."

I turned to the man named Houtmann, and saw in him an old sailor of perhaps three-score, with a drooped head, his hands in his pockets, a worn, wrinkled, melancholy face, his complexion, like that of the others, of the grave; he was dressed in boots, loose yellow, tarpaulin trousers, and a frock of the same material; he had a pilot-coat on, a good sou'-west cap— such as I myself wore aboard the Saracen— and there was a stout shawl around his neck.

I put out my hand, and said, "Houtmann, let an English sailor thank a brave Hollander of his own calling for his life."

He did not smile— showed himself, by not so much as a twitch in his face sensible of my speech, save that in the most lifeless manner in the world he held out his hand, which I took; but I was glad to let it fall. If ever a hand had the chill of death to freeze mortal flesh, his had that coldness. No other man's skin in that ship had I before touched, though my arm had been seized by Vanderdecken, and this contact makes one of the most biting memories of that time. Will you suppose that the coldness was produced by the wet and the wind? Alas! he withdrew his hand from his pocket; but, even had he raised it from a block of ice, you would not, in the bitter bleakness of the flesh, have felt, as I did, the death in his veins, had he been as I was.

The others were variously attired, in such clothes as you would conceive a ship's slop-chest would be fitted with from pickings of vessels encountered and ransacked in a hundred and fifty years. They had all of them a Dutch cast of countenance, one looking not more than thirty, another forty, and so on. But there was something in them— though God knows if my life were the stake I should not be able to define it— that, backed by the movements, complexions and the like, made you see that with them time had become eternity, and that their exteriors were no more significant of the years they could count than the effigy on the tomb of a man represents the dust of him.

"It blows hard," said I to Jans, making the most of my stock of Dutch, and resolved to confront each amazing experience as it befel me with a bold face. "But the Braave is a stout ship and makes excellent weather."

"So think the rats," exclaimed Houtmann, addressing Jans.

"A plague on the rats!" cried Jans. "There's but one remedy: when we get to Table Bay the hold must be smoked with sulphur."

"I never knew rats multiply as they do in this ship," said one of the sailors, named Kryns; "had we been ten years making the passage from Batavia, the vermin could not have increased more rapidly."

"Where do the crew sleep?" said I.

Jans pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to a hatch abreast of the after-end of the forecastle bulwark. The cover was over it, for there the spray was constantly shooting up like steam from boiling water, and filling the iron-hard hollow of the foresail with wet which showered from under the arched foot-rope in whole thunderstorms of rain. Otherwise I should have asked leave to go below and explore the forecastle, for no part of this ship could, I thought, be more curious than the place in which her crew lived, and I particularly desired to see how they slept, nay, to see them sleeping and to observe the character of their beds, whether hammocks or bunks, and their chests or bags for their clothes.

I said, "It will be dark enough down there with the hatch closed?"

"Ay," said the youngest-looking of the seamen, named Abraham Bothma— I took down their names afterwards from Imogene's dictation, conceiving that the mentioning of them would prove of interest to any descendants of theirs in Holland into whose hands this narrative might chance to fall—"but we keep a lamp always burning."

"But should you run short of oil!" said I, timorously, for I had made up my mind to pretend to one and all that I believed they had sailed from Batavia in the preceding year, and the question was a departure from that resolution.

"Oil is easily got," exclaimed Jans, roughly. "What use do you English make of the porpoise and the grampus? Is not the seabird full of it? And fish you in any bay along the coast 'twixt Natal and Cape Town, and I'll warrant you livers enough to keep your lamps burning for a voyage round the world. And what ship with coppers aboard can be wanting in slush?"

"Heer Jans," said I, "I am a sailor and love to hear the opinions of persons of my own calling. Therefore I would ask you, do not you consider your ship greatly hampered forward by yonder sprit-topmast and the heavy yards there?" And to render myself perfectly intelligible, I pointed to the mast that I have already described as being fixed upright at the end of the bowsprit, rising, so to speak, out of a round top there, and having a smaller top on the upper end of it.

"How would you have her rigged?" asked he, in a sneering manner.

"Why," said I, cautiously, "as most of the ships you meet are rigged— with a jibboom upon which you can set more useful canvas than spritsails."

On this, Bothma said, "Let your country rig its ships as it chooses, they will find the Dutch know more about the sea and the art of navigating and commanding it than your nation has stomach for."

I could have smiled at this, but the voice of the man, the deadness of his face, the terrifying life in his eyes, the sombre gravity of the others, standing about me like people in their sleep, were such a corrective of humour as might have made a braver man than I am tremble. I dared not go on talking with them, indeed, their looks caused me to fear for my senses, so without further ado I walked aft and entered the cabin hoping to find warmth and recovery for my mind in the beauty and conversation of Imogene.

The cabin was deserted. The darkness of the sky made it very gloomy, and what with its meagre furniture, the unhealthy colouring of its walls, trappings of gilt and handwork, once I daresay very brilliant and delightful, but now as rueful as a harlequin's faded dress seen by the sun, it was a most depressing interior, particularly in such weather as was then storming, when the ceaseless thunder of bursting surges drove shock after shock of tempestuous sound through the resonant fabric, and when the shrieking of the wind, not only in the rigging but along the floor of the stormy sky itself, was like the frantic tally-hoing of demons to the million hounds of the blast.

Not knowing how to pass the time, I went to the old, framed pictures upon the sides, and found them to be panels fitted to the ship's plank, and framed so as to form as much a part of the structure as the carving on her stern would be. But time, neglect, dirt or damp— one or all— had so befouled or darkened the surfaces that most of them were more like the heads of tar barrels than paintings. Yet here and there I managed to witness a glimmering survival of the artist's work; one representing the fish market at Amsterdam, such of the figures as were plain exhibiting plenty of humour; another a Dutch East Indiaman, of Vanderdecken's period, sailing along with canvas full, streamers blowing, and the Batavian colours standing out large from the ensign staff; a third was a portrait, but nothing was left of it save a nose whose ruddy tip time had evidently fallen in love with, for there it still glowed, a mouth widely distended with laughter, and one merry little eye, the other having sunk like a star in the dark cloud that overspread most of this panel. This, I supposed, had been the portrait of a sailor, for so much of the remainder as was determinable all related to Amsterdam and things nautical. Having made this dismal round, I sat me down at the table, sternly and closely watched by the parrot, whose distressing, croaking assurance I had no wish to hear, she being my only company if I except the clock, whose hoarse ticking was audible above the gale, and the skeleton skulking inside, whose hourly resurrection I was now in the temper to as greatly dislike as the bird's iterative denunciation.

I wondered how the young lady contrived to pass her time. Had she books? If so, they would doubtless be dull performances in old Dutch, fat and wormy volumes bound in hard leather— as sluggish in their matter as a canal, and very little calculated to amuse a spirited girl. Evidently, in the five years she had been sailing with Vanderdecken, she had learnt what she knew of Dutch; she spoke fluently, and with a good accent, though, to be sure, it was the Dutch of 1650. I constantly directed my eyes towards her cabin, in the hope of seeing her emerge, for I felt mighty dull and sad, and longed for the sight of her fair and golden beauty; and all the while I was wondering how she had endured, without losing her mind, the dreadful imprisonment she had undergone and was yet undergoing, and the still more fearful association of the captain and his men.

I also employed myself in turning over several schemes for escaping with her, but nothing that was really practicable offered. Suppose we met with an unsuspecting ship— I mean a vessel that did not know we were the craft that has been called the Flying Dutchman— Vanderdecken, being willing to get rid of me, sends me to her in a boat. I cry out that there is a young lady left behind breaking her heart for home, whereupon explanations would follow to prove the vessel the Death Ship! What would happen? In all probability, if I had managed to board the vessel we met, her crew, to preserve her from the Curse, would fling me overboard. In any case, away they would run directly the truth was known. Indeed, acquainted as I was with the terror with which Vanderdecken was viewed by all classes of mariners, 'twas positive that, though he had no suspicion himself of the dread he inspired, the story that would have to be told concerning Miss Dudley to account for her detention in the Phantom Ship would end in resolving those we encountered to have nothing to do with either her or me, but to bear a hand and "up sticks!"

As to getting away with her in one of the Dutchman's boats, first, how was I to hoist the boat over the side unperceived? Next, suppose that was to be managed, then on his missing us would not Vanderdecken, a man of fierce resolution, hunt after and perhaps find us, when I should be at the mercy of one in whom there was a great deal of the devil, and who, Heaven knows, could not revenge himself more awfully than by keeping me in his ship. Several projects I thought of, and then a strange idea came into my head. Here was a girl without mother or father, and, as I gathered, entirely friendless and penniless, as indeed in this latter article she could hardly help being as the child of a sailor. Suppose I should succeed in escaping with her? How could an association such as ours end but in a wedding? And did that consideration agitate me? Faith, though I had only known her since this morning, I reckoned, being young and in an especial degree an admirer and lover of the kind of beauty and sweetness this girl had in perfection, it would not need many days to pass before my heart would be hers.

Forthwith my imagination grew sunny. Many bright and delightful ideas occurred to me. Would not my tremendous experience find a glorious crowning in the hand of this girl and her endowment by Vanderdecken, who loved her, out of those chests of treasure and coin which he had in his hold? Would it be impossible for me to persuade him, say after the next gale which blew him back from Agulhas, to put us aboard some vessel homeward bound along with a chest of treasure for his wife as an earnest of what was coming, and so enable me to convey Miss Dudley straight to Amsterdam there to await his arrival? It was but a young man's fancy, pretentious and inconsistent with my opinion of the captain's temper and his ignorance of the Curse that lay on him; and it was not perhaps strictly honest. Though if you come to consider that his doom would never suffer him to use the riches he had in his ship, nor to know whether I had faithfully carried Miss Dudley to his house on the Buitenkant— where I afterwards heard he was living when he sailed— you will not judge me harshly for thus idly and merrily dreaming.

I was in the midst of this castle-building when the hour of noon was struck by the clock. I watched the figure of Death hewing with his lance, but with an abstracted eye, my mind being full of gay and hopeful fancies. But the moment the last stroke had rung, the parrot cried out:—

"Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

with so fierce an energy that it broke up my thoughts as you destroy a spider's web by passing your finger through it, and I dropped my chin on to my breast with my spirits dashed.

End of Volume 1

_______________

THE DEATH SHIP

W. Clark Russell

1888

Contents Volume 2

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Volume 1

Volume 3

_____________________

Chapter 1

Imogene Says She Will Trust Me

A HALF-HOUR PASSED, and during that time I had sufficiently recovered from the distressful croak of the parrot to wonder, as any sailor would, how the ship was navigated; for I could not doubt that the clock kept pretty close to the true time, since the easting and westing made by the ship was small, never, perhaps, exceeding ten degrees; and the circumstance of noon having struck set me wondering in what fashion the captain and mates navigated the ship, whether they used the cross-staff or relied on dead reckoning, or were supernaturally conned.

At half-past twelve arrived Prins, to prepare the table for dinner. I was so dull that his coming was extremely welcome, and I watched him go about his work with interest, not, perhaps, unmixed with fear. Out of the great drawer, under the table, he withdrew the cloth, knives, forks, silver goblets and the like, which had been set out for breakfast; but his movements were those of a marionette rather than a man's, he scarcely looked at what he did, putting a goblet here, a knife and fork there and so on, with the lifeless air of an object controlled by mechanism. Small wonder that the unhappy wretch should know his business! He had been at it long enough! Yet it wrung my heart to watch him and to think that he would still be arranging the cabin tables for meals, and attending upon Vanderdecken and his mates when Heaven alone knows how many times the wave of civilisation should have followed the sun round the globe, and how often our British Islands should have lapsed into their ancient savageness and emerged again.

Whilst he was at this work, Miss Dudley stepped out of her cabin. She came to a stand, not instantly recognising me in my own clothes, but quickly satisfying herself, she advanced with a smile and sat down near me, with no further sign of timidity than a slight blush which greatly heightened her beauty.

"Where is Captain Vanderdecken?" said she.

"I left him on deck three-quarters of an hour since," I answered. "We were talking when he suddenly broke off, and I should have supposed him in a fit but for his erect posture and the fiery life in his eyes."

"This happens to them all," said she, "as you will find out. I do not know what it means or why it should be."

"Possibly," I exclaimed, recalling the conjecture I have already written down, "the death in them grows too strong at periods, for the power that sustains them, be it demoniac or not, and then follows a failure of the vitality of the body, which yet leaves the spirit— as one sees it flashing in Vanderdecken's eyes— strong enough to recover the corporeal forces from their languor. But how terrible is all this for you to be living familiarly with!— the sweet, fresh, human life of the world your beauty would adorn and gladden, hidden from you behind the melancholy sea-line, and the passage of months, yes, and of years, finding you still aimlessly beating about these waters, with no better companions than beings more frightful in their shapes and behaviour as men than were they phantoms which the hand could not grasp and whose texture the eye can pierce."

"What can I do, Mr. Fenton? Captain Vanderdecken will not part with me. How can I escape?" she cried, with her eyes brimming. "If I cast myself overboard, it would be to drown; if I succeeded in gaining the shore when we anchored near to the coast, it would be either to perish upon the broiling sands, or be destroyed by wild beasts, or be seized by the natives and carried into captivity."

"But if a chance offered to make good your escape without the risks you name, would you seize it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well," said I, speaking with such tenderness and feeling, such a glow and yearning in my heart that you would say the tiny seed of love in my breast, watered by her tears, was budding with the swiftness of each glance at her into flower, "whilst I have been sitting melancholy and alone I have turned over in my mind how I am to deliver you from this dreadful situation. No scheme as yet offers, but will you trust me as an English sailor to find a means to outwit these Dutchmen, ay, though the Devil himself kept watch when they were abed?... One moment, Miss Dudley— forgive me, it had not been my intention to touch upon this matter until time had enabled you to form some judgment of me. But when two are of the same mind, and the pit that has to be jumped is a deep one, it would be mere foppery in me to stand on the brink with you, chattering like a Frenchman about anything else sooner than speak out and to the point as a plain seaman should."

"Mr. Fenton," she answered, "I will trust you. If you can see a way to escape from this ship I will aid you to the utmost of my strength and accompany you. You are a sailor; my father was of that calling, and as an English seaman you shall have my full faith."

It was not only the words, but her pretty voice, her sparkling eyes, her earnest gaze, the expression of hope that lighted up her face with the radiance of a smile rather than of a smile itself, which rendered what she said delightful to me. I answered, "Depend upon it your faith will animate me, and it will be strange if you are not in England before many months, nay, let me say weeks, have passed."

Here leaning her cheek in her hand she looked down into her lap with a wistful sadness in her eyes.

Not conceiving what was passing in her mind, I said, "Whatever scheme I hit upon will take time. But what are a few months compared with years on board this ship— years which only death can end!"

"Oh!" she answered, looking at me fully, but with a darkness of tears upon those violet lights, "I don't doubt your ability to escape and rescue me, nor was I thinking of the time you would require or how long it may be before we see England. What troubles me is to feel that when in England— if it please God to suffer me to set foot once more upon that dear soil— I shall have no friend to turn to." I was about to speak, but she proceeded, her eyes brimming afresh: "It is rare that a girl finds herself in my situation. Both my father and mother were only children and orphans when they married, my mother living with a clergyman and his wife at Rotherhithe as governess to their children when my father met her. The clergyman and his lady are long since dead. But were they living, they would not be persons I should apply to for help and counsel, since my mother often spoke of them as harsh, mean people. The few relations on my mother's side died off; on my father's side there was— perhaps there yet is— an uncle who settled in Virginia and did pretty well there. But I should have to go to that country to seek him with the chance of finding him dead. Thus you will see how friendless I am, Mr. Fenton."

"You are not of those who remain friendless in this world," said I, softly, for can you marvel that a young man's heart will beat quickly when such a beauty as Imogene Dudley is, tells him to his face that she is friendless. "I implore you," I added, "not to suffer any reflection of this sort to sadden or swerve you in your determination to leave this ship—"

"No, no!" she interrupted, "it will not do that. Better to die of famine among the green meadows at home than— oh!" she cried, with hysterical vehemence, "how sweet will be the sight of flowers to me, of English trees, and hedges blooming with briar roses and honeysuckles. This dreadful life!" she clasped her hands with a sudden passionate raising of her eyes, "these roaring seas, the constant screaming of the wind that bates its tones only to make a desolate moaning, the company of ghost-like men, the fearful sense of being in a ship upon which has fallen the wrath of the majesty of God! Oh, indeed, indeed it must end!" and burying her face in her hands she wept most grievously, sobbing aloud.

"What will end, mynheer? And what is it that causes thee, Imogene, to weep?" exclaimed the deep, vibratory voice of Vanderdecken.

I started, and found his great figure erect behind me, a certain inquisitiveness in the expression of his face, and much of the light shining in his eyes that I had remarked when he fell into that posture of trance I have spoken of. I answered as readily as my knowledge of his tongue permitted, "Miss Dudley weeps, sir, because this gale, as others have before, retards the passage of your ship to Amsterdam; and 'tis perfectly natural, consistent, indeed, with the wishes of all men in the Braave, that she should wish the baulking storm at an end."

He came round to his high-backed chair, and seated himself, and, putting his arm along the table, gently took Imogene's wrist, and softly pulled her hand away from her face, wet with her tears, saying, "My dear, your fellow-countryman is right; it is the sorrow of every creature here that this gale should blow us backwards, and so delay our return; but what is more capricious than the wind? This storm will presently pass, and it will be strange," he added, with a sudden scowl darkening his brow, and letting go Miss Dudley's hand as he spoke, "if next time we do not thrust the Braave into an ocean where these north-westers make way for the strong trade wind that blows from the south-east."

She dried her eyes and forced a smile, acting a part as I did; that is to say, she did not wish he should suspect her grief went deeper than I had explained; though I could not help observing that in directing her wet, sweet, violet eyes, with her mouth shaped to a smile, upon him, a plaintive gratitude underlay her manner, an admixture of pity and affection, the exhibition of which made me very sure of the quality of her heart.

To carry Vanderdecken's thoughts away from the subject he supposed Miss Dudley and I had been speaking about, I asked her in Dutch what she had been doing with herself since breakfast. She answered in the same language that she had been lying down.

"Have you books?" said I.

"A few that belong to the captain. Some are in French and I cannot read them. The others are in Dutch. There is also a collection of English poetry, some of which is beautiful, and I know many verses by heart."

"Are these works pretty new?" said I.

She answered, "Of various years; the newest, I think, is dated 1647."

"Ay," said Vanderdecken, "that will be my friend Bloys Van Treslong's book upon the tulip-madness."

Finding him willing to converse, I was extremely fretted to discover that, owing to my ignorance of the literature and art of his time, I could not "bring him out" as the phrase runs, for looking into the Batavian story since, I find scores of matters he could have told me about, such as the building of ships at Hoorn, the customs of the people, the tulip-madness he had mentioned, the great men such as Jan Six, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Van Campen who designed the Stadhuis and others, some of whom— as happened in the case of the great Willem Schouten— he may have known and haply smoked pipes of tobacco with.

But be this as it may, we had got back again to the gale when Prins brought in the dinner, and in a few minutes arrived the mate, Van Vogelaar, whereupon we fell to the meal, Imogene saying very little and often regarding me with a thoughtful face and earnest eyes as though, after the maiden's way in such matters, she was searching me; I taciturn, the mate sullen in expression and silent, as his death-like face would advertise the beholder to suppose him ever to be, and Vanderdecken breaking at intervals from the deep musing fit he fell into to invite me to eat or drink with an air of incomparable dignity, hardened as it was by his eternal sternness and fierceness.

At this meal I found the food to be much the same as that with which we had broken our fast. But in addition there was a roasted fowl and a large ham; and into each silver goblet Prins poured a draught of sherry— a very soft and mellow wine— which I supposed Vanderdecken had come by through the same means which enabled him to obtain coats for his own and his men's backs, and ropes for his masts and sails, and brandy and gin for his stone jars— that is, by overhauling wrecks and pillaging derelicts, for certainly strong waters were not to be got by lying off the coast and going a-hunting.

Yet though the wine put a pleasant warmth into my veins, insomuch that I could have talked freely but for the depressing influence of the captain and his mate, them it no more cheered and heartened, it gave them no more life and spirit than had they been urns filled with dust into which the generous liquor had been poured. Several times, indeed, whilst I was on board that ship, have I seen Vanderdecken, Vogelaar, and Arents swallow such draughts of punch out of bowls, as would have laid me senseless in five minutes, yet these capacious jorums gave rise in them to not the least signs of jollity; as, indeed, how should it have been otherwise, for their brains were dead to all but the supernatural influence that kept them moving— dead as the works of a going watch— and what is there in the fumes of wine to disorder embodied ghosts?

Chapter 2

Vanderdecken Exhibits Some Treasure

WHEN VOGELAAR left the cabin to relieve Arents on deck, Vanderdecken exhibited a disposition to talk. He gently took Imogene's chin in his hand and chided her very tenderly, yet without the slightest quality of what we should call pleasantness in his manner. For this would have brought him to some show of good-humour, whereas never during the time I was thrown with him did I see the least light of merriment on his face; I say, he chided her, but very gently, for crying at the delay caused by the storm, and exclaimed, motioning to me, "Here is a seaman. He will tell you that this is a stormy part of the ocean, and that at this season of the year we must look for gales from the north-west; but he will also know that these tempests are short-lived and that a breeze from the east, north or south, must carry us round the Cape as fairly as our helm controls us."

"Oh! that is so indeed, Miss Dudley," said I, quickly, and darting a meaning glance at her; and wishing to change the subject I went on: "Mynheer, when I was in your cabin last night shifting myself, I noticed a cross-staff. 'Twould be of no use to you to-day, the sun being blotted out. Failing an observation, upon what method do you rely for knowing your position?"

"What else but the log?" he exclaimed. "I compute entirely by dead-reckoning. The staff hath often set me wide of the mark. The log fairly gives me my place on the sea card, and then there is the lead."

I bowed by way of thanking him, for in this direction I gathered by his rejoinder as much as he could have acquainted me with in an hour's discourse, besides, the earnest regard of the pair of sweet light eyes opposite reminded me that I must be very wary in showing myself inquisitive.

"You have a sharp sight, sir," said Vanderdecken, but speaking without any fierceness, "to see that fore-staff in my cabin by the faint light there was. What else did you observe?"

I told him honestly, for I could imagine no challenge to his wrath in answering, that I had seen a speaking-trumpet, sand-glass, pictures, and the like. But as though Imogene knew him better and desired to shield me, she instantly said, "Oh, captain, will not you show Mr. Fenton the pictures of your wife and children? They will charm him, I know."

On this he called Prins to bring the pictures. If ever I had doubted this ship was the veritable Flying Dutchman the portraits would have settled my misgivings once and for all. The material on which they were painted was cracked in places, and the darkness of age lay very gloomy and thick upon them. They were all of a size, about ten inches long and six inches broad. He put his wife before me first and watched me with his fierce eyes whilst I pored upon the painting. The picture was that of a portly lady in a black close-fitting cap, the hair yellow, the bosoms very large, a square-shouldered heavy woman of the true Dutch mould, round-faced, not uncomely, and perhaps of five and forty years of age. How she was dressed I could not tell, but the arms were bare from the elbows, and they and the hands were, methought, very delicately painted and exquisitely life-like. The others were those of girls of different ages. Which of them Captain Vanderdecken imagined Miss Dudley to resemble I could not conceive; there was nothing in these darksome likenesses, albeit they represented maidenhood and infancy, to suggest a resemblance to the English beauty of the fragile, large-eyed, gold-crowned face of Imogene Dudley.

She that was named Geertruida was of a style that came close to good looks, eyes merry, dainty mouth, but cheeks too fat. Here was little Margaretha, for whom the piping swain had been purchased, peering at me with a half-shy, half-wondering look out of the dusky background.

As I returned them one by one, the captain took them from me, lingering long upon each and making such comments as "'Tis Johanna to the life!" meaning his wife. "What art is more wonderful than this of portrait painting? No age is likely to beat our time, and no nation the Dutch. How alive is the eye here! Methinks if I spoke angrily to her she would weep!" or "You will find this girl," meaning Geertruida, "a true sister, Imogene, homely, honest and innocent, so fond of fun but yet so dutiful, that there is no woman in all Holland who would make a better wife," or "Ah! little one, thy father will be with thee ere long," stopping to kiss the painting of his daughter Margaretha.

Prins stood by to receive the pictures, but Vanderdecken hung over this one for some minutes, falling motionless, insomuch that I thought another one of his strange fits or trances had seized him; and perfectly still for those moments were Miss Dudley and I, often glancing at each other as though both of us alike felt the prodigious significance imported into this spectacle of a father's love, by the bellowing of the wind, and the long, yearning, sickening, broadside rushes of the ship, ruthlessly hurled back by the surge and storm into the deeper solitude of those waters whose confines she was never to pass.

Now Arents left the table, never having given us, nor our talk, nor the pictures, the smallest imaginable heed. His going brought Vanderdecken back to life, so to speak; and he handed the picture of his child to Prins. I looked at him, expecting, though God knows why, to see a tear. But whatever sensibility Heaven had permitted this man to retain did not appear in his face. Had it been cast in brass it could not have been harder and more impenetrable. His eyes were full of their former passionate scornful life and light. They made me think, supposing him to show now as he would have appeared at the time of his death, that he was one who would have met his end full of impatience, imperious rage, and savage decrial of the holy ordinances of Nature.

But oh, the sadness, the sadness of the spectacle I had contemplated! This tender perusal by a husband and father of the beloved lineaments of those whom he deemed living, ay! and still looking as they looked at him from the canvas, but who had been dead so many years that time had perhaps erased the name from the stone that marked the burial-place of the youngest of them all— the little Margaretha! And how much longer would these portraits last, I asked myself? 'Twas certain by the evidences of decay in them that they had not the vitality of the ship and of those who sailed her. What then? The years would blot them out. Yet mercy he would surely deserve who loved his wife and children as this man did. And I still sometimes fondly hope that memory may be permitted to serve him in lieu of his eyes, so that in gazing upon the time-blackened canvas he may as truly see with intellectual sight the faces of his dear ones as though they stood out bright, fresh and life-like, as at the hour in which they were painted.

All the time I looked at these pictures I would notice Miss Dudley watching me, quickly averting her gaze when mine met hers. I put down this scrutiny to her wish to gather my character, though I need not at this distance expect to be reproached for my vanity if I say that I thought that was not her only reason for following me with her eyes. I pray you consider the life she had led since the destruction of her father's ship and the loss of her parents; how that she was now grown to be a woman; and how that I was not only a young, but bright, fair, merry-eyed sailor, her own countryman, of the calling she loved for her father's sake, and the sweeter to her sight for breaking in upon her mournful life and offering to snatch her from the frightful companionship of the Death Ship's crew.

But more of this anon.

Whilst Prins was in the captain's cabin hanging up the pictures, she exclaimed, "It is a dull and dreary day. How are we to kill the time?"

As she spoke the clock struck, and the parrot, instead of using her customary expression, laughed out loudly, "Ha! ha! ha!"

"That bird," said I, "seems to know what we are talking about. It is a pretty notion of hers to laugh at your inquiry when she sees how vainly old Death in the clock yonder stabs at time."

This I spoke in English.

"What do you say, mynheer?" demanded Vanderdecken.

"Oh, captain!" exclaimed Miss Imogene, as if she was carrying on the sense of my remarks, "could not we prettily dispatch an hour by looking at some of the treasure you have below?" She laid her little white hand on his, and pleaded with her eyes. "It will be a treat to Mr. Fenton to see the fine things you have, and I am still childish enough to love the sparkle of precious stones."

He turned to me and said, "Sir, I have no objection, but our countries are at war, and in case of your being transshipped I have to ask you, on your honour as a gentleman and a seaman, not to give information of the objects the lady desires me to show you."

I never before witnessed a finer dignity in any man's air than that which ennobled him as he spoke. I gave him my assurance, feeling that I cut but a mean figure in my manner of answering after his own majestic and haughty aspect and the rich and thrilling tones in which he had delivered himself, nor will I pretend that I was not moved at the vanity and idleness of the obligation of silence he imposed upon me, for whatever treasure he had would be as safe in his ship as on the sandy bed of the sea, even though on my escaping I should go and apprise all the admirals in the world of its existence.

He said no more but, calling to Prins, ordered him to clear the table, bring pipes and tobacco, and then take some seamen with him into— as I understood— the half-deck and bring up two chests of treasure, those which were lashed on the starboard side, close against the bulkhead. The cloth was removed, we lighted our pipes, and after we had waited some little while, Prins, with several sailors, appeared, bearing among them two stout, apparently very heavy, chests, which they set down upon the cabin floor, taking care to secure them by lashings and seizings to the stanchions, so that they should not slip with the ship's lurches.

The sailors interested me so much that, whilst they were with us, I looked only at them. It was not that there was anything in their faces, if I except the dreadful pallor, or in their attire, to fix my attention; it was that they were a part of the crew of this accurst ship, participators in the doom that Vanderdecken had brought upon her, members of a ghostly band the like of which it might never be permitted to mortal man to behold again. One had very deep-sunk eyes, which shone in their dark hollows with much of the fire that gave a power of terrifying to those of the captain. Another had a long, grizzly beard, over which his nose curved in a hook, his little eyes lay close against the top of his nose, and his hair, that was wet with spray or rain, lay like new-gathered seaweed down to pretty near his shoulder-blades. This man's name, I afterwards heard, was Tjaart Van der Valdt, whilst he that had the glowing eyes was called Christopher Roostoff.

They all went about in the soulless, mechanical way I was now used to, and, when they had set down the chests, Prins dismissed them with an injunction to stand by ready to take them below again. The cases were about three feet high, and ranging about five feet long; they were heavily girt with iron bands, and padlocked with massive staples. Prins opened them and flung back the lids, and then, to be sure, I looked down upon treasures the like of which in quality, I'll not say quantity, in one single ship, the holds of the Acapulco galleons could alone rival, or the caves in which the old buccaneers hid their booty. Miss Dudley, seeing me rise, left her seat, and came to my side. Vanderdecken stepped round, and leaned against the table, his arms folded, and his body moving only with the rolling of the ship.

I should speedily grow tedious were I to be minute in my description of what I saw, yet I must venture a short way in this direction. In one box there were fitted four trays, each tray divided into several compartments, and every compartment was filled with precious stones, set in rings, bracelets, bangles and the like, and with golden ornaments, such as birds for the hair, brooches, necklets, chains for wearing about the waist or neck, and other such things of prodigious value and beauty of device. I asked leave to examine some of these objects, and on picking them up noticed that some were of a much more antique character than others, insomuch that I said to Miss Imogene in English, "I suspect that much of these splendours our friend will have collected at different periods."

She answered in our tongue, "He can tell you what he purchased at Batavia, or what was consigned to him for delivery at Amsterdam, but his memory after that is a blank, and the last wreck he can recall, in which he found several quintals of silver and unminted gold, is the Fryheid that he met— I cannot tell where— in a sinking condition."

"There is more treasure aboard than this! cried I.

"Much more!" she replied. Then turning to Vanderdecken, who had fixed his eyes on me without moving his head, she said, "I am telling Mr. Fenton that these chests represent but a handful of the treasure in this ship."

"I am dazzled by what I see, mynheer, said I, speaking whilst Prins raised the trays disclosing many hundreds of guineas' worth of ornaments and stones. "Had I but the value of one of these trays alone this should be my last voyage."

"Ay," said he, "there is much that is beautiful here. Much that will yield good sums. But a large number of the articles in that chest belong to a merchant; there are likewise consignments, and my own share is but a speculation."

The other chest had but one tray, in which lay many golden crucifixes of different sizes, goblets, flagons, candlesticks, all gold, whilst beneath were numbers of a kind of small bricks or bars of pewter, which Miss Imogene told me were gold that had been originally disguised in this way as a blind to the pirates. In addition were several great canvas bags, into which Prins, moving always as an automaton, thrust his hand, bringing forth different sorts of coins, such as rix-dollars, ducatoons, ducats, Batavian rupees, Spanish dollars, and even schillings, worth no more than six stivers apiece.

There is a pleasure in looking at bright and sparkling objects, at the beauty of gold worked into strange or fantastic shapes, at jewels and stones in their multitude, gleaming out in twenty colours at once. And had I been a picaroon or a woman, I could not have surveyed this collection with sharper delight, though I hope you will not suppose that I felt the buccaneer's thirst for the things. But when my glance went to Vanderdecken, all the shining seemed to die out, and the richest of the jewels to lose its glory.

Not that this was actually so; it was the reflection excited in me that darkened the radiance of that treasure. There stood the great, majestic captain, with his arms folded over his beard, and his eyes fixed on the chest, frightfully symbolising— more wildly and sternly than could the corpse of a miser lying in a coffin, into which had been poured all the ducats he had hoarded in his life— the worthlessness of that wealth of which the desire makes devils of men in secret oppressions and bitter, hidden cruelties. Had Vanderdecken been veritably dead— recumbent— a corpse— the sight of him alongside those cases of costly things would not haply have affected me; 'twas the simulation of life in him, his unhallowed and monstrous vitality, that rendered his typification of the uselessness after death of that for which many among us sell our hearts, nay, diligently toil to extinguish the last spark of the Heavenly fire which the Creator sends us into this life radiant with; as who, looking at a babe's face, but sees?— that rendered, I say, his typification terrible. You could see he took no joy whatever in the contents of the cases; he eyed them stonily; you witnessed no pricking up of his ears to the tinkling and jingling rattle made by the coins as Prins poured them out and back again. Nor, had the money been shingle and the jewels and gold ornaments pieces of coal, could Prins have worked with duller eyes or more mechanical motions.

I said to Miss Imogene, pointing as I spoke to the chests that Vanderdecken might suppose we talked of the treasure in them, "He does not appear to care the snap of a finger for what is there. If the sense of possession is dead in him, why should he take whatever he can find of jewels, gold or silver, from the ships in which he is fortunate enough to find such things?"

"If your brain will not help you to such matters, how should mine?" she replied, with a faint smile. "The idea has never before occurred to me, but be sure 'tis a part of his punishment. He may feel no pleasure in the possession of his wealth; yet he knows it is on board, and it may be intended to render every gale that beats him back more and more bitter and hard by delaying him from carrying his cargo home."

This was shrewdly imagined, I thought, though it did not satisfy me, because since 'twas sure that he had lost recollection of preceding gales, succeeding ones could not gain in bitterness. In truth, we were afloat in a fearful and astonishing Mystery, from which my eagerness to deliver the sweet and fragrant girl by my side grew keener with every look of hers that met mine, and with every glance I directed at the captain and around the ancient interior that time had sickened to the complexion of the death which worked this ship in the forms of men.

Having satisfied me with a sight of these treasures, Vanderdecken ordered Prins to have the chests removed, and we then returned to the table to smoke out the tobacco that remained in our pipes.

Chapter 3

Imogene and I are Much Together.

SO FAR I have been minute, accounting for every hour and all things which happened therein since I was picked up by the mate of the Death Ship and put aboard her. My first impressions were keen and strong, and I have sought to lay them before you in the order in which they occurred. But to pursue this particularity of narrative, to relate every conversation, to regularly notice the striking of the clock, the movements of the skeleton, and the hoarse comminatory croak of the parrot, would be to speedily render this tale tedious. Therefore let me speak briefly for a little space.

The storm blew with steady fury for six days, driving the tall fabric to leeward to a distance of many leagues every twenty-four hours, the course of the drift being as I should suppose— for it was impossible to put much faith in the compasses— about south-east by east, the larboard tacks aboard and the ship "ratching" nothing. It was so continuous and heavy, this gale, that it began to breed a feeling of despair in me, for I felt that if such weather lasted many weeks it would end in setting us so far south that we should be greatly out of the road taken by ships rounding the Cape, and so remote from the land, that should Vanderdecken desire to careen or water his vessel it would occupy us months to fetch the coast, so that the prospect of escaping with Miss Imogene grew small and gloomy. Added to which was the melancholy of the cell-like cabin in which it was my lot to sleep, the fiery crawlings, the savage squeakings of great rats, the grinding, groaning and straining noises of the labouring structure, likewise the sickening, sweeping, soaring, falling motions of the high light vessel, movements which, as we drove further south, where the seas were swollen into mountains by the persistent hardness of the gale and the vastness of the liquid plain along which they coursed, furious with the fiendish lashing of the thongs of the storm, grew at times so insupportable that, sailor as I was and used to the sea in all its moods, I would often feel faint and reel to a sensation of nausea.

But Imogene was never in the least degree discomposed. She was so used to the ship that its movements were to her what the steadiness of dry land is to other women. She seldom came on deck however. Indeed, the gusts and guns were often so fierce— coming along like thunderbolts through the gale itself— that any one of them catching her gown might have carried her light figure overboard. Moreover, twenty-four hours after the gale set in, it drew up thick as mud; the horizon was brought within reach of a musket-shot; and out of this thickness blew the rain, in straight lines, mixed with the showering off the heads of the seas; the sky hung steady, of the colour of slate— no part lighter or darker than another, but so low that it appeared as if a man could whip his hand into it from our masthead whenever those reeling spars came plumb.

As it gave me no pleasure to linger on deck in such weather, you may suppose that Miss Imogene and I were much together below. Often a whole morning or afternoon would pass without a soul entering the cabin where we sate. Whether Vanderdecken was pleased to think that Imogene had a companion— a fellow-countryman, with whom she could converse, and so kill the time which he would suspect from her recent fit of weeping hung heavy on her spirits; or that, having himself long passed those marks which time sets up as the boundaries of human passions, he was as incapable of suspecting that Imogene and I should fall in love, as he clearly was of perceiving the passage of years; 'tis certain he never exhibited the smallest displeasure when, perchance, he found us together, albeit once or twice on entering the cabin when we were there he would ask Imogene abruptly, but never with the sternness his manner gathered when he addressed others, what our talk was about, as if he suspected I was inquiring about his ship and cargo; though if, indeed, this was so, I don't doubt the suspicion was put into his head by Van Vogelaar, who, I am sure, hated me as much because I was an Englishman as because our panic-stricken men had fired upon him.

It takes a man but a very short time to fall in love, though the relation of the thing, if the time be very short, is often questioned as a possibility, sometimes heartily laughed at as an absurdity, when deliberately set down in writing. Why this should be I do not know. I could point to a good many men married to women with whom they fell in love at a dance, or by seeing them in the street, or by catching sight of them in church and the like. I have known a man to become passionately enamoured of a girl by beholding her picture. And what says Marlowe?

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

Depend upon it, when passion is of slow growth and cultivated painfully, you may suspect a deficiency somewhere. Either the girl is not delightful of face and shape and her virtues and good qualities are hard to come at, or she is a tease and a coquette, and, in a manner of speaking, puts her foot down upon a man's heart and prevents the emotion there from shooting. There will be something wanting, something wrong, I say. Association may indeed lengthily induct one into a habit of affection, but the sort of love I have in my mind springs like a young god into a man's intelligence from a maiden's eyes.

But whether this swift passion is more lasting than the affection that is formed by slower mental processes, and which of them is the safer to trust to, is no riddle for such as I to bother over. And in sober verity, I am sorry to have been led into these remarks, which certainly should be omitted if they were not necessary as an apology.

For the truth must be told, and it is this: that the very first morning I met Imogene I fell in love with her beauty, while the long days of the storm which threw us greatly together confirmed the first movement of my heart by acquainting me with the extraordinary sweetness, innocence, gentleness and purity of her nature. These qualities, unlike the enchanting hue and brightness of her eyes, the golden falls of her hair, and her many other fairy graces, were not quickly discoverable, but they stole out during our many conversations. Who that has been to sea knows not how speedily character is discovered on shipboard? And I say that before that gale was ended I was so much in love with this fair and tender girl that I could have laid down my life to serve her.

This I should not have confessed, nor indeed made any reference to my love-passage, if it did not concern the influence exercised by the Death Ship on the lives and fortunes of those who have relations with her.

In this time our conversation was about all sorts of things— her parents, her home, her childhood, the loss of her father's ship, the friendless condition she would be in on her arrival in England should I manage to deliver her from Vanderdecken. Though when she came to that, I begged her to dismiss her fears at once and for ever, by assuring her that my mother would gladly receive her and cherish her as her own daughter, having but me to love, who was always absent. At which a faint blush sweetened her cheeks as though she suspected what was in my mind; but I was careful to hurry away from the subject, since I did not wish her then to suppose I loved her, for fear that, not having had time, as I believed, to love me, she might fall into a posture of mind calculated to baffle my hopes of carrying her away from the Braave. I told her all about myself, of the famous Fenton from whom I was descended, of my voyages, of the Saracen, whose passage to India I feared would have an ill issue now that she had met the Dutchman, and I talked again of Captain Skevington's amazing, and, as I supposed, accurate theories touching the living-dead who navigated this ship.

She had much to tell me of Vanderdecken and his ship; of unsuspecting vessels they had fallen in with, which had sold them tobacco, butter, cheese, and the like. Of others that had backed their topsails to speak, then taken fright and sailed away in hot haste.

I asked her if it was true that the captain hailed passing ships for the purpose of sending letters home. She answered no; it was not true; that was the general belief as she had heard from her father; but, as Vanderdecken did not know that he was curst— as he went on year after year, firmly believing that next time he should be successful in rounding the Cape— why should he desire to send letters home, more particularly as he regarded the Braave as one of the swiftest vessels afloat. She added, "I have never seen him write a letter, and I am certain he has never endeavoured to send one."

"But if he finds a ship willing to speak, he will send a boat?"

"Yes, always; but merely for necessaries of which he is constantly in want. Now it is tobacco; another time it will be spirits. Some few weeks since we met a ship, from which he purchased several cases of marmalade and some hams, for which Van Vogelaar paid in coin that scared them, when they put the age of the money and the appearance of this ship together; for they threw the mate overboard, and instantly made off."

"I suppose Van Vogelaar could not be drowned?" said I.

"No," said she; "he, like the rest, have no other business in life than to live. They had put the hams and marmalade into the boat, and when they threw him in the sea, he swam very quietly to his companions."

"What was the ship?" I asked.

"A Spaniard," she replied. "After they had put the ship before the wind I saw a number of them on the poop on their knees crossing themselves."

"I cannot understand," said I, "why this ship should be termed a Phantom. What could be more real than these timbers and the requirements of the people who navigate her?"

"Besides," exclaimed Imogene, "if she is a Phantom, how could Vanderdecken write those letters in her which he is supposed to desire to send home? If you have a real letter, such as a person can put into his pocket and deliver, you must have real materials to produce it, ink, pens, paper, wafers, and something hard to sit upon, or kneel upon, or write upon."

"Certainly!" said I. "Of a Phantom the whole must be phantasmal. Suppose a ghost dressed, its attire must be as unsubstantial as the essence it covers."

"The truth about this ship is not known," she continued, "and it never can be known, because her influence is dreaded. Vessels on finding out her character fly from her, and those who sell to her unsuspectingly pass away without giving her further thought."

"Or," said I, gloomily, "perhaps are never more heard of."

In this way would we talk, and you may conceive we were at no loss for topics. On several occasions she showed me some of the dresses Vanderdecken had furnished her with; of which I chiefly remember a chintz gown, spotted with roses, with sleeves swelling out like ruffs at the elbows; a pink dress, with a girdle to bring the waist close under the bosom; and a slate-coloured dress, with a red shawl for it, to be worn like a sash, and a kerchief for the throat; and I also recollect that she showed me some strange, very dainty caps, one to sit on the back of the head, another of black velvet and a feather, which she told me Vanderdecken had said was worn on the side of the head. She put it on to explain its use, and a man's true darling she looked in it.

Once she came into the cabin dressed in the pink dress with the high waist; and very sweet did she appear. But I said to her that of all the apparel she had shown me nothing pleased me better than the black velvet jacket in which I had first seen her, and thereafter she constantly wore it.

In short, the clothes Vanderdecken had stocked her cabin with, including much fine linen, lace, collars, long gloves, shoes of several colours, and the like, were such as to suggest a costly theatrical wardrobe by reason of the variety of the styles representing fashions from the middle of the seventeenth century down to within twenty years of the time in which happened what I am here relating. It has been already explained how these things were gotten. You have only to consider that this ship sailed from Batavia in 1653, with a large stock of dresses, linen, jewellery, plate and so forth in her hold, besides her cargo, which stock Vanderdecken, in whom there must still work the thrifty instincts of the Hollander, just as he is suffered to love his pipe and bowl, and pine for both when the tobacco and spirits have run out, had replenished by appropriating such wares, treasure and apparel as he had a fancy for out of the ships he encountered abandoned at sea or cast away upon the African coast. You have only to consider this, I say, and bear in mind the great number of years he has been afloat, and how many scores of richly-laden merchantmen have passed and repassed that part of the ocean to which the Curse confines him, to find nothing to marvel at in any catalogue of the contents of the Braave that could be offered.

Besides having all these strange and often sumptuous articles of attire to show me and talk about, Imogene had a great deal to tell me concerning the weary years she had spent in the vessel, wondering how her life was to end, how she was ever to get to England or to any other civilized country if Vanderdecken refused to let her leave him, because of his fatherly affection for her and his conviction that he was homeward bound, and only temporarily delayed by the north-west gales which beat him back. She said that after a time she began to fear that she would lose her own language and be able to speak no tongue but the ancient Dutch in which Vanderdecken and his men conversed, to preserve herself from which calamity she regularly perused the collection of English poetry that the captain most fortunately had among his books. Her grief was that the book, instead of poems, was not the Holy Scriptures, but she knew many prayers and hymns her mother had taught her, and these she never omitted reciting morning and night.

You would have been touched had you heard her, marked the sadness that rendered Madonna-like the character of her fragile, delicate beauty, observed the girlish innocence of the expression that shone with the moisture of unwept tears in the eyes she fixed on me, and then considered how she had been bereaved, how frightful for tediousness and dullness, and for the association of the mysterious beings into whose society she had been cast, must have been the five years she had spent on the Death Ship. I remember asking if she knew what religion Vanderdecken was of; she answered she did not know for certain, but that she had heard him speak of his wife and family as having worshipped in the Oude Kerk.

"Indeed, Mr. Fenton," said she, "I don't believe he is or was of any religion at all. Van Vogelaar is a Calvinist; he told me so one evening when I was speaking with surprise of Antony Jans being a Catholic, as it is almost impossible to reconcile the fatness of that man with the austerities and mortifications of his creed."

"There can be no doubt," said I, "that Vanderdecken was— when human like you and me, without religion. His shocking defiance, and the condemnation that followed, proved that he acted out of sheer sin in his soul, and not out of a passing passion. And yet you would have supposed that a Dutchman, no matter how secretly impious, would have behaved with more discretion than this skipper."

"I dare say he would have been more discreet," said Imogene, "had he imagined what was to follow."

It was in this way, and in such talk, that we killed those six days of storm; and now I come to other matters.

Chapter 4

The Gale Breaks

ON THE SIXTH day, during dinner, Vanderdecken said he believed we had seen the worst of the storm. There was a small lull in the wind, and a faintness sifting up, so to speak, from behind the peaks and valleys of the horizon into the sky all around, like a very dim dawning of fair weather innumerable leagues distant yet.

"I shall be glad to see the sun again," said Imogene.

"Let us get quit of these waters," exclaimed Vanderdecken, moodily, and often dropping his knife and fork to take his beard in both hands and stroke it with a fixed look in his eyes, which would have made you swear he beheld a vision, "and we shall have so much sun every day climbing higher and higher until it hangs right over our mastheads like a flaming shield that the coolness of the Biscayan Sea and the entrance of the English Channel shall be sweet as drink to a dry man."

"Pray, mynheer," said I, "how far to the eastwards do you suppose this gale has driven us?"

He looked at me with a sudden temper in his face as if he would crush me for daring to ask. Nevertheless, he answered, but with a deep thrill in the rich tremble of his voice, "About one hundred and fifty leagues, sir; and what of that?"

"Ay, and what of that?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar, who had turned a scowling eye on me on my asking this question.

"Why, nothing, gentlemen," I answered, warned by the violet eyes that dwelt upon me to slide out of this matter as quickly as I could. "The ground to be recovered is not great, and a pretty little south-east wind should float us, with square yards, round the Cape in three or four days."

Vanderdecken made no response; his eyes fell away from me to the table, at which he gazed in the posture of one who dreams waking. Van Vogelaar, on the other hand, continued to stare at me for a long minute, which, as he sate on my right hand and consequently had to turn his head and hold his face full towards me, proved a very severe trial to my temper, insomuch that I could have beat him for his insolence. But a very little reflection taught me to consider this steadfast, surly and abusive regard as meaningless as a dead man's stare would be if moulded to the expression Van Vogelaar wore; so I waited till he should have made an end of his scrutiny, and the captain shortly after rising, I followed him on deck, the weather as yet being too heavy and wet for Imogene.

It was as Vanderdecken had said. The gale had broke and we might look for a clear sky presently, yet the sea still ran fearfully high, and the wash and weltering of it along the sea-line that was now indifferently clear, suggested a vast sierra whose sides beyond were in sunshine, whilst over our trucks lay the sombre twilight of the tempest. There was still a fine rain in the air, though not such as to cloud the ocean, but I was so fascinated by the picture of the Flying Dutchman's fight with the mighty combers which rolled at her from the north and west that I lingered gazing till I was pretty near as soaked as when I had been fished up and brought aboard.

But a sailor makes no trouble of a wet jacket so long as he has a dry shirt for his back, which I had, thanks to Vanderdecken, who had been so good as to lend me several shifts of linen.

I do not know that I ever saw or heard of a ship that threw from her such bodies of foam as did this vessel. She would rise at the sea buoyantly enough, yet at every lean-to to windward for a giddy sliding swoop into the hollow, she hurled an enormous space of seething and spitting and flashing froth many fathoms from her, into which she would sink as though it were snow and so squatter, as 'tis termed, and lie there whilst you might count to ten or fifteen, ere rising out of it to the irresistible heave of the next leviathan sea. Often had I watched this picture during the six days, but the light breaking around the whole circle of the sea, like radiance dully streaming through greased paper, the decreasing force of the wind, that while leaving the surges still monstrous, suffered the ship to fall with deader weight to windward, thus enlarging the snow-like surface she cast from her whilst rendering it fiercer in its boiling, made this particular example of the ship's sea-going qualities a marvel in my sight, and I stood for a long time looking and looking.

If ever a man was to guess the deathless character of this craft it would be at such a time as this. The giant forces of nature with which she had warred were languishing. The beaten storm, not indeed yet breathless, was slowly silencing the desperate roar of its invisible artillery; the seas, like battering-rams, thundered against her sides, but with a gradual lessening of their fury, and the victorious ship, her decks streaming, her bows and sides hound-like with salival drainings, a fierce music of triumphant shoutings aloft, her reefed courses swollen as are the cheeks of trumpeters urging to the conflict, rose and fell, pitched and strained, among those liquid heights and hollows, every nerve in her ancient fabric strung taut for a battle that was to be repeated again and again, whilst the faintness round the horizon waxed into a delicate brightness of sunshine streaming off the edge of the canopy that still hovered on high, and the wind sank into whistlings, without admixture of thunderous intervals, and the surge-slopes drooped out of their savage sharpness.

By seven o'clock that night the gale was spent, and there was then blowing a quiet breeze from the west-south-west. The swell rolled slowly from the quarter from which the wind had stormed, and caused the Braave to wallow most nauseously, but she grew a bit steadier after they had shaken the reefs out of the courses and made sail on her. I watched this business with deep interest. Vanderdecken, standing on the poop, gave his orders to Van Vogelaar on the quarter-deck. The sailors went to work with true Dutch phlegm and deliberateness, taking plenty of time to unknot the reef-points, then carrying the fore and main-jeers to the capstan, and walking round without a song, sullen and silent. There was no liveliness— none of the springing and jumping and cheerful heartiness you would expect in a crew who, after battling through six dismal days of black winds and lashing seas, were now looked down upon by a Heaven of stars, shining gloriously among a few slowly-moving clouds.

Ay, you saw how dead were the bodies which the supernatural life in them kept a-going. They set their topsails, topgallant-sails and mizzen, which I have elsewhere described as a lateen-shaped sail secured to a yard, like to the triangular canvas carried by xebecs and gallies, then hoisted their jib or fore-staysail and let fall the clews of the spritsail, keeping the sprit-topsail handed. The larboard tacks were still aboard and the ship heading north, lying up for the coast that was now about two hundred and fifty to three hundred leagues from us. She made a wild picture, not wanting in solemnity either, yet charged with an element of fear. Twilight is but short-lived in those seas and it was dark— though the sky as I have said was full of radiant galaxies— some while before they had ended the business of crowding sail upon the ship. Amid the fury and froth of the gale the phosphoric gleamings of the timbers had been hidden; but now that peace had come and there was no other commotion than such as the long cradling swing of the swell produced, those grave-yard lights glistened out afresh and they made you think of the eyes of countless worms creeping in and out of the rottenness of an hundred and fifty years. It was certain that Vanderdecken and his mates saw these misty, sickly, death-suggestive glimmerings; for the faint lights trembled along the decks, twinkled upon the masts, shone with sufficient power on the sides to make— as I had observed when the ship first drew near to the Saracen— a light of their own in the black water; they must have been noticeable things to the crew, even as to Imogene and me; for they saw what we saw— the sun, the stars, the ocean, the sails, the directions of the compass— whatever was to be seen.

Why, then, was it that this fluttering, malignant sheen did not catch their notice? I know not. Maybe the senses permitted to them went so far only as to impel them to persevere in making the passage of the Cape. For besides these phosphoric crawlings, the aged condition of the ship, her antique rig, and a variety of other features illustrating the passage of time, would have been visible to them, had their perception not been limited by the Curse to the obligations it imposed.

After a little Vanderdecken went below, and presently returned bringing Imogene with him. On the poop 'twas all darkness save for the phosphorescence in the ship and the sea-fire over the side. The captain and the lady came close before I distinguished them.

"Fair weather at last, Mr. Fenton!" she exclaimed, after peering to make sure of me, and then stopping so as to oblige Vanderdecken to stop too, for he had her arm in his, and I think he meant to walk to and fro the deck with her.

"Yes," I replied, "Heaven is merciful. Such another six days I would not pass through for the wealth in this ship."

"Pray speak in Dutch, sir, that I may follow you," said Vanderdecken, with a certain stern and dignified courtesy.

"If I could converse with ease, mynheer," said I, "I should speak in no other language aboard this vessel. As it is, I fear you do not catch half my meaning."

"Oh, yes! you are intelligible, sir," he answered, "though you sometimes use words which sound like Dutch but signify nothing."

"Nothing to you, my friend," thought I; "but I warrant them of good currency in the Amsterdam of to-day." In short, his language was to mine, or at least to the smattering I had of the Batavian tongue, what the speech of a man of the time of Charles II. would be to one of this century— not very wide asunder; only that one would now and again introduce an obsolete expression, whilst the other would occasionally employ a term created years after his colloquist's day.

"But it pleases me, captain, to speak in my own tongue," said Imogene. "I should not like to forget my language."

"It will be strange if you forget your language in a few months, my child!" he answered, with a slight surprise.

A sudden roll of the ship causing the great mainsail to flap, he started, looked around him, and cried out with a sudden anger in his deep voice, to the steersman, "How is the ship's head?"

"North-by-east," was the answer.

"We want no easting," he cried out again, with the same passion in his voice, and strode with vehemence to the binnacle where stood Antony Arents, who had charge of the deck, and who had gone to view the compass on hearing the skipper call.

"This will not do!" I heard the captain say, his deep tones rumbling into the ear as though you passed at a distance a church in which an organ was played. "By the bones of my father, I'll not have her break off! Sweat your braces, man! Take them to the capstan! If we spring our masts and yards for it she'll have to head nothing east of north!"

There was a fierce impetuosity in his speech that made the delivery of it sound like a sustained execration. Arents went forward and raised some cries. I could see the figure of Vanderdecken black against the stars, up and down which he slided with the heave of the ship. He was motionless, close to the binnacle, and I could imagine the stormy rise and fall of his broad and powerful chest under his folded arms.

The watch came aft to the braces and strained at them. 'Twas a shadowy scene. There were none of those songs and choruses which seamen used to keep time in their pulling and hauling and to encourage their spirits withal. The boatswain, Jans, was on the forecastle attending the fore: Arents stood on the quarter-deck. Occasionally one or the other shouted out an order which the dim concavities on high flung down again out of their hollows, as though there were ghosts aloft mocking at these labours. You saw the pallid shinings writhing about the feet of the sailors, and the sharper scintillations of the wood-work wherever it was chafed by a rope. When they had trimmed, but not yet with the capstan, Arents called to the captain, who returned an answer implying that the ship had come up again, and that the trim as it was would serve. Thereupon the men stole out of sight into the darkness forward, melting into the blackness as do visions of a slumberer into the void of deep and dreamless rest; Arents returned to the poop and stood near the captain, who held his place with the entranced stirlessness I was now accustomed to see in him. But, no doubt, his eyes were on the needle, and had I dared approach, I might have beheld a fire in his eyes keener than the flame of the mesh with which the binnacle was illuminated.

"You would know him as one not of this world," said I to Imogene, "even should he pass you quickly in a crowd."

"There are some lines in the book of poetry downstairs which fit him to perfection," she answered—

"'Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face

Bears a command in it; though thy tackle's torn,

Thou shew'st a noble vessel.'"

"Ay," said I, "they are wonderfully pat; they might have been made for him."

"Here are others," she continued—

"'He has, I know not what,

Of greatness in his looks and of high fate,

That almost awes me.'

"And when his moods change these verses are always present—

'Read'st thou not something in my face that speaks

Wonderful change and horror from within me?'"

She put a tragic note into her voice as she recited; the starlight was in her eyes, and they were fixed on me; her face whitened out to the astral gleaming till you saw her hair throbbing on her forehead to the blowing of the wind. She continued—

"I could quote a score of passages marvellously true of the captain and his fellows, serving indeed as revelations to me, so keen are the eyes of poets. And little wonder," says she, with a sigh, "for what else have I had to read but that book of poetry!"

"Just now," said I, "he asked if you thought it likely you should lose your language in a few months. This plainly shows that he supposes he met with you in his passage from Batavia— that is his last passage. Now, since his finding you dates nearly five years back, and you tell me that he has only memory for what happened within the past few months, how does it fall out that he recollects your story, which he certainly does, for he asked me if you had related it to me?"

"It must be," she answered, "because he is constantly alluding to it in speaking of the reception his wife and daughters will give me. It is also impressed upon him by my presence, by my frequent asking him to put me on board a homeward-going ship, and so it is kept in his mind as a thing constantly happening— continually fresh."

"Suppose I should stay in this ship say for six months, never speaking of the Saracen nor recalling the circumstance of my coming on board, you believe his memory would drop the fact, and that he would view me as one who happened to be in the ship, and that's all, his mind stopping at that?"

"How he would view you I cannot say; but I am certain he would forget how you came here, unless there was incessant reference to the Saracen and to her men shooting at Van Vogelaar. But time would bear no part in this sort of recollection: he would still be living in the year of God 1653, and sailing home from Batavia; and if he thought at all he'd imagine it was in that year that you came on board his ship."

Well, here was a piece of metaphysics a touch above my intelligence and above this sweet creature's too, for she could only speak as she believed, without being able to account for the miraculous conditions of this ship's life and of that of her crew. And indeed I should not have teased her with such questions but for a great craving to obtain a just conception of the amazing character who has been, and must ever remain, the terror of all mariners; whilst beyond this again was a secret dread lest this fair enchanting woman should have been chosen to play a part in the marine tragedy; which I would have a right to fear if I found Vanderdecken's relations with her, as regards his memory for instance, different from what they were in all other directions. Plainly I mean this: that if she were being used as a Divine instrument, then it was certain that I should not be suffered to deliver her from the Death Ship— an insupportable reflection at any time, but a mortal blow now that I had come to love her.

Meanwhile, the giant figure of the Dutch captain stood motionless near the binnacle; close to him was the second mate, himself like a statue. The tiller-tackles, grasped by the helmsman, swayed him with every blow of the sea upon the rudder, yet even his movements had a lifelessness in them that was as apparent as though the man had been stricken dead at his post, and swung there against the dancing stars.

A quick jerk of the ship causing Imogene to lose her balance, she grasped my arm to steady herself by, and I took care she should not release me. Indeed, from almost the first hour of our meeting there had been a yearning towards me, a wistfulness of a mute sort underlying her demeanour, and this night I found assurance of it by her manner, that was not indeed clinging, having more of nestling in it, as if I was her refuge, her one hope. She may have guessed I loved her. I cannot tell. My eyes may have said much, though I had not spoken. But there was that in her, as she stood by my side, with her hand under my arm, that persuaded me her heart was coming to mine, and haply more quickly because of our sole mortality amid the substantial shadows of the Death Ship's crew. You felt what that bond meant when you looked around you and saw the dimly-looming figure of Vanderdecken beside the compass, the ghostly darkness of the second mate's form, the corpse-like swaying of the helmsman, as of an hanging body moved by the wind, and thought of the amazing human mysteries lost in the darkness forward, or slumbering in the hammocks, if, indeed, sleep was ever permitted to visit eyes which death was forbidden to approach. 'Twas as if Imogene stood on one side a grave, I on the other, and clasped hands for the courage we found in warm and circulating blood, over a pit filled with a heart-freezing sight.

"We shall escape yet— fear not!" said I, speaking out of the heat of my own thoughts as though we were conversing on that subject.

"May our Saviour grant it!" she exclaimed. "See how black the white water around the ship makes her in spite of the strange fires which glow everywhere!"

I felt her shiver as she cried, "The vessel seems to grow more terrible to my fancy. It may be because we have talked so much of her, and your views of Vanderdecken and the crew have raised terrifying speculations in me."

"We shall escape yet!" I repeated, hotly, for the very sense of our imprisonment and the helplessness of our condition for the time being, that might be long in terminating, was a thought so maddening that I felt in a temper to defy, scorn and spit in the face of the very Devil himself was he to appear. But I had her right hand pressed to my heart; 'twas sure she felt the comfort of it, and together for some while in silence we stood viewing the ship, the fabric of whose hull stood out as though lined with India ink upon the ashen tremble of froth that seemed to embrace her length like shadowy-white arms, as the wind blowing mildly into her sails forced her to break the water at her stern as she slided athwart the swell. She made a sight to shrink from! The sailor's heart within me sank to this feebly-luminous mystery of aged yet imperishable hull, holding within her creatures so unnatural that the eye of man can view the like of them nowhere else, and raising her structure of ancient sail and masts to the stars which glided in blue and green and white along the yards with the rolling of her. Little wonder that she should affright the mariner who meets her amid the lonely paths of the vast ocean she haunts.

I clasped my brow with bewilderment in my brain.

"Surely," I cried to my companion, "I am dreaming. It cannot be that I at this moment am standing on the deck of the Death Ship!"

She sought to soothe me, but she was startled by my behaviour, and that perception enabled me to rally. If she as a weak and lonely maiden could bravely support five years of life amid this crew, what craven was I to have my brain confused by only seven days' association, spent mainly in her company? Heaven forgive me. But methinks I realised our condition— all that it might hereafter signify— with a keenness of insight, present and prophetic, which would be impossible in her whose knowledge of the sea was but a child's when she fell into Vanderdecken's hands.

"We must have patience, courage and hope, Mr. Fenton," she said, softly. "Look at that starry jewel yonder," and she turned up her face to the cross that hung above the mizzen topmast-head, gleaming very gloriously in a lake of deep indigo betwixt two clouds. "It shines for me! and often have I looked up at it with full eyes and a prayer in my heart. It shines for you, too! It is the emblem of our redemption, and we must drink in faith that God will succour us from it."

She continued to gaze at it, and there was sheen enough to enable me to see a tender smile upon her upturned face. How sweet did she then appear, fairer than the "evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars," as the poet wrote. I looked up to that sparkling Cross and thought how strange it was that the Sentence pronounced upon this ship should doom her to sail eternally over waters above which there nightly rises the lustrous symbol of Compassion and Mercy.

"Take my arm, my child; 'tis chilly work standing," said the deep voice of the captain.

Again had he come upon us unawares, but this time he found us silent, together gazing at the Cross of stars. She withdrew her hand quickly from my arm and took his, showing wisdom in her promptness, as I was quick to see. Then, being alone, I went to the quarter-deck and fell to walking briskly. For Vanderdecken was right, the wind came bleak.

Chapter 5

The Death Ship's Forecastle

NEXT MORNING was clear and sunny. I was up betimes, being always glad to get away from my cabin, in the which I needed all my long training at sea to qualify me to sleep, not only because of the rats and the noises in the hold, and those mystic fires in the timbers that never failed to send a shudder through me if I opened my eyes upon them in the darkness, but because of my bed, which was miserably hard and wretched in all ways, and in which I would lie down dressed, saving my boots and jacket, never knowing when I might not be obliged to spring on deck in a hurry, though I took care to refresh myself o' morn by going into the head, pulling off my shirt and sousing myself with a bucketfull of salt water— 'twas an old canvas bucket, I remember— no man of the crew speaking to or noticing me.

This morning being very fine, the first bright day that had broken since I had been in the ship, I thought, since it was early, an hour to breakfast, Vanderdecken in his cabin and Arents alone on the poop-deck with the man who steered, that I would look a little closely into the vessel, and ascertain if possible where and how the men slept, where they dressed their food and the like. But first I snatched a glance around to see if any sail was in sight. No! 'Twas all dark-blue water meeting the clear sky in an unbroken girdle, that by holding its sapphire hue against the light azure of the heavens there, stood out with surprising sharpness. The swell left by the gale was not gone, but it came with a steady rhythmic flowing of folds from the north-west that seemed to soothe rather than to vex the ancient ship, and the heavings made the eastern sea-board a rich and dazzling spectacle, by catching the brilliant white sunshine on the polish of their rounded backs, and so carrying their burden of blinding radiance to the verge of the visible deep.

The ship was under all the canvas she had. That studding-sails have been for ages in use we know on the authority of Sir Walter Raleigh, in his writings on the improvements in ships since Henry the Eighth's days; yet I can answer that this Death Ship had no irons on her yards, nor could I anywhere see any spars that answered to the booms used for the spreading of those sails. However, even if she had been furnished with such canvas, this morning it would have been no use to her; for the breeze still hung, westerly and she was going close-hauled, steering something to the west of north and moving through the water at about three knots.

I spied the corpulent figure of Jans, the boatswain, forward of the fore-mast. He was standing with his arms folded, staring ahead. His posture somehow suggested a vacancy of mind, and you thought of him as looking into God knows what distance, with the unmeaningness you observe in the fixed gaze of a babe sucking.

I could not say whether the decks had been washed down; they seemed damp, as if newly swabbed. One whom I supposed to be the ship's carpenter was sawing wood near the house in which were the live stock. Two others, hard by him, sat upon a sail, stitching at it. There was a seaman in the fore-top, but what doing I could not see; little more than his head showed above the barricade. I walked forward to where the boatswain stood, and, on observing that he took no notice of me, I touched him lightly on the shoulder.

He turned his round face, ghastly as death yet as fleshy and plump as life, and gazed at me. I felt nervous— it was dreadful to accost these conformations, which were neither men nor devils— but I was resolved to go through with the business I had on hand, impelled by the thought that if I was suffered to come off with my life from this experience there would be that to relate to the world beyond anything which seamen have told of the ocean life.

I said to him, "Good morning, Herr Jans. Here, to be sure, is a fine sky with noble promise."

"True, sir," he answered, seeming to step out of the mystery of his stillness and vacancy without effort. "She looks fairly up: but so tedious a nor'-wester should be followed by a southerly gale!"

"Heaven grant it!" cried I, gathering courage from his civility. "You will be glad to see old Amsterdam again, no doubt!"

"Ay," said he, "I warrant you; and my wife, Amana, too, and my daughter, Tobina. Ha! ha!"

His laugh was like that of the parrot, mirthless; and not a wrinkle stirred upon his countenance to give reality to his shocking merriment.

To come at what I wanted— for I did not wish Vanderdecken to arrive and see me forward— I said "Yes, meetings are made sweeter by a little delay. Pardon me, Heer: I am an Englishman not well acquainted with the shipboard usages of the Dutch. In the ship of which I was second mate, we had what is called a topgallant forecastle in which the crew slept—"

He interrupted with a shake of the head. "I do not understand," said he.

This was not strange, for as I did not know the Dutch words, I called it topgallant forecastle in English.

"They slept under a deck resembling the poop," said I.

"Ha!" he exclaimed.

"Where do your crew sleep?"

"Down there," he responded, pointing to a hatch answering to the forescuttle of these times.

"Is it a comfortable cabin?" said I.

He made a face and spat behind his hand, which caused me to see that sailors in all times have been alike in the capacity of grumbling, and that even in this man, who by virtue of the age he had attained had long ceased to be human and was kept alive only by the Curse it was his lot to share with the skipper, the instincts of the seaman still lived, a few sparks among blackened embers.

"Judge for yourself if you will," said he. "My last ship was the Maagt van Eukhuysen, and though her forecastle raised a mutiny among us for its badness, I tell you, mynheer, 'twas as punch is to stale cold water compared to this."

He motioned me to descend, but I asked him to go first, for how was I to guess what would be my reception if the men saw me entering their abode unaccompanied? "Very good," said he, and catching hold of the coaming he dropped his great figure through the hatch, and I followed.

We descended by a ladder in perfect correspondence with the rest of the fittings of this ship— the hand-rails carved, and the steps a sort of grating— different, indeed, from the pieces of coarse, rough wood nailed to the bulkhead, which in these days form the road down through the forescuttle. The light of the heavens fell fair through the hatch, but seemed powerless to penetrate the gloom that lay around. I was blinded at first, and stood a moment under the hatch idly blinking and beholding nothing. Then stepping out of the sphere of the daylight, there stole upon my sight the details of the place one by one, helped by the wan, sputtering and smoking flame of a lamp shaped like a coffee-pot, the waste or mesh coming out of the spout fed by what the nose readily determined to be slush.

Jans stood beside me. "Can you see, mynheer?" said he.

"Ay, 'tis growing upon me by degrees," I replied.

"Master," exclaimed a hollow voice, proceeding from the darkest part of this forecastle, "if you could help me fill the bowl of a tobacco-pipe I should be grateful."

Very luckily I had the remains of what sailors term a prick of tobacco in my pocket, which Prins when he dried my jacket had very honestly suffered to remain there. The piece had been so hard pressed in the making, and rendered so water-proof by the rum in it, that my falling overboard had left it perfectly sweet and fit for smoking. By a stingy and cautious use of the knife there was enough of it to give all hands a smoke. I pulled it out and handed it to Jans to deliver to the man who had addressed me. Jans smelt it and said "Yes, it was tobacco, but how was it to be smoked?"

I pulled out my knife, and stepping into the light under the hatch, put the tobacco upon one of the ladder-steps and fell to slicing or rather shaving it, and when I had cut enough to fill a pipe bowl I rolled up the shreds in my hands, and taking a sooty clay pipe from Jans, charged it, and bade him light it at the lamp. He did so, speedily returning, smoking heartily, puffing out great clouds, and crying out, "Oh, but 'tis good! 'tis good!"

It is tiring work cutting up this kind of tobacco, and Jans now understanding how it was done, took the knife and the tobacco and shred about an inch of it, there being in all between three and four inches. Whilst this was doing I had leisure to gaze about me.

No sooner had Jans lighted his pipe, so that all could see he was smoking, than from several parts of that gloomy interior there slided a number of figures who quickly clustered around the ladder, over one of whose steps or treads the boatswain leaned, pipe in mouth, whilst he sliced and shaved. The daylight fell upon some of them, others were faintly to be seen in the dim illumination which the lustre, passing through the hatch, feebly spread. From rows of old hammocks, that died out in the gloom, these men had dropped, and mariners half-perished with hunger could not have exhibited more delirious eagerness for food than did these unhappy creatures for a pipeful of the tobacco Jans was at work upon. A dismaller and wilder, nay, a more affrighting picture I defy the imagination to body forth. It was not only that many of these unhappy people were half-naked— most of them still swinging in their hammocks, when I descended— it was their corpse-like appearance, as though a grave-yard had disgorged its dead, who had come together in a group, quickened and urged by some hunger, lust or need common to the whole, and expressing in many varieties of countenance the same desire. All about Jans they crowded, fifteen or twenty men; some thin, with their ribs showing, others with sturdy legs of the Dutch kind, some nearly bald, some so hairy that their locks and beards flowed down their backs and chests, some dark with black eyes, others round-faced and blue-eyed; but every man of them looking as if he was newly risen, Lazarus-like, from the tomb, as though he had burst the bondage of the coffin, and come into this forecastle dead yet living, his body formed of the earth of the grave, and his soul of the Curse that kept him alive.

I had particularly hoped to see some of them sleeping, wondering what appearance they presented in slumber; also whether such as they ever dreamed, and what sort of expressions their faces wore. But the place was too dark to have yielded this sight even had I been at liberty to peer into their hammocks. When my eyes grew used to the twilight of the slush-lamp and I could see plain, I found there was not much to whet curiosity. Here and there stood a box or sea-chest. Against the aged sides, hanging by nails or hooks, were coats, trowsers, oilskins, and the like, most of them differing in fashion, swaying with the heaving of the ship. Some odds and ends of shoes and boots, a canvas bucket or two, a tall basket, in which were stowed the dishes and mugs the men eat and drank with, completed, with the hammocks overhead, all the furniture that I could distinguish of this melancholy, rat-gnawed, yea, and noisome forecastle.

By this time Jans was wearied of slicing the tobacco, and the fellow called Meindert Kryns was at work upon what remained of it. All who had pipes filled them, and I was surprised to find how well off they were in this respect, though my wonder ceased when I afterwards heard that amongst other articles of freight Vanderdecken had met with in a derelict were cases of long clay pipes. It was both moving and diverting to watch these half-clad creatures smoking, their manner of holding the smoke in their mouths for the better tasting of it, the solemn joy with which they expelled the clouds; some in their hammocks with their naked legs over the edge; others on the chests, manifestly insensible to the chilly wind that blew down through the hatch. No man spoke. If aught of mind there was among them, it seemed to be devoted to keeping their pipe-bowls burning. Jans stood leaning against the fore-mast, puffing at his pipe, his eyes directed into the gloom in the bows. That he had forgotten the errand that brought him below, that I had no more existence for him than would have been the case had I never fallen from the rail of the Saracen, was clearly to be gathered from his strange rapt posture and air. I touched him again on the shoulder, and he turned his eyes upon me, but without starting. 'Twas the easiest, nimblest way of slipping out of a condition of trance into intelligence and life that can be conceived.

I wished to see all I dared ask to look at, and said, "Where do you cook your food?"

"I will show you," he answered, and walked to some distance abaft the forescuttle.

I followed him painfully, for I could scarce see; indeed, here would have been total blackness to one fresh from the sunlight. There was a bulkhead with an opening on the larboard hand; we passed through it, and I found myself on a deck pretty well filled up at the after-end with coils of cable, casks, and so forth; a windward port was open, and through it came light enough to see by. In the middle of this deck was a sort of caboose, situated clear of the ropes and casks. 'Twas, in short, a structure of stout scantling, open on either side, and fitted with brick-work contrived for a furnace and coppers for boiling. A man— the cook, or the cook's mate— his feet naked, his shanks clothed in breeches of a faded blue stuff, and his trunk in a woollen shirt— was at work boiling a kind of soup for the crew's breakfast. Another man stood at a dresser, rolling paste. This fellow was a very short, corpulent person, with a neck so fat that a pillow of flesh lay under the back of his head. Never in my time had I viewed a completer figure of a Dutchman than this cook. You would have supposed that into this homely picture of boiling and pie-making there would have entered such an element of life and reality as was nowhere else to be found in that accurst ship. Yet so little was this so, that I do not know that in all the time I had been in the Braave I had beheld a more ghastly picture. It was the two men who made it so; the unreality of their realness, to comprehend which, if this phrase should sound foolishly, think upon the vision of an insane man, or upon some wondrous picture painted upon the eyes of the dying or opening upon the gaze of some enthusiast.

The flames of the furnace shot a crimson glare upon the first of the two men I have described; he never turned his head to look at me, but went on stirring what was in the copper. The place had much of the furniture of one of our present cabooses or galleys. There was a kind of dresser and there were racks for holding dishes, an old brass timepiece that was as great a curiosity in its way as the clock in the cabin, a chair of the last century, a couple of wooden bellows, and such matters.

I was moving, when the little, fat cook suddenly fell a-sniffing, and turning to Jans, said, "Is there tobacco at last?"

"No," answered Jans; "this Heer had a piece which he has distributed. 'Tis all gone. But there is a smoke left in this pipe; take it."

He dried the sooty stem upon his sleeve, and handed it to the cook, who instantly began to puff, uttering one or two exclamations of pleasure, but with an unmoved countenance.

"Is there no tobacco on board?" said I, following Jans into the forecastle.

"The skipper has a small quantity, but there is none for the crew," he answered. "Had your ship supplied us with a little stock 'twould have been a godsend; welcomer, sir, than the powder and shot you wantonly bestowed upon our boat."

We were now in the forecastle, and this reference to the action of the terrified crew of the Saracen, in the hearing of the seamen who overhung their hammocks, or squatted on their chests, smoking, alarmed me; so with a quickly uttered "Good-morning" addressed to them all, I sprang up the ladder and gained the deck.

Chapter 6

We Sight a Ship

IT WAS LIKE coming out of a sepulchre to step from that forecastle on deck where the glorious sun was and the swaying shadows, and where the blue wind gushed in a soft breathing over the bulwark-rails, with weight enough in it to hold the canvas stirless, and to raise a gentle hissing alongside like the seething of champagne. I spied Vanderdecken on the poop and near him Imogene, so I hastened aft to greet the girl and salute the great bearded figure that nobly towered beside her. She looked fragrant and sweet as a white rose in the dewy morn, wore a straw hat turned up on one side and looped to stay there with a parti-coloured rosette, and though this riband was faded with age and the straw yellow and dull through keeping, the gear did suit her beauty most divinely, and I could have knelt and kissed her hand, so complete a Princess did she appear in the royal perfections of her countenance and shape.

To turn from the sparkle of her violet eye, the rosiness of her lip, the life that teemed in the expression of her face, like a blushing light shining through fragile porcelain, to turn from her to the great silent figure near her, with piercing gaze directed over the taffrail, his beard trembling to the down-rush of air from the mizzen, was to obtain a proper contrast to enable you to realise in the aspect of that amazing person the terrible conditions of his existence and the enormous significance of his sentence.

With a smile of pleasure at the sight of me, Imogene bade me good-morning, saying, "I am before you for the first time since you have been in the ship."

"I was out of my cabin half-an-hour ago, perhaps longer," said I. "What, think you, I have been doing? Exploring the sailors' quarters and inspecting the kitchen." And I tossed up my hands and turned up my eyes that she might guess what I thought of those places. Then meeting Vanderdecken's gaze, which he had brought to bear upon me with a frowning roll of the eyes, I took off my hat, giving him a bow. He greeted me in his imperious stormy way, and asked me what I thought of his ship.

I replied, "She is a very fine vessel, sir."

"Did they lift the hatches to show the cargo to you?" he exclaimed.

I answered smartly, "No," perceiving that he was aware I had been below in the fore-part.

"How does my forecastle show to your English prejudice?" he said.

"Oh, mynheer!" said I, smiling, with a look at Imogene, whose eyes were fixed in the quarter over the stern into which Vanderdecken had been staring, "so far from Englishmen being prejudiced, at all events, in naval matters, we are continually taking ideas from other nations, particularly from the French, whose ships of war we imitate and admire. Perhaps," said I, "that is one of the reasons why we are incessantly capturing the vessels of that nation."

But the conceit was lost, because this man had flourished before we had become the terror of the French that our admirals have since made the English flag to be.

Imogene cried out in Dutch, "Do you know, Mr. Fenton, that there is a sail in sight?"

My heart gave a bound, and following the indication of her ivory-white forefinger, which pointed directly astern, I saw the tiny gleam of what was unquestionably a ship's canvas, resembling the curved tip of a gull's wing.

"Ay, to be sure, yonder's a sail!" I exclaimed, after keeping my eyes fixed upon it a while to make sure, and I added in Dutch, "Which way, madam, does the captain say she is steering?"

"Directly after us," she replied.

"Judge for yourself, sir," said Vanderdecken, motioning with his hand toward a telescope that stood against the deck-house.

It was the ancient, heavy tube I had observed in his cabin. I picked it up, rested it upon the rail— it was too weighty for the support of my left hand— and worked away with it at the sail astern. It was a feeble old glass, magnifying, I should suppose, to the proportion of a crown to a groat. In fact I could see as well with the naked eye. It was Vanderdecken's telescope, however, and a curiosity, and still feigning to view the sail, I secretly ran my eye over the tubes, noticing, in very faint letters, the words, "Cornelius Van der Decken, Amsterdam, 1650," graved in flowing characters upon the large tube.

"She is heading after us, you think, mynheer?" said Vanderdecken as I rose.

"I could not say, sir. Has she grown since you first observed her?"

"Yes."

He took the glass and levelled it very easily, and I met Imogene's gaze as she glanced from him to me, as though she was sure I could not but admire the massive, manly figure of that man, drawn to his full height, and in such a posture as one would love to see him painted in.

"She is certainly steering our course," said he, speaking with his eye at the tube, "I hope she may not prove an English man-of-war. Who can tell? If a merchantman, be her nationality what it may, we'll speak her for tobacco, for that's a commodity we must have."

I looked earnestly and with a face flushed with hope at Imogene; but she glanced away from me to the sail, signalling to me by this action in a manner unmistakable, to be wary.

Vanderdecken put down the glass, cast a look aloft at the set of his canvas and the trim of his yards, and then called to Arents to heave the log. Some seamen came aft, in response to the second mate's call, and, bringing out a reel and sand-glass from the deck-house, measured the speed of the ship through the water, precisely as we at this day do, so ancient is this simple device of telling a ship's speed of passage through the water by paying out a line marked with knots to the running of sand! I heard Arents say that the vessel was going three knots and a half.

"At that rate," said I to Imogene, whilst Vanderdecken remained aft, watching in a soulless manner the automaton-like motions of the men engaged in hauling the line in and reeling it up, "that vessel yonder, if she be actually heading our way, will soon overhaul us."

"Mr. Fenton," said she, with subdued energy in her soft voice, "I earnestly pray you, neither by word, look or sign to give Captain Vanderdecken the least reason to suspect that you mean to escape from his ship and rescue me whenever the chance shall offer. I will tell you why I say this: just now he spoke of you to me, and said if an opportunity offered he should put you on board any vessel that would receive you, no matter where she was bound to, and then he asked what you and I chiefly talked about. There was more sternness in his manner than ever I recollect in him when addressing me."

"If I thought him capable of human emotions," said I, "I should reckon him jealous."

"But he has human emotions— he loves his wife and children," she replied.

"Ay, but who is to know that that love is not left to linger in him as a part of his curse?" said I. "By which I mean, if he was not suffered to remember his wife and children and love them, he might not show himself very eager to get round the Cape. Possibly he wants to get rid of me, not because he is jealous, not because he dislikes me as a man, but because that malignant baboon, Van Vogelaar, may have been speaking against me, putting fears into his head touching his treasure, and working upon his duty as a Hollander— a compatriot of De Ruyter, God help him— to hate me as an Englishman."

"But he loves me too, Mr. Fenton," said she.

"As a father might," said I, not liking this, yet amused by her sweet tenaciousness.

"Yes, as a father; but it shows he has capacity for other emotions outside those which you deem necessary for the duration of the Sentence."

"I ought to believe so if he hates me," said I, looking his way and observing that he had turned his back upon us and was watching the sail astern. "But be all this as it will, you shall find me as careful as you can desire."

"If," said she, plaintively, "he should become even faintly suspicious of your intentions, he might set you ashore, should we not meet with a ship to receive you, and then what would become of you and what would become of me, Mr. Fenton?"

"Have no fear," said I; "he shall discover nothing in me to make him suspicious. As to his setting me ashore, that he could do, and whether I should be able to outwit him in such a manœuvre, I cannot tell; but in no other way could he get rid of me, unless by throwing me overboard."

"He would not do that," she exclaimed, shaking her head; "nor do I think he would force you from this ship if he could find no ground for distrust. But something affecting you has worried his mind, I am certain, or he would not have declared his intention to send you to another vessel. He believes he is going straight home. Why, then, should he not be willing to carry you? Maybe he heard from Arents that you were below exploring the ship. Oh, Mr. Fenton, be cautious! If not for your own sake, then for mine!"

She involuntarily brought her little hands together into a posture of prayer with the earnestness of her entreaty, and her warmth flowed rosily to her cheeks, so that, though she spoke low, her manner was impassioned, and I saw how her dear heart was set upon my delivering her, and how great was her terror lest my thoughtlessness should end in procuring our separation. However, I had no time to then reassure her, though I resolved henceforth to walk with extraordinary circumspection, seeing that the people I had fallen amongst were utterly unintelligible to me, being so composite in their dead-aliveness that it was impossible to come at their motives and feelings, if they possessed any resembling ours. I say I had not time to reassure her, for Prins arrived to report breakfast, which brought Vanderdecken to us.

Little was said at table, but that little was quite enough to make me understand the wisdom of Imogene's fears, and to perceive that if I did not check my curiosity to inspect the ship so as to be able to deliver a true account of this strange and fearful fabric, I stood to lose Imogene the chance of escape which my presence in the vessel provided her with. No matter which of the two mates had the watch on deck, Van Vogelaar always sat down to meals first, Arents following. He was beside me this morning as usual, coming fresh from his cabin; and when we were seated, Vanderdecken told him there was a ship astern.

"How heading, skipper?"

"As we go, without doubt. She hath grown swiftly since first sighted, yet hangs steady in the same quarter."

"Let her hoist any colours but those of this gentleman's country!" said Van Vogelaar, with an ugly sneer.

"Should that happen, captain, will you fight her?" I asked, quietly.

"If she be a ship of war— no; for what are our defences against the culverins and demi-culverins of your ships, and how shall we match perhaps four hundred sailors with our slender company?" replied Vanderdecken, with an evil glitter in his eyes, and grasping his beard as his custom was when wrathful thoughts surged in him.

"She may prove a harmless merchantman— perhaps a sturdy Hollander— that will give you plenty of tobacco for a little of your silver," said Imogene, striking in with her sweet smile, and melodious voice, like a sunbeam upon turbulent waters.

"If you are in doubt why not shift your helm, gentlemen?" said I.

"Ah, skipper!" cried Van Vogelaar, sardonically, "we have an adviser here. It is fit that a Dutch ship should be served by an English pilot!"

I held my peace. At this moment the clock struck, and the parrot, as though some fiend was inside her green bosom prompting her to breed trouble, cried out "Wyn zyn al Verdomd!" with fierce energy, severely clawing her wires, and exhibiting more agitation than seems possible in a fowl of naturally dull and leaden motions.

"I believe she speaks the truth," exclaimed Van Vogelaar, turning his face towards the cage. "The parrot hath been known to possess a witch-like capacity of forecasting and divining."

"Oh, but you know, Heer, that she had that sentence by heart when the captain bought her," said Imogene, with a mixed air of distress and petulance in her face.

"I know, madam," he replied, "that yonder bird never spoke those words with such energy as she now puts into them before this gentleman arrived."

Vanderdecken looked at him and then at me, but did not speak.

"What do you suspect from the increased energy of the bird's language?" said I, fixing my eyes upon the mate.

He would not meet my gaze, but answered with his eyes upon his plate, "What is your motive in examining this ship, sir?"

"The harmless curiosity of a sailor," I replied.

He was about to speak, but I lifted my hand, meaning to entreat silence whilst I continued, but he, mistaking the gesture for a threat, shrank very abjectly from his seat, proving himself a timorous, cowardly fellow, and the more to be feared, perhaps, for being so. "Captain Vanderdecken," said I, keeping my hand lifted, that he and his mate might understand I intended no menace, "I know not what base and degrading charges Herr Van Vogelaar would insinuate. I am an honest man and mean well, and, sir, add to that the gratitude of one whose life you have preserved. You were pleased, on one occasion, to speak kindly of my countrymen, and regret that feud should ever exist between two nations whose genius seems to have a common root. I trust that your sympathy with Britain will cause you to turn a deaf ear to the unwarrantable hints against my honour as an English seaman, dropped by your first mate."

To this speech Vanderdecken made no reply; indeed, I would not like to swear that he had heeded so much as a syllable of it. Van Vogelaar resumed the posture on his seat from which he had started on my raising my hand and went on with his meal. Shortly after this Imogene left the table and entered her cabin, on which, weary of the sullen and malignant company of the mate, and the ghostly silence and fiery eyes of Captain Vanderdecken, I rose, bowed to the skipper, and went on deck.

I walked right aft, past the helmsman, and stood gazing with a most passionate yearning and wistfulness at the sail astern. The stranger had not greatly grown during the time we had passed below, but her enlargement was marked enough to make me guess that she was overhauling us hand over fist, as sailors say, and I reckoned that if the wind held she would be within gunshot by three or four of the clock this afternoon. I went for Vanderdecken's glass and examined her again; the lenses imparted an atmospheric sharpness and pellucidity of outline which showed plainly enough the royals and topgallant-sails of apparently a large ship slightly leaning from the wind. I could not persuade myself that she was "reaching," for though our yards were as sharply braced as they would lie, the stranger, if she were close hauled, could have luffed up three or four more points, but as she held her place it was certain she was making a free wind and coming along with her yards braced-in somewhat. Therefore she was not bound to the westwards, and if for the Indian Ocean, what need had she to be heading due north?

I put down the glass, but the yearning that rose within me at the sight of the vessel ceased when I thought of Imogene. Suppose that ship should prove the instrument of separating me from her! I had talked big for the sake of comforting her, of fearing nothing from Vanderdecken save being set ashore or tossed overboard, for I counted upon any and all ships we met refusing to receive me if they found out that this ancient fabric was the Flying Dutchman. But suppose Vanderdecken should heave me overboard on nearing a vessel, leaving it to her people to succour me if they chose?

These were the fancies which subdued in me the eager wistfulness raised by yonder gleaming wing of canvas, whitening like a mounting star upon the blue edge of the ocean in the south.

Lost in thought, I continued gazing until presently I grew sensible of the presence of someone standing close beside me. It was Imogene. On the weather quarter was Van Vogelaar surveying the sail with folded arms and stooped head. His face wore a malignant expression, and in his stirlessness he resembled an effigy, wrought with exquisite skill to a marvellous imitation of apparel and shape.

"Where is the captain?" I asked.

"He is smoking in the cabin," Imogene answered.

"Yonder rascal is evidently my enemy," said I.

"All will be well if you show no curiosity," she replied, softly. "Do you not remember that I cautioned you at the very beginning? My belief is that the mate is mad you should know of the treasure in this ship, and will be eager to get rid of you lest you should contrive to possess it."

"But how?"

"By acquainting the master of the ship you are transferred to with the wealth in this vessel. Add to this fear— for he has a share in all they recover from wrecks, and in a portion of the cargo— his hatred of you for your men firing at him."

"I begin to see," said I, "that there are several strokes of human nature still to be witnessed among these unhappy wretches, spite of their monstrous age, the frightfulness of the Curse they are under, and their being men who are alive in death— corpses reflecting vitality just as the dead moon shines. But needs must where the Devil drives; speculating will not serve; we must wait."

I watched her whilst she looked at the sail in our wake; emotion darkened and lightened in the violet of her eyes as the blue folds of Heaven seem to deepen and brighten with the breathings of the wind; through her delicate lips her rose-sweet breath came and went swiftly. She started, looked at Van Vogelaar, aloft at the canvas, round the deck, with a sharp tremble running through her light form, and cried out with an hysteric swiftness, and in a voice full of tears, "You will not leave me to this wretched fate, Mr. Fenton! You will not leave me in this dreadful ship!"

I grasped her hand. "I swear before the Majesty of that offended God whose eye is on this ship as we thus stand, that if I am forced to leave you it will be at the cost of my life!"

Chapter 7

We Watch the Ship Approach Us

WE STOOD in silence for some moments, hand in hand; then finding Van Vogelaar furtively watching us, I quitted her side; at the same moment Vanderdecken came on deck.

I went to the foremost end of the poop and there stayed, leaning against the bulwark, my mind very full of thought. Though I had been in this vessel a week, yet now, as on many occasions, I found myself conceiving it to be a thing incredible that this craft should be the famous Death Ship of tradition, the talk and terror of the mariner's forecastle; and such a feeling of mystification thickened my brains that a sudden horror stung me from head to foot with the sensation the nervous are possessed with, when, in a sudden panic, they fear they are going out of their minds. But, by keeping my eyes fixed on Imogene, I succeeded ere long in mastering this terrible emotion, even to the extent of taking a cheerful view of my situation; first, by considering that, for all I knew, I had been led by the Divine hand to this ship for the purpose of rescuing the lovely girl from a fate more dismal and shocking than tongue could utter or imagination invent; and next, by reflecting that if God spared my life so that I could relate what I had seen, I should be famous among sailors as the only seaman that had ever been on board the Phantom Ship, as she is foolishly styled, eaten with her commander, mixed with her crew, beheld the discipline of her, and looked narrowly into all circumstances of her inner or hidden life.

It seemed to me incredible that any vessel could encounter her and not guess what she was, though, of course, I believed what Imogene had said, that now and again an unsuspicious ship would traffic with Vanderdecken in such commodities as the one wanted or the other had. If her character was expressed at night by the fiery crawlings like red-hot wire upon her, in the daytime she discovered her nature by signs not indeed so wild and terrifying, but to the full as significant in a sailor's eyes. Supposing her to have been built at Hoorn, in 1648— that date, I believe, would represent her birth— there would be nothing in the mere antiquity of her hull, or even in the shape of it, to convict her as Vanderdecken's ship; because the difference between the bodies and forms of ships of the time in which she was built and those of many vessels yet afloat and actively employed, would not be so great as to let the mariner know what she was. For instance, there was a vessel trading in my time between Strangford and Whitehaven that was an hundred and thirty years old. She was called the Three Sisters, and the master was one Donnan; she was also known by the name of the Port-a-Ferry Frigate. Her burthen was thirty-six tons, and 'twas positively known she was employed at the siege of Londonderry, in 1689. Now, here was a craft once beheld by me, who am writing this, that was nearly as ancient as the Flying Dutchman. She was often to be met coasting, and, in consequence of her having been the first vessel that ever entered the Old Dock at Liverpool, was ever after made free of all port charges. Yet, no sailor shrank affrighted from her, no grave-yard fires lived in her timbers; when encountered at sea she was regarded as a venerable piece of marine architecture, and that was all. But why? Because her rig had been changed. She had been a ship; when I knew her she was a brigantine. Aloft she had been made to keep pace with all improvements. Then her hull was carefully preserved with paint, her voyages were short, and she was constantly being renewed and in divers ways made good.

But this Death Ship was now as she had been in 1653 when she set sail from Batavia for her homeward passage. Aloft she was untouched— that is, in respect of her original aspect, if I save the varying thickness of her standing gear, which would not be observable at a short distance. For a century and a half, when I met her, had she been washing about in this ocean off the Cape of Storms, and the exposure had rotted her through and kindled the glow of deadwood in every pore. It might be that the Curse which held her crew living was not yet quick in her. By which I mean that she had not yet come to that condition of decay which would correspond in a ship to the death of a human being, so that the repairs, careening, calking and the like which her men found necessary for her might be found needful for some years yet, when she would become as her crew were— dead in time but staunch and enduring so long as the Curse should be in force.

These were the speculations of a troubled and bewildered mind. I glanced at the sail astern and guessed it would not be long before that shining pillar of canvas swept the hull beneath it on to the delicate azure that went trembling to the heavens there. Prins had brought a chair for Imogene and she sat near the tiller. Vanderdecken stood beside her, watching the distant ship. Van Vogelaar, who had the watch, stumped the weather side of the poop, often coming abreast of where I stood to leeward, and occasionally sending a scowling furtive glance my way. It was not my policy to intrude. Nay, the rising of that vessel in our wake furnished a particular emphasis to Imogene's advice to me, for if haply I should irritate Vanderdecken by some unwise remark or indiscreet behaviour, and the ship should turn out an Englishman and act in some such fashion as did the Saracen, my life might have to pay for the incivility of my countrymen.

I had the yearning of the whole ship's company in me for a pipe of tobacco, but I had parted with all I owned— which now vexed me, for my generosity had brought me no particular kindness from the men— and had not the courage to solicit a whiff or two from the skipper's little store. Sometimes Imogene would turn her head as if to view the ship or glance at the sea, but in reality to mark if I was still on deck, but I could not discover in her way of doing this the slightest hint that I should approach her. Occasionally Vanderdecken addressed her, often he would stand apparently wrapped in thought, heeding nothing but the vessel astern, if one might suppose so from his eyes being bent thitherwards. From time to time Van Vogelaar picked up the glass and levelled it at the ship, and then put it down with an air of angry impatience— though you found the motion suggested rather than showed as an actually definable thing the counterfeit passion displayed in the gestures and carriage of an automaton.

Leaning against the rail of the bulwarks as high as my shoulder-blades, I quietly waited for what was to come, yet with a mind lively with curiosity and expectations. What would Vanderdecken do? What colours would the stranger show? How would she behave? What part might I have to take in whatever was to happen? To be sure the stranger would not be up with us for some while yet, but since breakfast the breeze had slightly freshened, and by the rapid enlargement of those shining heights astern you knew that the wind had but to gather a little more weight to swiftly swirl yonder nimble craft up to within musket-shot of this cumbrous ancient fabric.

I looked over the rail, watching the sickly-coloured side slipping sluggishly through the liquid transparent blue, marbled sometimes by veins and patches of foam, flung with a sullen indifference of energy from the hewing cutwater, on the top of which there projected a great beak, where yet lingered the remains of a figure-head that I had some time before made out to represent an Hercules, frowning down upon the sea with uplifted arms, as though in the act of smiting with a club. It was easy to guess that this ship had kept the seas for some months since careening by observing the shell-fish below the water-line, and the strings of black and green weed she lifted with every roll. But, uncouth as was the fabric, gaunt as her aged furniture made her decks appear, inconvenient and ugly as was her rig, exhibiting a hundred signs of the primitiveness in naval construction of the age to which she belonged, yet, when I lifted my eyes from the water to survey her, 'twas not without a sentiment of veneration beyond the power of the horror the supernaturalism of her and her crew raised in me to correct. For was it not by such ships as this that the great and opulent islands and continents of the world had been discovered and laid open as theatres for posterity to act dazzling parts in? Was it not with such ships as this that battles were fought, the courage, audacity, skill and fierce determination exhibited in which many latter conflicts may, indeed, parallel, but never in one single instance surpass? Was it not by such ships as this that the great Protector raised the name of Britain to such a height as exceeds all we read of in the history of ancient or modern nations? What braver admirals, more skilful soldiers, more valiant captains, stouter-hearted mariners, have flourished than those whose cannon flamed in thunder from the sides of such ships as this?

Ay, 'twas a structure to dream in when the soul could let slip the dread which the thought of the Curse and the appearance of the crew inspired; a wizard to hearken back the imagination to olden times and show the sun sparkling, and the Heavens blue, and the sea azure in pictures, not more dead, and not less vital either, than the company who manned her, who were beings with loving hearts and blood-fed skins in that distant age into which she drove fancy, romancing and recreating.

The time passed; at the hour of eleven, or thereabouts the hull of the ship astern was visible upon the water-line. The breeze had freshened, and the long heave of the swell left by the gale was whipped into wrinkles, which melted into a creamy sparkling as they ran. Under the sun, upon our starboard bow, the ocean was kindled into glory; through the trembling splendour the blue of the sea surged up in fluctuating veins, and the conflict of the sapphire dye welling up into the liquid dazzle, where it showed an instant, ere being overwhelmed by the blaze on the water, was a spectacle of beauty worthy of life-long remembrance. Elsewhere, the crisped plain of the ocean stretched darker than the Heavens, under which were many clouds, moving with full white bosoms like the sails of ships, carrying tinted shinings resembling wind-galls, or fragments of solar rainbows, upon their shoulders or skirts, as they happened to offer them to the sun.

By this time you felt the stirring of curiosity throughout the ship. Whatever jobs the crew had been put to they now neglected, that they might hang over the sides or stand upon the rail to watch and study the ship astern of us. Many had an avidity in their stare that could not have been matched by the looks of famine-stricken creatures. Whether they were visited by some dim sense or perception of their frightful lot and yearned, out of this weak emotion, for the ship in pursuit, albeit they might not have been able to make their wishes intelligible to their own understandings, God knoweth. 'Twas moving to see them; one with the sharp of his hand to his forehead, another fixedly gazing out of a tangle of grey hair, a third showing fat and ghastly to the sunlight, a fourth with black eyes charged with the slate-coloured patches of blindness, straining his imperfect gaze under a bald brow, corrugated into lines as hard as iron.

Vanderdecken had left Imogene and stood on the weather quarter with the mate. The girl being alone, I walked aft to her and said in English, feigning to speak of the weather by looking aloft as I spoke, "I have held aloof long enough, I think. He will not object if I join you now?"

"No— his head is full of that ship yonder," she replied. "For my part I am as weary of sitting as you must be of standing. Let us walk a little. He has never yet objected to our conversing. Why should he do so now?"

So saying she rose. Her sheer weariness of being alone, or of talking to Vanderdecken, was too much for her policy of caution. We fell to quietly pacing the poop deck to leeward, and with a most keen and exquisite delight I could taste in her manner the gladness our being together filled her with, and foresee the spirit of defiance to danger and risks that would grow in her with the growth of our love.

No notice was taken of us. The eyes and thoughts of all were directed to the ship. From time to time Vanderdecken or Van Vogelaar would inspect her through the glass. Presently Antony Arents and Jans, the boatswain, joined them, and the four conversed as though the captain had called a council.

"She is picking us up very fast," said I to Imogene, whilst we stood awhile looking at the vessel. "I should not like to swear to her nationality; but that she is an armed ship, whether French, or Dutch, or English, is as certain as that she has amazingly lively heels."

"How white her sails are, and how high they rise!" exclaimed Imogene. "She leans more sharply than we."

"Ay," said I, "she shows twice her number of cloths. Is it not astonishing," I continued, softening my voice, "that Vanderdecken, and his mates and men, should not guess that there is something very wrong with them, from the mere contrast of such beautifully cut and towering canvas as that yonder with the scanty, storm-darkened rags of sails under which this groaning old hull is driven along?"

"Yes, at least to you and me, who have the faculty of appreciating contrasts. But think of them as deficient in all qualities but those which are necessary for the execution of the Sentence. Then their heedlessness is that of a blind man, who remains insensible to the pointing of your finger to the object you speak to him about."

"Would to God you and I were quit of it all," said I.

"We must pray for help, and hope for it too!" she answered, with a swift glance at me, that for a breathless moment carried the violet beauty and shining depths of her eyes fair to mine. An instant's meeting of our gaze only! Yet I could see her heart in that rapid, fearless, trustful look, as the depth of the Heavens is revealed by a flash of summer lightning.

Suddenly Vanderdecken gave orders for the ensign to be hoisted. The boatswain entered the little house, and returned with the flag which he bent on to the halliards rove at the mizzen topmast-head. The colours mounted slowly to his mechanical pulling, and they were worthy indeed of the dead-and-alive hand that hoisted them, being as ragged and attenuated with age as any banner hung high in the dusty gloom of a cathedral. But the flag was distinguishable as the Hollander's ensign, as you saw when it crazily streamed out its fabric, that was so thin in places, you thought you spied the sky through it. One should say it was a flag seldom flown on board the Dutchman, to judge from the manner in which the crew cast their eyes up at it, never a one of them smiling, indeed, though here and there under the death-pallor there lay a sort of crumpling of the flesh, as of a grin. 'Twas a flag to drive thoughts of home deep into them, and now and again I would catch one muttering to another behind his hand, whilst the most of them continued to steadfastly regard the ensign for many minutes after Jans had mastheaded it, as though they fancied home could not be far distant with that flag telling of it.

Chapter 8

The Centaur Flies From Us

NOW THE DUTCH FLAG had not been flying twenty minutes when, my sight being keen, I thought I could perceive something resembling a colour at the fore-royal masthead of the ship. I asked Imogene if she saw it. She answered "No." I said nothing, not being sure myself, and was unwilling to intrude upon the four men standing to windward by asking for the telescope. On board our ship they had set the sprit-topsail, and the forward part of the dull, time-eaten, rugged old vessel resembled a Chinese kite. She was doing her best; but let her splutter as she would 'twas for all the world like the sailing of a beer-barrel with a mast steeped in the bunghole. And this, thought I, was the vessel that gave the slip to the frigate belonging to Sir George Ascue's squadron! The wake she made was short, broad and oily— a square, fat, glistening surface of about her own length— not greatly exceeding the smoothness she would leave aweather if drifting dead to leeward under bare poles; different indeed from that suggestion of comet-like speed which you find in the fleecy swirl of a line of foaming waters boiling out from the metalled run of a fleet cruiser, and rising and falling and fading into dim distance like a path of snow along a hilly land.

On board yonder ship they would have perspective glasses of a power very different from the flat lenses in Vanderdecken's tubes; and since by this time it was certain they had us large in their telescopes, what would they be thinking of our huge, old-fashioned tops, fitter for the bowmen and musqueteers of Ferdinand Magellan and Drake than for the small-armsmen of even the days of the Commonwealth, of the antique cut of our canvas and the wild and disordered appearance its patches and colour submitted, of the grisly aspect of the wave-worn, storm-swept hull, of the peaked shape and narrowness of our stern, telling of times long vanished, as do the covers of an old book or the arches in an ancient church?

Imogene and I continued our walk up and down, talking of many things, chiefly of England, whereof I gave her as much news, down to the time of the sailing of the Saracen, as I carried in my memory, until, presently coming abreast of the group of four, still on the weather quarter, every man of whom, turn and turn about, had been working away with the telescope at the ship, Vanderdecken called me by name and stepped over to us with the glass in his hand.

"Your sight is younger than ours, mynheer," said he, motioning towards Jans and the two mates. "What flag do you make yonder vessel to be flying at her fore-topgallant masthead?"

I took the glass and pointed it, kneeling to rest it as before, and the instant the stranger came within the lenses I beheld Britannia's glorious blood-red St. George's Cross blowing out— a great white flag betwixt the fore-royal yard and the truck that rose high above. Pretending to require time to make sure, I lingered to gather, if possible, the character of the ship. From the cut of her sails, the saucy, admirable set of them, the bigness of the topsails, the hungry yearning for us I seemed to find in the bellying of the studding-sails she had thrown out, it would have been impossible for a nautical eye to mistake her for anything but a State ship, though of what rate I could not yet guess. There was a refraction that threw her up somewhat, and in the glass she looked to be swelling after us in a bed of liquid boiling silver, with a thin void of trembling blue between the whiteness and the sea-line.

I rose and said, "The colour she shows is English."

Vanderdecken turned savagely towards the others and cried, "English!"

Arents let fly an oath; Jans struck his thigh heavily with his open hand; Van Vogelaar, scowling at me, cried, "Are you sure, sir?"

"I am sure of the flag," said I; "but she may prove a Frenchman for all I know."

Vanderdecken clasped his arms tightly upon his breast and sank into thought, with the fire in his eyes levelled at the coming ship.

"See there, gentlemen!" I exclaimed. "A gun!"

Bright as the morning was I had marked a rusty red spark wink in the bow of the vessel like a flash of sunshine from polished copper; a little white ball blew away to leeward expanding as it fled. An instant after, just such another cloudy puff swept into the jibs and drove out in a gleaming trail or two. Presently the reports reached our ears in two dull thuds, one after the other.

Vanderdecken stared aloft at his canvas, then over the side, and joined the others. My excitement was intense; I could scarce contain myself. I knew there was a British squadron at the Cape, and 'twas possible that fellow there might be on a reconnoitring or cruising errand.

"You are sure she is English?" Imogene whispered.

"She is a man-of-war; she is flying our flag. I don't doubt she is English," I replied.

The girl drew a long tremulous breath, and her arm touching mine— so close together we stood— I felt a shiver run through her.

"You are not alarmed, Imogene?" I exclaimed, giving her her Christian name for the first time, and finding a lover's sweetness and delight in the mere uttering of it. She coloured very faintly and cast her gaze upon the deck.

"What is going to happen?" she whispered. "Will they send you on board that ship— keeping me?"

"No! they'll not do that. If she be an Englishman and has balls to feed her cannon with—" I cried, raising my voice unconsciously.

"Hush!" she cried, "Van Vogelaar watches us."

We were silent for a space that the attention I had challenged should be again given to the ship. During the pause I thought to myself, "But can her guns be of use? How much hulling and wounding should go to the destruction of a vessel that has been rendered imperishable by the Curse of Heaven? What injury could musket and pistol, could cutlass and hand-grenades deal men to whom Death has ceased to be, who have outlived Time and are owned by Eternity?"

Vanderdecken, who had been taking short turns upon the deck with heated strides, stopped afresh to inspect the ship, and as he did so another flash broke from her weather-bow, and the smoke went from her in a curl. The skipper looked at the others.

"She has the wind of us and sails three feet to our one. Let the mainsail be hauled up and the topsail brought to the mast. If she be the enemy her flag denotes, her temper will not be sweetened by a long pursuit of which the issue is clear."

Van Vogelaar, scowling venomously, seemed to hang in the wind, on which Vanderdecken looked at him with an expression of face incredibly fierce and terrible. The posture of his giant figure, his half-lifted hand, the slight forward inclination of his head as if he would blast his man with the lightning of his eyes— it was like seeing some marvellous personification of human wrath; and I whispered quickly into Imogene's ear, "That will be how he appeared when he defied his God!"

It was as if he could not speak for rage. And swiftly was he understood. In a breath Jans was rolling forward, calling to the men, Arents was hastening to his station on the quarter-deck, and Van Vogelaar was slinking to the foremost end of the poop. The crew, to the several cries that broke from the mates and boatswain, dropped from rail and ratline, where they had been standing staring at the pursuing craft, and in ghastly silence, without exhibition of concern or impatience, fell to hauling upon the clew-garnets and backing the yards on the main.

So weak was the ship's progress that the bringing of the canvas to the mast immediately stopped her way, and she lay as dead as a buoy upon the heave of the sea. This done, the crew went to the weather side, whence, as they rightly supposed, they would best view the approaching vessel. Jans held to the forecastle, Arents to the quarter-deck, and the mate hung sullen in the shadows cast by the mizzen-shrouds upon the planks. My heart beat as quickly as a baby's. I could not imagine what was to happen. Would yonder man-of-war, supposing her British, take possession of the Braave?— that is, could she? English powder, with earthquake power, has thrown up a mighty mountain of wonders; but could it, with its crimson glare, thunder down the Curse by and in which, this ship continued to sail and these miserable men continued to live? I shuddered at the impiety of the thought, yet what ending of this chase was to be conjectured if it were not capture?

Vanderdecken, on the weather quarter, watched the ship in his trance-like fashion. How majestic, how unearthly, too, he looked against the blue beyond, his beard stirring and waving like smoke in a faintly moving atmosphere to the blowing of the wind! He wore the aspect of a fallen god, with the fires of hell glittering in his eyes and the passions of the damned surging dark from his soul to his face. Imogene and I had insensibly gained the lee-quarter, and our whispers were driven seawards from him by the breeze.

"How will this end?" I asked my sweet companion. "If there be potency in the Curse this ship cannot be captured."

She answered: "I cannot guess; I have not known such a thing as this to happen before."

"Suppose they send a prize crew on board— the Sentence will not permit of her navigation beyond Agulhas— there is not a hawser in all the world stout enough to tow this ship round the Cape. As it is, is not yonder vessel doomed by her chasing us, by her resolution to speak us?"

There was a deep stillness fore and aft. No human voice broke the silence. You heard but the purring of the surges frothing against our sides, the flap of a sail to the regular roll of the fabric, a groan from the heart of her, the soft shock of the sudden hit of a billow. Nothing more. The silence of the unmeasurable deep grew into a distinct sense undisturbed by the gentle universal hissing that went up out of it. The sails of the oncoming ship shone to the gushing of the sunlight like radiant leaning columns of a porphyritic tincture breaking into moonlike alabaster with the escape of the shadows to the sunward stare of the cloths. Bland as the fairy glory of the full moon floating in a sea of ethereal indigo was the shining of those lustrous bosoms, each course and topsail tremulous with the play of the golden fringe of reef-points, and delicate beyond language was the pencilled shadowings at the foot of the rounded cloths. Like cloud upon cloud those sails soared to the dainty little royals, above the foremost of which there blew Britannia's glorious flag, the blood-red cross of St. George upon a field white as the foam that boiled to as high as the hawse pipes with the churning of the shearing cutwater storming like a meteor through the blue. Oh, she was English! You felt the blood of her country hot in her with the sight of her flag that was like a crown upon an hereditary brow, making her queen of the dominion of the sea, roll where it would!

She approached us like a roll of smoke, and the wash of the froth along her black and glossy bends threw out the mouths of her single tier of cannon. She was apparently a thirty-eight-gun ship, and as she drew up, with a luffing helm that brought the after-yard-arms stealing out past the silky swells of the sails on the fore, you spied the glitter and flash of the gold-coloured figure-head, a lion, with its paw upon Britannia's shield. When she was within a mile of us she hauled down her studding-sails, clewed up her royals and mizzen topgallant sail, and drove quietly along upon our weather-quarter, still heeling as though she would have us note how lustrous was the copper, whose brightness rose to the water-line, and what finish that ruddy sheathing, colouring the snow of the blue water leaping along it with a streaking as of purple sunshine, gave to her charms.

All this while, the master, mates and crew of the Death Ship were as mute as though they lay in their coffins. Vanderdecken leaned upon his hand on the rail above the quarter-gallery, and the motion which the heave of the ship gave to his giant form by the sweeping of it up and down the heavens at the horizon emphasised his own absolute motionlessness. Nevertheless, his gaze was rooted in the ship, and the brightening of the angry sparkle in them to the nearing of the man-of-war was a never-to-be-forgotten sight.

"How is this going to end?" I whispered to Imogene. "Is it possible that they are still unable to guess the character of our vessel?"

The frigate had drawn close enough to enable us to make out the glint of buttons and epaulets on the quarter-deck, the uniform of marines on the forecastle, and the heads of seamen standing by the braces or at the guns along the decks. She now hauled up her mainsail but without backing her topsail, luffed so as to shake the way out of her, giving us, as she did so, an oblique view of her stern very richly ornamented, the glass of the windows flashing, and the blue swell brimming to her name in large characters, "Centaur."

"Ship ahoy!" came thundering down through the trumpet at the mouth of a tall, powerfully-built man erect on the rail close against the mizzen-rigging: "What ship is that?"

Vanderdecken made no answer. The wind blew in a moaning gust over the bulwark, and there was the sound of a little jar and shock as the old fabric leaned wearily on the swell, but not a whisper fell from the men. Meanwhile it was grown evident to me that our ship was greatly puzzling the people of the frigate. It looked indeed as if the men had left their stations to crowd to the side, for the line of the bulwarks was blackened with heads. A group of officers stood on the quarter-deck, and I could see them pointing at our masts as though calling one another's attention to the Braave's great barricadoed tops, to her sprit-topmast, the cut and character of her rigging, and to the many signs that would convert her into a wonder, if not a terror, in the eyes of sailors.

"Ship ahoy!" now came down again, with an edge of anger in the hurricane note. "What ship is that?"

At this second cry Vanderdecken broke into life. He turned his face forward. "Bring me my trumpet!" he exclaimed, in a voice whose rich, organ-like roll must have been plainly heard on board the frigate, whether his Dutch was understood or not. The ancient tube I had seen in his cabin was put into his hand. He stepped to the rail, and placing the trumpet to his mouth, cried, "The Braave."

"Where are you from?"

"Batavia!"

"Where bound?"

"Amsterdam!"

There was another pause. The line of heads throbbed with visible agitation along the sides, and I saw one man of the group on the quarter-deck go up to the captain, who was speaking our ship, touch his cap, and say something. But the other imperiously waved him off with a flourish of his trumpet, which he instantly after applied to his lips, and shouted out, "Haul down your flag and I will send a boat."

Vanderdecken looked towards me. "What does he say?" he exclaimed.

I told him. He called to Van Vogelaar, who promptly enough came to the halliards and lowered the flag to the deck. I watched the descent of that crazy, attenuated, ragged symbol. To my mind it was as affrighting in its suggestions of unholy survival as the whole appearance of the vessel or the countenance and mechanic manners of the most corpse-like man of the crew of her.

Scarce was the ensign hauled down when there came to our ears the silver, cheerful singing of a boatswain's pipe, the main-topsail was laid aback and the frigate's length showed out as she fell slightly off from the luff that had held her canvas trembling in the wind. We were too far asunder for the nice discernment of faces with the naked eye, but methought since there seemed no lack of telescopes aboard the frigate, enough should have been made out of the line of deadly faces which looked over our bulwark-rail, to resolve us to the satisfaction of that British crew.

Again was heard the silver chirping of the boatswain's whistle; a pinnace was lowered, into which tumbled a number of armed seamen, and the blades of eight oars flashed like gold as they rose feathering from the first spontaneous dip.

"They are coming!" cried Imogene in a faint voice.

"Let us keep where we are," I exclaimed, "Vanderdecken does not heed us. If we move his thoughts will fly to you, and he may give me trouble. Dear girl, keep a stout heart. They will be sure to carry us to the ship— proud to rescue you, at least; then, what follows must come— you will be safe!"

She put her hand under my arm. Tall as were the bulwarks of the Braave, there was swell enough so to roll the ship as to enable me with every windward sway to see clear to the water where the boat was pulling. With beating hearts we watched. On a sudden the oars ceased to rise and fall; the seamen hung upon them, all to a man, staring at our ship with heads twisted as if they would wring their necks; then, as if impelled by one mind, they let fall their oars to stop the boat's way, all of them gazing with straining eyeballs.

The officer who steered stood erect, peering at us under his hand. The ship, God knows, was plain to their view now— the age and rottenness of her timbers, her patch-work sails, the sickliness of such ghastly and dismal hue as her sides discovered, the ancientness of her guns and swivels; above all, the looks of the crew watching the boat's approach— an array of figures more shocking than were they truly dead, newly unfrocked of their winding sheets and propped up against the rail to horribly counterfeit living seamen.

"Why have they ceased rowing?" cried Imogene, in a voice of bitter distress, and withdrawing her hand from my arm to press it upon her heart.

As she spoke a sudden commotion was perceptible among the men in the boat; the officer shrilly crying out some order, flung himself, as one in a frenzy, in the sternsheets; the larboard oars sparkled, and the desperate strokes of the men made the foam fly in smoke, whilst the starboard hands furiously backed-water to get the boat's head round swiftly, and before you could have counted ten she was being pulled, in a smother of froth, back to the frigate.

I was about to leap to the side and shout to them, but at the instant Vanderdecken turned and looked at me. Then it flashed upon my mind, "If I hail the boat, he and Van Vogelaar, all of them, may imagine I design to inform the frigate of the treasure!"— and the apprehension of what might follow such a suspicion held my feet glued to the deck.

"They have guessed what this ship is!" said Imogene, in a voice full of tears.

I could not speak for the crushing disappointment that caused the heart in me to weigh down, heavy as lead. I had made sure of the officer stepping on board, and of his delivering the girl and me from this accursed ship on hearing my story, and acting as a British naval officer should when his duty as a sailor, or his chivalry as a man, is challenged; in conformity with that noble saying of one of our most valiant admirals, who, on being asked whither he intended to carry his ship—"To Hell!" he answered, "if duty commands!"

Yet one hope lingered, though faintly indeed; the captain of the frigate had imperiously commanded the boat to be manned, as I gathered by his manner of waving away the officer, who had addressed him in a remonstrant manner; would he suffer the return of the boat's crew until they had obeyed his orders?

I watched. Headlong went the boat, smoking through the billows which arched down upon her from the windward, and her oars sparkled like sheet lightning with the panic-terror that plied them; the excitement in the ship was visible enough, discipline had given way to superstitious fear. I could see the captain flourishing his arm with threatening gestures, lieutenants and midshipmen running here and there, but to no purpose. The whole ship's company, about three hundred sailors and marines as I supposed, knew what ship we were, and the very frigate herself as she rolled without way, looked like some startled beast mad for flight, the foam draining from her bows to the slow pitching, as a terrified steed champs his bit into froth, and shudder after shudder going up out of her heart of oak into her sails, as you would have said to watch the tremble and filling and backing of them to the wind.

It was as I had feared, and had the captain of the man-of-war promised to blow his ship and men into a thousand atoms if the boat's crew refused to obey his orders to board us, they would have accepted that fate in preference to the hideous alternative adventure. In a trice the pinnace was alongside the frigate, the crew over the rail, and the boat hoisted. The yards on the main flew round, royals and topgallant-sails were set, studding-sails were run aloft, and before ten minutes had elapsed since the boat had started to board us, the frigate, under a whole cloud of canvas, was heeling and gently rolling and pitching over the brilliant blue sea, with her head north east, her stern dead at us, the gilt there and the windows converting her betwixt her quarters into the appearance of a huge sparkling square of crystal, the glory of which flung upon her wake under it a splendour so great that it was as though she had fouled a sunbeam and was dragging the dazzle after her.

I looked at Imogene; her beautiful eyes had yearned after the ship into the dimness of tears.

"My dear, do not fret,", said I, again calling her my dear, for I still lacked the courage to call her my love; "this experience makes me clear on one point: we shall escape, but not by a ship."

"How, if not by a ship?" she cried, tremulously.

Before I could reply, Vanderdecken looked round upon us, and came our way, at the same time telling Van Vogelaar to swing the topsail-yard and board his main tack.

"'Tis in this fashion," he exclaimed, "that most of the ships I meet serve me. It would be enough to make me deem your countrymen a lily-livered lot if the people of other nations, my own included, did not sheer off before I could explain my needs or learn their motives in desiring to board us. What alarmed the people of that ship, think you, mynheer?"

"Who can tell, sir?" I responded, in as collected a manner as I could contrive. "They might suspect us hardly worth the trouble of capturing—"

He motioned an angry dissent.

"Or," I continued, abashed and speaking hurriedly, "they might have seen something in the appearance of your crew to promise a bloody resistance."

"By the Holy Trinity!" he cried, with the most vehement scorn, "if such a thing were conceivable I should have been glad to confirm it with a broadside!" and his eye came from the frigate that was fast lessening in the distance to his poor show of rust-eaten sakers and green-coated swivels.

It was sure that he had no suspicion of the truth. Not knowing that he and his ship were accurst, how was it possible for him to guess the cause of the behaviour of the ships which fled from him? You would suppose that he and the rest of the crew discovered many signs of satisfaction and delight at this escape from a ship to whose commands they had hauled down their flag; instead, they hung upon the rail watching the frigate shifting her helm for a hasty flight without a murmur, a note of speech; nothing appeared in them but a dull, leaden, Dutch phlegmatic curiosity, if indeed this quality at all possessed them, and when Van Vogelaar sang out to them to brace round the yards on the main, they fell to the job of trimming sail and getting way on the ship with an incredible ghastly indifference in their countenances and in their movements, as they went about their silent labour. Indeed, whatever passions they had seemed to pertain to what was to come; I mean, the heaving in sight of a ship would make them eager for tobacco or for whatever else they needed and she might have; but when the incident, the adventure, the experience— call it what you will— was passed, they turned a black and passionless mind upon it, without the capacity of grief or gladness.

It was an hour after our usual dinner-time, and Prins arrived to tell the captain the meal was on the table. He put Imogene's hand under his arm caressingly, and I followed them with one wistful look at the frigate that was already a toy and far off, melting like a cloud into the junction of sapphire ether and violet ocean. I saw Vanderdecken level a glance at her too, and as we entered the cabin he said, addressing me, but without turning his head, and leading Imogene to the table. "It will be a disappointment to you, mynheer, that your countrymen would not stay to receive you?"

"It was your intention," said I, "that I should go with them?"

"Certainly," he answered, confronting me slowly and eyeing me haughtily; "you are an Englishman, but you are not my prisoner."

"We may be more fortunate next time," I said, coldly.

"'Tis to be hoped!" said Van Vogelaar, who had followed last, speaking in his harshest and sourest tone.

I turned to eye him; but at the moment the parrot, probably animated by our voices, croaked out, hoarsely, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!" on which the fellow broke into a coarse, raw "ha! ha!" yet never stirring a muscle of his storm-hammered face. 'Twould have been like fighting with phantoms and fiends to war in words with these men. I am here, thought I, and there is yonder sweetheart to rescue before I am done with this Death Ship; and with a smile at her earnest, half-startled eyes I seated myself.

Chapter 9

Captain Vanderdecken Walks in His Sleep

THIS INCIDENT of the English frigate satisfied me that it was Vanderdecken's intention to get rid of me at the first opportunity that offered. There could be no doubt that Van Vogelaar had poisoned his mind against me, for, certainly, at the start of this experience of mine, the skipper had treated me with humanity and a sort of heated, lofty courtesy; and since he deemed himself homeward bound, and regarded his vessel as a good sailer, he would not think it necessary to tranship me if his mind had not been acidulated.

I remember when the evening came on that same day we had been chased and abandoned by the Centaur, walking up and down the lee-side of the short poop alone, Arents, who had charge, standing silent near the helmsman. I had worked myself up into great confusion and distress of mind. Dejection had been followed by a fit of nervousness, and when I looked around me at the unmeasurable waste of ocean darkling in the east to the growing shadows there, at the ancient heights of canvas above me, with the dingy rusty red of the western light slipping from the hollow breasts and off the sallow spars, till the edges of the sails melted into a spectral faintness upon the gradual gloom, at the desolate, grassy appearance of the decks, the dull motions, the death-like posture of the three or four men standing here and there forward— I felt as if the curse of the ship had fallen upon my heart and life too— that it was my doom to languish in her till my death— to love and yet be denied fruition— to yearn for our release with the same impotency of desire that governed the navigation of this Death Ship towards the home it was the Will of God she was never to approach.

Yet in any other mood I should have found an exquisite repose for the soul in this interval. There was an aroma as of the tropics in the gentle north-west wind. The ship, faintly impelled, went with a small curl of silver at her bow, as softly along the sea as the reflection of a star slides upon the brow of a smooth swell. The peace of the grave was in the floating tomb, and had my spirits been easy there would have been something of the delicious rapture of intellectual enjoyment that the opium smoker is said to inhale through the stem of his pipe in the indolent watching of this ancient ship, swimming out of daylight into darkness, with the reflected hectic on the larboard beam creeping like vermilioned smoke up her masts and over her sails, and vanishing off the trucks like the trailing skirts of some heavenward flying vision.

On turning from a short contemplation of the sea over the stern, I observed Imogene, at the head of the ladder conducting from the poop to the quarter-deck, watching me. It was the first opportunity which had offered for speaking with her alone since dinner-time.

"Captain Vanderdecken has gone to his cabin to take some rest," said she. "I knew you were above by your tread."

"Ah! you can recognise me by that?"

"Yes, and by the dejection in it, too," she answered, smiling. "There is human feeling in the echo; the footfalls of the others are as meaningless as the sound of wood smitten by wood."

"I am very dull and weary-hearted," said I. "Thanks be to God that you are in this ship to give me hope and warmth."

"And I thank Him, too, for sending you to me," said she.

I took her hand and kissed it; indeed, but for Arents and the helmsman, I should have taken her to my heart with my lips upon hers. "Let us walk a little," said I. "We will step softly. We do not want the captain to surprise us."

I took her hand, and we slowly paced the deck.

"All the afternoon," said I, "I have been considering how we are to escape. There is no man among this ghostly crew who has a friendly eye for me, and so whatever is done must be done by me alone."

"You must trust no one," she cried, quickly; "the plan you light upon must be our secret. There is a demon imprisoned in Vanderdecken; if it should be loosed he might take your life!"

"I don't doubt it. And suppose I went armed, my conflict would be with deathless men! No! no! my plan must be our secret, as you say. But what is it? If but a gleam of light sank its ray into this darkness I should take heart."

She pressed my hand, saying, "The frigate's abandoning of us has depressed you. But an opportunity will surely come."

"Yes, the behaviour of the frigate has depressed me. But why? Because she has made me see that the greatest calamity which could befall us would be our encountering a ship willing to parley with us."

"Is it so?"

"I fear; because Vanderdecken would send me to her, and separate us." Then bethinking me, by observing her head sink, how doleful and unmanly was such reasoning as this, such apprehension of what might be, without regard to the possibility of our salvation lying in the very circumstance or situation I dreaded, I said, heartening my voice, "Imogene, though I have no plan, yet my instincts tell me that our best, perhaps our sole chance of escaping from this ship will be in some necessity arising for her to drop anchor off the coast, for careening, or for procuring provisions and water. Think, my dear, closely of it! We dare not count upon any ship we meet taking such action as will ensure our joint deliverance. No body of seamen, learning what vessel this is, would have anything to do with her. Then, as to escaping from her at sea, even if it were in the power of these weak, unaided arms to hoist one of those boats there over the side unperceived, I know not whether my love for thee, Imogene— whether, O forgive me if I grieve you—"

She stirred her hand, as if to remove it, but I held it the tighter, feeling in the warm and delicate palm the dew that emotion was distilling there.

She was silent, and we came to a stand. She said in a weak and trembling voice: "You do not grieve me. Why should I grieve to be loved?"

"You are beautiful and good and a sailor's child, my dearest," said I.

"And friendless."

"No! bid me say I love thee?"

She bade me whisper, drawing closer to me. I swiftly kissed her cheek that was cold with the evening wind. Great Heaven! what a theatre was this for love-making. To think of the sweetest, in our case the purest, of emotions having its birth in, owing its growth to, the dreaded fabric of the Death Ship! Yet I, that a short while ago was viewing the vessel with despondency and fear and loathing, now for a space found her transfigured! The kiss my darling had permitted, her gentle speech, the caress that lay in her drawing close to me, had kindled a light in my heart, and the lustre was upon the ship; a faint radiance viewless to the sight, but of a power to work such transformation, that instead of a gaunt phosphoric structure sailing through the dusk, there floated under the stars a fabric whose sails might have been of satin, whose cordage might have been formed of golden threads, whose decks might have been fashioned out of pearl!

We were silent for awhile, and then she said, in a coyly-coquettish voice with a happy note of music in it, "What were you saying, Mr. Fenton, when you interrupted yourself?"

"Dear heart!" cried I, "you must call me Geoffrey now."

"What were you saying, Geoffrey?" said she.

"Why," I replied, "that even were it possible for me to secure one of those boats, and launch it unperceived, my love would not suffer me to expose you to the perils of such an adventure."

"My life is in your keeping, Geoffrey," said she. "You need but lead— I will follow. Yet there is one thing you must consider: if we escape to the land, which seems to me the plan that is growing in you—"

I said, "Yes," watching the sparkling of the stars in her eyes, which she had fixed on mine.

"Are not the perils which await us there greater than any the sea can threaten, supposing we abandoned ourselves to its mercy in that little boat yonder? There are many wild beasts on the coast; often in the stillness of the night, when we have been lying at anchor, have I heard the roaring and trumpeting of them. And more dreadful and fearful than leopards, wild elephants and terrible serpents— all of which abound, dear— crocodiles in the rivers and poisonous, tempting fruit and herbs— are the savages, the hideous, unclothed Kaffres, and the barbarous tribes which I have heard my father tell of as occupying the land for leagues and leagues from the Cape to the coast opposite the Island of Madagascar."

A strange shudder ran through her, and letting slip my hand to take my arm— for now that she knew I loved her she passed from her girlish coyness into a bride-like tenderness and freedom, and put a caressing manner into her very walk as she paced at my side— she cried, "Oh, do you know, Geoffrey, if ever a nightmare freezes my heart it is when I dream I am taken captive by one of those black tribes, and carried beyond the mountains to serve as a slave."

There was so much truth in what she said that I could not listen to her without an emotion of distress; since, my own judgment forbidding the escape by the boat— if it were possible for us so to escape— her dread of the land was like the complete shutting out of all self-deliverance. However, I felt that no good could come of a conversation that insensibly led us into disheartening reflections, so I gradually worked our thoughts into another channel, and presently found myself breathing my passion afresh into her ear and hearkening to hurried answers, sighed rather than spoken, so gentle was her utterance. The dusk had thickened into night, the stars swung in glory to the majestical motion of the mastheads, there was a curl of moon in the west like a paring of pearl designed for a further enrichment of the jewelled skies, the phosphor trembled along the decks, and all substantial outlines swam into indistinctness in an atmosphere that seemed formed of fluid indigo. Visible against the luminaries past the quarter-gallery was the figure of the mate; but the helmsman near him was shrouded by the pale haze that floated smoke-like about the binnacle. Flakes of the sea-glow slipped slowly past upon the black welter as though the patches of stardust on high mirrored themselves in this silent ebony water. From time to time a brilliant meteor flashed out upon the night and sailed into a ball of fire that far outshone the glory of the greatest stars. The dew fell lightly; the crystals trembled along the rail and winked to the stirring of the wind with the sharp sparkle of diamonds; and though we were in the cold season, yet the light breeze, having a flush of northing in it, was pure refreshment without touch of cold, so that a calmer, fairer night than this I do not conceive ever descended upon a ship at sea.

I was a young fellow in those days. My passion for the lonely and lovely girl who walked beside me was keen and hot; that she loved me as I loved her I could not be certain, for women are slower, and therefore the surer, in their capacity of loving than men; but that she did love me she made me know by a subtle sweetness of words and behaviour. I was young, I say, of a naturally merry and sanguine heart, and the gladness of my love entered into the night, smoothing out all the alarms and anxieties from my mind, and making me so much myself that for my light spirits I might have been on board some English ship with my sweetheart, swiftly heading for home, instead of treading with her the deck of a vessel accurst of Heaven, and moving through the night, a ghostly shadow palely gleaming with death-fires, on a voyage that was never to have an end.

Thrice the clock struck in the cabin, and whenever the first chime sounded I would start as if we were near land and the sound was the note of a distant cathedral bell; and punctually with the last stroke would come the rasping voice of the parrot, reminding all who heard it of their condition. Occasionally, Arents moved, but never by more than a stride or two; forward all was dead blackness and stillness, the blacker for the unholy, elusive shinings, the stiller for the occasional sighing of the wind, for the thin, shaling sound of waters, gently stemmed, for the moan now and again that floated muffled out of the hold of the ship. Twice Imogene said she must leave me; but I could not bear to part with her. The night was our own, yea, even the ship, in her solitude wrought by the silent figures aft and the tomb-like repose forward, seemed our own; and my darling, being in her heart as loth as I to separate, lingered yet and yet till the silver sickle of the moon had gone down red into the western ocean, and the clock below had struck half-past eleven.

Then she declared it was time, indeed, for her to be gone; should Vanderdecken come on deck and find her with me he might decide to part us effectually by sending me forward, and forbidding me to approach the cabin end; so, finding her growing alarmed, and hearing the quick beating of her heart in her speech, I said, "Good-night," kissing her hand, and then releasing her. She seemed to hurry, stopped and looked behind; I stood watching her; seeing her stop, I held out my arms, and went to her, and she returned to me. With what love did I kiss her upturned brow, and hold her to my heart!

She was yet in my arms, when the great figure of Vanderdecken rose above the ladder, and ere I could release her he was close to us, towering in shadow like some giant spirit. The start I gave caused her to turn; she saw him, and instantly grasping my hand drew me against the bulwark, where we stood waiting for him to speak. Love will give spirit to the pitifullest recreant, and had I been the most craven-hearted of men the obligation to stand between such a sweetheart as Imogene and one whom she feared, though he stood as high as Goliath, would have converted me into a hero. But I was no coward; I could look back to my earliest experiences and feel that with strictest confidence. Yet, spite of the animating presence of Imogene, the great figure standing in front of us chilled, subdued, terrified me. Had he been mortal I could not have felt so; nay, had his demeanour, his posture, been that which intercourse with him had made familiar, I should not have suffered from the superstitious fears which held me motionless, and made my breathing laboured. But there was something new and frightful in the pause he made abreast of us, in the strange and menacing swinging of his arms, in the pose of his head defiantly held back, and in his eyes, which shone with a light that owed nothing to the stars, in the pallid gloom of his face. His gaze seemed to be rivetted on the ocean-line a little abaft of where we stood, and therefore did he appear to confront us. The expression in his face I could not distinguish, but I feebly discerned an aspect of distortion about the brow, and clearly made out that his under-jaw was fallen so as to let his mouth lie open, causing him to resemble one whose soul was convulsed by some hideous vision.

Imogene pressed my hand. I looked at her, and she put her white forefinger to her mouth, saying in accents so faint, that they were more like the whispers one hears in memory than the utterance of human lips: "He is walking in his sleep. In a moment he will act a part. I have seen this thing once before;" and so fairily speaking she drew me lightly towards the deeper gloom near the bulwarks where the mizzen-rigging was.

For some moments he continued standing and gazing seawards, slowly swinging his arms in a way that suggested fierce yet almost controlled distress of mind. He then started to walk, savagely patrolling the deck, sweeping past us so close as to brush us with his coat, then crossing athwartships and madly pacing the other side of the deck, sometimes stopping with a passionate violent suddenness at the binnacle, at the card of which he seemed to stare, then with denunciatory gesture resuming his stormy striding now lengthwise, now crosswise, now swinging his great figure into an abrupt stand to view the sea, first to starboard then to larboard, now standing aloft; and all with airs and gestures as though he shouted orders to the crew and cried aloud to himself, though saving his swift deep breathing that, when he passed us close, sounded like the panting of bellows in angry or impatient hands, no syllable broke from him.

"Some spell is upon him!" I exclaimed. "I see how it is!— he is acting over again the behaviour that renders this ship accurst."

"I saw him like this two years ago; 'twas earlier in the night," whispered Imogene. "He so scared me that I fainted."

That Arents and the helmsman took notice of this strange somnambulistic behaviour in their captain I could not tell: he approached them as often as he approached us, and much of the dumb show of his rage was enacted close to them; but so far as I could judge from the distance at which we stood, their postures were as quiet as though they were lay figures, or passionless and in sensible creatures without understandings to be touched. It was a heart-subduing spectacle beyond words to tell of. Bit by bit his temper grew, till his motions, his frenzied racings about the deck, his savage glarings aloft, his fury when, in this distemper of sleep, his perusal of the compass disappointed him, were those of a maniac. I saw the white froth on his lips as he approached us close to level a flaming glance seawards, and had he been Satan himself I could not have shrunk from him with deeper loathing and colder terror. The insanity of his wrath, as expressed by his gestures— for he was as mute as one bereft of his voice by agony— was rendered the wilder, the more striking and terrible by the contrast of the night, the peace of it, the splendour of the stars, the silence upon the deep rising up to those luminaries like a benedictory hush! For such an infuriated figure as this you needed the theatre of a storm-tossed ship, with the billows boiling all about and over her, and the scenery of a pitchy sky torn by violet lightning and piercing the roaring ebony of the seas with zig-zag fire, and the trumpetings of the tempest deepened by a ceaseless crashing of thunder.

He continued to lash himself into such a fury that, for very pity, misery and horror, you longed to hear him cry out, for the expression would give relief to his soul, strangling and in awful throes. Suddenly he fell upon his knees; his hands were clenched, and he lifted them on high; his face was upturned; and as I watched him menacing the stars with infuriate gestures, I knew that even as he now showed so did he appear when he blasphemously dared his Maker. A soft gust of the midnight air blew with a small moan through the rigging. Vanderdecken let drop his arms, swayed a while as if he would fall, staggered to his feet, and with his hands pressed to his eyes as though indeed some sudden stroke of lightning had smitten him blind, came with wavering gait, in which was still visible a sullen and disordered majesty, to the poop ladder, down which he sightlessly went, steered by the wondrous, unintelligible faculty that governs the sleep-walker.

I pulled off my hat and wiped my forehead, that was damp with sweat.

"Great God!" I cried. "What a sight to behold! What anguish is he made to suffer! How is it that his human form does not scatter, like one broken on a wheel, to the rending of such infernal passions as possess him?"

Imogene was about to answer when on a sudden the first stroke of midnight came floating up in the cathedral-note of the clock.

"Hark!" she exclaimed. "It is twelve! Arents will now be relieved by Van Vogelaar. If that malignant creature spies me here at this hour with you, oh, 'twould be worse through the report he would give than if Vanderdecken himself had surprised us. Good-night, Mr. Fenton!"

She quickly slipped from my grasp, and faded down the ladder. As she vanished I put my hand to my heart to subdue its beating, and whilst I thus stood a moment the last note of the clock vibrated into the stillness on deck and scarcely less clear than had the accursed croak sounded close beside me, rose the parrot's detestable cry:

"Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

Chapter 10

We Sight a Dismasted Wreck.

TERRIBLE as must have been the sufferings of Vanderdecken in the tragic passage through which his spirit had driven in a silent madness of sleep, yet next morning I could perceive no trace of his frenzy in the cold and ghastly hue of his face. I found him on deck when I quitted my melancholy cabin, and he responded to the good morning I gave him with a touch of civility in his haughty, brooding manner that was not a little comforting to me, who had been kept awake till 'twas hard upon daylight by remembrance of the spectacle I had witnessed, and by apprehensions of how a person of his demoniacal passions might serve me if I should give him, or if he should imagine, offence.

The draught— for the breeze was little more— had come more northerly, and the ship, as I might guess by the sun, was heading about north east. There were swathes and circles of gleaming ribbed clouds of gossamer texture all about the sky, and they looked as if some mighty hand had been swinging pearls, as a sower hurls seeds, about the heavens, which had been compacted by the wind into many different figures. They sobered the dazzle where the sun was, so that his wake lay upon the ocean in flashing streaks, instead of the fan-shaped path of glory he would have wrought had he shone in unstained azure.

"There should be promise of a breeze, mynheer," said I, "in the shape and lay of those high clouds and the little dimness you notice to windward."

"Yes," he answered, darting a level glance, under his bushy, corrugated brows, into the North quarter; "were it not for what hath been sighted from aloft, I should be steering with my starboard tacks aboard."

"What may be in sight, sir?" I asked, dreading to hear that it was a ship.

He answered, "The sparkle of a wet, black object was visible from the cross-trees at sunrise. Arents finds it already in the perspective glass from the fore-top. He reports it the hull of an abandoned ship. He may be mistaken. Your sight is keen, sir; we greatly need tobacco; but I would not willingly lose time in running down to a vessel that may be water-logged, and therefore utterly unprofitable."

"You wish me to go aloft and see what I can make of the object, sir?"

"If you will be so good," he answered, with a grave inclination of the head.

"Captain Vanderdecken," said I, "I should be glad to serve you in any direction. I only regret your courtesy will not put me to the proof."

He bowed again and pointed to the telescope to which Arents had fastened a lanyard that he might carry it aloft on his back. I threw the bight over my head and walked forward, guessing now that Vanderdecken's civility was owing to his intending to make me oblige him in this way. Coming abreast of the weather fore-shrouds, I jumped on to an old gun, thence leaped to the rail and swung myself into the rigging, up which, however, I stepped with the utmost caution, the seizings of the ratlines looking very rotten, and the shrouds themselves so grey and worn that they seemed as old as the ship herself, and as if generations of seamen had been employed to do nothing else but squeeze the tar out of them. There was a good-sized lubber's hole through which I easily passed, the barricadoes prohibiting any other entrance into the top; and when I was arrived, I found myself on a great circular platform, green as a field with moss and grass, and surrounded by a breastwork of wood to the height of my armpits, the scantling extraordinarily thick, but answering in age and appearance to the rest of the timber in the ship, with loop-holes for muskets and small cannon.

The foot of the fore-sail having a very large curve, I had a clear view of the sea on both bows under it, and the moment I ran my naked eye from the windward to the leeward side, then I saw, fair betwixt the cathead and the knighthead, the flashing of what was unquestionably the wet side of a dismasted ship rolling to the sun. The regular coming and going of the sparkling was like the discharge of a piece fired and quickly loaded and fired again. I pointed the telescope, and the small magnification aiding my fairly keen sight I distinctly made out the hull of a vessel of between three hundred and four hundred tons, rolling with a very sluggish regularity and shooting out a strong blaze of light whenever the swell gave her streaming sides to the glory. I was pretty sure, by the power and broadness of this darting radiance, that her decks were not submerged, that indeed she would still show an indifferently good height of side above the water, and thereupon threw the glass over my back for the descent, pausing, however, to take a view of the ship from the height I occupied, and wondering not a little, with something of amusement, too, at the extraordinary figure her body offered thus surveyed.

In fact, she was not three times as long as she was broad, and she had the sawn-off look of a wagon down there. After every swimming lift of her head by the swell, the droop of her bows hove a smearing of froth into the large blue folds, that might have passed for an overflowing of soap-suds from a wash-tub; and upon that whiteness all the forward part of her stood out in a sort of jumble of pondrous catheads, curved headboards sinking into a well, out of which forked the massive boltsprit, as the people who fashioned it would have spelt it, with its heavy confusion of gear, yards, stays for the sprit-topmast, and the like. I had a good sight of the sails up here, and perceived they were like the famous stocking of which Dr. Arbuthnot, or Pope, or one of the wits of Queen Anne's reign, wrote; that is, that though they might have been the same cloths which the Braave sheeted home when she set sail from Batavia, yet they had been so patched, so darned, and over and over again so repaired, that to prove they were the same sails would be as nice a piece of metaphysical puzzling as to show that they were not.

Yet the sun flung his light upon their many-hued dinginess, and as I looked up they swung to the heave of the ship with a hard blank staring of their breasts that seemed like the bending of an idiot's gaze at the clusters and wreaths, and curls of pearly vapour over the lee horizon, and though my glance was swift yet even in a breathless moment a confusion was wrought, as though the shining prismatic clouds were starting to sweep like some maelstromic brimming of feathery foam around the ship and founder her in gradual gyrations of blue ether and snow-like mist. Great God! thought I, here, to be sure, is a place to go mad in! To lie upon this dark green platform, to hearken to the spirit-whisperings amid this ancient cordage, to behold these darkened sails sallowly swelling towards some bloody disc of moon soaring out of a belt of sooty vapour, to listen to the voices of the fabric beneath and to the groans of her old age dying in echoes in the caverns of her stretched canvas— by my father's hand! thought I, if I am to save my brain I must put myself nearer to Imogene than this; so I dropped with a loud heart through the lubber's hole, and stepped down the ratlines as fast as my fears of the soundness of the seizings would suffer me to descend.

"What do you see, mynheer?" asked Vanderdecken.

"The hull of a ship, sir," I replied. "She is deep in the water but not too deep for boarding, I believe, for the sunshine finds a wide expanse to blaze out upon when she rolls."

"Well," he exclaimed, "an hour or two can make but very little difference," and he sent his impatient, imperious gaze into the blue to windward, and fell to marching the deck athwartships, opposite the tiller-head, becoming suddenly as heedless of my presence as if I had been a brass swivel on his bulwarks. But I was less likely to be chagrined by his discourtesy than by his attention. It had, indeed, come to my never feeling so easy in my mind as when he perfectly neglected me.

Our bringing of that hull within sight from the deck ran into more than an hour or two. Close-hauled, and the breeze light, the Braave scarce seemed able to push her bows through the water at all. The bubbles and foam-bells slided past as languidly as the tide of ebb in its last quarter wrinkles against the stem of an anchored vessel.

At breakfast nothing else was talked of, and little enough was said about it too. We were, in truth, a silent party. Every look of Imogene caused me to see how the memory of last night worked in her— a night of sweetness and terror— of kisses and caresses, and entrancing revelations— and of an horrific spectacle of enormous and speechless anguish, humanly devilish! On deck, in the early sparkling breeziness of the morning, I had been sensible of no recoil on meeting Vanderdecken; but at table I sat close to him; to his presence the recollection of the foam upon his lip, his fallen jaw, the soul-devouring, feverish restlessness of his enraged movements, his dreadful posture of imprecation, imparted insufferable emphasis; and when I quitted the cabin for the deck, not having spoken half-a-dozen syllables during the meal, the feeling of relief in me was like the removal of a cold hand from my heart.

It was two hours-and-a-half after sighting the hull from the masthead, that it lay visible upon the sea from the deck. Luckily, the breeze had stolen a point or two westerly, which enabled our ship to keep the wreck to leeward of our bowsprit; otherwise, we should never have fetched it by two miles, without a board, and that might have ended in a week's plying to windward. The crew had long got scent of this object ahead, and being as keen for tobacco as was ever a sharp-set stomach for victuals, they were collected in a body on the forecastle, where, in their dull, lifeless, mechanic way they stood staring and waiting. Although those who had the watch on deck had been at various sorts of work when the wreck hove into view over the forecastle rail— such as making spun-yarn, sawing wood, (as I supposed for the cook-room) sail-mending, splicing old running gear, and the like— yet, I remarked they dropped their several jobs just as it suited them, and I never observed that either of the mates reproved them, or that the captain noticed their behaviour; whence I concluded that the Curse had stricken the ship into a kind of little republic, wherein such discipline as was found was owing to a sort of general agreement among the men that such work as had to be done must be done.

I found myself watching the wreck with a keener interest than could ever possess the breasts of the wretched master, mates, or crew. Was any stratagem conceivable to enable me to use that half-sunk vessel as an instrument for escaping with Imogene from this Death Ship?

My dearest girl came to my side whilst my brain was thus busy, and in a soft undertone I told her of what I was thinking. She listened with eager eyes.

"Geoffrey," said she, "you are my captain. Command me, and I will do your bidding."

"My darling," I replied, "if you knew what a miserable, nervous creature this Death Ship has made of me you would guess I was the one to be led, you to direct. But yonder craft will not serve us. No! Better that little boat there than a hull which the crew, ay, and perhaps the very rats have abandoned."

Chapter 11

The Dead Helmsman

I PROVED right in the estimate I had formed from the fore-top of the size of the wreck. Her burthen was within four hundred tons. We gradually drove down to her, and when we were within musket-shot Vanderdecken ordered the topsail to be laid aback. The breeze had freshened, the little surges ran in a pouring of silver-gushing heads, the broad-backed swell rose in brimming violet to our channels, and our ship rolled upon it helpless as an egg-shell. The wallowing of the wreck, too, was like the plashing and struggling of some sentient thing heavily labouring, with such fins or limbs as God had given it, to keep itself afloat.

That there was no lack of water in her was certain; yet, having the appearance of a ship that had been for some days abandoned, at which time it might be supposed that her people would imagine her to be in a sinking condition, it was clear that in a strange accidental way the leak had been healed, possibly by some substance entering and choking it. All three masts were gone within a foot or two of the deck. Her hull was a dark brown, that looked black in the distance against the blue, with the mirror-like flashing from the wet upon it; she had a handsome stern, the quarter-galleries supported by gilt figures, wherefrom ran a broad band of gilt along her sides to the bows. Under her counter there stole out in large, white characters, with every heave of her stern, the words "Prince of Wales," and 'twas startling to see the glare of the letters coming out in a ghastly, staring sort of way from the bald brow of the swell, as it sloped from the gilded stern. Her name proved her English. You could see the masts had been cut away, by the hacked ends of the shrouds snaking out into the hollows and swellings over the side. Her decks were heavily encumbered with what sailors call "raffle"— that is, the muddle of ropes, torn canvas, staves of boats and casks, fragments of deck fittings and so forth, with which the ocean illustrates her violence, and which she will sometimes for weeks, ay, and for months, continue to rock and nurse, and hold intact for very affection of the picture as a symbol of her wrath when vexed by the gale, and of her triumphs over those who daringly penetrate her fortresses to fight her. The confusion to the eye was so great, and rendered so lively and bewildering by the hulk's rolling that, scan her as you would, it was impossible to master details with any sort of rapidity.

Suddenly Imogene, grasping my wrist in her excitement, exclaimed, "See! there is a man there— he seems to steady himself by holding the wheel— look now, Geoffrey, as she rolls her decks at us!"

I instantly saw him. The wheel was in front of the break of the poop, where the cuddy or round-house windows were; and erect at it stood a man, on the starboard side, one hand down clutching a spoke at his waist, and his left arm straight out to a spoke to larboard, which he gripped. Methought he wrestled with the helm, for he swerved as a steersman will who struggles to keep a ship's head steady in a seaway.

"Is he mad?" cried I. "Ay, it must be so! Famine, thirst, mental anguish, may have driven him distracted. Yet, even then, why does not he look towards us? Why, were he actually raving, surely his sight would be courted by our presence."

"Pray God he be not mad," whispered Imogene; "he is certain to be a sailor and an Englishman; and if he be mad, and brought here, how will these men deal with him?"

"Yes; and I say, too, pray God he be not mad!" I cried; "for back me with a hearty English sailor and I believe— yes, I believe I could so match these fellows as to carry the ship, without their having the power to resist me, to any port I chose to steer for to the eastward;" for with her cry of, "He is sure to be a sailor and an Englishman," there swept into my brain the fancy of securing the crew under hatches, and imprisoning Vanderdecken and his mates in their cabins— the least idle, in sober truth, of all the schemes that had presented themselves to me.

"Hush!" she exclaimed, breathlessly, and as she closed her lips to the whisper, Vanderdecken came to us. But not to speak. He stood for some minutes looking at the wreck, with the posture and air of one deeply considering. The seamen forward gazed with a heavy steadfastness, too, some under the sharp of their hands, some with folded arms. I heard no speech among them. Yet though their stillness was that of a swoon, their eyes shone with an eager light, and expectation shaped their pallid, death-like faces into a high and straining look.

There were no signs of life aboard the wreck, saving the figure of the man that swayed at the wheel. I was amazed that he should never glance towards us. Indeed, I am not sure that the whole embodied ghastliness of our Death Ship matched in terror what you found in the sight of that lone creature grasping the wheel, first bringing it a little to right, then heaving it over a little to left, fixedly staring ahead, as though such another Curse as had fallen upon this Dutch ship had come like a blast of lightning upon him, compelling him to go on standing at yonder helm, and vainly striving to steer the wreck— as terribly corpse-like as any man among us, and as shockingly vital too!

It struck my English love of briskness as strange that Vanderdecken should not promptly order the boat over, or give orders that should have reference to the abandoned hull; yet I could not help thinking that his Holland blood spoke in this pause, and that there intermingled with the trance-like condition that was habitual in him, the phlegmatic instincts of his nation— that gradual walking to a decision, which in Scotland is termed "takin' a thocht."

After a while he said to me: "Mynheer, the wreck hath an English name; she will be of your country therefore. May I beg of you to take my trumpet and hail that person standing at the wheel?"

"I shall not need your trumpet, sir," said I, at once climbing upon the rail and thinking to myself that 'twas odd if there was not wanted a trumpet with a voice as thunderous as the crack o' doom to bring that silent, forward-staring man's face round to his shoulder.

"Wreck ahoy!" I bawled, with my hand to my cheek, and the wind took the echo of my voice clear as a bell to the hulk.

There was not a stir in the helmsman beyond that dreary monotonous waving of his figure in his struggle to steady the wheel. I watched the foamless leaning of the wreck into the hollow, bringing her decks aslant to us, and the trailing and corkscrewing of the black gear that was washing over the side, and the sparkling of the broken glass of a skylight contrasting with the dead black of an half-dozen of carronades, and the squattering of the dead-eyes of her channels upon the blue volume of sea like the ebony heads of a row of negroes drowning; and then, wash! over she rolled to larboard, bringing a streak of greenish copper sheathing out of the white water which the fierce drainings from her side churned up, with a mighty flashing of sunlight off her streaming side, and a sharp lifting of the dark shrouds and stays and running ropes out of the seething welter, making her appear as though scores of sea-snakes had their fangs in her timbers, and that 'twas the very agony of their teeth, and the poison, which caused her to roll from them.

I shouted again, and yet again; then dismounted.

"He is deaf!" said Vanderdecken.

"He is dead!" said I, for this was forced upon me, spite of the erect and life-like posture of the figure, and what resembled the straining of his arms to steady the wheel.

Chapter 12

The Dutch Sailors Board the Wreck.

"GET THE boat over," cried Vanderdecken, turning to Van Vogelaar, "and go and inspect the wreck. Look to the man first: Heer Fenton declares him dead; and particularly observe if there be aught that hath life in it aboard."

On this, Van Vogelaar went forward, calling about him. In a few minutes a white-faced seaman, with yellow beard trembling to the wind, and his eyes looking like a rat's with the white lashes and pink retinas, leisurely climbed aloft with a line in his hand, and swinging himself on to the main-yard, slided out upon the horses to the extremity, or yard-arm as it is termed, which he bestrode as a jockey a steed; and then hauled up the line, to the end of which was hitched a tackle. This tackle he made fast to the yard-arm, and by it, with the help of steadying-ropes or guys, some of the crew on deck hoisted the little boat out of the bigger one and lowered it away into the water alongside.

I watched this business with a sailor's interest, wondering that so great a ship as this— great, that is, for the age to which she belonged— should carry no more than two boats, stowed one in the other after the fashion of the north-country coastmen. Nor was I less impressed by the aged appearance of the boat when she was afloat. She had the look of a slug with her horns, only that those continuations of her gunnel rail projected abaft as well as from the bows. And when Van Vogelaar and three of the crew entered her, then, what with the faded red of her inner skin, the wide, red blades of the short oars, the soulless movements of the seamen, the hue of their faces, the feverish unnatural shining of their eyes like sunshine showing through a cairngorm stone, their dried and corded hands, which wrapped the handles of their oars like rugged parchment— the little but marvellous picture acted as by the waving of a magic wand, forcing time back by a century and a half and driving shudders through the frame of a beholder with a sight whose actuality made it a hundredfold more startling and fearful than had it been a vision as unsubstantial as the Death Ship herself is mistakenly supposed to be.

The wreck being within hailing distance, the boat was soon alongside her. The heavy rolling of the hull, and the sharp rise and fall of the boat, would have made any human sailor mightily wary in his boarding of the vessel, but if ever there was an endevilled wretch among the Phantom's horrible crew, Van Vogelaar was he. The fiend in him stayed at nothing. The instant the boat had closed the wreck the fellow leaped, and he was on deck and walking towards the figure at the wheel, whilst the other— that is to say, two of them— were waiting for the hull to swing down for them to follow.

The mate went up to the figure, and seemed to address him; then, receiving no reply, he felt his face, touched his hands, and pulled to get that amazing grip relaxed, but to no purpose. The others now joining him, they all stared into the figure's face; one lifting an eyelid and peering into the eye, another putting his ear to the figure's mouth. Van Vogelaar then came to the side, and shouted in his harsh and rusty voice that it was a dead man. Vanderdecken imperiously waved his hand, and cried, "Fall to exploring her!" and motioned significantly to the sky, as if he would have the mate misgive the weather, though there was no change in the aspect of the pearly wreaths and glistening beds of vapour, and the draught was still a gentle breeze.

"Dead!" I whispered to Imogene; "yet I feared it!"

"Will he have been English, think you, Geoffrey?" she said.

"Yes!" cried I, feeling a heat rising to my cheeks, "name me a foreigner that would so gloriously have confessed his nation! English?— ay, a thousand times over! For what does that posture indicate, that stern holding to his place, that dutiful grip of his iron hands? What but those qualities which give the British sailor the dominion of the deep, and which rank him foremost among the noblest spirits the world has ever seen? He has died at his post— one of thousands who have as heroically perished."

I noticed Vanderdecken looking at the body. There was deep thought in his imperious, menacing expression, with a shadow of misery that his fierce and glittering eyes did but appear to coarsen and harshen the gloom of, and I wondered to myself if ever moments came when perception of his condition was permitted to him, for it truly appeared as though there were a hint of some such thing in him now whilst he gazed at the convulsive figure at the wheel, as if— Jesus have mercy upon him!— the sight of the dead filled his own deadly flesh with poignant and enraging yearnings, the meanings of which his unholy vitality was unable to interpret.

When Van Vogelaar had spent about half-an-hour on the wreck, he and the others dropped over the side into the boat and made for us. We had scarce shifted our position, for the courses being hauled up and the topgallant-sails lowered, there was too little sail abroad for the weak wind then blowing to give us drift, and the swell that drove us towards the wreck would also drive the wreck from us. The mate came over the side, and stepping up to the captain, said, "She is an English ship, freighted with English manufacture; I make out bales of blanket, clothing and stores, which I imagine to have been designed for troops.

"What water is in her?"

"Seven and a quarter feet by her own rod."

"Her pump?"

"She hath two— both shattered and useless."

"Does she continue to fill?"

"I believe not, sir; I would not swear to it; she rolls briskly, but," said he, sending his evil glance at the wreck, "it does not appear that she is sunk deeper since we first made her out."

"Yonder figure at the wheel is dead you say?"

"As truly dead a Briton as ever fell to a Dutchman's broadside." I exchanged a swift look with Imogene. "His eyes are glassy; his fingers clasp the spokes like hooks of steel. He must have died on a sudden— perhaps from lightning— from disease of some inward organ— or from fear." And there was the malice of the devil in the sneer that curled his ugly mouth as he spoke, taking me in with a roll of his sinister eyes.

I watched him coldly. Remonstrance or temper would have been as idle with this man and his mates as pity to that unrecking heart of oak out there.

"What is to be come at?" demanded Vanderdecken, with passionate abruptness.

The other answered quickly, holding up one forefinger after another in a computative tallying way whilst he spoke, "The half-deck is free of water, and there I find flour, vinegar, treacle, tierces of beef, some barrels of pork, and five cases of this— which hath the smell of tobacco, and is no doubt that plant." And he pulled out of his pocket a stick of tobacco, such as is taken in cases to sea to be sold to the crews.

Vanderdecken smelt it. "'Tis undeniably tobacco," said he, "but how used?" His eye met mine; I took the hint, and said: "To be chewed, it is bitten; to be smoked, it has to be flaked with a knife— thus, mynheer." And I imitated the action of cutting it.

Some of the crew had collected on the quarter-deck to hear the mate's report, and seeing the tobacco in the captain's hand and observing my gestures, one of them cried out that if it was like the tobacco the Englishman had shown them how to use 'twas rare smoking! Whether Vanderdecken had heard of my visit to the forecastle I do not know: he seemed not to hear the sailor's exclamation, saying to me, "Yes, mynheer, I see the convenience of such tablets; they hold much and are easily flaked." And then, sweeping the sea and skies with his eyes, he cried: "Get the other boat over: take a working party in her and leave them aboard to break out the cargo. The smaller boat will tow her to and fro. Arents, you will have charge of the working party— you, Van Vogelaar, will bring off the goods and superintend the transhipments. Away, now! There is stuff enough there to fill the hollowest cheek with fat and to sweeten the howl of a gale into melody. Away, then!"

There was excitement in his words, but none in his rich and thunderous voice, nor in his manner; and though there seemed a sort of bustle in the way the men went to work to hoist out the large boat, it was the very ghost of hurry, as unlike the hearty leaping of sailors, fired with expectation, as are the twitchings of electrified muscles, to the motions of hale limbs controlled by healthy intellect.

Yet, to a mariner, what could surpass the interest of such a scene? As I leaned against the bulwark with Imogene, watching the little boat towing the big one over the swell, with now a lifting that put the leaning, toiling figures of the rowers clear against the delicate, vaporous film over the sky at the horizon— the red blades of the oars glistening like rubies as they flashed out of the water, and the white heads of the little surges which wrinkled the liquid folds melting all about the boats into creaming silver, radiant with salt rainbows and prismatic glories— and now a sinking that plunged them out of sight in a hollow, I said to my dear one, "Here is a sight I would not have missed for a quintal of the silver below. I am actually witnessing the manner in which this doomed vessel feeds and clothes herself, and how her crew replenish their stores and provide against decay and diminution. What man would credit this thing? Who would believe that the Curse which pronounced this ship imperishable should also hold her upon the verge of what is natural, sentencing her to a hideous immortality, and at the same time compelling the crew to labour as if her and their life was the same as that of other crews, in other ships."

"If they knew their doom they would not toil," she answered; "they would seek death by famine or thirst, or end their horrible lot by sinking the ship and drowning with her."

"How far away from the dread reality is the world's imagination of this ship, and the situation of her people!" cried I. "She has been pictured as rising out of the waves, as sailing among the clouds, as being perpetually attended by heavy black storms, and thunder claps and blasts of lightning! Here is the reality— as sheer a piece of prose at first sight as any salvage job, but holding in the very heart of its simplicity so mighty, so complicate, so unparalleled a wonder, that even when I speak to you about it, Imogene, and suffer my mind to dwell upon it, my mind grows numb with a dread that reason has quitted her throne and left me fit only for a madhouse!

"You tremble!" she whispered, softly; "nay, you think too closely of what you are passing through. Let your knowledge that this experience is real rob it of its terror. Are we not surrounded with wonders which too much thought will make affrighting? That glorious sun; what feeds his flaming disk? Why should the moon shine like crystal when her soil perchance is like that of our own world, which also gleams as silver does though it is mere dust and mould and unreflecting ashes? Think of the miracles we are to ourselves and to one another!"

She pressed my hand and pleaded, reproved and smiled upon me with her eyes. Was she some angelic spirit that had lighted by chance on this Death Ship, and held it company for very pity of the misery and hopelessness of the sailor's doom? But there was a human passion and tenderness in her face that would have been weakness in a glorified spirit. Oh, indeed, she was flesh and blood as I was, with warm lips for kissing, and breasts of cream as a pillow for love, and golden hair too aromatic for phantasy.

Chapter 13

The Dutchmen Obtain Refreshments.

ABOVE AN HOUR passed before the big boat, deeply laden, was towed by the little one from the wreck. Of what a proportion of her freight was composed I could not tell, much of it being in parcels and casks. They had made sure of the tobacco by bringing away, at once, all that they could find. I observed a number of hams stitched up in canvas, and some sacks of potatoes, two bags of which were lost by the bottoms bursting whilst they were being hoisted, on which Van Vogelaar broke into several terrible oaths in Dutch, though 'twas like a dramatic rehearsal of a ranting and bullying scene, for Vanderdecken took no notice and the men went on hoisting and lowering away in the old phlegmatic mechanic fashion as though they were deaf. There were likewise other kinds of provisions of which I need not tease you with the particulars. I believe that all the loading of the boat— in this her first trip, I mean— consisted of articles of food; for some of the parcels which puzzled me proved to contain cheeses and the others might therefore as well represent stores of a like kind.

"Is it their custom to bring away the provisions first," I asked Imogene.

"As a rule," she answered, "they take whatever comes to hand, that is, if the articles be such as may be of use. What they chiefly secure as soon as possible is tobacco and spirits; then provisions and clothing; and then any treasure they may come across, and afterwards any portion of the cargo they may fancy that is light to handle, such as silks, pottery, and so forth."

"But they cannot take very much," said I, "or a few meetings of this kind would sink their ship for them with overloading."

"There are many of us," she replied, "and the provisions they bring away do not last very long. The pottery they use and it is soon broken. Silk and such materials as they bring are light; and then, my dear, they do not meet wrecks every day, nor of the wrecks they meet may you count one in five that yields enough to sink this ship by a foot."

"I am heartily sorry," said I, "that they should find so much to eat aboard yonder hulk. With so goodly a store of provisions, Vanderdecken will not require to run into the land to shoot; and until this ship brings up I see no chance for ourselves."

She sighed and looked sadly into the water, insomuch that she suggested an emotion of hopelessness; but in an instant she flashed out of her expression of melancholy weariness into a smile and gave me the deep perfections of her violet eyes to look into, as if she knew their power over me and shaped their shining influence for my comfort and courage.

When the boat was discharged of her freight, the men's dinner was passed over the side for the fellows to eat in snatches, working the while to save time. The wind remained weak and quiet, but it was inevitable that the hamper we showed aloft should give us a drift beyond the send of the swell; and to remedy this Vanderdecken clewed up his topsails and took in all his canvas, leaving his ship to tumble under bare poles, and by this means he rendered the drift of the vessel down upon the wreck extremely sluggish and scarcely perceptible.

All day long the big boat was towed to and fro, making many journeys and regularly putting off from the wreck very deep with freight. Vanderdecken ate his dinner on deck. You would have found it hard to reconcile any theory of common human passions such as cupidity, rapacity and the like, with his bloodless face and grave-yard aspect; and yet it was impossible to mistake the stirring of the true Dutch instincts of the patient but resolved greed in the air he carried whilst he waited for the return of the boat, in his frequent levelling of the telescope at the wreck as one who doubted his people and kept a sharp eye on them, in the eagerness his posture indicated as he hung over the rail watching the stuff as it was handed up or swayed by yard-arm tackles over the side, and the fierce peremptoriness of the questions he put to Van Vogelaar as to what he had there, how much more remained, and so on, though nothing that the mate answered, satisfactory as must have been the account he gave, softened the captain's habitual savageness or in any degree humanised him. Of the majesty of his deportment I have spoken; likewise of the thrilling richness of his voice, the piercing fire of his fine eyes and of his mien and bearing, so haughtily stately in all respects as to make one think of him, after a Pagan fashion, as of some god fallen from his high estate; but for all that he was a Dutchman at heart, dead-alive as he was; as true to his Holland extraction in 1796 as he had been an hundred and fifty years earlier, when he was trading to Batavia and nimbly getting money, and saving it, too, with as sure a hand as was ever swung in Amsterdam.

The threads and lines and beds of vapour extending all over the sky served to reverberate the glory of the sunset, as the crags and peaks of mountains fling onwards the echoes of the thunder-clap. In the east it was all jasper and sapphire, reds and greens, and a lovely clear blue slowly burning to a carnelian in the zenith, where the effulgence lay in a pool of deep red with a haze of light like fine rain floating down upon it half white, half of silver; then followed a jacinthine hue, a lustrous red most daintily delicate, with streaks of clear green like the beryl, till the eye came to the west, where the sun, vastly enlarged by refraction, hung in enormous bulk of golden fiery magnificence amid half-curtained pavilions of living splendour, where 'twas like looking at some newly-wrought fairy world robed in the shinings of the Heaven of Christ to see the lakes and lagoons of amber purple and yellow, the seas of molten gold, the starry flamings in the chrysolite brows of vapour, and the sky fading out north and south in lights and tints as fair as the reflections in the wet pearly interior of a sea-shell gaping on a beach towards the setting sun. The small swell traversing the great red light that was upon the sea put lines of flowing glory under the tapestries of that sunset, and the appearance was that of an eager shouldering of the effulgence into the grey of the south quarter, as though old Neptune sought to honourably distribute the glory all around, and render the western sea-board ambient.

Then it was, while the lower limb of the luminary yet sipped from the horizon the gold of his own showering, that the picture of the wreck, and the Death Ship heaving pale and stripped of her canvas, became the wonder that my memory must for ever find it. How steadfastly the dead seaman at the wheel kept watch! The quieted sea now scarce stirred the rudder, and the occasional light movements of the figure seemed like starts in him, motions of surprise at the Dutchmen's antlike pertinaciousness in their stripping of the hull.

And they? In that mani-coloured western blaze they partook more of the character of corpses, in those faces of theirs, which stared our way or glimmered for a breath or two over the bulwarks, than ever I had found visible in them by moonlight or lamplight or the chilling dimness of a stormy dawn. The sun vanished and the pale grey of evening stole like a curtain drawn by spirit-hands out of the eastern sea and over the waning glories of the skies, with a star or two glittering in its skirts; and the wind from the north blew with a sudden weight and a long moaning, making the sea whence it came ashen with gushings of foam which ran into a colour of thin blood on passing the confines of the western reflection. Vanderdecken, seizing his trumpet, sent a loud command through it to the wreck; but the twilight was a mere windy glimmering under the stars, which shone very brightly among the high small clouds by the time the boats had shoved clear of the hull and were heading for us, and the night had come down dark, spite of the stars and the silver paring of moon, ere the last fragment of the freight of rope, sail, and raffle from the wreck had been passed over the side from the big boat.

It grew into a wild scene then: the light of the lantern-candles dimly throwing out the bleached faces and dark figures of the seamen as they hoisted the boats and stowed them one inside the other, the ship rolling on the swell that had again risen very suddenly as though some mighty hand were striving to press it down and so forcing the fluid surface into larger volumes, the heads of the seas frothing spectrally as they coursed arching and splashing out of the further darkness, the eastering slip of moon sliding like a sheering scythe among the networks of the shrouds and gear, and nothing to be heard but the angry sobbing of waters beating themselves into hissing foam against the ship's side, and the multitudinous crying, as of a distant but piercing chorussing of many women and boys, of the freshening wind flying damp through the rigging.

It had been a busy day, it was still a busy time; but never throughout the hours, if I save the occasional cursing of the mate, the captain's few questions, his command trumpetted to the wreck, my talk with Imogene, had human voice been heard. It was not so noticeable a thing, this silence of the ghostly crew, in the broad blaze of sunshine and amid an exhibition of labour that was like sound to the eye, as now, in the darkness, with the wind freshening, sail to be made and much to be done— much of the kind that forces merchant seamen into singing out and bawling as they drag and pull and jump aloft. The wreck was a mere lump of blackness tumbling out to windward upon the dusky frothing welter, and I thought of the dead sentinel at the helm. What in the name of the saints was there in that figure to put into the sea the enormous solitude I found in the vast surface glimmering to where it melted in shadow against the low stars? What was there in that poor corpse to fling a bleakness into the night wind, to draw an echo as chilling as a madman's cry out of the gusty moaning aloft, to sadden the very star-beams into dull and spectral twinklings? The canvas shook as the silent sailors sheeted it home and voicelessly mastheaded the yards. At three bells in the first watch the Death Ship had been wore to bring her starboard tacks aboard, and under all the canvas she had she was leaning before a small gale with her head to the southward and westward, her sides and decks alive with the twistings of the mystic fires which darkness kindled in her ancient timbers, and her round weather-bow driving the rude black surge back into boiling whiteness.

Chapter 14

My Life Is Attempted

HEADING OUT to sea afresh! Once again pointing the ship's beak for the solitude of the ocean, and starting as it might be on a new struggle that was to end in storm and defeat, in the heavy belabouring of the groaning structure by giant surges, and in a sickening helpless drift of God alone knew how many leagues, ere the sky brightened into blueness once more!

Never had I so strongly felt the horror and misery of the fate which Vanderdecken's hellish impiety had brought down upon his ship and her company of mariners as now, when I saw the yards braced up on the starboard tack, and the vessel laid with her head to the south and west. The fresh wind seemed to shriek the word "Forever!" in her rigging, and the echo was drowned in the wild sobbing sounds that rose out of each long, yearning wash of the sea along her dimly shining bends.

How was I to escape? How deliver Imogene?

I was a sailor, and whilst the ocean found me business, whilst it defined the periods of its detentions of me, I loved it! The freedom of it was dear to my heart; it was my home; it was a glass in which was mirrored the image of the Creator I worshipped. But the prospect of continuously sailing upon it in the Death Ship, of fighting its subtle winds and furious storms to no purpose, converted it into a melancholy waste— a liquid plain of desolation— a mere Hell of waters upon whose sandy floor Hope, with tempest-torn wings, would speedily lie drowned, whilst its surface should grow maddening with the reflected icy sparkling of that Starry Crux, which shone but as a symbol of despair when the eye sought it from these accursed decks and beheld the quick light of its jewels trembling over the yard-arms of the Death Ship.

Shortly after midnight the wind freshened, and it came on to blow with some weight. I had been in my cabin an hour, lying there broad awake, being rendered extraordinarily uneasy by my thoughts. The sea had grown hollow, and the ship plunged quickly and sharply with a heavy thunderous noise of spurned and foaming waters all about her. It was sheer misery lying intensely wakeful in that desolate cabin, that would have been as pitchy black as any ancient castle dungeon but for the glimmering lights, which were so much more terrible than the profoundest shade of blackness could be, that had there been any hole in the ship where the phosphor did not glow, I would cheerfully have carried my bed to it, ay, even if it had been in the bottom of the fore-peak or in the thickest of the midnight of the hold. The rats squeaked, the bulkheads and ceilings seemed alive with crawling glow-worms, groans as of dying, cries as of wounded men sounded out of the interior in which lay stowed the pepper, mace, spices and other Indian commodities of a freight that was hard upon an hundred and fifty years old!

I suspected from the motions of the ship and the hollow, muffled roarings outside, that a gale of wind was brewing, and I resolved to go on deck and take a look at the weather since I could not sleep, for if the wind was north west it would give us such a further drift to the eastwards as would set the African coast at a fearful distance for our round-bowed sea-wagon to come at. On the other hand, the gale might have veered to a quarter favourable to heading for Cape Agulhas. Should this happen, how would the Curse operate? Would the ship be permitted to near the Cape before being blown back? But I suspected the operation of no fixed laws in this doom. To suffer the Death Ship to draw close, to fill the minds of the crew with triumphant assurance of their weathering the Cape of Storms, would be a mere hideous tantalising of them that could surely form no part of the sentence which obliterated from their minds the recollection of past failures. For, let the readers of my narrative bear this steadfastly in view: that if Vanderdecken and his men knew of a surety that they were never to pass the cape into the South Atlantic Ocean, then, as beings capable of thinking and acting, they would long ago have desisted from the attempt and sought rest— if they could not procure death for themselves— haply in that same island of Java from which they had sailed.

I crawled into my clothes by feeling for them, and groped my way on to the poop. The sky was black with low-flying cloud, from the speeding rims of which a star would now and again glance, like the flash of a filibuster's fusil from the dark shrubbery of a mountain slope. But there was so much roaring spume and froth all about the ship, that a dim radiance as of twilight hung in the air, and I could see to as high as the topmast heads.

I stepped at once to the binnacle without noticing who had the watch and found the ship's head south-east by south. I could not suppose the ancient magnet showed the quarters accurately, but, allowing for a westerly variation of thirty degrees, the indication came near enough to satisfy me that the wind was as it had been ever since the night I first entered this ship— right in our teeth for the passage of the Cape, and that though we might be sluggishly washing through it close-hauled, we were also driving away broadside on, making a clean beam course for the heart of the mighty Southern Ocean.

This vexed and harassed me to the soul, and occasioned in me so lively a sympathy with the rage that adverse gales had kindled in Vanderdecken, that had he contented himself with merely damning the weather instead of flying in the face of the Most High and behaving like some foul fiend, I should have deeply pitied him and considered his case the hardest ever heard of. The main-yard was lowered and a row of men were silently knotting the reef-points. The topgallant-sails had been handed, reefs tied in the topsails, and the vessel looked prepared for foul weather.

But though the wind blew smartly, with weight in its gusts and plenty of piping and screaming and whistling of it aloft, there was no marked storminess of aspect in the heavens, sombre and sullen as was the shadow that ringed the sea-line, and fiercely as flew the black clouds out of it in the north west; and with this appearance I essayed to console myself as I stood near the mizzen-shrouds gazing about me.

Seeing a figure standing near the larboard-shrouds, I stepped over and found it to be Van Vogelaar. My direct approach made some sort of accost a formal necessity, but I little loved to speak with this man, whom I considered as wicked a rascal as ever went to sea.

"These nor'-westers are evil winds, mynheer," said I, "and in this sea they appear to have the vitality of easterly gales in England. What is the weather to be like? For my part, I think we shall find a quieter atmosphere before dawn."

He was some time in answering, feigning to watch the men reefing the mainsail, though by the light of the white water I could catch the gleam of his eyes fixed upon me askant.

"What brings you on deck at this hour?" said he, in his rasping, surly voice.

I answered, quietly, that feeling wakeful and hearing the wind, I rose to view the weather for myself.

"A sailor is supposed to rest the better for the rocking of seas and the crying of wind," said he, with a mocking, contemptuous tone in his accents. "That saying is intended no doubt for the Dutch seamen; the English mariner nobly shines as a sailor in his own records, but you will admit, sir, that he is never so happy as when he is ashore."

"Sir," I replied, suppressing my rising temper with a very heavy effort, "I fear you must have suffered somewhat at the hands of the English sailor that you should never let slip a chance to discharge your venom at him. I am English, and a sailor, too, and I should be pleased to witness some better illustrations of Dutch courage than the insults you offer to a man who stands defenceless among you, and must be beholden, therefore, wholly to your courtesy."

He said, in a sneering, scornful voice, "Our courtesy! A member of a dastardly crew that would have assassinated me and my men with their small arms, hath a great claim upon our courtesy!"

"I was aft, and ignorant of the intentions of the men when that thing was done," said I, resolved not to be betrayed into heat, let the struggle to keep calm cost what it would.

To this he made no reply, then after a pause, said in a mumbling voice as if he would, and yet would not have me hear him, "I brought a curse into the ship when I handed you over the side; the devil craved for ye, and I should have let you sink into his maws. By the holy sepulchre, there are many in Amsterdam who would have me keel-hauled did they know this hand had saved the life of an Englishman!" And he tossed up his right hand with a vehement gesture of rage.

I was a stoutly-built fellow, full of living and healthy muscle, and I do solemnly affirm that it would not have cost me one instant of quicker breathing to have tossed this brutal and insulting anatomy over the rail. But it was not only that I feared any exhibition of temper in me might end in my murder; I felt that in the person of this ugly and malignant mate I should be dealing with a sentence that forbade his destruction, that must preserve him from injury, and that rendered him as superior to human vengeance as if his body had been lifeless. And what were his insults but a kind of posthumous scorn, as idle and contemptible as that inscription upon a dead Dutchman's grave in Rotterdam, in which the poor Holland corpse after eighty years of decay goes on telling the world that in his opinion Britons are poor creatures?

I held my peace, and Van Vogelaar went to the break of the poop, whence he could better see what the men were doing upon the main-yard. The enmity of this man made me feel very unhappy. I was never sure what mischief he meditated, and the sense of my helplessness, the idleness of any resolution I might form in the face of the supernatural life that encompassed me, made the flying midnight seem inexpressibly dreary and dismal, and the white foam of the sea carrying the eye to the ebony cloud-girdle that belted the horizon, suggested distances so prodigious that the heart sank to the sight of them, as to thoughts of eternity.

I was running my gaze slowly over the weather sea-board, whence came the endless procession of ridged billows like incalculable hosts of black-mailed warriors, with white plumes flying and steam from the nostrils of their steeds boiling and pouring before them, and phosphoric lights upon them like the shining points of couched spears, when methought a dim pallid shadow, standing just under a star that was floating a moment betwixt two flying shores of cloud, was a ship; and the better to see, I sprang on to the rail about abreast of the helmsman, for my support catching hold of some stout rope that ran transversely aft out of the darkness amidships. What gear it was I never stopped to consider, but gripping it with my left hand swayed to it erect upon the rail, whilst with my right I sheltered my eyes against the smarting rain of spray, and stared at what I guessed to be a sail. I have said that the creaming and foaming of the waters flung from the vessel's sides and bows made a light in the air, and the sphere of my sight included a space of the poop-deck to right and left of me, albeit my gaze was fastened upon the distant shadow.

All on a sudden the end of the rope I grasped was thrown off the pin to which it was belayed and I fell overboard. 'Twas instantaneous! And so marvellously swift is thought that I recollect even during that lightning-like plunge thinking how icy-cold the sea would be, and how deep my dive from the great height of the poop-rail. But instead of striking the water, the weight of me swung my body into the mizzen-channels by the rope my left hand desperately gripped. I fell almost softly against a shroud coming down to a great dead-eye there and dropped in a sitting posture in the channel itself which to be sure was a wide platform to windward and therefore lifted very clear of the sea, spite of the ship's weather rolls. My heart beat quickly, but I was safe: yet a moment after I had liked to have perished, indeed, for the rope I mechanically grasped was all at once torn from my fingers with so savage a drag from some hand on deck that nothing but the pitting of my knee against a dead-eye preserved me from being tweaked into the hissing caldron beneath. I could see the rope plain enough as it was tautened, through the pallid atmosphere and against the winking of the stars sliding from one wing of vapour to another, and perceived that it was the main-brace, the lowering of the yard or reefing the sail having brought it within reach of my arm. Then, with this, there grew in me a consciousness of my having noticed a figure glide by me whilst I stood on the rail; and, putting these things together, I guessed that Van Vogelaar, having observed my posture, had sneaked aft to where the main-brace— that was formed of a pendant and whip— was made fast and had let go of it, never doubting that, as I leaned against it, so, by his whipping the end off the pin it would let me fall overboard!

I was terribly enraged by this cowardly attempt upon my life and was for climbing inboard at once and manhandling him, ghost or no ghost; then changed my mind and stayed a bit in the channel considering what I should do. Thin veins of fire crawled upon this aged platform as upon all other parts of the ship; but the shrouds coming very thick with leather chafing-gear to the dead-eyes made such a jumble of black shapes, that I was very sure Van Vogelaar could not see me if he should take it into his head to peer down over the rail.

After casting about in my mind, the determination I arrived at was to treat my tumble from the rail as an accident, for I very honestly believed this: that if I should complain to Vanderdecken of his mate's murderous intention, I would not only harden the deadly malignity of that ghastly ruffian's hatred of me, insomuch, that it might come to his stabbing me in my sleep, but it might end in putting such fancies into the captain's head as should make him desire my destruction, and arrange with his horrid lieutenant to procure it. Indeed, I had only to think of Amboyna and the brutal character of the Dutch of those times, and remember that Vanderdecken and his men belonged to that age, and would therefore have the savagery which one hundred and fifty years of civilization, arts, and letters have somewhat abated in the Hollanders, to determine me to move with very great wariness in this matter.

But I had been dreadfully near to death, and could not speedily recollect myself. The white heads of the surges leaped, boiled and snapped under the channels, like wolves thirsting for my blood; and the crying of the wind among the shrouds, in whose shadows I sat, and the sounds it made as it coursed through the dark night and split shrilly upon the ropes and spars high up in the dusk, ran echoes into those raving waters below, which made them as much wild beasts to the ear as they looked to the eye.

But little good could come of my sitting and brooding in that mizzen-channel; so, being in no mood to meet the villain, Van Vogelaar, I very cautiously rose, and with the practised hand of a sailor crawled along the lap of the covering-board, holding by the rail but keeping my head out of sight, and reached the main-chains, whence I dropped on to the deck unseen among the tangled thickness of the shrouds, and slided, as stilly as the ghostliest man among that ghastly crew could tread, to my cabin.

Chapter 15

My Sweetheart's Joy.

ONCE ASLEEP I slept heavily, and it was twenty minutes past the breakfast hour by the time I was ready to leave the crazy and groaning dungeon that served me for a bedroom.

I entered the cabin, but had scarcely made two steps when there sounded a loud cry in a girl's voice, half of terror, half of joy; a shriek so startling for the passions it expressed that it brought me to a dead stand. It was Imogene. I saw her jump from her seat, make a gesture with her arms as though she would fly to me, then bring both hands violently to her heart with a loud hysterical ha! ha! as if she could only find breath in some such unnatural note of laughter, whilst she stood staring at me with straining eyes that filled her violet beauty with a light like that of madness.

The clock struck the half-hour as she cried, and the echo of her voice and the deep, humming vibration of the bell were followed by the parrot's diabolical croak:

"Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

"God in Heaven!" exclaimed Vanderdecken, in a tone deep with amazement, "I thought that man was drowned!"

It was a picture of consternation that I should not have dreamt to expect in men who had outlived life and in whom you would think of seeking qualities and emotions outside those which were necessary to the execution of their sentence. Vanderdecken, leaning forward at the head of the table upon his great hands, the fingers of which were stretched out, glared at me with a frown of astonishment. Prins— whose attendance upon me in my cabin had long been limited to his placing a bucket of salt-water at my door without entering— Prins, I say, arrested by my entry whilst in the act of filling a cup of wine for the captain, watched me with a yawn of wonder, and stood motionless as though blasted by a stroke of lightning; whilst Van Vogelaar, with his head upon his shoulder, the blade of the knife with which he had been eating forking straight up out of his fist that lay like a paralysed thing upon the table, eyed me with a sunk chin and under a double fold of brow; his level, enchained stare full of fear, and cruelty and passion.

I saw how it was, and giving the captain a bow and my darling a smile, I went to my place at the table and sat down. Van Vogelaar shrunk as I passed him, keeping his eyes upon me as a cat follows the motions of a dog; and when I seated myself he fell away by the length of his arm, dropping his knife and fork and watching me. Imogene, breathing deeply, resumed her seat; nothing but Vanderdecken's amazement hindered him from observing her agitation, which was of a nature he could not possibly have mistaken, if indeed he still possessed the capacity of distinguishing such emotions as love.

She merely said, letting out her words in a tremulous sigh: "O Geoffrey, thank God! thank God!" The food in front of her was untasted; but what grief there had been in her face before was lost in the confusion of feelings which worked in her loveliness with a vitality that made her red and white in the same moment. She repeated under her breath to herself: "Thank God! thank God!"

This, while the others stared.

I turned to Van Vogelaar. "Mynheer," said I, "you regard me with astonishment."

He shrank a little further yet, and, after a pause, said, "Are you man or devil?"

"Captain Vanderdecken," said I, "has your mate lost his reason?"

On this Van Vogelaar cried out: "Captain, by the Holy Trinity, I swear it was as I have reported. This Englishman, after prowling on deck last night in the early hours of the middle watch, suddenly clambered on to the rail, for what purpose I know not, and leaned his weight against the starboard main-brace, the sail then reefing. I looked round— on turning again he was gone! and Nicholas Houltshausen, who was at the helm, swore he saw him rise black upon the white eddies of the wake."

Vanderdecken frowningly questioned me with his eyes. I should have been acting a sillier part than a fool's to have jested with these men, besides, I had long since resolved to be plain.

"Herr Van Vogelaar," said I, "doubtless refers to my having fallen into the weather mizzen-channel last night from the rail, whilst peering at what I believed to be a ship. The main-brace, upon which I had put my hand to steady myself, yielded very suddenly," and here I shot a look at the mate, "but I fell lightly, and after sitting a little to recover my breath, made my way to my cabin."

Van Vogelaar's death-like face darkened. An oath or two rattled in his throat, and returning to his old posture he fell to the meat upon his plate with the ferocity of some starving beast, insomuch that the veins about his forehead stood out like pieces of cord.

The feelings with which Vanderdecken received my explanation I could not gather. He gazed hard at me with fiery eyes, as though, mistrusting me, he sought to burn his sight down to my heart, and then, slowly resuming his knife and fork, went on with his breakfast in his familiar trance-like way, mute as a dead man.

I constantly exchanged glances with Imogene, but held my peace since she remained silent. She struggled to compose her face, but her joy at my presence shone through her mask of reserve, twitching the corners of her mouth into faint smiles, and dancing in her eyes like sunshine on the ripples of a sapphire pool. Her love for me spoke more in this quiet delight than she could have found room for in a thousand words. How sweet and fair she looked! The light of her heart lay with a fair rosiness upon her cheeks, which had been as pale as marble when she had risen with her shriek and laughter to my first coming.

Presently Van Vogelaar left the cabin, going out scowling and talking to himself, but not offering so much as to glance at me. There was a piece of hung meat on the table, of what animal I did not know; it proved indifferent good eating. This and some cakes made of flour, with a goblet of sherry and water, formed my breakfast. I ate slowly, knowing that Vanderdecken would not smoke whilst I breakfasted, and wishing to tire him away that Imogene and I might have the cabin to ourselves. But my stratagem was to no purpose. He started suddenly from his waking dream— if, indeed, it was to be credited that any sort of intellectual faculty stirred in him when he lapsed into these cataleptic stillnesses— and bade Prins go and get cut up some of the tobacco they had removed from the wreck, and then erecting his figure and stroking down his beard, he looked from me to Imogene and back to me again, and said, "The weather promises to mend; but this wind must come from a witch's mouth— and a witch of deep and steady lungs. I hope you may not have brought us ill-luck, sir?"

"I hope not," said I, shortly.

"There are malign stars in the heavens," he continued, in a voice that trembled richly upon the air, like the waving echoes of some deep-throated melodious bell, "and there are men born under them. North of the Baltic, on Muskovite territory, is a nation of wretches who can bewitch the winds and sail their ships through contrary gales. They are not far removed from Britain," said he, significantly.

"They are as close to Holland, mynheer," said I.

"Oh, captain!" cried Imogene, "you do not wish to say that Mr. Fenton has had a hand in the fixing of this wind?"

He leaned his forehead upon his elbow, and stretching forth his other hand, drummed lightly on the table with his long, lean, leprous-coloured fingers as he spoke. "Why, Mynheer Fenton, Miss Dudley must allow that a curious luck attends you. How many of a crew went to your ship?"

"Forty, sir."

"Mark your star! Of forty men you alone fall overboard! But fortune goes with you and you are rescued by Van Vogelaar. Observe again! Of forty men you alone are delivered into a ship whose nation is at war with yours! Yet fortune still attends you and you are hospitably received, yea, even made welcome, and clothed, and fed and housed."

I bowed.

"More yet! Last night you fell from the bulwark-rail. What sorcery is it that sways you into the mizzen-channel and presently, unseen, to your bed? Nicholas Houltshausen is noted among us for his shrewd sight. Did not he swear he saw you rise black after your plunge among the froth of the ship's wake? What was it that he beheld? Can the soul shed its body as the butterfly its skin and yet appear clothed, substantial, real as flesh and blood?"

"I exactly explained that accident," said I. "If there be sorcery in my having the luck to tumble into a ship's mizzen-chains instead of the water, then am I a witch fit for a broomstick and a grinning moon!"

"Captain Vanderdecken does but amuse himself with you, Mr. Fenton," said Imogene. "It is true, mynheer," she continued, putting on an inimitable air of sweet dignity, which was vastly reassuring to me as proving that she had recovered her old easiness of mind and was now playing a part, "that we believed you had fallen overboard last night, and this being our conclusion you may judge how greatly your entrance just now amazed us. For me, I was so frightened that I shrieked out, as you doubtless heard. Truly I thought you, the dead, arisen. Captain Vanderdecken cannot recover his surprise, and would have himself to believe that you are a sorcerer. You, who are so young, and an English sailor!" She laughed out, and a truer ring she could not have put into her forced merriment had she been a Pritchard, or a Clive, or a Cibber. "Indeed," she added, "to be a necromancer, you need a beard as long and as grey as the captain's."

There was no temper in the look Vanderdecken cast upon her, nay, it almost deserved the name of mildness in him whose eyes were forever fiery with hot thought and passions of undivinable character. But not the phantom of a smile showed in his face in response to her laughter.

"Madam," said I, putting on a distant air in conformity with the hint of her own manner, "I am no sorcerer. For your sake I would I were, for then my first business would be to veer this wind south, and keep it there till it had thundered our ship with foaming stem into the smooth waters of the Zuyder-Zee."

This seemed to weigh with Vanderdecken. He reflected a little and then said, with something of lofty urbanity in his mode of addressing me, "Had you that power, mynheer, I do not know that I should object to your presence were you Beelzebub himself."

Imogene's smile betrayed the delight she felt in her gradual, happy, nimble drawing of this fierce man's thoughts away from his astonishing suspicions of me as a wizard.

"Have you ever heard, Mr. Fenton," said she, "of that nation to the north of the Baltic of whom Captain Vanderdecken has spoken?"

"Oh! yes, madam," I replied; "they are well known as Russian Finns, and are undoubtedly wizards, and will sell such winds to ships as captains require. I knew a master of a vessel who, being off the coast of Finland, grew impatient for a wind to carry him to a certain distant port. He applied to an old wizard, who said he would sell him a gale that should enable him to fetch the Promontory of Rouxella, but no further, for his breeze ceased to obey him when that point was reached. The captain agreed, holding that a wind to Rouxella was better than light airs and baffling calms off the Finland coast, and paid the wizard ten kronen— about six and thirty shillings of English money— and a pound of tobacco; on which the conjurer tied a woollen rag to the fore-mast, the rag being about half a yard long and a nail broad. It had three knots, and the wizard told him to loose the first knot when he got his anchor, which he did, and forthwith it blew a fresh favourable gale."

"That is so?" demanded Vanderdecken, doubtingly, and folding his arms over his beard.

"I knew the captain, mynheer," I answered; "his name was Jenkyns, and his ship was a brig called the True Love."

"Did the first knot give him all the wind he wanted?" asked he.

"No, sir. It gave them a brisk west south-west gale that carried them thirty leagues beyond the maelstrom in the Norwegian sea; then shifted, on which Captain Jenkyns untied the second knot, which brought the wind back to its own quarter. It failed them again, but when the third knot was untied there arose so furious a tempest that all hands went to prayers, begging for mercy for choosing to deal with an infernal artist instead of trusting to Providence."

It was not easy to make out the thoughts in Vanderdecken's mind, not less because of the half of his countenance being densely clothed with hair, than because of the white, iron rigidity of as much of his face as was visible; yet I could not doubt that he believed in those Finnish wizards from a sudden yearning in his manner, followed by a flashing glance of impatience at the cabin entrance, that was for all the world as though he had cried out "Would to God there was a purchasable wind hereabouts!" But the reader must consider that this man belonged to an age when wise men soberly credited greater wonders than Icelandish and Finnish wind-brokers.

By this I had made an end of breakfast, and Prins arriving with a jar full of the tobacco, flaked and fit for smoking, the captain filled his pipe, first pushing the jar to me, and then fell into one of his silences, from which he would emerge at wide intervals to say something that was as good as a warrant he was thinking no longer of the sorcery of my fall and appearance. When he had emptied his bowl, he went to his cabin. Imogene instantly arose and came to my side.

"Oh, my dearest!" she whispered, with a sudden darkening of her eyes by the shadow of tears, "I did believe, indeed, you were lost to me for ever! My senses seemed to leave me when Vanderdecken accounted for your absence."

"Dear heart! My precious one!" I answered, fondling her little hand, which lay cold with her emotion in mine; "I am still with thee, and hope with us may remain fearless. But it was a narrow escape. Van Vogelaar came red-handed to this table. For hours he has had my blood upon his devilish soul. No wonder the villain quailed when I entered this cabin."

"What did he do?" she cried.

"I believed I saw a ship," I answered; "I jumped on to the rail to make sure, and leaned against the brace that governs the main-yard. He slipped aft and let go the rope, meaning that I should fall overboard, but my grip was a sailor's, and I swung with the rope into the mizzen-chains."

"The wretch! He told Vanderdecken that you had climbed on to the bulwarks and fallen. I could kill him!" She clenched her white fingers till the jewels on them flashed to the trembling of the tension, and a delicate crimson surged into her face. "I could kill him!" she repeated.

"Hush, sweet one! It is our business to escape, and we need an exquisite judgment. I, too, could kill the treacherous ruffian, only that he is deathless. You, brave heart, will advise me that we are not to know of this thing. No, let it be an accident of my own doing. We are in a shipful of devils, and must act as if we believed them angels."

Her face slowly paled, her fingers opened, and the angry shining faded out of her eyes leaving the soft, violet pensive light there.

"Yes, you are right; we must not know the truth of this thing," said she, musingly, after a little. "But be on your guard, Geoffrey; keep well away from that rogue. His Spanish treachery is made formidable by his Dutch cunning. How swiftly he acted last night! His thoughts must have been intent for some time or even the demon in him would not have been equal to such readiness. See to your cabin door at night— O Geoffrey, he might steal in upon you."

I smiled. "He has spoken once; I shall not require a second hint."

"O that I had a man's arm, Geoffrey, that I might be your sentinel whilst you slept!"

"Precious one! You shall sentinel me yet! Patience, meanwhile! It is this ship that makes home so distant. Once clear of this groaning vault and we shall be smelling the sweetbriar and the violet."

Vanderdecken came out of his cabin and went on deck. He walked with impetuosity and passed without regarding us. Through the open door leading to the quarter-deck I saw him stand a minute with his face upturned and then toss his hand with a gesture of baffled rage.

"He is cursing the wind," said Imogene. "How often has he done so since I have been in this ship! And when will a last day come to him, when there shall be no wind to curse, when death shall have paralysed his tongue and silenced his heart? How fiercely it now throbs! Surely there is more stormy passion in one day of its beating than in twenty years of a human pulse! O, my dear, that you had the northern wizard's power of evoking prosperous gales!"

"I should be glad of that power," said I, "for better reasons than to help this man to fight against his Sentence. Can you guess what I would do? I would straightway blow this old ship ashore. Dread the Afric coast as you will, dear one, it will be our only chance."

"I dread it for its savages— the thought of captivity beyond the mountains is horrible! I have heard my father tell of the wreck of an East Indiaman named the Grosvenor, in which were ladies of distinction, who were seized by the natives and carried far inland and made wives of. That is not more than twenty years ago. O, Geoffrey, sooner than that— I would be content to die in this ship— to go on sailing about in her till my hair was as white as the foam about our keel!" and as she said this she grasped a handful of her golden hair and held it to me, unconscious in the earnestness of her fears of the child-like simplicity of her action. I put my lips to the tress, that flowed from her head through the snow of her hand and thence down like a stream of sunny light or the raining of the jet of a golden fountain, and told her not to fear, that I loved the natives as little as she, and would contrive to give them a wide berth; and then I changed the subject by wondering what the consequences would be if last night's business and Vanderdecken's talk this morning put it into the minds of the crew that I was as much a wizard as any Finn and could control the breezes if I chose.

She shook her head. "Better that they should regard you as what you really are— an English sailor. Suppose they persuaded themselves that you could raise and sell winds, they might determine to test you, and imprison, even torture you in the belief you were stubborn and would not do their bidding; or, if they came to consider you a wizard, they might think your presence in the ship unlucky, and, being half-savages, with demons for souls, as I believe, and with instincts belonging to a time when the world was brutal and human life held in no account— there is no imagining how they would serve you."

"Oh, Imogene!" cried I, "you are my good angel—"

"A true sweetheart must ever be that to the boy she loves," she whispered, looking down and softly blushing.

"You are my true sweetheart, Imogene! And how faithfully you are able to guide me through the marvellous experience we are both passing through, I know by the words you have just uttered," and I went on to tell her how Van Vogelaar had under his breath talked as if to himself of my being a curse in the ship.

As I said this, Prins came to the cabin door, and stood looking in. Perceiving him, Imogene rose and saying quietly, "He has perhaps been sent to report if we are together; go you on deck, dearest; I will join you, presently," went to her berth.

End of Volume 2

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THE DEATH SHIP

W. Clark Russell

Contents Volume 3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Volume 1

Volume 2

_________________

Chapter 1

We Tell Our Love Again

I HAD PASSED from the deck, where I slept, to the cabin in too great a hurry to notice the weather. Now, reaching the poop, I stood a moment or two to look around, being in my way as concerned about the direction of the wind as Vanderdecken himself.

It still blew fresh, but the heavens lay open among the clouds that had thickened their bulk into great drooping shining bosoms, as though indeed the crystalline blue under which they sailed in solemn procession mirrored the swelling brows of mighty snow-covered mountains. The sea ran in a very dark shade of azure, and offered a most glorious surface of colours with the heave of its violet hills bearing silver and pearly streakings of sunshine and foam upon their buoyant floating slopes, and the jewelled and living masses of froth which flashed from their heights and stormed into their valleys as they raced before the wind which chased them with noisy whistlings and notes as of bugles. The Death Ship was close-hauled— when was the day to come when I should find her with her yards squared?— but on the larboard tack, so that they must have put the ship about since midnight; and the sun standing almost over the mizzen topsail yard-arm showed me that we were doing some westing, for which I could have fallen on my knees and thanked God.

The captain and the mate were on deck, Vanderdecken abreast of the tiller, Van Vogelaar twenty paces forward of him, both still and stiff, gazing seawards with faces whose expressionlessness forbade your comparing them to sleeping dreamers. They looked the eternity that was upon them, and their ghastliness, the age and the doom of the ship, fell with a shock upon the perception to the horrible suggestions of those two figures and of the face at the tiller, whose tense and bloodless skin glared white to the sun as the little eyes, like rings of fire eating into the sockets beneath the brows, glanced from the card to the weather edges of the canvas.

Yet I found comfort in their entranced posture and disregard of me, for the less I engaged their attention the safer I should be whilst in their ship, and memory being with them a deceptive and erratic quality, I might hope in time to find that they had forgot to hate me.

I quitted the poop, not choosing to keep myself in view of Vanderdecken and Van Vogelaar, and walked about the quarter-deck, struggling hard with the dreadful despondency which clouded my mind, whilst imagination furiously beat against the iron-hard conditions which imprisoned me, as a bird rends its plumage in a cage, till my heart pulsed with the soreness of a real wound in my breast. The only glimmer of hope I could find lay, as I had again and again told Imogene, in the direction of the land. But who was to say how long a time would pass before the needs of the ship would force Vanderdecken shore-wards? And if the wind grew northerly and came feeble, how many weeks might we have to count ere this intolerable sailer brought the land into sight? Oh! I tell you, such speculations were sheerly maddening when I added to them the reflection that the heaving of the land into view might by no means prove a signal for our deliverance.

However, by the time Imogene arrived on deck I had succeeded in tranquilising my mind. She took some turns with me and then went to the captain on the poop and stayed with him, that is, stood near him, though I do not know that they conversed, till he went to his cabin; whereupon I joined her, neither of us deigning to heed the mate's observation of us, and for the rest of the morning we were together, knitting our hearts closer and closer whilst we talked of England, of her parents, the ship her father had commanded, and the like, amusing ourselves with dreams of escape, till hope grew lustrous with the fairy light our amorous fancies flung upon it. And lo! here on the deck of this Death Ship, with Van Vogelaar standing like a statue within twenty paces of us, and the dead face of a breathing man at the tiller, and silent sailors languidly stirring forwards or voicelessly plying the marline-spike or the serving-mallet aloft, where the swollen canvas swayed under the deep-breasted clouds like spaces of ancient tapestry from which time has sponged out all bright colours— here, in this fated and faded craft, that surged with the silence of the tomb in her through hissing seas and aslant whistling winds, did I, in the course of our talk, find myself presently speaking of my mother, of the little town in which she lived, of the church to which, under God, I would lead my sweetest, there to make her my bride!

She blushed rosy with delight, and I marked the passionate gladness of her love in the glance she gave me, as she lifted the fringes of her white eyelids to dart that exquisite gleam, whilst she held her chaste face drooped. But looking, as though some power drew me to look, at Van Vogelaar, I met his malignant stare full, and the chill and venom of his storm-bruised countenance fell upon my heart like a sensible atmosphere and poison.

For the life of me I could not help the shudder that ran through my frame. "Do you believe," said I, "that the men of this Death Ship have any power of blighting hope and emotion by their glance? The mere sighting of this vessel, it is said, is sufficient to procure the doom of another!"

She shook her head as though she would say she could not tell.

"There is something," said I, "to ice the strongest man's blood in the expression Van Vogelaar sometimes turns upon me. There is an ancient story of a bald-pated philosopher who, at a marriage-feast, looked and looked a bride, and the wondrous pavilion which the demons she commanded had built, into emptiness. He stared her and her splendours into thin air, sending the bridegroom to die with nothing but memory to clasp. There may be no philosophy in yonder Dutch villain, but surely he has all the malignity of Apollonius in his eyes."

"Do you fear he will stare me into air?" said she, smiling.

"I would blind him if I thought so," said I, with a temper that owed not a little of its heat to the heavy fit of superstition then upon me. "In the times of that rogue it was believed a man could pray another dead; but did one ever hear of a stare powerful enough to dematerialise a body? Sweet one, if that pale ruffian there could look you into space, what form would your spirit take? Would you become to me, as did the girl of his heart to the old poet—

"The very figure of that Morning Star

That, dropping pearls and shedding dewy sweets,

Fled from the greedy waves when I approached."

"He cannot part us!" she exclaimed. "Let me be your Morning Star, indeed, flying to you from the greedy waves, not from you, Geoffrey! Do not speak to me of Van Vogelaar, nor look his way. Tell me again, dear, of your mother's home; talk to me of flowers— of English flowers— and of that old church."

Chapter 2

We Sight a Sail

AS THE DAY advanced, the breeze weakened, the sea grew smoother, the surge flattened to the swell, and the wind did little more than crisp with snowy feathers those long, low, broad-browed folds swinging steadily and cradlingly out of the heart of the mighty southern ocean. Every cloth the Braave carried had been sheeted home and hoisted. She looked as if she had been coated with sulphur, as she slipped rolling up one slant and down another brimming to her channels; the hue of her was as if she had been anchored all night near to a flaming hill and had received for hours the plumy, pumice-coloured discharge of the volcano. There was nothing to relieve this sulphurous reflection with flash or sparkle; the sunshine died in the green backs of the brass swivels, it lay lustreless upon the rusty iron cannons, it found no mirror in the dry and honeycombed masts, and it touched without vitalising the rounded canvas, whose breasts had nothing of that hearkening, seeking look which you find in the flowing swelling of a ship's sails yearning horizon-wards to the land beyond the sea.

She was heading about north west by north, on the larboard tack, the yards as hard fore and aft as they would lie; and though she was making more leeway than headway, 'twas certain her bowsprit— for the first time during the days I had spent in her— was pointing fair for the Cape passage. It was this that had softened Vanderdecken's fierceness. As bit by bit the Death Ship stole up to this heading, so had his temper improved; insomuch that throughout the afternoon he had exhibited towards me a manner marked in no small degree by the haughty courtesy and solemn and stately urbanity which I had observed in his treatment of me in the first day or two of my being with him. This, I promise you, singularly rejoiced me, as exhibiting precisely the influence necessary to neutralise the hideous malignity of the mate. It also showed that he was still so much a sea-captain in soul as to be rendered bland and obliging, or savage and dangerous, by the turn of the weather, or rather by the direction and strength of the wind. Indeed, had his character contained more strokes of the humanity that is familiar to us, I should have heartily sympathised with the rage which contrary gales aroused in him. But the Curse had made a lusus naturæ of him. Much of what had, in 1653, been sailorly had been eaten out by time, and he flourished chiefly on those instincts which had miserably won him his doom. Hence, however greatly you wished to feel pity, you found you could not compassionate him as you would a living and real person. And of this, indeed, I was especially sensible that afternoon, whilst watching him and reflecting that though to be sure he could speak to me now without striving to blast me with his eyes and to damn me with his frown, yet let the wind suddenly head us and blow hard, and 'twas odds but that I should be hiding away from him, in the full conviction that it might need but a single indiscreet word to procure my being thrown overboard.

It was half-past five o'clock in the afternoon. I had come up from supper, leaving Vanderdecken smoking at the head of the table. Imogene had gone to her cabin for her hat. Van Vogelaar was off duty, and very likely lying down. Arents had the watch. There was a fine sailing wind blowing, and but for the choking grip of the trim of the yards on the creaking, high, old fabric, I believe the ship would have got some life out of it.

It was the first dog-watch— an idle hour— and all the ghostly crew were assembled forward, every man smoking, for tobacco was now plentiful; and their postures, their faces, their different kinds of dress, their lifelessness, save for the lifting of their hands to their pipes, and above all their silence, made a most wonderful picture of the decks their way; the foreground formed of the boats, a number of spare booms, the close quarters for the live-stock, the cook-house chimney coming up through the deck and trailing a thin line of blue smoke, whilst under the arched and transverse foot of the foresail you saw the ship's beak, the amazing relic of figure-head, the clews of the sprit-sail and sprit-topsail pulling aslant— between being the men, a dismal, white and speechless company, with the thick fore-mast rising straight up out of the jumble of them, whilst the red western light flowed over the pallid edges of the canvas, that widened out to the crimson gold whose blaze stole into the darkened hollows this side and enriched the aged surfaces with a rosy atmosphere.

I stood right aft, carelessly running my eye along the sea-line that floated darkening out of the fiery haze under the sun on our weather-beam, till in the east it curved in a deep, blue line so exquisitely clear and pure that it made you think of the sweep of a camel's hair-brush dipped in indigo. I gazed without expectation of observing the least break or flaw in that lovely, darkling continuity, and 'twas with a start of surprise and doubt that I suddenly caught sight of an object orange-coloured by the light far down in the east, that is to say, fair upon our lee-quarter. It was a vessel's canvas beyond question; the mirroring of the western glory by some gleaming cloths; and my heart started off in a canter to the sight, it being impossible now for a ship to heave into view without filling me with dread of a separation from Imogene, and agitating me with other considerations, such as how I should be dealt with, on a ship receiving me, if they discovered I had come from the Flying Dutchman.

I waited a little to make sure, and then called to the second mate, who stood staring at God knows what, with unspeculative eyes.

"Herr Arents, yonder is a sail— there, as I point."

He quickened out of his death-like repose with the extraordinary swiftness observable in all these men in this particular sort of behaviour, came to my side, gazed attentively, and said, "Yes; how will she be heading?" He went for the glass, and whilst he adjusted the tubes to his focus Captain Vanderdecken arrived with Imogene.

"What do you see, Arents?" asked the captain.

"A sail, sir, just now sighted by Herr Fenton."

Vanderdecken took the glass and levelled it, and after a brief inspection handed me the tube. The atmosphere was so bright that the lenses could do little in the way of clarification. However, I took a view for courtesy's sake, and seemed to make out the square canvas and long-headed gaff-topsail of a schooner as the sails slided like the wings of a sea-bird along the swell.

"How doth she steer, mynheer?" said Vanderdecken, as I passed the telescope to Arents.

"Why," I answered, "unless the cut of her canvas be a mere imagination of mine, she is close-hauled on the larboard tack and looking up for us as only a schooner knows how."

"What do you call her?" he exclaimed, imperiously.

"A schooner, sir."

Whether he had seen vessels of that rig since their invention I could not know, but it was certain the word schooner conveyed no idea. It was amazing beyond language that hints of this kind should not have made his ignorance significant to him.

The sight of the amber shadow on the lee quarter put an expression of anxiety into Imogene's face. She stood looking at it in silence, with parted lips and shortened breathing, her fragile, her too fragile profile like a cameo of surpassing workmanship, against the soft western splendour, the gilding of which made a trembling flame of one side of the hair that streamed upon her back. Presently turning and catching me watching she smiled faintly, and said in our tongue, "The time was, dear, when I welcomed a strange sail for the relief— the break— it promised. But you have taught me to dread the sight now."

I answered, speaking lightly and easily, and looking towards the distant sail as though we talked of her as an object of slender interest, "If our friend here attempts to transfer me without you, I shall hail the stranger's people and tell them what ship this is, and warrant them destruction if they offer to receive me."

The time passed. Imogene and I continued watching, now and again taking a turn for the warmth of the exercise. As on the occasion of our pursuit by the Centaur, so now Vanderdecken stood to windward, rigid and staring, at long intervals addressing Arents who, from time to time, pointed the glass as mechanically as ever Vanderdecken's piping shepherd lifted his oaten reed to his mouth.

Shortly after six, arrived Van Vogelaar, who was followed by the boatswain, Jans; and there they hung, a grisly group, whilst the crew got upon the booms, or overhung the rail, or stood upon the lower ratlines, with their backs to the shrouds, suggesting interest and excitement by their posture alone, for, as to their faces, 'twas mere expressionless glimmer and too far off for the wild light in their eyes to show.

Thus in silence swam the Death Ship, heaving solemnly as she went, with tinkling noises breaking from the silver water that seethed from her ponderous bow, as though every foam bell were of precious metal and rang a little music of its own as it glided past. But by this time the sail upon our lee-quarter had greatly grown, and the vigorous red radiance, rained by the sinking luminary in such searching storms of light as crimsoned the very nethermost east to the black water-line, clearly showed her to be a small but stout schooner, hugging the wind under a prodigious pile of canvas, and eating her way into the steady breeze with the ease and speed of a frigate-bird that slopes its black pinions for the windward flight. Her hull was plain to the naked eye and resembled rich old mahogany in the sunset. Her sails blending into one, she might, to the instant's gaze, have passed for a great star rising out of the yellow deep and somewhat empurpled by the atmosphere. It was our own desperately sluggish pace that made her approach magical for swiftness; but there could be no question as to the astonishing nimbleness of her heels.

After a while, Vanderdecken and his men warmed to the sight, and fell a-talking to one another with some show of eagerness, and a deal of pointing on the part of Jans and Arents, whilst Van Vogelaar watched with a hung head and a sullen scowl. Occasionally, Vanderdecken would direct a hot, interrogative glance at me; suddenly he came to where we stood.

"What do you make of that vessel, mynheer?" said he.

"Sir," I replied, "to speak honestly, I do not like her appearance. Two voyages ago my ship was overhauled by just such another fellow as that yonder; she proved to be a Spanish picaroon. We had a hundred-and-fifty troops who, with our sailors, crouched behind the bulwarks and fired into her decks when she shifted her helm to lay us aboard, and this reception made her, I suppose, think us a battle-ship, for she sheared off with a great sound of groaning rising out of her, and pelted from us under a press as if Satan had got hold of her tow-rope."

"What country does her peculiar rig represent?" he asked, looking at the vessel with his hand raised to keep the level rays of the sun off his eyes.

"I cannot be sure, mynheer; French or Spanish; I do not believe her English by the complexion of her canvas. She may prove an American, for you may see that her cloths are mixed with cotton."

The word American seemed to puzzle him as much as the word schooner had, for in his day an American signified an Indian of that continent. However, I noticed that if ever I used a term that was incomprehensible to him, he either dismissed it as coming from one who did not always talk as if he had his full mind, or as some English expression of which the meaning— as being English— was of no concern whatever to his Dutch prejudices.

"Doth she suggest a privateer to your judgment?" he inquired.

I answered "Yes; and more likely a pirate than a privateer, if indeed the terms are not interchangeable."

On this he went to the others, and they conversed as if he had called a council of them; but I could not catch his words, nor did I deem it polite to seem as if I desired to hear what was said.

"Do you really believe her to be what you say, Geoffrey?" said Imogene.

"I do, indeed. The dusk will have fallen before we shall have her near enough to make out her batteries and judge of her crew; but she has the true piratical look, a most lovely hull— low-lying, long and powerful— do you observe it, dearest? A cutwater like a knife, a noble length of bowsprit, and jibbooms, and a mainsail big enough to hold sufficient wind to send a Royal George along at ten knots. If she be not a picaroon, what is her business here? No trader goes rigged like that in these seas. 'Twould be otherwise were this the Pacific. She may be a letter of marque."

"Look!" cried Imogene, "she hoists her flag."

I hollowed my hands and used them for telescopes. The bunting streamed away over the stranger's quarter, but it was a very big flag, and its size, coupled with the wonderful searching light going to her in crimson lancing beams out of the hot flushed west, helped me to discern the tricolour.

"French!" I exclaimed, fetching a quick breath.

Vanderdecken had seen the flag, and was examining it through his ancient tubes. After a little he gave the glass to Van Vogelaar, who, after inspecting the colour, handed it to Arents; then Jans looked.

Vanderdecken called to me, "What signal is that she hath flying?"

I responded, "The flag of the French Republic."

He started, gazed at the others, and then glanced steadfastly at me as if he would assure himself that I did not mock him. He turned again to the schooner, taking the telescope from Jans.

"The French Republic!" I heard him say, with a tremble of wonderment in his rich notes. The mate shrugged his shoulders, with a quick, insolent turning of his back upon me; and the white, fat face of Jans glimmered past him, staring with a gape from me to the schooner. But now the lower limb of the sun was upon the sea-line; it was all cloudless sky just where he was, and the vast, rayless orb, palpitating in waving folds of fire, sank into his own wake of flames. The heavens glowed red to the zenith, and the ruby-coloured clouds moving before the wind looked like smoke issuing from behind the sea where the world was burning furiously. The grey twilight followed fast, and the ocean turned ashen under the slip of moon over the fore yard-arm. The stealing in of the dusk put a new life into the wind, and the harping in our dingy, faded heights was as if many spirits had gathered together up there and were saluting the moon with wild hymns faintly chanted.

Chapter 3

The Death Ship Is Boarded By A Pirate

I WILL NOT SAY that there is more of melancholy in the slow creeping of darkness over the sea than in the first pale streaking of the dawn, but the shining out of the stars one by one, the stretching of the great plain of the deep into a midnight surface, whether snow-covered with tossing surges or smooth as black marble and placid as the dark velvet sky that bends to the liquid confines, has a mystic character which, even if the dawn held it, would be weak as an impression through the quick dispelling of it by the joyous sun, but which is accentuated in the twilight shadows by their gradual darkening into the blackness of night. I particularly felt the oncoming of the dusk this evening. The glory of the sunset had been great, the twilight brief. Even as the gold and orange faded in the west so did the canvas of our ship steal out spectrally into the grey gloom of the north and east; the water washed past wan as the light of the horny paring of moon; the figures of the four men to windward were changed into dusky, staring statues, and the wake sloped out from the starboard quarter full of eddying sparkles as green as emeralds. The canvas of the schooner, that had shone to the sunset with the glare of yellow satin, faded into a pallid cloud that often bothered the sight with its resemblance to the large puffs of vapour blowing into the east.

"I should be glad to know her intentions," said I, uneasily. "If she be a piratical craft it will not do for you to be seen by her people, Imogene. Is it curiosity only that brings them racing up to us? May be— may be! They will be having good glasses aboard and have been excited by our extraordinary rig."

"Why should I not be seen, Geoffrey?" asked my innocent girl.

"Because, dearest, they may fall in love with and carry you off."

"But if they should take us both?" said she, planting her little hand under my arm.

"Ay, but one would first like to know their calling," I replied, straining my eyes at the vessel that, at the pace she was tearing through it, would be on our quarter within hailing distance in twenty minutes.

What did Vanderdecken mean to do? He made no sign. Fear and passion enough had been raised in him by the Centaur's pursuit; was I to suppose that yonder schooner had failed to alarm him because he was puzzled by her rig and by the substitution of the tricolour for the royal fleur de lys?

"Speak to him, Imogene," said I, "that I may follow. They may resent any hints from me if I break in upon them on a sudden.

"Captain," she called in her gentle voice, "is not that vessel chasing us?"

He rounded gravely upon her: "She is apparently desirous of speaking with us, my child. She will be hailing us shortly."

"But if she be a pirate, captain?"

"Doth Herr Fenton still think her so?" he demanded.

"She has the cut of one, sir," said I; "and in any case her hurry to come at us, her careful luff and heavy press of sail, should justify us in suspecting her intentions and preparing for her as an enemy."

"Will the Englishman fight, think ye, captain, if it comes to that?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar, in his harshest, most scoffing voice.

Taking no notice of the mate, I said in a low voice to Imogene, speaking quickly, "They have nothing to fear. It is not for a Frenchman's cutlass to end these wretches' doom. I am worried on your account. Dearest, when I bid you, steal to my cabin— you know where it is?"

"Yes."

"And remain there. 'Tis the only hiding-place I can think of. If they board us and rummage the ship— well, I must wait upon events. In a business of this kind the turns are sudden. All that I can plan now is to take care that you are not seen."

I should have been glad to arm myself, but knew not where to seek for a weapon; but thinking of this for a moment, it struck me that if the schooner threw her people aboard us, my being the only man armed might cost me my life; therefore, unless the whole crew equipped themselves I should find my safest posture one of defencelessness.

"Do these men never fight?" I asked Imogene.

"There has been no occasion for them to do so since I have been in the ship," she answered. "But I do not think they would fight. They are above the need of it."

"Yet they have treasure, they value it, and this should prove them in possession of instincts which would prompt them to protect their property."

"God manages them in His own fashion," said she. "They cannot be reasoned about as men with the hot blood of life in them and existing as we do."

Yet their apathy greatly contradicted the avidity with which they seized whatever of treasure or merchandise they came across in abandoned ships, nor could I reconcile it with the ugly cupidity of the mate and the lively care Vanderdecken took of those capacious chests of which he had exposed to me the sparkling contents of two. Blind as they were, however, to those illustrations of the progress of time which they came across in every ship they encountered, they could not be insensible to the worthlessness of their aged and cankered sakers and their green and pivot-rusted swivels. Their helplessness in this way, backed by the perception in them all that for some reason or other no harm ever befel them from the pursuit of ships or the approach of armed boats, might furnish a clue to the seeming indifference with which they watched the pale shadow of the schooner enlarging upon the darkling froth to leeward, though I am also greatly persuaded that much of the reason of their stolidity lay in their being puzzled by the rig of the schooner and the flag she had flown; nor perhaps were they able to conceive that so small a craft signified mischief, or had room for sailors enough to venture the carrying of a great tall craft like the Braave. But Vanderdecken could not know to what heights piracy had been lifted as a fine art by the audacity and repeated triumphs of the rogues whose real ensign, no matter what other colours they fly, is composed of a skull, cross-bones, and hour-glass upon a black field.

The moon shed no light; but the wind was full of a weak dawn-like glimmer from the wash of the running waters and from the stars which shone brightly among the clouds. In all this while the schooner had never started a rope-yarn. Her white and leaning fabric, swaying with stately grace to the radiant galaxies, resembled an island of ice in the gloom, and the illusion was not a little improved by the seething snow of the cleft and beaten waters about her like to the boiling of the sea at the base of a berg. She showed us her weather side, and heeled so much that I could not see her decks, but there was nothing like a gun-muzzle to be perceived along her. A gilt band under her wash-streak shone out dully at intervals to her plunges, as though a pencil had been dipped in phosphorus and a line of fire drawn.

She was looking up to cross our wake and settle herself upon our weather quarter. Nothing finer as a spectacle did I ever behold at sea than this spacious-winged vessel when she crossed our wake, rearing and roaring through the smother our own keel was tossing up, flashing into the hollows and through the ridges with spray blowing aft over her as though she were some bride of the ocean and streamed her veil behind her as she went, the whole figure of her showing faint in the dull light of the night, yet not so feeble in outline and detail but that I could distinguish the black, snake-like hull hissing through the seas, her sand-coloured decks, a long black gun on the forecastle, and a glittering brass stern-chaser abaft the two black figures gripping the tiller, the great surface of mainsail going pale to its clew at the boom end, a full fathom over the quarter, the swelling and mounting canvas, from flying-jib to little fore-royal, from the iron-hard stay-foresail to the thunderous gaff-topsail on high, dragging and tearing at the sheets and bringing shroud and backstay, guy and halliard, sheet and brace so taut that the fabric raged past with a kind of shrieking music, filling the air as though some giant harp were edging the blast with the resonance of fifty wind-wrung wires. Great heaven! how did my heart go to her! Oh, for two months' command of that storming clipper with Imogene on board!

'Twas a rush past with her; all that I saw I have told you, saving a few men in the bows and a couple of figures watching us near to the two helmsmen. If she mounted guns or swivels along her bulwarks I did not see them.

I overheard Vanderdecken exclaim, "It is as I surmised; she hath but a handful of a crew; she merely wishes to speak us."

Van Vogelaar returned some gruff answer in which he introduced my name, but that was all I heard of it.

Once well on our weather quarter, the schooner ported her helm, luffing close; her gaff-topsail, flying-jib, royal and topgallant sail melted to the hauling upon clewlines and downhauls as though they had been of snow and had vanished upon the black damp wind; but even with the tack of her mainsail up, they had to keep shaking the breeze out of the small sail she showed, to prevent her from sliding past us.

"Oh, ze sheep ahoy!" sung out one of the two figures on the quarter-deck, the man coming down to the lee rail to hail, "What sheep air you?"

As with the Centaur, so now, Vanderdecken made no response to this inquiry. He and the others stood grimly silent watching the schooner, as immobile as graven images.

I said to Imogene, "'Tis dark enough to show the phosphor upon the ship. That should give them a hint. Mark how vividly the shining crawls about these decks."

"Ze sheep ahoy!" shouted the man from the schooner that lay to windward, tossing her bows and shaking the spray off her like any champing and curvetting steed angrily reined in and smoking his impatience through his nostrils. "What sheep air you?"

Vanderdecken stepped his towering figure on to the bulwark; "The Braave," he cried, sending his majestic voice ringing like a note of thunder through the wind.

"Vhat ees your country?" yelled the other.

Vanderdecken did not apparently understand the question, but probably assuming that these sea-interrogatories followed in the usual manner, answered, "From Batavia to Amsterdam," speaking as the schooner's man did in English, but with an accent as strongly Dutch as the other's was French.

Thought I, he will see that we are a Holland ship, and as France and their High Mightinesses are on good terms he may sheer off. But even as this fancy or hope crossed my mind, a sudden order was shouted out on the schooner and in a breath the vessel's hatches began to vomit men. They tumbled up in masses, blackening the white decks, and a gleam of arms went rippling among them.

"Captain Vanderdecken!" I bawled, "that fellow is a pirate! Mind, sir, or she will be aboard of you in another minute!" And not stopping to heed the effect of my words, I grasped Imogene by the hand and ran with her off the poop. "Get you to my cabin, dearest, they are pirates and will be tumbling in masses over the rail directly."

I pressed my lips to her cheek and she glided like a phantom down the hatch-ladder.

What I relied on by advising her concealment I could not have explained; since those who rummaged the vessel were pretty sure to enter the cabins. But my instincts urging me to hide her away from the first spring of the men on to our deck, I took their counsel as a sort of mysterious wisdom put into me by God for her protection; it coming to this in short— that there might be a chance of their overlooking her if she hid below, whereas they were bound to see her if she remained on deck, to be ravished by her beauty, and, supposing them pirates, to carry her off as a part of their booty, according to the custom of those horrid villains.

I stepped away from the hatch, lest it might be supposed I was guarding it, and stationed myself in the deep shadow under the quarter-deck ladder, where it and the overhanging deck combined cast an ink-like shade. There was small need to look for the schooner, you could hear her hissing like red-hot iron through the water as she came sweeping down upon our quarter under a slightly ported helm, ready to starboard for the heave of the grapnels and the foaming range alongside. There was no show of consternation among the crew of the Death Ship; nay, if emotion of any sort were at all visible, you would have termed it a mere kind of dull, muddled, Dutch curiosity. I had fancied they would jump to arm themselves and assume some posture of defence; instead of this they had gathered themselves together in several lounging groups about the waist and gangway, many of them with pipes in their mouths, the fire of which glowed in bright, red spots against the green and lambent glitterings upon such woodwork as formed their background; and thus they hung with never a monosyllable uttered among them, their silence, their indifference, their combination of ghostly characteristics, with their substantial, glooming shapes, more terrifying to my mind than had every man of them a carbine pointing from his shoulder, with a crew forward as numerous again standing match in hand at twenty murdering pieces!

All in an instant the shadow of the schooner's canvas was in the air deepening the gloom upon our decks with a midnight tincture; you heard the snarling wash of water boiling between the two vessels; the claws of the grapnels flung from the bows and stern of the Frenchman gripped our aged bulwark with a crunching sound, and the mystical fires in the wood burnt out to the biting iron like lighted tinder blown upon. Then, in a breath, I saw the heads of twenty or thirty fellows along the line of the bulwark rail, and as they sprang as monkeys might into our ship, one of them that grasped a pistol exploded it, and the yellow flash was like the swift waving of a torch, in the glare of which the faces of the silent, staring, indifferent sailors of the Braave glanced in a very nightmare of white, unholy countenances.

There was some yelping and howling among the Frenchmen as they tumbled inboard— indeed, the seamen of that nation cannot budge an inch without making as much noise as would last a British forecastle several voyages; but their clamour sounded to me very much like the cries of men who did not relish their errand and raised these shouts for the same reason that sets a boy whistling on a road in a dark night. They jumped from the rail in slap-dash style indeed, waving their cutlasses and flourishing their pikes; but whether it was that they were suddenly confounded by the silence on our decks, or that they had caught sight in the pistol flash of the faces of the Death Ship's crew, or that the suspicion of our true character, which must have been excited in them by the glow upon our hull and by the ancient appearance of our spars, was quickly and in a panic way confirmed and developed by the glitterings upon our deck, the aspect of our ordnance, the antiquity suggested by the arrangement of our quarter-deck and poop— all of these points visible enough in the wild, faint light that swarmed about the air but all of them taking ghostly and bewildering, ay, and terrifying emphasis from the very dusk in which they were surveyed; whatever the cause, 'tis as sure as that I live who write this, that instead of their making a scamper along the decks, charging the Dutch seamen, flinging themselves down the hatchways and the like, all which was to have been expected, they suddenly came to a dead stand, even massing themselves in a body and shoving and elbowing one another, for such courage, maybe, as is to be found in the feel of a fellow-being's ribs, whilst they peered with eyes bright with alarm at the phlegmatic sailors of Vanderdecken and around then at the ship, talking in fierce short whispers and pointing.

It takes time to record the events of thirty seconds, though all that now happened might have been compassed whilst a man told that space. 'Twas as if the frosty, blighting Curse of the ship they had dashed into had come upon their tongues, and hearts and souls. Over the side, where the grappling schooner lay, heaving with a cataractal roaring of water sounding out of the sea between, as the Flying Dutchman rolled ponderously towards her, loud orders in French were being delivered, mixed with passionate callings to the boarders upon our decks; the schooner's sails waved like the dark pinions of some monstrous sea-fowl past ours, which still drew, no brace having been touched. I guessed there were thirty in all that had leapt aboard, some of them negroes, all of them wildly attired in true buccaneering fashion, so far as the darkness suffered my eyes to see, in boots and sashes, and blouses and lolling caps; there they stood in a huddle of figures with lightning-like twitching gleams shooting off their naked weapons as they pointed or swayed or feverishly moved, staring about them. Some gazed up at the poop, where, as I presently discovered, stood the giant figure of Vanderdecken, his mates and the boatswain beside him, shapes of bronze motionlessly and silently watching. But the affrighting element— more terrible than the hellish glarings upon the planks, bulwarks and masts, more scaring than the amazing suggestions— to a sailor's eye— of the old guns, the two boats and all other such furniture as was to be embraced in that gloom— was the crowd of glimmering faces, the mechanic postures, the grave-yard dumbness of the body of spectral mariners who surveyed the boarding party in clusters, shadowy, and spirit-like.

I felt the inspiration, and, with a pang of Heaven-directed sympathy with the terrors working in the Frenchmen's breasts, which needed but a cry to make them explode, I shouted from the blackness of my ambush, in a voice to which my sense of the stake the warning signified in its failure or success, lent a hurricane note: "Sauvez vous! Sauvez vous! C'est l'Hollandais Volant!"

What manner of Paris speech this was, and with what accent delivered, I never paused to consider; the effect was as if a thunder-bolt had fallen and burst among them. With one general roar of l'Hollandais Volant! the whole mob of them fled to the side, many dropping their weapons the better to scramble and jump. Why, you see that shout of mine exactly expressed their fears, it made the panic common; and 'twas with something of a scream in their way of letting out the breath in their echoing of my shout that they vanished, leaping like rats without looking to see what they should hit with their heads or tails.

I sprang up the quarter-deck ladder to observe what followed, and beheld sure enough, the towering outline of Vanderdecken standing at the rail that protected the fore-part of the poop-deck gazing down upon the schooner with his arms folded and his attitude expressing a lifelessness not to be conveyed by the pen, though the greatest of living artists in words ventured it. Against the side were the two mates and Jans looking on at a scene to whose stir, clamour, excitement, they seemed to oppose deaf ears and insensible eyes. Small wonder that the Frenchmen should have fled to my shout, fronted and backed as they were in that part of the ship into which they had leapt, and where they had come to an affrighted stand, by the grisly and sable shapes of Vanderdecken and his comrades aft, and by the groups of leprous-tinctured anatomies forward.

I peered over the rail. The two vessels lay grinding together, and as the tall fabric of the Death Ship leaned to the schooner, you thought she would crush and beat her down, but with the regularity of a pulse the dark folds of water swept the little vessel clear, sometimes raising her when our ship lay aslant to the level of our upper deck, and giving me, therefore, a mighty good prospect of what was happening in her. Both vessels were off the wind and were surging through it with a prodigious hissing betwixt their sides.

The fright of the boarders had proved contagious. I shall never forget the sight! Small as the schooner was, there could not have been less than ninety men on her decks, and they made a very hell of the atmosphere about them with the raving notes in their cries and bawlings. My knowledge of French was small, but some of their screams I could follow, as for instance: "'Tis the Flying Dutchman!"

"Cut us adrift! Cut us adrift!"

"Flatten in those head-sheets! Shove her off! Shove her off! Pole her, my children, with a couple of sweeps!"

"Now she starts. No! What holds her? Ha! ha! the weather topsail-brace has fouled the Hollander's fore-topsail yard-arm. No use going aloft! Let go of it— let go of it— that it may overhaul itself!"

Imagine about four-score throats— some with the guttural thickness of the negro's utterance— all together roaring and delivering orders such as those of which I have given you specimens! Figure the decks throbbing with men rushing with apparent aimlessness from one side to the other, from one end to the other— not a vestige of discipline among them— a drowning yell or two coming up from between the ships where some wretch that had fallen overboard was holding on— the sails shaking, the water washing beyond in a glaring white that gave a startling distinctness to the shape of the schooner as she rose softly to the level of our upper deck bulwarks upon the seething snow!

Why, no matter how strongly imagination should present the picture, what is the simulacrum as compared to that reality which I need but close these eyes to witness afresh? The wildness of the scene took a particular spirit from the frowning, rocking mass of the Death Ship— the tomb-like silence in her— the still and glooming shapes watching the throes and convulsions of the terrified Frenchmen and negroes from the poop and forward over the rail— the diabolic glowing in her timbers— the swaying of her dusky canvas like the nodding of leviathan funeral plumes— the dance of the slender slip of moon among the rigging, defining the vast platforms of the barricaded tops, monstrous bulgings of blackness up there as though a body of electric cloud swung bulbously at each lower masthead.

They had the sense to cut the lines which held them by their grapnels to our ship, and presently to my great joy— for if they were true pirates, as there was good reason to believe from their appearance and manner of laying us aboard, 'twas impossible to feel sure that the fiercer spirits among them might not presently rally the rest— the schooner went scraping and forging past ahead of us; snapping her topgallant mast short off, with the royal yard upon it, by some brace, stay or backstay fouling us in a way the darkness would not suffer me to witness, and in a few minutes she had crossed our bows and was running away into the north east, rapidly expanding her canvas as she went, and quickly melting into the darkness.

I stopped to fetch a few breaths and to make sure of the Frenchman's evanishment by watching. More excitement and dread had been packed into this time than I know how to tell of.

I slipped to the hatch on the upper deck, descended a tread or two, and softly called. In a minute I espied the white face of my dearest upturned to me amidst the well-like obscurity.

"They are gone," said I, "the danger is over."

She instantly stepped up.

"I heard you cry out 'The Flying Dutchman! Save yourselves!'" she exclaimed, with a music almost of merriment in her voice. "It was a bold fancy! What helter-skelter followed!"

I took her hand and we entered the cabin. The richly-coloured old lamp was alight, the clock ticked hoarsely, you heard the scraping of the parrot clawing about her cage.

"Oh," she cried, "what a dismal place is that they have given you to sleep in! I believed I was hardened to the dreadful flickerings upon the deck and sides, but they scared me to the heart in that cell— and the noises too in the hold! Oh, Geoffrey, how severe is our fate! Shall we ever escape?"

"Yes, my dearest, but not by ships, as I have all along told you. A chance will offer, and be you sure, Imogene, it will find me ready. Wondrous is God's ordering! Think, my dear, that in the very Curse that rests upon this ship has lain our salvation! Suppose this vessel any other craft and boarded by those villains, negroes of the Antilles, and white ruffians red-handed from the Spanish Main— 'tis likely they were so and are cruising here for the rich traders— by this time where would my soul be? and you— ay, there is a virtue in this Curse! It is a monstrous thought— but, indeed, I could take Vanderdecken by the hand for the impiety that has carried you clear of a destiny as awful in its way as the doom these unhappy wretches are immortally facing."

She shuddered and wept a little, and looked at me with eyes the brighter for those tears which I dared not kiss away in that public cabin.

Chapter 4

My Life is Again Attempted

VANDERDECKEN and the mate came below soon after this, and Prins set a bowl of punch before them. The captain seated himself in his solemn way, and the mate took Imogene's place— that is, over against my seat— she being at my side. They filled their pipes and smoked in a silence that, saving Vanderdecken's asking me to drink, would, I believe, have remained unbroken but for Imogene.

She said: "Captain, there is no fear, I hope, of those pirates attempting to board us again in the darkness?"

"Did Herr Fenton tell you they were pirates?" he replied, with the unsmiling softness of expression he was used to look upon her with.

"Surely they were pirates?" she cried.

"Be it so, my child," said he, "what doth it signify? They are gone; I do not fear they will return."

Being extremely curious to know what sense he had of this strange adventure, I exclaimed, "It is very surprising, mynheer, that a score of ruffians, armed to the teeth, should fling themselves into this ship for no other purpose, seemingly, than to leap out of her again."

"They imagined us English, Herr Fenton," said Van Vogelaar, with a snarl in his voice and a sneer on his lip.

I did not instantly catch the drift of his sarcasm.

"Doth any man suppose," said Vanderdecken, rearing his great figure and proudly surveying me, "that the guns of our admirals have thundered in vain? You seek an interpretation of the Frenchman's behaviour? Surely by this time all Englishmen should understand the greatness of the terror our flag everywhere strikes! Twice you have witnessed this— in the hasty retreat of your man-of-war, and this night in the conduct of the French schooner. Tell me," he cried, with new fires leaping into his eyes, "how I am to resolve the panic-terror of the boarding party, if I am not to believe that until they were on our decks, had looked round them and beheld our men, they knew not for certain the nation to which the Braave belonged?"

I bowed very gravely as I acquiesced.

"Skipper," cried Van Vogelaar, "is it not likely that they imagined us English? They showed no fear till our country spoke in the faces of our sailors."

A faint smile of scorn curled the lips of Imogene, but the contempt of her English heart quickly faded into an expression of compassion and sadness when she let her eyes travel from the sinister and ugly mate to the majestic countenance of the commander. But no more was said. The two men puffed at their pipes and sipped at their silver mugs in silence, and at long intervals only did Imogene and I exchange a word.

That they should so easily have been able to satisfy the surprise which the behaviour of the schooner must have excited in them was astonishing. Yet a little reflection made me see that, since they did not know they were accurst and were ignorant of the horror and terror with which mariners of all countries viewed them, it was almost inevitable they should attribute the flight of ships from them either to a selfishness and indifference to their needs or to the dread which they inspired as a vessel that flew the Dutch flag. Yet may I, without irreverence, suggest that much of the venom of the Curse must be neutralised by their ignorance of their condition and their inability to drive conjecture to the truth of whatever befel them? The shaping of their doom is beyond the power of reason to grasp, and I feel, therefore, the impiety of criticism. Nevertheless, I must say that, since it is Heaven's will these wretches should be afflicted with earthly immortality, it is inexplicable that the torments which perception of the truth would create, should be balsamed into painlessness by ignorance. For hath not the Curse the idleness of that kind of human revenge which strikes and mutilates an enemy already dead?

Imogene withdrew to her cabin at about half-an-hour after nine; Vanderdecken went on deck and I sat alone smoking, thinking of the surprising events of the evening, scheming how to escape and making my heart very heavy with a passionate hopeless yearning for the time to come when, secure upon the soil of our beloved land, I should be calling the delicate, lovely, lonely girl— the amber-haired fairy of this Death Ship— my own! The slow, rusty, saw-like ticking of the ancient clock was an extremely melancholy noise, and I abhorred its chimes too, not because of the sound, that was very sonorously melodious, but because it startled the parrot into its ugly, hobgoblin croak. It was a detestable exclamation to salute the ears of a man whose thoughts ran in the very strain of that coarse, comminatory confirmation of them.

The ancient salt and weedy smell of the ship— a distinguishable thing in the after part— if it was somewhat mitigated forward by the greasy smoke and steam of the cook-house— lent a peculiar accentuation to the various shinings of the lamp, in whose many-coloured radiance some of the dusky oval-framed paintings loomed out red, others green, the ponderous beams of the upper deck blue, the captain's tall, velvet-backed chair yellow, and so on; all these tints blending into a faint unearthly atmosphere as they stole dying to the bulkhead of the state-room, behind whose larboard door my love lay sleeping.

I was glad to quit the place, and went on deck. There was nothing to be seen saving the foam that flashed near and crawled afar, the glitter of the low-lying stars like the sparkle of torches on ships dipping upon the horizon, a sullen movement of dark clouds on high, and the moon red as an angry scar up-curled over the western horizon. 'Twas on a sudden I noticed that we were making a fair wind of the breeze. Yes, on looking aloft I perceived that the yards were braced in, lying so as to show the wind to be blowing about one point abaft the beam. It was strange that in the cabin I had not heard any noise to denote that the men were trimming sail, no sound of rope flung down in coils, no rusty cheeping cry from the aged blocks, no squeak of truss or parrel, or tread of foot. That was, maybe, because the men had fallen dumbly, as usual, to the job of hauling and pulling, so that my attention had not been drawn to such noises as were raised. Be this as it may, for the first time since I had been in the ship the wind had come fair. By the situation of the Cross, I guessed she was being headed about west-north-west, which would carry us to Agulhas, and also into the Ethiopic Sea.

For a little bit I was sensible of a degree of excitement; there had come a break; it was no longer a hopeless ratching to the north, then a bleak, slanting drift into the mighty solitude of the south; the ship was going home! But with that thought my spirits sank. Home? What home had she but these wild, wide waters? What other lot than the gentle cradling or tempestuous smiting of these surges, the crying of the winds of the southern ocean in her rigging, the desolate scream of the lonely sea-bird in her wake, the white sunshine of the blue heavens, the levin-brand of the electric storm, the midnight veil of the black hurricane, the wide, snow-like light of the northern moon, over and over again! No! I was mortal, at least, with the plain understanding of a healthy man, and was not to be cheated by a flowing sheet as though mine, too, was the unholy immortality with its human yearnings and earthly labours of the men who manned this Death Ship. The change was but one of the deceits of their heavy sentence, and with an inward prayer that for me and for my precious one it might work out some profitable issue, I went to my cabin.

The door hung on a hook that held it open by the length of a finger; outside swung the lamp that sent light sufficient to me through the interstice. At midnight, this lamp was borne away by Prins, whose final duty before going to his sleeping-place lay in this. It was a regular custom, and whenever it happened that I stayed on deck beyond midnight, then I had to "turn in," as best I could, in the dark. Yet, dark I could not term my cabin at night, 'twas rather "darkness visible," as Milton hath it; for though the glowing crawlings yielded no radiance, no, no more than a mirrored star shining out of the wet blackness of a well, yet such objects as intercepted it, it revealed, as a suspended coat, for instance, that, hanging against the bulkhead, had its figure limned against the phosphor, as though 'twas blotted there in ink, very faithful in outline.

There was enough in the events of the evening to keep my brain occupied and my eyes open, and I lay thus for some half-hour, thinking and watching the unnatural lights, and wondering why they should be there, since I had never beheld the like glowing in the most ancient marine structure I had ever visited, when, on a sudden, I was sensible of someone standing outside the cabin door and listening, as it appeared. It was a peculiar, regular breathing sound, that gave me to know this— a respiration as rhythmic as that of a sleeping man whose slumber is peaceful. An instant after I heard the click of the hook of the door lightly lifted out of the staple, but all so quietly that the noise would have been inaudible amid the straining of the rocking vessel if my attention had not been rendered piercing by that solemn and strong breathing, rising very plainly above the sounds in the hold.

I sprang on to the deck; being in my socks I fell on my feet noiselessly. Against the greenish glitterings about the cabin I easily made out the figure of a man, standing within the door, holding it in a posture of eager listening. My breath grew thick and short; the horror of this situation is not to be conceived. It was not as though I were in an earthly ship, for in that case, no matter who the midnight intruder, he would have had a mortal throat for my fingers to close upon. But whoever this shape might be he belonged to the Death Ship, and 'twas frightful to see his outline, black as the atmosphere of a churchyard grave, thrown out, in its posture of watching and listening, by the fiery, writhing fibrines of the phosphor, to know that the deep and hollow breathing came from a figure in whom life was a monstrous simulation, to feel that his confrontment by an Hercules or a Goliath would as little quail his endevilled spirit as the dead are to be terrified by the menaces of the living.

I watched with half-suffocated respiration. Since his outline was plain it was sure mine was so likewise; but I could not distinguish that he was looking towards the place where I stood, that is, in the middle of the after bulkhead, a couple of paces from the foot of the bed, whither I had backed on his entering.

He very softly closed the door, on which I drew myself up waiting for the onslaught I was certain he designed, though when I considered what thing it was I should be dealing with, the sense of my helplessness came very near to breaking me down. Having closed the door he approached the bed, and bent his head down as though listening; then, with amazing swiftness, stabbed at the bed four times, each blow, with the vehemence of it, making a distinct sound; after which he hung over the bed with his arm uplifted and his head bent as though he would make sure by listening that he had dispatched me. His figure was so plain that it was as if you should cut out the shape of a man in black paper and paste it upon a dull yellow ground. From the upraised hand I could distinguish the projection of a knife or small sword not less than a foot long. He was not apparently easily satisfied that I lay dead; for he kept his menacing, hearkening posture while I could have counted sixty; he then went lightly to the door, opened it and passed out.

Whether he walked in his sleep— and certainly his motions were those of a somnambulist— or whether he was influenced by some condition of his doom, of a character as unconjecturable as the manner in which vitality was preserved among the crew, who were years and years ago dead in time, I could not conceive; but, resolved to discover him if I could, I followed on his heels, catching the door as it swung from his grasp; but there was no need to close it nor slip a foot beyond the coaming; for, the glimmer all about serving my sight, I saw him enter the cabin opposite— that in which Van Vogelaar slept, whereby I knew who it was that would have assassinated me that night had I slept when I lay down.

You will easily credit that this man had murdered sleep so far as I was concerned. I would not go on deck, and I would not lie down either, for what I had beheld had so wrought in my imagination that the mere idea of resting upon the holes which the villain's blade had made in the aged mattress filled me with horror. So for the rest of the night I walked about the cabin or rested on the edge of the bed, praying for daylight, and repeatedly commending myself to God; for, this being the second time my life had been attempted by the same hand, I could not question, if it was the will of Heaven this hideous cruise should be prolonged, the third venture would be successful, and in the dreadful loneliness and luminous blackness of that cabin I viewed myself as a dead man, and could have wept with rage and grief when thinking of my helplessness and of Imogene's fate.

However, I clearly saw that no good could attend my telling Vanderdecken of his mate's hunger for my life. If Van Vogelaar had walked in his sleep he would not know what he had done; he would call me a liar for charging him with it, and I might count upon Vanderdecken siding with him in any case. The Dutch are a less savage people than they were, but in the age to which this ship's company belonged they were the most inhuman people in Europe, perhaps in the world, and such were the barbarities they were guilty of, that the passage of two centuries— and it would be the same if it were the passage of two hundred centuries— leaves their crimes as fresh and smoking to God as the blood of their victims at the time of their being done to death. Consider their treatment of sailors: how for a petty theft they would proclaim a man infamous at the fore-mast; torture him into confession by attaching heavy weights to his feet, running him aloft, and then letting him fall; keel-haul him, that is, draw him several times under the ship's keel; affix him to the mast by nailing him to it by a knife passed through his hand; flog him to the extent of three hundred to five hundred strokes, then pickle his bleeding mangled back; fling him ironed into the hold: there half-starve him till they met with a bare, barren, lonely rock upon which they would set and leave him. Read how they treated the English at Amboyna! No! I had the Dutch of the seventeenth century to deal with in these men, not the Hollanders of my day, borrowing fine airs from the Germans and sweetening their throats with French à la mode phrases. But how to escape them? There were moments when I paced my cabin like a madman and with a madman's thoughts in me too.

I brought a haggard face with me to the breakfast table, and Imogene surveyed me with an eye full of inquiry and anxiety. My thoughts, acting with my wakefulness, had told, and I fancied that even Vanderdecken suffered his gaze to rest upon me as though he marked a change. Van Vogelaar's manner satisfied me that he had acted in his sleep or under some spell that stupefied the understanding whilst it gave the spirit full play, for he discovered nothing of that wonder and terror which had been visible in him when I entered the cabin after his former attempt to destroy me, which certainly had not been the case had he quitted my bedside in the belief that I was dead of my wounds.

Vanderdecken talked of the fair wind; a sort of satisfaction illuminated his sombre austerity; though his dignity was prodigious and his commanding manner full of an haughty and forbidding sternness, he was nevertheless politer to me than he had ever yet been, going to the length of talking about the food on the table, the excellent quality of the African Guinea fowl and bustard, recommending me to taste of a dish of marmalade, and relating a story of a privateer having left behind him, in a ship he had clapt aboard of, a number of boxes which seemed to be full of marmalade, but which in reality were loaded with virgin silver. But it was the fair wind that produced this civility, though after last night's business 'twas welcome enough let the cause be what it would.

No sooner had Imogene and I a chance of speaking alone than she asked me what was the matter. I told her how Van Vogelaar had entered my cabin and stabbed at my bed. She turned white; her beautiful eyes grew large and bright with terror; she clasped her hands and for some moments could not speak. Her agitation diminished, however, when she understood that Van Vogelaar walked in his sleep, though she was still very white when she cried: "If you had been sleeping when he entered you would now be dead!"

I answered: "What he does in his sleep he may do awake. This action is like the whispers of a dreamer, babbling out his conscience. It is in his soul to kill me, and long thinking upon it has moved him to the deed in his sleep."

"Oh, Geoffrey, did I not beg you to secure your door?"

"Ay— that shall be looked to in future, I warrant you. But why should this man, of all the others, especially thirst for my life? How have I wronged him?"

She replied by pointing out that the crew of my ship had fired upon him; also that in the days of his natural life he was no doubt a villain at heart and that all the features of his devilish nature attended him through his doom; that being more jealous, rapacious and avaricious than the others, he might regard my presence as a menace to his share of the treasure, and hunger after my destruction; so that, come what might, I should never be able to report the wealth that lay in the ship's hold.

There was no doubt my darling was right, impossible as I found it to reconcile these earthly and human passions and motives with his supernatural being; and particularly the indifference he exhibited on the previous evening when the Frenchman came running us aboard, with his concern for his share in the gold, jewels and plate below. But I had long abandoned all speculation concerning what I must term the intellectual aspect of these miserable creatures. You will suppose that we found a fruitful text in this mate's somnambulistic attack upon me, and that we talked at great length about our chances of escape and the necessity Van Vogelaar's malignant hate put me under of inventing some method to deliver ourselves by, be the risks of it what they might. Yet it was but talk.

Indeed, never did prisoners' outlook appear more hopeless. Compared to this floating jail, compassed about by the mighty sea, the walls of a citadel were as paper, the bars of a dungeon's window as packthread. But the most bitter and invincible barrier of all was Captain Vanderdecken's resolution to carry Imogene with him in this ship to Amsterdam.

Chapter 5

A Tempest Bursts Upon Us

I DID NOT, as I had told Imogene, need a second hint to secure my life by night, however it might fall out with me in the day. By looking about I met with a piece of ratline stuff which I hid in my cabin, and when the night came I secured one end to the hook of the door, passing the other end through the staple and then making it fast to my wrist; so that, the door being shut, no one could enter without tweaking or straining my arm with such violence as was sure to awake me.

Meanwhile the fair wind hung very steady, blowing about south, a pleasant breeze that yielded a pure blue sky and small puff-shaped clouds exceedingly white; the sea was also of a very lovely sapphire, twinkling and sparkling in the north like a sheet of silver cloth set a-trembling. The Braave stole along softly, with but little seething and hissing noises about her now that her yards lay braced well in. I would think whilst I watched her flowing sheets, the long bosoms of her canvas swelling forwards with the slack bolt-ropes arched like a bow, and the mizzen rounding from its lateen yard, backed by the skeleton remains of the great poop lantern, that she needed but the bravery of fresh paint, a new ancient, pennons and streamers, bright pettararoes or swivels, glass for the lanterns and gilt for her galleries and beak, to render her as picturesque and romantic a vessel as ever sailed in that mighty procession, in whose van streamed the triumphant insignia of the great Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese Admirals.

'Twas impossible to doubt that every man in the ship believed that he was going home this time. There was an air of alacrity in them that had never before been noticeable. They would look eagerly seawards over the bows, gazing thus for long minutes at a time. Whenever the log was hove I'd mark one or more inquire the speed of the men who had held the reel or dragged in the line, as they went forward. They smoked incessantly, with an air of dull and heavy satisfaction in their faces.

I observed a lifting, so to speak, of the stupor off Vanderdecken. His trances— I mean those sudden fits of death-like insensibility which I can only liken to cataleptic attacks— were few, whence I concluded that his spirit, or whatever might be the nature of the essence that owned his great and majestical frame for a tabernacle— had gathered an increase of vitality from the invigorated hope and brisk desires which the fair wind had raised. In Van Vogelaar I witnessed no change. Possibly the dark shadows of my fears being on him held him gloomy and malignant to my sight. Likewise, I was careful to keep a wide space between us, save at meals, and never to have my back upon him, for to be sure, if I was to be murdered by the rogue, it should not be for the want of a bright look-out on my part.

This state of things continued for three days. A powerful current runs to the westward in these seas, and adding its impulse to our progress, I calculated that in those seventy-two hours we made not less than an hundred and thirty-three leagues. As time passed my wonder increased, for though I knew not our position, and never durst ask Vanderdecken what situation his dead-reckoning assigned us, I could not conceive— recollecting the place in which the Saracen was when we sighted the Death Ship— that we had been blown, during the time I had been on board, into a very remote sea; and hence 'twas reasonable that I should think it wanted but a few days sailing after this pattern to carry us round the Cape. Therefore I say my wonder grew, for whilst it was impious to suppose that the Devil could contrive that this ship should outwit the Sentence, yet our steady progress caused me to waver in my faith in the stern assurance of the vessel's doom.

I would say to Imogene: "The breeze holds; see how steady is the look of the southern sky! Is it possible that this wind will carry her round?"

To which she would answer: "No, the change will come. Oh, Geoffrey, it will come, though no more than the ship's length lay between her and the limit which you believe the Curse has marked out for her upon this sea."

Then I would agree with her. But afterwards, coming on deck in the afternoon, or next morning, and finding the Death Ship pushing along, her head pointing north-west, her sails full, the wake sliding away astern in a satin smoothness, wonder and doubt would again possess me, and twenty odd fancies occur, such as, "Suppose the Sentence has been remitted! Suppose it be the Will of Heaven this ship should return to Amsterdam, that a final expiation of Vanderdecken's wrong-doing might be accomplished in his and his miserable crew's beholding with their own eyes the extinction of those houses they had yearned for, and the tombs— if aught of memorial in that way remain— of those hearts whose beating they hoped to feel upon their own?"

Such thoughts would set me talking to Imogene.

"Conceive of this ship's arrival in the Texel! What consternation, what astonishment would she arouse! What mighty crowds would flock to view her!" And in the hurry and ardency of my imagination, I would go on figuring the looks and behaviour of the people as our ghastly crew stepped ashore, asking one and another after their wives and children, those Alidas, Geertruidas, Titias, Emelies, Cornelias, Johannas, Fedoras, Engelinas, and Christinas, and those Antonys, Hendricks, Jans, Tjaarts, Lodewyks, Abrahams, Willems, Peters, and Fredericks, whose very memory, let alone their dust, was as utterly gone as the ashes in any pipe forward there when the fire had been tapped out of the bowl overboard.

During the night of the third day the wind held steadily. I left the deck a little before midnight, having passed some hours of the darkness in the company of my love, and our sails were then full with the prosperous wind, the ship passing along over the quiet sea in a great shadow, the stars very piercing, and the light of their colours sharp and lovely; but on coming from my cabin next morning, I found the breeze gone; the ship was rolling upon a swell coming with some power from the westwards; and the dead cloths of the canvas striking a small thunder into the motionless air as they beat against the masts with the weary, monotonous swaying of those spars.

The change had come! The swell was full of foreboding; it was as my heart had foreseen, spite of the wonder and inventions of my imagination; but nevertheless, the perception of that polished sea heaving into the dimness of the distant sky, the sight of the deadness of the calm that had slued the Death Ship till her sprit-topsail veiled and disclosed the oozing sun as she bowed with her beak pointing into the east, brought a disappointment that sickened me to the soul.

"Great God," I cried within myself, "is this experience to end only with my death!" and I entered the cabin in so melancholy a mood that I could scarce hold up my head for the heaviness in my eyes and brain.

Imogene was alone. I kissed her hand and fondled it. She instantly observed my depression, and said, gently, "I feared this calm would dishearten you. But it was inevitable, dear. It was impossible a change of some kind should be delayed."

"Yes, but it breaks me down to think of another long, soul-starving, stormy drive into the south-east, another terrible spell of Vanderdecken's savage manners— of Van Vogelaar's murderous attempts, and of the hopelessness afterwards. Oh, my love! the hopelessness afterwards!— when the weather breaks and the wind blows fair again. Will it never end?"

She cast her eyes down with a swift motion of her finger to her lips. I turned, as Vanderdecken approached. The darkness of his inward rage lay heavy upon the folds of his brow; 'tis no exaggeration to apply to his appearance the strong words of Beaumont:

"There are a thousand furies in his looks,

And in his deadly silence more loud horror

Than, when in Hell, the tortur'd and tormentors

Contend whose shrieks are greatest!"

He came without speaking to his chair, turning his fiery eyes from Imogene to me without saluting us. A moment after Van Vogelaar arrived.

We took our places, but none spoke. One side-long look the mate darted at me under his parchment-coloured lids, and malice and hate were strong in it. I could see that Imogene was awed and terrified by the captain's manner. You dreaded to hear him speak. His stillness was that of a slowly ripening tempest and his sultry, forbidding, darkening bearing seemed to thicken the very atmosphere about him till you drew your breath with labour. He drank a silver cupfull of wine, but ate nothing.

The mate on the other hand plied his knife and fork with a surly heartiness. For my part, I felt as though a mouthful must choke me; yet I made out to eat that these men should not think I was afraid. I believe Imogene would have gone to her cabin but for her anxiety to support and encourage me, so to say, by her presence.

"What horrible curse do we carry in this ship," presently exclaimed Vanderdecken, speaking with a hoarse muttering that had no note of the familiar melodious richness, "that all winds which might blow us westwards die before the meridian of Agulhas is reached? What is there in these masts to poison the breeze? Do we spread sails woven in the Devil's loom? Have we a Jonah among us?"

"Skipper!" cried Van Vogelaar, "Is it Herr Fenton, think you? Measure the luck he carries by what hath happened since he has been in this ship. Six days of storm!" He held up his fingers with a furious gesture. "Twice, in a few hours, have our lives, our treasure, our ship been imperilled! Note, now, this westerly swell, this stagnant atmosphere, and a dimness in the west that will have grown into storm and wind ere the afternoon watch be ended."

"He speaks to my prejudice," I exclaimed, addressing Vanderdecken; "let him be candid. His tongue is injurious to the Hollander's love of honour. Mynheer, consider: He talks of the six days of storm— that weather had been brewed before my ship sighted yours. Of the English man-of-war and the French pirate; why not of the wreck that yielded you a bountiful store of needful things? He knows— as you do, Herr Vanderdecken, that Englishmen— least of all English mariners— are not among those who practise sorcery. This change is the concern of that Being who has yet to judge this man. If he charges me with the control of the elements, then, by the Majesty of Heaven, he basely lies even in his rash and impious effort to do me, a weak and erring mortal, honour!"

With which I turned upon the villain and stared at him with eyes fuller of more potent fury flashed into them by the rage of my healthy, earthly manhood than could possibly possess him out of that dusty sepulchre of his body which lived by the Curse alone. He shrunk away from me, looking at his skipper.

"Captain Vanderdecken," broke in the sweet voice of Imogene, "you will not let Herr Van Vogelaar's intemperate accusations influence your love of justice. Herr Fenton is not accountable for this calm; 'tis monstrous to suppose it. Charge me sooner with witchcraft; I have been longer in this ship than he; in that time you have met many adverse winds; and if his being an Englishman is his wrong, hold me also answerable for the failure of your hopes, since I am English too!"

He looked at her, then at me, then back to her, and methought her beauty coloured the stormy cloud of his expression with a light of its own, not softening it, but robbing it somewhat of its terror. He moved his lips, talking to himself, folded his arms and leaned back, staring straight up at the deck.

I fancied by saying more yet I could mend my case, and would not meet Imogene's eye for fear of being checked.

"Captain Vanderdecken, I am here as a shipwrecked man— dependent upon your generosity as a fellow-being, of which you have given me so abundant an illustration that my heart sinks when I consider that I am too poor to make you any return saving in thanks. Had I tenfold the powers your mate imputes to me, could I work you evil? Give me the control of the wind, and such a gale would follow this ship that you should be speedily counting the date of your arrival at Amsterdam in hours. Is it reasonable that I should seek to delay this voyage? I, who have but these clothes in which I stand— who am divorced from my home— who am helpless and defenceless among the enemies of my country— among men from whom I should have nothing to hope if they had not long given the world to know that their generosity as foes is alone equalled by their heroism as mariners!"

He had slowly turned his eyes upon me when I began to speak, and now made a haughty gesture with his hand as if bidding me hold my peace. And perhaps my conscience felt the rebuke, though he merely designed to let me know that I had said enough; for, between ourselves, I had as little opinion of Dutch generosity as I had of Dutch valour, and should have despised myself for this flattering had I been talking to human beings.

Happily nothing more came of the tempest that lay muzzled in the captain's breast. Whether my standing up for myself, my heated manner towards his mate, gave a new turn to his mood, he did not speak again of the change of weather, and as speedily as ceremony would permit, I got up, made my bow, and went on deck.

The appearance in the west was sullen enough, though merely with a faintness there that was unrelieved by any edging or shouldering outline of cloud. A few patches of vapour lay streaked along the sky, otherwise the heavens hovered in an unstained hollow, but of a faded, watery blue, unwholesome and with a sort of blindness of fog in it; and up in the north-east hung the sun, shorn of his rays, a squeezed yet uncompacted mass of dazzle, like as I have seen him show when setting in a belt of vapour that has not entirely hid him, and casting a wake as dim as burning oil. The swell had grown in weight even while we had been breaking our fast. There being not the faintest draught of air to steady the vessel— no, not so much as to put the most delicate curl of shadow upon the heads of the muddy-blue, grease-smooth, liquid roundings which came with a sulky brimming to the channels. She rolled with stupid heaviness, her sails rattling like a discharge from great ordnance, and a sort of song-like cries twanging out from the sharp fierce strains put upon the shrouds and backstays, and many noises in her hold. You would have thought that her huge round-tops and heavy furniture of spar and rigging would have given some regularity to her pendulous swaying: but the contrary was the case, her action being so jerky, abrupt, and unforegatherable by the legs, that walking was impossible.

I passed the morning partly on deck, partly in the cabin, nearly all the while in Imogene's society, Vanderdecken's passionate mood being too vehement to suffer him to notice either me or my dearest. Indeed, I sought the cabin chiefly to remove myself from his sight, for as the weather darkened round his wrath mounted with it— visible in his tempestuous stridings, and above all, in the flaming and cursing eyes he would again and again level at the heavens; and I sometimes felt that nothing less than my life might be the forfeit of my even provoking his regard and constraining his attention to me in his present satanic posture of mind.

When the dinner hour came, he fiercely ordered Prins to bring him some drink on deck: he could not eat. All the morning he had been directing his gaze into the south and north and east for any blurr of the polished folds that should exhibit movement in the air in those quarters; and from the undulating sea-line, which he searched in vain, his eyes seemed to reel with the very sickness of wrath into the west where, as I knew, the Curse was busy.

Imogene and I were as mute as images at table. We had agreed not to utter a syllable whilst the mate was present, and some time before he had finished his meal, we left the cabin for the quarter-deck, where we sat hidden from Vanderdecken, who marched about the poop near the tiller, with a tread whose echo rang through the solid deck, and with a mien that made me ready to witness him at any minute repeat, waking and sensible, the horrid blasphemous part he had performed in his sleep.

The faintness in the west deepened into thickness. The atmosphere grew hot, and the fanning of the canvas that had before filled the decks with chilling draughts became a refreshment. By two o'clock in the afternoon the heads and shoulders of ponderous storm-clouds had shaped themselves above the dingy blueish obscurity in the west; they jutted up with a ghastly sheen of sickly bronze upon their peaks and brows and made a very frightful appearance. You would have thought there was a great motionless fold of heat suspended, viewless, in the middle of the heavens, and that it was magnetically drawing up volumes of black fumes from some pestilential land lying hidden behind the sea. The strange light, rusty with the ominous storm-tinge, made the sea appear round and hard, cheating the eye with the illusive complexion, till the eastern sea-line looked thirty leagues distant, and not closer westwards either, spite of its fading out in a jumble of ugly shadow that way. The sky still had a dirty sort of blue where the sun went out behind it, and I tell you 'twas scaring to find him sunk out of sight in a kind of ether whose hue, deceptive as it was, caused it to look clear enough for him to float in. It was in its way a sheer drowning of the luminary, like the foundering of a flaming fabric in the sea.

The gloom stole gradually into darkness as though some giant hand was warily drawing a sable curtain over our mastheads. Never did I watch the growth of a storm with such awe as now filled me. To my alarmed sight, the gathering seemed like an embodiment of the Curse in dreadful, swelling, livid vapours, whose dull hectic, whose sallow bronze glaring out of the murkiness, showed like the overflowing of the blue and scarlet and sunlight fires pent up in those teeming surcharged bosoms. My plain sense assured me that the tempest could not hold for this Death Ship the menace that would render its aspect terrifying to the mariner on board an earthly craft; yet it was impossible for my instincts as a seaman to accommodate themselves to the supernatural conditions which begirt me, and I found myself trembling for the safety of the ship when I discovered that the tempest was suffered to grow without an order being given to the men to shorten sail and prepare for it.

I left Imogene and stepped furtively along the quarter-deck to command the poop, and saw Vanderdecken standing aft, surveying the storm with his arms folded, his chin depressed, and his face staring out ashenly against the gloom. I watched him for some minutes, but never once did he stir. Arents and Van Vogelaar were on the other side of the deck, leaning over the rail, gazing at God knows what, but never speaking as I could be sure in the silence that rested upon the ship. The men hung about in groups forward; mere cunningly devised shapes of human beings without the faintest stir of restlessness among them. Many of them smoked, and the pale wreaths went from their paler lips into the air straight as staffs.

"Imogene, look at that sky!" I whispered, "did mortal ever behold the like of it?"

'Twas two o'clock; a tempest-coloured twilight, in which the sails to the flattened swell swayed like visionary wings grown languid with long flight, and feebly hovering and almost noiselessly beating over the ship; out of the gloom over the side came now and again the yearning moan of water, foamlessly laving the bends and run of the vessel; in each death-like pause you heard the silence tingling in the air with the low phantasmal muttering of a weltering sea, a sound as of an imagination of unreal breakers upon a faery shore.

With hands clasped upon my arm, my darling looked as I pointed. In the extreme west the shade of the heavens was a sort of dismal slate, and there was an incessant winking of lightning all about it, like a mad dancing of stars of piercing brilliance; this enlarged into dense masses of dark vapour streaked as sand is ribbed by the action of surf; then zenith-wards was a space of faint green sky, very dim as though beheld through smoke, and past this lay a floating body of thin vapour thickening over our mastheads into an amazing appearance of clouds like to the bush that shags the New Holland slopes, merging eastwards into a vast array of clouds twisted into the aspect of whirlpools, and in their brooding motionlessness resembling vortices suddenly arrested when most madly gyrating. But this description, though imitated to the life, conveys not the least idea of the horrid appearance of that sky, for there is nothing in words to express the effect upon the mind of the contrast of the several shades of colour all combinating to fill the sea with a malignant hue, and the keen throbbing of the lightning low down, the washing sweep of the sick and ghastly ocean into the western dusk, the stooping soot of the vaporous maelstroms overhead, only waiting, as it seemed, for some storm-signal to start off every one of them into a very madness of revolution, boiling out into wet and crimsoned tempests.

After a little all these appearances melted into one great cloud of an indigo tint, ridged with layers of black vapour and blackening into very midnight on the western seaboard where the lightning was shooting. The sea had strangely flattened; the weighty swells which had precoursed the growth of the storm had run away down the eastern waters; it was as though the hot heaviness of the rising and spreading blackness had pressed down the ocean into a smooth plain.

As not an order had yet been given, not a clewline nor a halyard touched, I had made up my mind to presently behold an astonishing exhibition of magic; that is to say, I was to witness a sudden violent blast of storm strike this Death Ship with every sail she carried abroad, and no harm to come to her from it. All at once there was a great stroke of lightning that flashed up the heavy oppressive obscurity, and the whole ship leapt to the eye in a blaze of emerald fire. There fell a few huge drops of rain, covering the decks with circles as big as saucers. A sullen shock of thunder boomed in a single report out of the west, and then it was that the voice of Vanderdecken rang out like a vibratory echo of the deep storm-note that had died away.

"Clew up the topsails and topgallant sails!"

"In sprit-sail and get the yard fore and aft!"

"Some hands this way and stow the mizzen!"

"Lower the main-yard and furl the sail!"

"Stand by to double reef the fore-course!"

These and other orders he delivered one by one, and they were repeated by the two mates and the boatswain.

I cannot believe that any fantastic vision was ever wilder, stranger, more impressive than the picture offered by the Death Ship when her men went to work to snug her down. Their mechanically-moving shapes hauling upon the ropes, running like shadows along the decks, vanishing in the sullen, swarming thickness as they mounted the shrouds, every man as silent as a spectre; the fitful trembling out of the whole vessel to the white and green and violet glimmer of the yet distant lightning; the dark sea dimly glancing into a kind of light, wan and indeterminable as the sheen of stars in polished steel, under the play of those western glitterings; the blackness overhead now settled down to the eastern seaboard, over the horizon of which there yet hovered a streak of dusty green— it was a spectacle to need the hand of Dante or Milton.

Compar'd to these storms, Death is but a qualm,

Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermudas calm;

Darkness, Light's eldest brother, his birthright

Claims o'er the World!

It was as black as night. What the men were about, with what dispatch they worked, it was impossible to see. No songs or cries came from them to enable me to guess their movements. If ever Imogene and I exchanged a word it was in a whisper, so heart subduing was the darkness and the horrible element of suspense and uncertainty in it. I had her close to the cabin-front under the poop, ready for the shelter of it at the outburst. Ten minutes went by, and then it seemed to me as if a deeper shade yet had penetrated the darkness. Suddenly, I heard a far-off humming noise, a kind of growling sound, not to be likened to thunder, though you seemed to catch the note of that too in the multitudinous crying. It was as if the denizens of a thousand forests were flying before the roaring of a tornado among the trees, every savage beast raising its own savage cry as it went, the whole uproar so remote as to resemble a mountain's reverberation of the horrible clamour leagues and leagues distant inland.

"What is that?" cried Imogene.

Ere I could speak, the heavens were split in twain by a blast of lightning that looked to fly like a dazzling shaft of flame from the north sheer over our mastheads into the south. It was almost instantly followed by a crash of thunder, ear-splitting as the explosion of the batteries of a dozen first-rates all discharged at one moment. And then fell the rain in a whole body of water, charged with hailstones as big as pigeon's eggs. The fall raised such an uproar on our decks that you looked to see the whole substantial fabric shattered by it. The surface of the sea foamed in fire to that lashing of water and hail. There was now a perpetual blaze of lightning, but the thunder merely deepened the prodigious noise of the rushing wet without, its claps being distinguishable in the dreadful tumult. We had immediately withdrawn to the cabin, and closing the door, stood looking on through the window. The decks were full of water, which, cascading through the ports and all other freeing orifices, added its roaring to the other notes of the tempest. The ship seemed on fire to as high as we could see with the hellish and continual flaming of the lightning.

'Twas of several colours, and in the same breath you saw spars, rigging, bulwark-rails, all blazing out as though lumined with brushes dipped in blue and crimson, and star-white and yellow and dark violet fires.

But no wind as yet; not a breath! That I could tell by the droop of the fore-course hanging by its gear, and faintly fanning dark and wet from its yard. But I knew it could not be far off. Those sounds I had heard as of a thousand affrighted wild beasts were— my ear well knew the noise— the echoings high in the middle air of a prodigious wind bellowing as it swept the ocean into white rage. My heart beat swiftly; all was so fearfully real that I could not grasp the supernatural conditions of the life of this ship and crew, which had otherwise assured me that the Curse that triumphed over the monarch Death must be superior to the wildest hurricane that ever piled the ocean into mountains.

"Hark!" I exclaimed, "it is upon us!" and as I spoke the gale smote us like a bolt from heaven, falling upon us with a long and frightful scream and amid a volley of lightning that made the sky a blinding purple dazzle from sea-line to sea-line. I held with both hands to one side of the frame of the window, and Imogene, half-swooning with terror, lay against me, nothing but my body saving her from being dashed against the side of the cabin. Such was the sharpness of the angle to which the first frenzy of the liberated hurricane heeled the vessel, that for some minutes I veritably believed she was foundering. The ocean boiled in a flat plain of froth, and the ship lay steady upon the enraged whiteness, with the rail of her bulwarks under, and you heard amid the seething and shrill shrieking of the wind, the sound of the water pouring on to her decks over the upper and quarter-deck and forecastle-rails, as the cataract thunders, coiling with a pure head, over the edge of some rocky abrupt. If I had opened the door— if indeed I could have taken action on that violent headlong steep of deck— it would have merely been to drown the cabin and Imogene and myself. There was nothing to be done but attend the issue, and for several minutes, I say, I stood holding on, my dearest clasping me and so supporting herself, scarce knowing whether the vessel was under water or not, unable to speak for the horrible clamour without, the lightning continuously holding the fabric visible through the window in its mani-coloured blaze, and the enduring steadiness of the hull upon the flat foam putting a terror into the situation you would not have remarked in her labouring in a hollow sea.

Presently, to my great joy, I perceived that she was recovering her upright posture. They had succeeded in getting her to pay off, and after a little, giving her tall stem to the gale, she went before it as upright as a church, the water on her decks pouring away overboard, the piercing fury of the wind robbed to the extent of the velocity with which the vessel drove, and no other sound rising up off the sea but the amazing hissing of foam.

"Curse or no Curse," said I, "Vanderdecken knows his business as a sailor, and call me a Dutchman if here has not been a noble stroke of seamanship!"

"Wy zyn al Verdomd!" said the parrot.

Chapter 6

We Spring A Leak.

I NEVER REMEMBER the like of such a storm as this in these seas, though I have made the passage of the Cape four times and have met some frightful weather off the great Agulhas Bank. Amazing suddenness and violence in the first bursting of a storm you have reason to expect in the inter-tropical regions eastwards of the African continent, but not down here. Captain George Bonny, of the ship Elizabeth Tudor, is the only person that I am acquainted with who has had experience of so sudden a tempest as I have attempted to describe off this African headland; and who is to say that he had not happened upon the neighbourhood of the Death Ship and unwottingly tasted somewhat of the doom of that vessel, whose passage over the limits of her fate the storm the Elizabeth Tudor encountered was designed to furiously arrest?

Be this as it will. I passed from the cabin into as raging and affrighting a scene as was ever witnessed in any ocean. The sky was made unearthly by the flashes of lightning, whose blinding leaps seemed to bring the blackness down like a wall upon the eyes, and if ever an interval lasted long enough to suffer the light to resume its powers, then you found that blackness horrible with the unspeakable shade it took from the plain of boiling froth that stretched like a world covered with snow to the sea-girdle, fading from startling, staring, glaring whiteness around us into a pallid, ghastly dimness, where it sank and melted into the levin-riven inky folds.

I struggled on to the poop and crawled on my hands and knees to the little deck-house, against the foremost end of which I stationed myself; and here I was protected from the rain and wind. Straight as an arrow over the seething smother the Death Ship was running, and her keel slided smooth as a sledge through the feathery surface. The tempest lay like a red-hot iron sheet upon the waters, making it boil and furiously hiss, but stifling all life of billow, ay, of ripple even, out of it. The men had contrived to shorten sail down to the double-reefed fore-course, and under that strip of curved and lifted canvas— a steel-hard belly, black as a cloud against the white water beyond the bows— the ship was driving, three men at the great tiller, and others attending the tackles attached to it. With every blue or green or yellow flash, you saw the rain sweeping along in crystal lines, complexioned by the electric dartings, now like silver wire, now as if the heavens were shedding blood. 'Twas like a sea of water in the wind, and the shrill harsh singing of it above, and the vehement sobbing of it upon the decks, were sounds of themselves amid the universal shrieking and hissing. There was an incessant explosion of thunder, sometimes right overhead, the echoes answering in volleys, and the rattling sharper than the speaking of great guns in mountain scars and hollows. The dazzling play made a fiery tapestry of the scene, and the flying ship came and went in flames, leaping out of the black tempest, then vanishing like a burning shape, eclipsed and revealed by the speeding of sooty vapours.

Amid these fierce swift shinings I would catch sight of the towering form of Vanderdecken standing at the mizzen-rigging, one hand on a shroud or backstay, sloping his figure against the tempest and his beard blown straight out before him. The others being abaft the little house I could not see. The scene now did indeed astonishingly realise the doubtful traditions which depicture the Flying Dutchman perpetually sailing amid storm. Since I had been on board I had viewed her in many conditions of weather; but though her supernatural qualities and characteristics best appeared when they stole out to the faint, waving silver of the moonshine trembling along the oil-like blackness of a midnight calm, yet she could never be more impressive than when, as she was now, fleeing like a witch driven mad by pursuing demons, whose numbers darkened the heavens, the lightning streaming about her like ordnance in Titanic hands fired to bring her to, all her rigging in a scream as she ran, showing in the spaces of dusk betwixt the flashes a great, black, phantasmal shape upon the floor of ringing and frenzied whiteness which the tempest swept along with her, and which broke not therefore in the lightest curl from her stern, nor yielded a hand's-breadth of wake.

She was flying dead into the east, and every minute her keel passed over as many fathoms of sea as would take her hours of plying to recover. I frequently directed my eyes at Vanderdecken, suspecting his wrath, and prepared for a tragical exhibition, whose furiousness should be in awful correspondence with this insanity of sea and sky, but had the life been struck out of him as he stood there his posture could not have been more fixed and unmoving.

It was, however, impossible for such wind as this to blow many minutes without raising a sea. The increased soaring and falling of the black wing of canvas forward against the boiling that rose in a faintness of spume and lustre of its own into the air denoted the gradual hollowing of the water, and then no sooner had the talons of the storm succeeded in scooping shallow troughs out of the levelness of foaming snow than the surge grew magically. Every liquid side was shouldered by the tempest into hills, and the hills swelled into such mountains as you must come down into these seas to behold the like of. Half-an-hour after the first of the hurricane the ship was plunging and laying along amid a very cauldron of infuriate waters, scarcely visible amid the fleecy fog of spray, heights of the sea reaching to her tops, spouting their prodigious lengths alongside, sometimes tumbling in thunder upon her forward decks, sometimes curling in blown snakings ahead of her. Heavy as had been some of the hours of my first six days of storm, the wildest of that time was but as a feather to the weight of this tempest. The lightning ceased, and but for the evening that was now descending, and that had put the shadow of night into the shade of the storm, the heavens must have shown somewhat pale by the thinning of the electrical vapour; but this scarce perceptible clearance did but leave larger room for the wind, and it was now blowing with extraordinary spite. It would be impossible for the ship to run long before the swollen acclivities, whose foaming heads appeared to brush the black ceiling under which they coursed as they arched in the wake of the vessel's narrow stern, and methought they would have to bring her to speedily if she was not to be pooped and swept and smothered.

Even whilst I thus considered, the tempestuous voice of Vanderdecken swept in a roar along the deck.

"Settle away the fore-yard and secure the sail!"

"Some men aft here to the mizzen and show the foot of it as she rounds!"

'Twas more like the spiriting of canvas than the hands of men going prosaically to work on jeers and clew-garnets when the fore-yard slowly slided down to the bulwark-rails, and the sail was smothered as though frapped by airy fingers forked out of the whirling dusk. Some of the crew with glimmering faces came crawling aft, probing the solid substance of the wind with figures bowing sheer into it, and all in silence the helm was put down amid a sudden mad flogging of liberated cloths aft, and the ship lying along gave her round bow and side to the seas which flashed in storms of water over her as she met them to the pressure of the hard-over rudder.

Once with the sea fair upon the bow, the ancient structure rose as buoyantly as a wooden castle to the heave of the mighty surge, for all her labouring with full decks and the veiling of her by clouds and storms of spray. But had her situation looked to be one of frightful and imminent peril, I must by this time have viewed it with unconcern. The sense of the Curse that held the ship vital was strong in me. Out of the first terrific blast of the hurricane 'twas odds if the newest and stoutest ship could have emerged without damage, supposing she had not been sunk outright; yet did this vessel survive that fearful outfly, aged as she was. Not a yarn of her old ropes broken, nor a spar nor yard, whose rottenness caused them to glow in the dark, sprung or strained; more staunchly than could have been possible to her, even in the hour of her launch, did she breast the great black seas which swept her to their mountain-tops with yelling rigging and masts aslant, to hurl her a breathless moment afterwards into stagnant valleys, echoing the thunder of the gale that touched not their depths.

I quitted the deck and returned to Imogene in the cabin. The lighted lamp swung wildly, and though the uproar of the tempest was muffled below, yet the noise of straining was so great that I had to put my lips close to my dear girl's ear to make myself heard. I gave her a description of the sea, acquainted her with the posture in which the ship lay, and told her that the incredible violence of the storm was promise enough that it would not endure; though it was horrible to think of the miles we had been forced to run into the eastwards, and of the leagues off our course the drift of the ship, even in twelve hours, would compel us to measure.

Prins came to inquire if we would eat. We answered "No." That evening was the most dismal I had ever spent in the accursed ship. I held my sweetheart's hand, and speech being, as I have said, as good as impossible, I afflicted myself with a thousand miserable thoughts and dark and ugly fancies. Great heaven! With what loathing did I regard the sickly mask of the ship's side, the gloomy ovals, the ghastly revelry of the lantern's colours flashing to the prodigious swinging of the tempest-tossed fabric! And from time to time the parrot, affrighted by the noises and by the dashing of her cage against the bulkhead, burst suddenly out with her horrid croak of "Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

Neither Vanderdecken nor his mate came below. Nothing could better have illustrated their ignorance of their true state than the anxieties which held them to the deck in the heart of that raging wind. Their solicitude might indeed deserve another name for the impious passions which informed it, yet it had a character sailorly enough to make it intelligible to human sympathy, and 'twas truly soul-subduing to sit in that cabin and hear the uproar of the tormented waters without, the outcry in the rigging, the straining and groaning below, and think of those men— of Vanderdecken, at all events— watching his ship as though Batavia were but six weeks distant and Amsterdam a certain port presently.

At half-past nine Imogene withdrew. I led her to her cabin door, tenderly kissed her, then returning called for a cup of spirits and water and went to my sleeping place. I thought to have stayed a minute on deck to look about me, but the wind came with so much fury of wet in it that, having no mind to turn in with drenched clothes, I hastily raised the hatch and dropped below. I believe I lay awake the greater part of the night. My memory is not clear owing to the confusion my brain was in. It was not only a feeling akin to conviction that my fate was sealed, that my dearest and I were never to be rescued nor suffered to deliver ourselves from this Death Ship, though to be sure such apprehensions, so keen and fierce, might have caused a stouter mind than mine to fall distraught, the movements of the ship were so excessive, being very high, light and broad, and the seas so extraordinarily hollow, that, without disordering me with sickness, they wrought an alarming giddiness in me, and I lay as one in a sort of fit.

In some such condition as this I languished, I believe, through the greater part of the night, but contrived to snatch sleep enough to refresh me, so that when I awoke I felt better, the dizziness gone and with it something of the distress of mind. The action of the ship showed that the gale was considerably abated, but I had no sooner my senses than I took notice of an unusual sound, like a slow and measured beating in the ship, as though some stout fellow with a heavy mallet regularly struck a hollow object in the hold. This excited my curiosity, and I went on deck. The moment my head was through the hatch I saw what produced the noise. The men were pumping. There was but one pump seemingly that would work, and this four seamen were plying, the water gushing freely from the pipe and washing away overboard through the scuppers.

The old engine made so melancholy and uncommon a sound that I might have lain a week in my bed speculating upon it, without even hitting the truth. I took notice that the water came up clear and bright as glass, a sure sign that it was entering freely. A sullen shade still hung in the weather, the sky was of slate, with a small scud flying under it of the hue of sulphur, but the breeze was no more than a fresh gale of which we were making a fair wind, the yards braced very nearly square, and the Braave sulkily swinging through it with a noise of boiling at her bows.

I was not a little excited by this combination of glass-bright gushing and square yards, and after going forward for the comfort and sweetness of a canvas bucketful of salt water foaming like champagne as I lifted it out of the snow-flaked, dark-green surge, I walked on to the poop, where stood Arents alone, and stepped up to the binnacle. The card made a west-north-west course, the wind on the larboard quarter. I ran my eye over the sea, but the olive-complexioned hue worked with a sulky sinuosity naked against the livid shadow, and the deep looked indescribably gloomy and swollen and confused, though the sun had been risen above half-an-hour. Arents was not a man I held in awe, albeit many might have deemed his unearthly pallor more dreadful than most of the others because of the great breadth of fat and hairless face it overlay; yet I was determined not to question him lest he should repulse me. I therefore contented myself with a short salute and lay over the rail watching the swollen bodies of water and wondering what plan Vanderdecken was now upon, until the chimes of the clock in the cabin made me know it was breakfast time.

The captain came to the table with a stern and bitter expression in his countenance. It was possible he had been on deck throughout the greater part of the night, but he exhibited no trace of the fatigue you would expect to see in one that was of this earth. Methought, as I glanced at him, that sleep must be a mockery to these men, who, being deathless, stood in no need of that repose which counterfeiting death, reinvigorates our perishable frame every morning with a quickening as of a resurrection. What has one to whom the grave is denied to do with slumber? Yet if a whiter pallor was possible in Vanderdecken I fancied I witnessed it in him now. His eyes were angry and bright; the skin of his forehead lay in folds upon his heavy brows, and yet there was the stillness of a vitality, numbed or blasted by disappointment or exhausted by passion, in his manner.

Van Vogelaar did not arrive, maybe he was sleeping, with Arents' leave, well into his watch on deck. Imogene had a wan and drooping look. She answered my concerned gaze by saying she had not slept, and she smiled as she spoke, but never more sadly to my knowledge; it seemed but as a light playing over and revealing her melancholy. Lovely she appeared, but too fragile for my peace, and with too much of the sorrowful sweetness of the moon-lily when it hangs down its white beauty and contracts its milky petals into leanness with the waning of the silver orb it takes its name from.

Suddenly she pricked her ears. "What is that sound?" she exclaimed, in English.

"It is the seamen pumping the water out of the ship," I replied.

"Strange!" she said. "Long before dawn I heard it indistinctly and have ever since been listening to it with a languid, drowsy wonder, not imagining its nature. It has been working continuously. Is there water in the ship?"

"I have not dared inquire," I answered, with a side-long look at Vanderdecken, who ate mechanically without heeding us.

"Captain," she said, softly, touching him on the arm with her hand, which glittered with his jewels, "the men have been pumping for some hours— why? Will you tell me?"

He brought his eyes slowly to hers with a blank look that caused her to repeat her question.

Whereupon he answered: "The heavy working of the ship in the small hours has caused her to start a butt or hidden end."

"She is leaking?"

He answered: "Yes, my child."

"Can the leak be stopped?" she asked, encouraged to these questions by my glances.

"No, 'tis below her water-line. But it does not gain. Continuous pumping keeps the water level. We shall have to careen to get at the leak."

"Are we sailing to the coast?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

Chapter 7

Imogene Fears For Me.

ON HEARING that we were sailing to the coast my delight was so keen that I came near to suffocating myself by the sudden checking of the shout of joy that rose to my throat like an hysteric throttling thickness in the windpipe. To be sure, had anyone asked what there was in the news to fill me with this transport I should not have been able to offer a sufficient reason, for it was not as though Vanderdecken meant to steer for a port. I was sensible that he would head for some desolate bay upon a hot shore of sand, backed by great mountains, and leagues distant from any settlement, whether Dutch or British. Yet so great had been the depression excited by the tempest and the barrenness of our chances, that the mere circumstance of a change having come about, the mere happening of a departure from our rueful business of beating to the windward, raised my spirits to a very great height; nor must it be forgotten that though I conjectured in darkness, I had for a long time felt persuaded that if ever we were to remove ourselves from the Death Ship, the only opportunity that could offer would attend our dropping anchor off the African Coast.

I will not say that Vanderdecken did not observe the change in my countenance when he made his answer to Imogene. But whatever might have been his reflections they were concealed by his frowning brow and the dark and stormy shadow of passion upon his face. He ceased to speak when she ceased to question, and went on deck without calling for his usual pipe of tobacco, which was a very remarkable illustration in him of his wrath and concern.

"Dearest," said I, going to Imogene's side, "it has been a dark and cheerless night with you I fear. Would to God it were this day in my power to give redness to the roses that now lie white in your cheeks. Yet this is great news that Vanderdecken has given us."

She smiled in a questioning way.

"Why," said I, answering her, "'tis very certain that we shall never escape from this Death Ship whilst she sails the seas. But though I could not here say for the life of me what the land may do for us, I feel that the coming to an anchor close to it may give us a chance, and it will go hard indeed if a sailor's cunning, sharpened by despair, does not contrive some remedy for this horrible enthralment."

She mused a little and said, "Geoffrey, I have made up my mind to this: if you can carry me away with you I will go— whatever resolution you may form will be mine, as shall be your fortune. But, dearest," says she, smiling to my grasp of her hand, "I am also determined that your liberty shall not depend upon my escape; if you are able to get away alone, but not with me, then I stay."

"Ah!" said I, shaking my head, "your gaze cannot have sunk very deep into me or you would not talk thus."

She put her finger upon my lip. "Geoffrey, consider this. You are a man, you are young, the world is before you, liberty is your precious jewel— nay, you have a home and a mother to return to. I am an orphan— lonely in this great world of water as any sea-bird that solitarily follows our ship. I sometimes feel that there is a cold hand on my heart and that my time is not long. If it is to be my destiny to remain in this vessel, I am too certain of a short residence to fear it."

She stopped suddenly and wept.

We were alone, and I took her in my arms. I saw how it was with her, how the fear of the tempest, how sleeplessness, had wrought in her delicate health and depressed her powers, and I comforted and cherished her as my heart's love best knew how; yet her foreboding concerning her time in this world struck a chill into my blood, for it just then found solemn accentuation in her unusual pallor, her languid eyelids, the sadness of her smile, her low voice and tears.

However, I borrowed comfort from the reflection that the health of the heartiest maiden might well fail in such an existence as this girl passed, spite of the wine-like invigoration of the salt winds; that she had survived hard upon five years of experiences so wild and amazing that a few weeks had tended not a little to pale my own face and even rob me of something of my manhood; that it was inevitable she should break down from time to time, but that her sweetness would soon bloom and be coloured into a loveliness of health when this Death Ship had become a thing of the past, and when I had safely lodged her as my bride in my mother's pretty home, with flower-gardens and fields to wander in, upon floors unrocked by billows, in rooms irradiated at night by fires never more mystical than the soft flame of oil or the silver of star and moonshine.

The weather brightened as the day advanced. By noon the sky had broken into lagoons of blue, with fine large clouds that rained here and there upon the horizon and filled the air down there with broken shafts of rainbow, like to windgalls, only that the colours were very sharp and even glorious. There was now plenty of sunshine to give life and splendour to the ocean, whose dye of azure looked the purer and more sparkling for its cleansing by the great wind and rain and fire-bolts of the past night. The swell of the sea was from the southward, no longer a turbulent movement, but a regular respiratory action, with weight and volume yet that made you think of the deep as a sentient thing, with something of the violence of its hellish conflict yet lurking in its rhythmic breathing.

About this hour a number of whales showed their black, wet backs at the distance of a mile. The sunshine turned their spoutings into very beautiful fountains, which fell in showers of diamonds and rubies and emeralds; and their great shapes and solemn movements, with now and again the dive of one with a breathless lingering of tail that showed like a gigantic fan of ebony, or the rise of another, floating its sparkling blackness above the violet fold of a brimming swell, as though a little island had been hove to the surface by some deep-sea convulsion, afforded Imogene and me some twenty minutes of very agreeable diversion. The wind was a trifle to the southward of west, a brisk breeze, and the ship swarmed and swirled and rolled along at a speed of some five or six marine miles in the hour, every cloth abroad and already dried into its usual dingy staring tones. But the pump was worked without intermission. The clanging of the brake upon its pin, the gushing of the bright water flowing to the scuppers and flooding the deck thereabouts with every roll, the hissing of the slender cascades over the side, grew into sounds as familiar as the creaking of the bulkheads, or the cries of the rudder upon its ancient rusty pintles.

Those pumping gangs made a strange, mysterious sight. They toiled, but their labour was not that of living seamen who change their posture again and again, who let go an instant with one hand to smear the sweat from their brows or to bite an end of tobacco, who break into choruses as they ply their arms or growl out curses upon this hardest of marine tasks, or raise a cheerful call of encouragement one to another. There was the same soullessness in this as in all else they did. No dew was distilled from their death-like faces. Once at the pump they never shifted their attitudes. A seaman of seventy, and perhaps older yet, would work side by side with one of twenty years, and at the end of the hour's labour— for each gang was relieved every hour— the aged sailor would exhibit no more fatigue than the younger one. Their aspects came out startlingly as they stood close together, their countenances bearing expressions as undeterminable as the faint smile or the dim frown of horror or the slumberous placidity on the features of the dead; and never was the sense of the wild conjecture of the Saracen's mad captain so borne into me as when I viewed one group after another coming to this pumping business, and contrasted their faces and perceived how every man— young, middle-aged and old— showed in dreadful vitality the appearance he would have offered at the hour of his death, no matter his years, had the Curse not stood between him and the grave.

That afternoon, happening to be alone on the poop— I mean, without Imogene— for when she was absent I was more alone, though the whole of that ship's grisly company had gathered around me, than ever I could have been if marooned on some mid-ocean rock— and listening a little to the monotonous beat of the pump-gear, a thought came into my head and I stepped over to Vanderdecken, who leaned upon the weather-rail, his chin upon his hand.

"Mynheer," said I, "I ask your pardon for breaking in upon you. The labour of pumping is severe— I know it from several stern experiences." He lifted his head and slowly looked round to me. "This ship," I continued, "has rescued me from death and proved an asylum to me. 'Tis but right I should share in the general toil. Suffer me then, mynheer, to take my turn at the pump with the others."

He eyed me a little with his wonderful fiery gaze, and answered: "It is not necessary. Our company is numerous, there are hands enough. Besides, sir, there is no urgency, the water doth not gain if it do not decrease."

I bowed, and was leaving him, but he added: "I fear you have but an imperfect knowledge of the character of the Dutch. Yet you tell me you have often visited Rotterdam."

"It is true, mynheer, but only as a sailor liberated o' nights and forced therefore to form his judgment on such company as the ale-house supplies."

"That seems so," said he, "otherwise you would suspect from such treatment as we have shown you that we regard you as a guest, and it is not customary among us to use our guests as labourers."

I bowed again, contenting myself with merely thinking how, as a guest, I went in fear of my life— to say no more. I thought, however, I would use his seeming willingness to converse with me, and said in as deferential a manner as I could command, "Sir, the mere circumstance of my being your guest should properly teach me to believe that a time must come when I shall have wearied your courtesy by imposing too great a burden of my company upon it."

I paused, hoping he would make haste to assure me to the contrary; but he did not speak, merely eyeing me steadfastly.

"You will therefore judge, mynheer," I continued, "that I am actuated by no idle motive of curiosity in asking you whether your present design is to steer the ship to a port?"

"To what port?" he exclaimed.

I told him I did not know.

"Nor I," said he. "What settlement is there on this seaboard? You do not suppose that, with yonder pump going day and night, I should be willing to head for any other point of the coast than the nearest bay in which to careen and get at the leak?"

"Will that bay, mynheer," said I, still speaking with the utmost modesty and deference, "be far distant?"

He answered: "It lies a few miles south of the parallel of thirty-four degrees. To reach it we shall have to sail an hundred and eighty leagues."

"Five hundred and forty miles!" I exclaimed, with an involuntary dejected glance aloft and at the passing water. "At this rate of progress, sir, the passage will occupy about five days."

Our gaze met as I said this and I observed a sudden fire in his eyes.

"Does the execution of any project you have in your mind depend upon the time we will take in reaching the coast?" said he, with suspicion sounding fiercely in the rich deep notes of his utterance.

I felt the blood in my face as I answered: "Mynheer, I have no project. Methought, if you sailed to a port, you would rid yourself of my company. I have been long in your ship; every day increases my sense of trespass—" which said, I broke off, being really dismayed by the passionate fixity of his regard. Such a searching for the heart in one's face was unbearable. My imagination, perhaps my conscience, imparted a wizard-like power to his burning eyes, and I felt that if I lingered, I should be constrained into a revelation of my intention to escape with Imogene, as certain birds are fascinated into motionlessness and charmed to their devourment by the gaze of serpents. With the abruptness of alarm I bowed and left him. As I walked I could feel that his searching, scorching gaze followed me.

However, it was something to have found out our whereabouts, to have gathered his intention, and to be able to calculate the time of our arrival off the coast. On this I plumed myself, making pretty sure that if my questions had caused him to suspect some project in my mind, his memory would loose its hold of the thing after a few hours. But I was mistaken, as you shall now see.

Whilst we were seated at the last meal, and with us in that Death Ship formed of soup or wine for drink, and such victuals as remained from dinner, I observed a peculiar air of distress and anxiety in Imogene's face. I do not know that she made the least effort to disguise it. A sharp gleam of resentment would sparkle in the soft violet depths of her eyes as she now and then turned them on Van Vogelaar or Vanderdecken, and then as they came to me they would soften into an exquisite wistfulness that was very near to a look of grievous pain.

On the captain filling his pipe I went on deck and stood out of sight of the cabin on the poop-front, wondering what Imogene's manner signified. Presently she joined me.

The sun was gone down; the stars shone singly or in clouds of bright dust over our northward-pointing bowsprit, and the air was soft and faint with the delicate light of the moon that was drawing out of her first quarter, and that could now rain her pearls with power into the dark waters under her.

"What is amiss, dearest?" said I, taking her hand in mine, and moved in a way I could not give expression to by the pallor of her face, her eyes showing large and dark, the paleness of lip and hair and throat— her whole countenance, yes and her figure too; stealing out of their realness into an elfin-like unsubstantiality to the wan complexion of the moon.

She answered: "Did not I tell you I was sorry you had questioned Vanderdecken? He is full of suspicion, and there is always Van Vogelaar at hand to exasperate his captain's temper and fancies by the poison of his own reptile-nature."

"Has Vanderdecken spoken to you of my questions?"

"No," she replied. "What has happened is this:— Half-an-hour before supper I was in my cabin. The air was close, and I put the door on the hook and was near it combing my hair. Vanderdecken came into the cabin and spoke to Prins. Soon afterwards Van Vogelaar entered, and told the captain that he had been among the crew and informed them that he hoped to make the coast in four or five days, and that on their arrival at Amsterdam they would receive additional pay for their labour at the pump. They talked a little, but I should not have heeded them had not I suddenly caught the sound of your name. On this I left off combing my hair and crept close to the door. Vanderdecken said: 'I believe he hath some scheme. He shrunk from my gaze and the colour mounted to his cheeks. He quitted me with the air of one whose conscience is like an exposed nerve.'"

"Heaven defend us!" I exclaimed, "your true Dutchman is very fit to be a hangman. Yet this unholy creature did certainly look at me to some purpose. 'Twas time I walked off!"

She continued: "Van Vogelaar answered, 'I would not trust that man further away from me than my hand could seize him. Skipper, I ask your pardon, but was it wise, think you, to exhibit samples of the treasure below to this Englishman? There is a noble fortune for him in those chests could he but come at them. What sort of egg is that which, beyond question, his mind is sitting upon, and that will be presently hatched? He is eager to learn your intentions. He manifests this eagerness in defiance of the contempt and anger with which you have again and again crushed down his curiosity into the silence of terror. Suppose he hath some plot to secure the stranding of this ship; or that he intends her a mischief that shall force us to beach and perhaps abandon her? He is a sailor and an Englishman; we are Hollanders! Skipper, the like of that man needs no help from sorcery to contrive our ruin.' Vanderdecken answered, 'He must be got rid of,' in a voice that showed how Van Vogelaar's talk worked in him. I did not need to look, Geoffrey, to know what sort of expression his face wore. They were silent awhile. Vanderdecken then said: 'Twould be mere barbarous, useless murder to take his life; there is no evidence against him. But we have a right to protect ourselves since he hath been mad and ungenerous enough to raise our suspicions—' Van Vogelaar interrupted: ''Tis more than suspicion— 'tis conviction with me, skipper—' 'This occurs to me as a remedy,' said Vanderdecken: 'he must be set ashore before we sail; but he shall not be left to starve. A musket and ammunition will provide him with food, and he shall have a week's provisions. He is young, and with stout legs, and cannot miss his way to our Settlement if he hold steadfastly to the coast.' The mate said, 'Ay, that will be dismissing him lovingly.' They then went to the other end of the cabin and talked, but I could not hear them."

"It would be barbarous, useless murder," I cried, "to hang, or stab or drown me, but kindness, nay, lovingness, to set me ashore with a week's provisions and a fowling-piece, to give me a night to be torn to pieces in by wild beasts, or a week to be enslaved by the Homadods, or a month to perish of hunger! The villains! Is this to be their usage of me?"

"Geoffrey, if they put you on shore I will follow. The future that is good enough for you is good enough for me. And, indeed, I would rather die a hard death on shore than be left to miserably live with men capable of cruelly destroying you."

I reflected a little, and said, "Their resolution keeps me safe for the present, at all events. If I am to be marooned they will let me alone meanwhile. Therefore I consider that their determination greatly improves our chances.... No! there is nothing in their intention to scare me. I like their meaning so well that our prayer to God must be that Vanderdecken may not change his mind."

She was at a loss to understand me until I pointed out that, as I gathered from her report, they would not send me ashore until just before they were about to sail, so that I should have plenty of time to look about me and consider the surest method of escaping, whilst the ship was being careened and the leak repaired and the vessel in other ways doctored.

"And, dearest," said I, "it has come to this with you, too: that sooner than remain with these fierce and dreadful people you will take your chance of that African coast you so greatly feared."

"I will share your fortune, Geoffrey, be it life or death— let come what will," said she, nestling close and looking up at me out of the phantom faintness of her face with her large eyes in whose liquid darkness the moon was reflected in two stars.

"My precious one! I could not leave thee! If the terrors of the shore— the fears of the savage, the wild beast, the poisonous serpent— triumphed over your desire of escape, I would remain with you, Imogene, if they would let me. 'Twould be a hard fate for us both, dearest, to wear out our lives in this ship. But we cannot be parted— not of our own will, at least, however God may deal with us, or the knife or yard-arm halter of these villains. Wherever you are I must be—"

"Yes!" she cried, passionately.

"It may not indeed come to our delivering ourselves by using the coast. Another scheme is in my head, though of it I will say nothing, since too much of fortune must enter it to fit it for cold deliberation. But it may end in our escaping to the land and lurking there in hiding till the ship sails. And it makes my heart feel bold, Imogene, to hear you say that sooner than languish and miserably end your days in this accursed fabric you will dare with me the natural perils of that shore."

And I say this: that had I been sure our life would prove the forfeit of attempting to escape by the coast, I would have welcomed death for her and myself sooner than live to think of her locked up in this detested ship, passing the long horrid days in the society of unearthly men condemned of Heaven, and stealthily weeping away her heart at the thought of our severance.

Chapter 8

Land

BUT FOR IMOGENE having overheard his conversation with Van Vogelaar, I should never have been able to guess that there was any change in Vanderdecken's resolution respecting me; I mean any change in his intention to carry me to Europe in his ship. There was the same uniformity in the variety of his moods; he was sullen, haughty, morose, often insanely fierce, sometimes talkative, then falling into trances, in all such exhibitions as heretofore. In Van Vogelaar, however, there was a slight alteration. At moments I caught him peering at me with a look in his eyes that might have answered very well as a dark malicious merriment of soul of which the countenance was capable of expressing the villainous qualities only, I mean, not the mirth also. Sometimes he would make as though to converse; but this I cut short, repelling him very fearlessly now that I understood his and his captain's plans, and that I had nothing to fear this side the execution of it.

On my side, I was extremely wary, walking cautiously in all I said and did, and never venturing a remark to Imogene, even when we had reason to believe we were absolutely alone, without sinking my voice after a careful probing glance around as if I expected to see an human ear standing out on any beam or bulkhead my sight went to.

I busied myself in certain preparations in which I got Imogene to help me. Since, in any case, our escape to the land would have to be profoundly secret, 'twas necessary we should get ready a small stock of food to carry away with us, and I told Imogene to make some bags out of the stoutest stuff she could come at to store it in, and to privately convey to me such provisions as I indicated, which she, as well as I, was to secrete when alone, during Prins' absence, when the table was prepared.

I said: "You have needles and thread?" for she had told me that some of the apparel Vanderdecken lent or gave her she had been obliged to alter. "We shall require three or four bags. Linen will do for the material."

"There is plenty of linen," said she. "I will make the bags. But what is your project, Geoffrey? Tell me your full scheme— I may be able to put something to it."

"I have two schemes," I answered: "but I will speak only of the one that concerns the shore. Vanderdecken is sure to bring up close to the land; I have little doubt of being able to swim the distance, and shall make a small frame of wood to sit about your waist on which you will float when I lower you into the water, and then I shall softly let myself down and tow you to the land by swimming."

I thought to see her countenance change, but she regarded me fearlessly, indeed with an emotion as of triumph colouring her face.

"How am I to enter the water?" she asked.

"I will lower you from the quarter-gallery outside your cabin," I replied, "the height is not great. The blackness under the counter will hide you, and I shall contrive to float us both away very quietly."

She said, gazing at me fondly and smiling: "Everything is feasible so far, Geoffrey. But now imagine us arrived on shore."

"I must carry you as far as your strength will suffer," I replied. "Of course, Vanderdecken will send in pursuit of us, but there should be no lack of dense vegetation full of hiding places. Yet in this as in all other things, my dearest, we must rely upon God's help. That given there is nothing to fear; denied— then it would be better for me if I threw myself overboard at once."

"Geoffrey," she said, "I do not question you, dear heart, for dread of what we may encounter, but merely that by letting your plans lie in my mind my girlish spirit may grow used to them and unswervingly help you when the time comes."

"Brave little woman!" I cried, "do not believe I could misjudge you. You would ask me what is to follow when this vessel quits the coast and leaves us alone there? How can I answer? We must attempt what others have successfully achieved, and struggle onwards to some settlement. I know— I know, my darling, that the outlook is black and affrighting. But consider what our choice signifies; the fate that awaits us if you remain and I am marooned; or the chances— meagre indeed, but chances, nevertheless— which offer if we escape to the land. And we shall be together, dearest!"

I kissed her brow, and her love leapt in her to my impassioned greeting; beautiful as she was, yet did she appear transfigured by the rich hue in her cheeks, her smile, the sparkle of her chaste and maidenly joy in the dark heaven of her eyes. Call me not cruel for thus deliberately preparing to bring her face to face with the horrors of the African coast— with those barbarous features which her heart had long ago recoiled from the mere thought of. She was my sweetheart— my affianced— my life's blood. Oh! how dear to me for her beauty, her sweetness, her passion for me, the miracle of our meeting, her loneliness under the sun and stars of the mighty Southern Ocean, amid shapes more spectral than ghosts, more horrible with their survival of human vices than had they been dead bodies quickened into life without soul or brain.

How could I leave her? How could I endure the idea of my being forced ashore— alone— and of her sailing away forever from me in this grisly company? I had considered all these things; how if we gained the beach she would have to walk, as far as her limbs suffered, in drenched clothes and her delicate flesh chilled to the bone; how in our hiding-place the dews of a deadly climate would fall upon her by night, with creeping abominations of reptile and vermin swarming in the tangle where she lay— enough! I say that all perils which experience or imagination could crowd into such a deliverance as that I had in my mind and was steadfastly working out had been present to me from the beginning— but to what purpose? Only to make me feel with the power of every instinct, with the impulse and strength of all-influencing and heated passions, that my fortune must be hers and that we could not part!

A sailor will wonder perhaps to hear me speak of three or four bags of provisions, and wonder also that I should not see that if there was the least movement in the water when I lowered Imogene with these bags about her into it, the provisions would be spoiled by the wet. But 'tis proper to say here that this proposal to float her in a frame and tow her ashore by swimming was but an alternative scheme which, at all hazards, I would go through with, if the other and less perilous venture should prove impracticable, and in case this should be so, I said nothing to her about it, that by her growing accustomed to the dismal and dangerous project she would not tremble and shrink if it came, as I feared it might, to our having to escape ashore. Three small bags secured about my darling's shoulders, well out of the water, were less likely to be wetted than one big one that must needs hang low, trice it as I might; and anyway the three would be as good as one, let the manner of our escape be what it would.

She made me these bags, and I hid them in my cabin, along with some biscuit which had been taken from the wreck, a few pieces of salted meat cooked, a small jar of flour, a little silver cup for drinking, and other compact and portable things, such as the flat banana cakes the cook sent to the cabin, a bottle of marmalade of the size of a small pickle jar, and the like. These things she and I took from the table by degrees, and they were not missed. I would have given a finger for a musket and powder and balls; but if there was an arms-chest on board neither she nor I knew where to find it. And suppose it had been possible to me to have secreted a musket— what they used, I believe, for shooting game and cattle were match-locks with barrels about three and a half feet long, and the bore of the bigness of a horse-pistol, and cartridges in small hollow canes, each holding a charge of powder— ammunition was not to be had without asking.

She stitched me four bags, but three I found when loaded would be as heavy a load as it was prudent to put upon her; because when I came to look about me for wood for a frame for her to float in I could only meet with five small pieces, and even the purloining of these was attended with prodigious anxiety and trouble, as you will judge when I say that to get them I had to watch till I was unobserved and then kick a piece, as if by accident, under a gun, or to any corner where it might lie until I could carry it below under cover of the night.

All these things I hid under the bed-place in my cabin, where I had very little fear of their being found; for the good reason that, to my knowledge, no one ever entered the berth.

Meanwhile, the wind held bravely, with— on the third day— but a few hours of stagnant atmosphere and a flat and brilliant sea, followed by a shift into the westward of south that worked into a hearty wind, before which the Death Ship drove under all cloths, the clear water gushing from her scuppers to the clanking and spouting of her pump. Bearing in mind our situation after the tempest, as given me by Vanderdecken, and narrowly, if furtively, observing the courses we made, I kept a dead reckoning of our progress— for by this time I could measure the vessel's pace with my eye as correctly as ever the log could give it— and when the fifth day arrived I knew that at eight o'clock that morning either we were some twelve leagues distant from the African coast or that Vanderdecken was amazingly wrong in his calculations.

My excitement bade fair to master me. It needed a power of will such as I could never have supposed I possessed to subdue my demeanour to that posture of calmness which the captain and his mates were used to see in me. Happily, Imogene was at hand to control any exhibition of impatience or anxiety.

"Let them suspect nothing in your manner," she would say. "Van Vogelaar watches you closely; the least alteration in you might set him conjecturing. Who knows what fancies his base and malignant mind is capable of? His heart is bent on your destruction, and though he hopes that must follow your being left alone on the coast, yet a change in your ordinary manner might fill his cruel soul with fear that you had some plan to escape with your life, in which case I fear, Geoffrey, he would torment and enrage Vanderdecken into slaying you either here or on shore."

Well, as I have said, at eight o'clock that morning I reckoned we were some twelve leagues distant from the coast. The breeze had slackened somewhat, but it still blew a fresh air, and the water being quiet and such small swell as there was, together with the billows, chasing us, our speed was a fair five and a half knots. Yet there was no sign to advertise us of the adjacency of land. A few Cape hens flew along with us on our starboard beam, but this kind of sea-fowl had accompanied the ship when we were as far south as ever we were driven since I had been in her, and they could not be supposed to signify more than that we were "off" the South African headland— which term may stand for the measure of a vast extent of sea. The ocean was of as deep and glorious a blue as ever I had beheld it in the middle of the Atlantic. My suspense grew into torment; anxiety became anguish, the harsher and fiercer for the obligation of restraint. There was no dependence to be placed on Vanderdecken's reckoning. For several days he had been hove-to, and his log would certainly neither tell him his drift nor how the currents served him. My only hope then was in the supernatural guiding of the ship. I might believe, at least, that the instincts of the sea-bird would come to one whose dreadful and ghostly existence lay in an aimless furrowing of the mighty waters, and that he would know how to steer when the occasion arose, as does the ocean-fowl whose bed is the surge as its pinion is its pillow, but whose nest must be sought in rocky solitudes, leagues and leagues below that sea-line in whose narrow circle you find the creature flying.

I dared not seem to appear to stare earnestly ahead; the part I had to play was that of extreme indifference; yet, swift as were the looks I directed over either bow, my eyes would reel with the searching, passionate vehemence of my stare, and the blue horizon wave to my sight as though it swam upon a swooning view.

Shortly after twelve o'clock, I was standing alone on the forward end of the poop, when I observed a clear shade of blue haze upon the horizon directly ahead. I watched it a little while, believing it no more than a darkening in the dye of the sky that way; but on bringing my eyes to it a second time, I found a fixity in the atmospheric outlining of the shadow that was not to be mistaken for anything but the blue faintness and delicate dim heads of a distant hilly coast. I turned, with a leap of heart that was a mingling of rapture and dread, to win Imogene by my manner to view the land, too; but she stood with Vanderdecken near the tiller, with her back upon me, apparently watching the motions of a bird that steadily flew along with us, some three cables' length on our larboard quarter, flying no faster than we sailed, yet going through the air as straight as a belated homeward-bound rook. One of the men forward saw the azure shadow, and seemed to call the attention of two or three others to it in that voiceless, mechanical way, which furnished a ghostlier and grislier character to the bearing and movements of the crew than ever they could have taken from the paleness of their faces, and the glittering, unreal vitality of their eyes only; and they went towards the beak to look, dropping whatever jobs they might have been upon, with complete disregard of discipline.

Broad as the day was, abounding as the scene with the familiar and humanising glory of the blessed golden sunshine and the snow-topped peaks of shallow liquid sapphire ridges, yet the figures of those men, showing under the swelling and lifting foot of the foresail, peering under the sharp of their hands against their foreheads, silent in postures of phlegmatic observation, gave the whole picture of the ship a wild and dismal colour and appearance, and the black melancholy, the cold unholiness of it, stole biting as polar frost-smoke to the senses through the genial splendour of the noon-tide. Yet, like those men, did I stand looking with my hand against my brow, for there was a wonderful and almost blinding magnificence of light upon the shivering waters under the sun that was now floated north, but the resplendent haze did not dim the substantial line that was growing with a deepening hue into the atmosphere, and already methought I could discern the curve and sweep of inland airy altitudes with the dainty silver of clouds streaking them.

"Land, Herr Fenton!" cried a voice in my ear.

I started. Van Vogelaar stood close beside me, pointing with a pale leathern forefinger, his harsh and rugged face smileless, though his eyes grinned with malice as they lay fastened upon mine.

"I see it, mynheer," I replied, coldly.

"It should rejoice your English soul," he exclaimed. "Your countrymen will not count you as a mariner of theirs if you love not the land! See! Remote and faint though it be, how substantial even in its blue thinness doth it show! No sea-sickness there, Herr Fenton! No hollow seas yawning black as vaults!"

Had this man been of the earth I needed but to catch him by the scroff and breech and bring his spine to my knee to kill him. And he looked so much as if I could have served him so that it was hard to regard him without pity. I said, quietly, "Will that be the land the captain desires to make?"

"Ay," he answered, snarlingly, "the Dutch are sailors."

I thought to myself, yes, when they have the Devil for a sea-cunny they will hit their port.

"You will be glad to step ashore if but for half-an-hour?" said he, looking at me.

"That is a matter that concerns your master," I answered, turning from him. A low ha! ha! broke from him, muffled as the sound of a saw worked under deck, as musical too, and as mirthless. Yet Imogene's quick ear caught it, and she turned swiftly to look. And methought it had penetrated further yet, for upon the heels of it, there rose up, as an echo, from the cabin, that harsh and rusty cry, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

Chapter 9

We Bring Up in a Bay

I COULD NOT at that time know what part of the South African coast was this we had made, but I have since learnt that it lies a few miles to the eastward of the meridian of twenty-two degrees, and about an hundred and sixty miles from Cape Agulhas. When it first came into sight, as I have said, it was but a faint, long-drawn shade in the light blue of the sky over the horizon, with such a fairy tincture of flanking eminence beyond that the whole was as delicately tender as the visionary shore of a dream.

But before the dinner-hour had come round we had stolen nearly two leagues closer to it, and the coast lay plain enough and very brave with colours, the green of several dyes, the mountain sky-lines of an exquisite clearness of cutting in the radiant atmosphere and against the hard azure brilliance of the heavens, and the tracts of white sand low down as lustrous as the foam of a dissolving surge.

Soon after the land had hove into view, Imogene joined me. She had kept her feelings under whilst near Vanderdecken. Now, by my side, she stood with twenty emotions working in her, her nostrils quivering, her lips pale, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, the bright light that a passing hope flashed into her eyes dying out to the tearful shadowing of some bitter fear.

I said to her, very softly, and keeping my face as expressionless as my inward agitation would permit— for Vanderdecken and his mates conferred together near us, sometimes stopping close, sometimes pacing—"If this pace holds our anchor should be down by dusk."

"What will they do?" she asked.

"I have been asking that question of myself," I replied. "Were they human— of this earth— I could foretell their movements. No sooner were they come to an anchor than they would turn to and get the guns and cargo over to one side, that by listing the ship they might bring the leak out of water and save themselves this starving job of pumping. But we have to base conjecture upon men who are neither dead nor alive, who are Dutchmen besides, I mean of a dull and apathetic habit, and they may wait for daylight and so obtain rest, of which they should get as much as they want with the reliefs they are able to send to the pump."

"What should best fit your project, Geoffrey?"

"Oh," said I, under my breath, "if we are to escape we shall need a deserted deck and a sleeping ship."

"If this should come about to-night will you make the venture?"

"I cannot tell. Put it thus: if they shift the cargo after coming to an anchor with the idea of raising the leak clear, the work may occupy them all night. So all night long the ship will be alive and busy, and there will be no chance for me."

"But the ship will also be alive if they continue to ply the pump, which must be done if she is not to sink."

"Yes," said I, "so I may have to wait till to-morrow night."

She cried, with a quick blanching of her face that cruelly proved her stock of strength but slender, "If they careen the ship to-night they will be able to repair the leak in the morning, and be ready to sail before the evening."

"I do not fear that."

"Yet it might happen, Geoffrey! They will put you on shore before sailing—" She stopped, bringing her hands together with a passionate clasp.

"I do not fear that," said I again. "Much will depend on where the leak is. If it be low down they may not be able to come at it without discharging cargo, which, seeing that they have but those two boats yonder to work with, and that they will have to make tents ashore and protect themselves against the natives— if any there here be— should keep them on the move for a long month. No, dearest, I do not fear that they will get away by to-morrow night— not if they were ten times as numerous and as nimble; nor is it probable that Vanderdecken would suffer me to be marooned till the ship is ready to start. My one anxiety is just now the weather. There is tranquility in that dark blue sky over us; the wind weakens as we approach the land, and there is promise of a calm night. May God help me to achieve my purpose before another twelve hours have rolled by."

She looked at me with eagerness and alarm. "To-night!" she cried. "If this ship lies here for days, as you imagine, how, when we are ashore, dare we hope to escape the strenuous search Vanderdecken is certain to make for us?" I smiled; she continued, with a feverish whisper: "Consider, dearest! If we are captured— he will have your life! God knows into what barbarities his rage may drive him!"

"Dearest," said I, gently, "let us first get out of the ship."

And here we broke off, for our whispering had lasted long enough. Soon after this we went below to dinner. At the start we none of us spoke, our behaviour and perhaps our appearance answering very exactly to the poet's description of a party in a parlour who sat—

"All silent and all damned!"

Outside, the sun shone gloriously, and the blue air had the purity of polished glass; but only a small portion of light found admission through the small windows in the cabin front, and we ate and gazed upon one another in a sullen atmosphere as gloomy as the expression on Vanderdecken's face. At this moment I see him plain, as on that day; his beard falling to his waist, his head slightly bowed, and his glance travelling in a gaze that would often stop and become fixed, his skin bleak and high and drawn with pallor. He was attired in a sort of blouse of dark-green cloth, confined about his waist by a yellow belt fastened by a small metal clasp, that would have given him a romantic and buccaneering look but for the austere majesty and fateful character of his appearance, which inevitably neutralised every suggestion that did not accord with the solemn, horrible mystery of his being.

We sat for some time, as I have said, as silent as the dead; but on reflecting that there was nothing, in reason, I could say likely to procure me a harder fate than that already designed by these men, I determined to ask a question or two, and said: "Has your carpenter ascertained in what part of the ship the leak is, mynheer?"

He turned his eyes round upon me slowly. He was indeed stately in all he did. I never beheld him glance quickly nor start, and the only time in which his dignity fell, torn in rags from him, was that night when he acted over the scene of the Curse in his sleep.

He answered, "Yes."

"Is it far down?" said Imogene.

"The ship will need heeling to four strakes," he replied.

I dropped my knife on to the deck for the excuse to pick it up that I might hide the delight in my face. A list of four strakes would prove but a very small matter to bring about, and my fears that the vessel would linger for days, perhaps for a month, on this coast vanished.

"I hope," said I, "it may not prove worse than a started butt-end."

"It is that, and no more," said he.

"How much more would you have, Herr Fenton?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar, in his ugliest manner. "Dost suppose our pump can deliver half the great South Sea with every stroke?"

"It should take us four days of easy working," said I, "to careen, repair, and start afresh snugly stowed."

"You are in a hurry to get home, sir, no doubt?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar.

"Sir," said I, "I am addressing the captain."

"Skipper!" cried the man; "Herr Fenton is in a hurry to get home! We should put him in the way of making a speedy passage."

"I expect to return in this ship," said I, speaking with my eyes on Vanderdecken. "I am well satisfied. Nothing stauncher floats. Consider, mynheer, how nobly she has acted in the gales we have encountered. It would please me to entreat you to use such poor skill as I have as a mariner in helping your men; but your courtesy is magnanimous— of the form that is to be met in highest perfection in the Hollander of lineage— and I will not risk my own civility by further requests."

He motioned with his hand, contenting himself with whatever answer the gesture signified. I perceived there was no further information to be obtained from him— from Van Vogelaar nothing but sneers and insults— and so held my peace. Yet I had learnt something.

When, after dining, I went on deck, the land looked as near again as it had when I went below. This was owing to the amazing transparency and purity of the atmosphere, insomuch that every twenty fathoms the ship measured was like adding a fresh lens to a perspective glass. Yet it was not until four o'clock that the coast lay so clear as to render every detail of it a visible thing, and then the sight was helped by the sun being on the larboard side and showering his glory aslant, which, mingling with the golden splendour rising out of his wake in the sea, put an extraordinary shining into the atmosphere, but without the lustrous haze that had been rising when he was right over the land and kindling the water under our bows. 'Twas a picture of a bay with a shelving beach thickly green with bushes and trees, in and out of which there winded lengths and lines of exceeding white sand that trembled to the sunshine with the shivering metallic sheen of frosted silver. The sea went blue as the sky to the shore and tumbled into foam, in some places leaping up in creamy dartings, in others making a small crystal smoke with its boiling, elsewhere lapping tenderly and expiring in ripples. The azure heights beyond, which had seemed to closely flank the coast when first beheld, drew inland with our approach, marking their remoteness by the retention of their lovely atmospheric delicacy of colour, and their height by the lengths of vapour that clung to their mighty slopes at various altitudes, like fragments of great silken veils or cloths of pale gold which had been rent whilst blowing along. The seaboard went in a rugged line east and west by the compass, sometimes coming very low down, sometimes soaring into great forelands, plentifully covered with wild growths, as you saw by the several dyes of green that coated it, and in one place— about a league from the bay— a pale blue smoke rising up denoted a bush-fire, and, as it was easy to suppose, the presence of natives.

The sky was catching a tinge of brassy hardness from the westering sun, and the complexion of it where the mountain heights were somehow made you think of measureless miles of hot and cloudy sand glowing yellowly up into that feverish reflection. The weak swell that lifted us rolled in wind-wrinkled folds into the bay, which yawned unsheltered to the south. I knew from experience that it needs no great wind on this coast to raise a monstrous sea, and it was with unspeakable eagerness and anxiety that I directed my eyes from the land to the sky overhead and on our quarters. But the promise of tranquility seemed to deepen with the drawing down of the sun. It was sheer sapphire in the south, melting eastwards into violet, and the sea that way was like an English lake, and to the left of the sun there floated a few purple clouds, which I watched some time with attention but could not tell that they moved, though a breeze was still about us, humming pleasantly aloft, keeping our old sails rounded, and sending the aged structure gliding at four knots an hour as quietly through it as a seagull paddling in the level water of an harbour.

But for the tedious clanging of the pump and the fountain-sounds of its discharge, the stillness on board would have been as deep as the hush upon the land. Still, lovely as was that afternoon, I very well remember wishing it had been a month earlier or later than this. We were in the stormy time of the year in these parts, though it was summer at home, and a violent change might quickly come. If it came, Vanderdecken would have to put to sea, leak or no leak, for it was not to be supposed that mere hemp could partake of the Curse; and the cables which I saw some of the crew getting up out of the hold and bending to the anchors at the bows were assuredly not going to hold this lump of a craft, high out of water and as thick as a tower aloft, for twenty solid minutes in a seaway and in the eye of a stout wind.

Therefore it was, when I was alone with Imogene, the coast being then about a league distant and the sun low, that I said to her: "Dearest, I have made up my mind to make a desperate effort to get away with you to-night."

"I am ready," she answered, instantly; "you need but tell me what to do."

"We must make use of this noble weather," I continued; "it is a fickle season, a change may come in half-a-dozen hours and force Vanderdecken to sea with his pump going. Imogene, it must not find us aboard."

"No."

"There will be no moon till eleven; we must be away before she rises, for she will glow brightly in that sky."

"Dearest, I am ready," she repeated. "But, Geoffrey, risk nothing on the mere chance that the weather will change. You might imperil your life by haste— and to-morrow night may be as reposeful as this that approaches, and with a later moon too!"

"Yes, but do not bid me risk nothing!" I exclaimed. "We must risk everything— our chances aboard and our chances out of the ship— or you are as good as chained to this vessel for life."

She smiled her acquiescence. I looked at her with passionate inquiry, but never did a braver and more resolved heart gaze at a lover from a maiden's eyes. I found the fearlessness of her devotion the more admirable for the dread she had expressed concerning the perils of the coast, and for her speaking thus to me with the land close to and all its wildness and melancholy visible to her, together with the distant smoke, towards which I had seen her glance again and again, and whose meaning she perfectly understood.

The ship swam slowly forwards. The coast dried the wind out of the atmosphere, but so much the better, for there was enough to carry us in, and then it could not die too soon to serve my turn. All was ready with the anchors forward, and the men hung about in pallid gangs waiting for orders to take sail off the ship. The vitality of the wondrous craft seemed to lie in the pump and its automatic plyers, so deep was the silence among the crew and so still their postures; but now and again the heavy courses would swing into the masts to the soft bowing of the fabric and raise a feeble thunder-note like to the sound of bowls rolling over hollow ground. The red light in the west lay upon the head of the shaggy line of coast, and the far-off mountains that had been blue went up in a dim purple to the sky; the crimson haze seemed to float over the rugged brink and roll down the slope to the shore, so that the scene was bathed in a most exquisite delicate light— all features touched with red; a bronze as of English autumn upon the green; the white sand gleaming rosily, and great spaces of reddish rubble-like ground glowing dark as blood. But the loneliness! I figured myself ashore there— the ship gone— Imogene gone! I stood in fancy upon the beach looking out on this bare sea; an aged, perhaps worthless firelock by my side, a few cartridges, a week's store of provisions! The moan of the surf was in my ear; every creaking and rustling of the wind in the near bushes startled me. To right and left rolled the coast for endless leagues, and the vast plain of sea, whose multitudinous crying found echoes in a thousand caverns, east and west, and in the reverberating heart of giant cliffs, whose walls were best measured in parallels and meridians, went down into the heavens where the uttermost ends of the earth were.

Yet, hideous as was the prospect of that shore when I thought of myself marooned upon it, its horrors shrunk into mere perils, such as courage, patience and resolution might overcome, when my imagination put my darling by my side, and with her hand in mine, I looked round me upon the vast scene of solitude. In her weakness I found my strength; in her devotion my armour. Great God! How precious to man is Thy gift of woman's love! But for Imogene where would have been my purpose and determination? I have but to recall the condition of my spirits when I looked at the shore and thought of myself as alone there to know.

The sun had been sunk an hour, the twilight had melted into darkness, and the sky was full of stars, when the Death Ship floated in a breathless manner to abreast of the eastern bluff or foreland of the bay, and with an air as faint as the sigh of a spirit expiring upon the black drapery of her higher canvas, she slided the blotting head of coast on to her quarter, and came to a dead stand within half-a-mile of the beach.

I heard Vanderdecken tell Arents to drop the lead over the side. This was done. The captain exclaimed: "What trend hath she?"

"None, sir. The line is up and down like an iron bar."

"Clew up the topsails and topgallant-sails. Up with the courses. See all ready to let go the anchors, Van Vogelaar."

These orders were re-echoed. In a moment the decks were alive with dusky shapes of moving men; one after another the sails dissolved against the stars like clouds, amid the hoarse rumbling of blocks, the whistling of running ropes, the rattle of descending yards.

"Are you all ready forward?" cried Vanderdecken, his rich voice going in notes of deep-throated music up into the gloom.

"All ready!" answered Van Vogelaar from the forecastle.

"Then let go the anchor!"

The heavy splash of a great weight of iron was followed by a hot seething sound of cable torn through the hawse-pipe; the water boiled to the launching blow from the bow and spread out in a surface of dim green fire.

I watched to see if the vessel would swing: but there was no air, neither was there tide or current to slue her, and she hung in a shadow like that of a thunder-cloud over her own anchor, her mastheads very softly beating time to the slow lift and fall of the light swell.

"Keep all fast with the larboard anchor!" exclaimed Vanderdecken. "Overhaul the cable to the fifty fathom scope. Aloft men and stow the canvas. Carpenter!"

A hoarse voice answered, "Sir?"

"Sound the well and let me know what water there is."

In a few minutes a lantern flickered like an ignis fatuus and threw out the sombre shapes of men as its gleam passed over the decks which rippled in faint sheets of phosphoric light. He who bore it was the carpenter. When he came to the pump he handed it to a seaman whilst he dropped the sounding-rod down the well. The light was yellow, and the figures of the fellows who were pumping and the stooping form of the carpenter stood out of the gloom like an illuminated painting in a crypt. A foot or two of water gushing from the pump sparkled freely to where the darkness cut it off. Against the glittering lights in the sky you saw the ink-like outlines of men dangling upon the yards, rolling up the canvas. I watched the carpenter pore upon the rod to mark the height to which the wet rose; he then came on to the poop and spoke to Vanderdecken in a voice too low for me to catch what he said.

Imogene had left me ten minutes before, and I stood alone in the deeper shade made in the gloom upon the poop by the mizzen-rigging. The beating of my heart was painful with anxiety. From one moment to another I could not tell what the next order might be, and if ever I seemed to feel a breath of air upon my hot temples, I trembled with the fear that it was the forerunner of a breeze. As it stood, 'twas such a night to escape in that my deepest faith in God's mercy had never durst raise my hopes to the height of its beauty and stillness.

On the opposite side of the poop slowly walked Vanderdecken; in the starlight such of his skin as showed was as white as wax; he sometimes looked aloft at the men there, sometimes around at the ocean, sometimes coming to a stand to mark the gradual swinging of the ship that was now influenced by some early trickling of tide or by the motions of the small heaving in the sea, or by some ghostly whisperings of air overhead.

Ten minutes passed. Though the ship was full of business, not a sound broke from the men, and the hush you felt upon the dark line of shore would have been upon the vessel but for the clanking jerks of the pump-brake and the noise of flowing water.

A figure came up the poop-ladder and softly approached. It was Imogene. I lightly called and she came to my side in the shadow.

"What are they doing?" she asked.

"They are furling the sails; nothing more as yet," I answered.

"Will they endeavour to lift the leak out of water to-night?"

"Dearest, I am waiting to see what they mean to do."

"I will ask Vanderdecken," said she, "he always answers my questions."

I seized her hand. "No! He may suspect I sent you. Let us walk carelessly here and there. Lurking in the shadow might give an air of conspiracy to the prattle of infants to the suspicions of such a mind as his."

We moved towards the taffrail— the helm was lashed and abandoned— and then quietly to and fro, speaking under our breath.

"Geoffrey, we may find no water to drink when we get on shore; have you provided for that?" she said.

I started. I had thought of all things, as I fancied; yet I had overlooked the most essential of our certain needs.

"No, I have not provided for that," I exclaimed. "How now to manage?"

"I thought of it just now in my cabin. There is a pitcher there and the sight of it put it into my head to ask if you had included water in your stock of provisions. It holds about two gallons. It has a narrow neck and may be easily corked. But how can we convey it ashore. My weight and the bags and it would sink a bigger frame than the one that is to float me."

I said: "Is there fresh water in it?"

"It is nearly full. Prins keeps it replenished."

I said: "Are bottles to be had?"

She reflected and answered: "There are jars in which wine is kept, but I do not know where to find them."

'Twas my turn to think. I then cried: "There is a silver flagon in the box under the table; that which Prins took away last week and brought back filled with sherry for Vanderdecken. Can you get it?"

"Yes."

"We may not need it; if so we will leave it. Vanderdecken shall not say that we have plundered him though we must risk a graver charge even than that if there be occasion. Dearest, convey that flagon to your cabin. Fill it with fresh water in readiness. We shall find fresh water sweeter than the richest wine. Also contrive to have the pitcher filled to the brim. Prins will do that and suspect nothing. You will invent a reason, and when it is filled cork it as securely as possible and bind the head with stout rag that what you use as a cork may not fall out."

She said she would go and see about it at once.

"A moment," I whispered. "Is the window of your quarter-gallery open?"

"No; but I will open it."

"Do so; stand at it till you hear me cough. Then grasp a rope that I will let hang against the window and coil it away as you pull it in."

She understood me with the readiness of a sailor's child and a sailor's sweetheart, and left me. The mizzen-yard was lowered; the sail had been stowed some time. Rove through a small block at the end of the yard was a length of thin line termed signal halliards used for the showing of colours. I waited till Vanderdecken came to a stand at the head of the ladder that was, of course, at the forward end of the poop, and then with a mariner's swiftness overhauled the halliards through the block, catching the end as it fell that it might not strike the deck, and threw it over the quarter, coughing distinctly as I did so. I felt her pull it; I paid it out cautiously, narrowly watching Vanderdecken till the whole length was gone, then sauntered forward to where the shadow of the mizzen-rigging blackened the air.

I had not stood there a minute when Vanderdecken cried out, "Van Vogelaar!" The mate answered from the forecastle.

"Let a hand remain on the main-topsail yard to receive a tackle for hoisting out both boats."

I turned my back, putting both my hands to my face in an ecstatic burst of gratitude to the great God of Heaven for this signal mercy. 'Twas what I had been hoping and waiting for, with a heart sickened by doubt and fear. The order was given, and had I been suddenly transported with Imogene into a ship bound for England my soul could not have swelled up with keener exultation!

Chapter 10

The Weather Helps My Scheme

I will say now that the alternate scheme I had all along had in my mind was escaping by means of one of the boats. But I had held this project back from Imogene; nay, had kept it in hiding almost away from my own consideration for fear that I should be unable to secure a boat. Perhaps, indeed, I had counted upon Vanderdecken practising the custom of his day, which was to get the boats over on coming to an anchor; yet it was but a hope, and not daring to think too heartily in this direction I had talked wholly to Imogene of delivering ourselves by floating and swimming ashore.

But now the boats were to be lifted over the side, and my next proceeding must therefore be to watch an opportunity to enter one of them with Imogene and silently sneak away.

To see what they were about, the men hung several lanterns about the waist and gangways. The canvas had been furled, and the yards lay in thick black strokes against the stars. The coast looked like peaked heights of pitch, and the sea, with a sort of dead gleaming floating in it with the motion of the folds, spread out brimful to the dim flashing of the surf. You could hear nothing for the noise of the pumping, yet it seemed to me but for that, God knows what mysterious whisperings, what faint noise of howling cries, what strange airy creeping of hisses and the seething of swept and disturbed foliage and burrowed bush I might catch the mingled echo of, hovering in a kind of cloud of sound, and coming, some of it, from as far away as the deeper blackness that you saw in the land where the cerulean giants of the afternoon steadied their burdened postures by pressing their brows against the sky. There was a red spot upon that part of the coast over which you would be looking for the crimson forehead of the moon presently. 'Twas a league off, and expressed a big area of incandescence, and was the fire whence the smoke I had noticed arose.

One after the other they swung the boats clear of the rail to the water, and secured the ends of their painters, or the lines by which they were fastened, to a pin, on either quarter, thus leaving both boats floating under the counter. Vanderdecken then gave orders for the second anchor to be let go, the ship having some time since slided imperceptibly back to the fair tension of the cable already down.

I now thought I had been long enough on deck, that further lingering must suggest too much persistency of observation; so I went to the cabin. It was empty. I coughed, and in a minute or two Imogene came from her berth. The lamp swung over the table and the white light that fell through the open bottom of it streamed on my face.

She instantly exclaimed: "You are flushed and look glad! What is it, Geoffrey?"

"We are as good as free!" I cried. She stared at me. Then I explained how Vanderdecken had ordered the boats over as though in sober truth he had as great a mind as I that we should escape; how our deliverance by one of the boats had been my second but concealed scheme; how both boats were under the counter, to our hands almost; and how nothing more remained to be done but wait a chance of entering one of them and dropping hiddenly out of sight.

"Then we need not land!" she cried.

I said, "No." She clasped her hands and looked at me with a rapture that made me see how heavy though secret had lain the horror of escape by the shore upon her.

I said to her: "Slip into your quarter-gallery and look over and tell me which boat lies under it, whether the little or the large one. Also if the rope that holds her is within reach. Also distinguish what furniture of oars and sails are in the boats— if any there be. I dare not go to your cabin lest Vanderdecken should arrive as I come out."

She went, and was gone about five minutes. During this interval I took notice of a sobering down of the movements of the men about the deck, as though they were coming to an end with their various jobs of coiling away and clearing up. But the pump gushed incessantly. I grew extremely eager to know if they meant to handle the cargo and guns, towards careening the vessel, that night. But whether or no, I was determined to leave the Death Ship, and before the moon rose— if possible.

'Twas now a little after seven o'clock. Imogene returned. She glanced about her to make sure I was alone, and seating herself close to me, said: "It is the bigger boat that is under my quarter-gallery."

"Good!" I cried. "She will be the safer for our purpose."

"Where the other boat lies the gloom is so thick 'tis impossible to see what is in her. But I can distinctly perceive the outline of a sail in the big boat."

"There will be a mast as well," said I. "Since the sail is there she will have been lowered fully equipped. And the rope that holds her?"

"It tightens and droops with the lifting of the boat and the heaving of the ship," she replied. "But I think it may be grasped by standing upon the rail of the galley."

This I had expected, for the boat rode to a very short scope of line.

"Now, dearest," said I, "this is my plan: the line you dragged in, when middled and doubled, will serve me to lower you down with. When in the boat, you must throw the line off you, so that I may use it to send down the pitcher of water and the bags of provisions. I will then come down by it myself. Retire as early as you may under pretence of being weary, then clothe yourself in your warmest attire and select such apparel as fits most closely, for flowing drapery cannot but prove troublesome. Leave your cabin door unlatched, but seemingly shut, that I may enter by pushing only. Meanwhile, stay here. I shall return in a few minutes."

I walked to my cabin below. The gang of pumpers clove to the brake like a little company of spectres clothed as seamen, and their manner of toiling suggested a horrid mockery of the labour of earthly beings. I shot a swift glance along the deck ere descending the hatch, but, saving the men who pumped, could see no more than a shadow or two moving in the distance forward. I took the bags of provisions from under the bed; the smallest of the three fitted my hat, which I put on my head; the other two I crammed into my coat pockets, which were extremely capacious. A goodly portion of the bag in the larboard pocket stood up, and the head of the other was very visible; but I covered them by keeping my arms up and down; and so conveyed them to the cabin, which I surveyed through the door before entering.

Imogene instantly took them to her berth, and then returned. She had scarce resumed her seat when Vanderdecken entered. He came to the table and looked on a moment, and said: "Imogene, where is Prins?"

"I have not seen him," she answered.

He stepped to the door and called, and then came to his chair and seated himself, not offering to speak till Prins arrived.

"Get the supper," said he. "Mix a bowl of brandy punch. My limbs ache. I have stood too long."

Encouraged to address him by his breaking the silence, I said, "Mynheer Vanderdecken, may I ask if it is your intention to careen to-night?"

He looked at me sullenly and with a frown, and said: "Why do you inquire?"

"That I may crave a favour, sir. My cabin is close to the pump; the clattering of that engine is extremely disturbing, and therefore I would ask your permission to use this bench for a bed to-night if you do not intend to careen to the leak, and so render further pumping unnecessary."

He considered awhile, eyeing me sternly; but it was not conceivable that he should find any other than the surface-meaning in this request.

He answered: "I do not intend to careen; the weather hath every promise of continued fairness; the men shall have their night's rest; they will work the more briskly for it to-morrow. As the pump must be kept going, your request is reasonable. You can use this cabin, and Prins shall give you one of my cloaks to soften your couch."

I made him a low grateful bow, secretly accepting his civility, however, as does a man condemned to death the attentions of a gaoler or the tenderness of the hangman.

Prins prepared the table for supper, and then set a bowl of steaming punch before the captain. Shortly afterwards arrived Van Vogelaar and Arents. Our party was now complete, and we fell to. I said: "Gentlemen, you will forgive the curiosity of an English mariner who is unused to the discipline of the Batavian ships. How, Mynheer Vanderdecken, are the watches among you arranged when in harbour, as in a sense we may take ourselves now to be?"

Imogene observing my drift came to my help and said in Dutch: "The practice is as with our countrymen, Herr Fenton."

"Then the commandant stands the watch till midnight, and the mates together till sunrise," said I, speaking inaccurately that I might draw them into speech.

"No," exclaimed Arents. "With us the commander keeps no watch. The mates take the deck as at sea, I till midnight, Van Vogelaar till four, then I again."

"That is as it should be," said I, smiling into Arents' large, fat, white face.

"And it is very proper," said Van Vogelaar, in his coarse sarcastic voice, "that English sailors should apply to the Dutch for correct ideas on true marine discipline."

"Gentlemen," said I, suavely, "I have learnt much since I have been with you."

The mate darted one of his ugliest looks at me. And it was made infernal by the twist of leering triumph in his heavy lips, though he could not suppose I exactly understood what it meant.

We fell silent. Vanderdecken served out the punch with a small silver goblet. I drank but a mouthful or two, dreading the fumes. The others quaffed great draughts, making nothing of the potency of the liquor, nor of the steaming heat of it. Had they been as I was or Imogene— human and real— I should have rejoiced in their intemperance; but 'twas impossible to suppose that the fumes of spirits could affect the brains of men immortal in misery.

When they had done eating they called for pipes, and Vanderdecken told Prins to bring him such and such a cloak, naming and describing it. The fashion of it was about eighty years old; 'twas of very dark velvet, with a silver chain at the throat and silk under-sleeves. He motioned to Prins to put it down, giving me to know by the same gesture that it was at my service. I thanked him with a slight inclination of the head, grateful that he did not speak, as I knew not what effect the news of my desire to sleep in the cabin might have upon the malignant mate's suspicious mind.

Imogene observed a strict silence. Sometimes I caught her looking at Vanderdecken, sometimes round upon the cabin. At such moments there came a softened light of wistfulness into her eyes; nay, rather let me call it pensiveness, for there was nothing of yearning in it— merely the emotion that would attend the thought that, under God, this was the last night she would ever pass in the Death Ship; the last hours she would ever spend in the company of Vanderdecken. The old fabric had for nearly five years been her ocean home— the only refuge in the wide world for her. 'Twas associated with the desolation of her orphaned state— with the anguish of her loneliness in the open boat. Her very being had merged into the ancient timbers— to the spirit of her life a voice and an expression had been given by each hollow straining sound, by the roar of wind in the rigging, by the musical stirrings of air in the quiet night, by the sob of gently-passing waters, by the thunder of the storm-created surge. And he at whom she gazed— cruel, fierce, scowling, imperious as he was— lifting God-defying eyes to the heavens, his giant frame volcanic with the desperate perturbations of a soul of fire— yet had that man ever been gentle to her— he had tended her with something of a father's love; he had held her to his breast as an ocean-stray for whom, Heaven help him! he believed that there was an asylum, that there was affection, that there was motherly and sisterly sympathy in his distant home at Amsterdam. She could not have been the Imogene of my adoration, the fresh, true-hearted virginal being of this Death Ship, mingling something of the mystery of the doomed structure and something of the mighty deep, with the pure, chaste, exquisite vitality of a living and a loving woman, had not her violet eyes saddened to the thought of parting for ever from her floating home and from that stately, bearded figure whose affection for her was even fuller of pathos than his dream of those whom he deemed yet slumbered at night in far-off Amsterdam.

But no sentiment of this kind coloured my view of him. To me, that was to be put ashore by his command and left miserably to perish there, he was a cruel and a murderous rascal; of which qualities in him I had so keen a sense that I never for a moment questioned that if my scheme miscarried and he found out what I intended, he would have me swung at the yard-arm right away out of hand, though it should be pitch dark and they should have to hang me by lantern-light.

Presently Arents put down his pipe and went on deck. Van Vogelaar, leaning on his elbow midway across the table, muttered with the long shank of his pipe between his teeth to Vanderdecken about the routine and rotation of the pumping-gangs. The captain let fall a few instructions touching the morning's work. Imogene rose.

"I am like you, Captain Vanderdecken— weary," she said, smiling, whilst her pale face fully warranted her assurance. "I shall go to bed."

"'Tis early," said he, sending a look at the clock; "you seem dispirited, my dear. It will not be this brief halt here, I trust? We shall be under weigh again in a couple of days, homeward-bound— one great ocean already traversed. Think of that!" She put her fingers to her mouth simulating a yawn. "But if you are weary," he continued, "go to rest, my dear."

She smiled at him again, curtsied to me, and with a half-bow to Van Vogelaar went to her cabin.

Vanderdecken, dipping the silver goblet into the punch-bowl, bade me extend my cup. I thanked him, said my head ached, and that with his leave I would take the air above for a spell. On gaining the poop I walked right aft and looked over the taffrail. The boats there rose and fell in two lumps of blackness under the quarters. They strained very quietly at the lines which held them, and this enabled me to observe, by noting the trend of the land, that such surface-motion as the water had was westerly. I was fretted to observe the sea unusually phosphorescent. Every time the rise and fall of the ship's stern flipped at one or the other of the boat's lines the sudden drag raised a little foam about her, and the bubbling flashed like the reflection of sheet lightning in a mirror. This, I say, vexed me; for the dip of an oar must occasion a fire as signalling in its way as a flare or a lantern, though the boat itself should be buried in the darkness.

I came away from the taffrail after a very brief look over. Arents at the head of the poop-ladder stood apparently gazing at the men pumping on the main-deck, but I knew the motionless postures into which he and the others fell too well to guess that any speculation would be found in his eyes could they be peered into. The bush fire burnt like a great red spark on the black outline to starboard. Out of the western ocean the stars looked to be floating as though they were a smoke of silver sparkles, meeting in a mass of diamond-light over our swaying mastheads, with scatterings of brilliant dust among them, suggesting the wakes of winged star-ships; but past the starboard yard-arms all this quick, glorious scintillation of planet and meteor, of fixed stars and the Magellanic clouds, with the beautiful Cross sweetly dominant, went wan and dying into mere faintness. This however I did not particularly heed, though the habits of a sailor would cause me to fasten my eye upon the appearance; but presently looking for the crimson scar of bush-fire, I found it was gone with many of the stars which had been glittering above and against it.

A few minutes put an end to conjecture; 'twas a true South African fog coming along, white as gunpowder smoke, and eating out the prospect with long feelers and winding limbs till the whole body was fluffing thick and soft as feathers about the ship, eclipsing everything save a golden spike or two of the lighted lantern that hung against the main-mast for the comfort or convenience of the pumpers.

Chapter 11

My Poor Darling

IT WAS TEN O'CLOCK. For half-an-hour had I been sitting in the cabin alone waiting for Vanderdecken to come below and go to bed. I heard the parrot angrily clawing about her cage to the chiming of the bell, as if impatient of the slowness of the strokes and enraged by their disturbing notes; and when the last chime died out she violently flapped her wings and cried, with an edge of scream in the ordinary harshness of her voice, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!"

"Verdomd for you, you vile croaker!" thought I, involuntarily clenching my fist as I looked towards her. "Such another yell might bring Van Vogelaar out of his berth."

But she was never again to utter that curse in my hearing.

I went to the cabin door, and found the thickness boiling black about the decks, not an outline visible, nothing to be seen but the lantern-shine, dim as a glow-worm in the crystalline denseness. The clanking of the pump seemed to find twenty echoes in the great concealed fabric of round-tops and square yards on high. How ghostly the stillness with which the brake was plied! You listened till your ear seemed in pain for the sound of a human laugh, the growl of a human voice.

Whilst I stood looking into the thickness, Vanderdecken came down the quarter-deck ladder. The wet of the fog sparkled in his beard, and his fur cap glistened to the lamplight. He stood in the doorway and stared at me under his great heavy brows as though surprised, and even startled, to see me; then exclaimed, "Ach, I had forgotten you sleep in this cabin to-night. The lamp can be left alight, if you please."

"If you please, mynheer," said I, with a note of careless indifference in my voice. In fact I would rather have been in darkness, but it was my policy to seem as if his wishes were all the same to me, let them run as they would.

"Tell Prins when he comes, it is my order he should leave the lamp burning," said he, speaking quietly and in a manner that recalled my earliest impressions of him when he talked low lest he should disturb Imogene. He gave me a stiff bow and walked to his cabin.

Five minutes after arrived Prins.

"'Tis the captain's wish," said I, in a low voice, "that the lamp should be kept alight."

"Good, sir," he replied, imitating my soft speech.

"It is for my convenience; I sleep here as you know, that the pump may be less disturbing. Captain Vanderdecken is good enough to consult my comfort, but as the light is bright, pray dim it, Prins. That may be managed, I hope?"

"Easily," he answered, and climbed upon the table to come at the lamp.

"So," said he, turning down the mesh, "how is that, Herr Fenton?"

"A little fainter yet— so! I thank you, Prins. Have you made an end of your work? I am in no hurry to lie down."

He slipped off the table with a look round, and said: "My work is finished, Herr. You can take your rest at once for me." He yawned. "These African fogs make one gape. Good-night, sir."

"Good-night, Prins."

He halted in the doorway.

"I will shut this door to keep the damp out," he said. I motioned with my hand as though bidding him shut it, which he did, and I was left alone.

I wrapped Vanderdecken's large rich cloak about me, and stretched myself along the bench, using my arm as a pillow. I resolved to lie thus for at least half-an-hour, conceiving that this would be long enough to weary any one who should take it into his head to watch me through the cabin window. As to Vanderdecken, I did not fear his seeing me whilst he kept his door closed. The bulkhead of his berth was thick and apparently seamless, and his door fitted into overlaps of the jambs, for the exclusion of draughts of air after the fashion in old shipbuilding. I lay very quiet hearkening to the dulled beating of the pump and watching the clock, the great hand of which was just visible. When it came round so as to lie upon the quarter before the hour, I rose with the utmost stealth, arranging the cloak in such a fashion as to make the dark shape of it resemble a recumbent form, and holding my breath, stole on tiptoe to Imogene's cabin and pushed the door. It opened; I entered and pushed the door to again, and it jammed noiselessly upon the soft substance that had kept it closed before.

Imogene sat on the side of her bed, that exactly resembled the bed in Vanderdecken's room which I have described. She was fully dressed, and had on a fur or sealskin cap, with flaps for the ears. A small silver lamp of a very ancient pattern hung from a hook in the great beam that traversed the ceiling of her cabin, but she had trimmed or depressed the mesh into a feeble gleam. The little door that led to the quarter-gallery stood open. I kissed her cold forehead, and whispered, "Are you ready?"

"Yes!"

I held her hand whilst I could have counted ten, but found it steadier than mine.

"Come, dearest!" said I, and I stepped into the gallery.

The fog put an intolerable blackness into the air, and the chill of it was like frost upon the flesh. But for the phosphorescence of the sea, which I had before lamented, I should not have been able to see the boat under the counter. As it was, the tweaking of the line to the rise and fall of the Death Ship kept a small stir of water about the boat; the greenish-yellow shining showed through the fog and threw out the figure of the structure. The railing of the gallery rose to the height of my breast. I leaned over it, waving my hand in the blackness for the rope, and not catching it, bade Imogene seize my coat to steady me, and jumped on to the rail, and in a moment felt the line and grasped it; then dismounted, holding the rope. In a few seconds I had the boat's head— that was square and horned, as you will remember— fair under the gallery, and in that posture I secured her by hitching the slack of the line to the rail.

Everything continued to help us; first the fog, that made an astonishing blackness of the night, though I guessed this would grow into a pallid faintness presently, when the moon was up and had gathered power; next the phosphoric shinings upon which the boat rose and fell like a great blot of ink; then the noise of the pump, which, to the most attentive ear on deck, would absorb all such feeble sounds as our movements were likely to cause; and again, there was the small but constant grinding of the sudden jumping of the rudder to the action of the swell, very nicely calculated to lull the suspicions of Vanderdecken in the adjacent cabin should he be awake and hear us. But this I did not fear, for the quarter-gallery was outside the ship, and we worked in the open air, and made no noise besides.

Not a moment was to be lost; the halliards I had unrove from the mizzen-peak lay in a heap at my feet. I ran the length through, doubled it, and made a bowline-on-the-bight of the two thicknesses. This bight or loop I slipped over Imogene's shoulders, bringing the running or lowering part in front of her that there should be no pressure to hurt her tender breasts, and then took two turns round a stancheon on the quarter-gallery.

"Dearest," I whispered, kissing her, "keep a stout heart and do exactly as I bid. First, in what part of the cabin shall I find the pitcher and the provisions?"

"Between the foot of the bedstead and the door. They are covered with a dress."

"Right. I am now about to lower you into the boat. I will lower very gently. The moment your feet touch the boat, cough— but not loudly— as a sign for me to lower handsomely, for the rise and fall of the boat necessitates smart action. When you are safe— that is when you are gotten into the middle of the boat— sit down, and throw the rope off you. I will then send down the pitcher and bags by the line which you will cast adrift from them. It will then be my turn to join you."

So saying I took her in my arms and lifted her on to the rail, seating her there an instant, then taking in one hand the end of the rope which was twisted round the stancheon, with the other I gently slided her over the rail, easing her down with my arm round her till she hung by the line. In another moment she was in the boat.

I hauled up the line, went for the pitcher and bags and sent them down to her, she receiving and detaching them from the line with a promptitude equal to anything I could have hoped to find in that way in a sailor. I called to her softly— that she might know why I lingered—"I am going for the cloak," for the moment I saw it I had made up my mind to carry it off as a covering for Imogene.

I opened her cabin door breathlessly and peered out; then stole soft as a mouse to the cloak and threw it over my arm. The interior lay in a sullen gloom to the dim shining of the lamp. Our stock of provisions was small, and my eye catching sight of the chest under the table I recollected having seen Prins put a canvas bag full of biscuit into it after supper. This I resolved to take. So I went to the chest, raised the lid, and found the bag, but my hurry and agitation being great I let fall the lid which dropped with a noisy bang. Heaping curses upon my clumsiness, I fled like a deer into the cabin and on to the quarter-gallery, threw the cloak and bag into the boat, and followed headlong down the rope I had left dangling from the rail.

I was scarce arrived when the faint light that streamed from Imogene's berth into the quarter-gallery was obscured, and to my horror I saw the loom of a human shape overhanging the rail.

"Imogene! Imogene! Come back— come back!" rang out Vanderdecken's deep and thrilling voice. "Herr Fenton, restore to me the treasure thou wouldst rob me of and I swear not a single hair of thy head shall be harmed."

In mad haste I sawed through the rope that held the boat with my pocket-knife. He could not see, but he heard me; and springing on to the rail, roared, in his thunderous notes, "Arents, Arents, the Englishman hath seized one of the boats and is kidnapping Miss Dudley. Do you hear me? Speak— or you swing!"

I heard the clattering of heavy boots running along the tall echoing poop high over our heads.

"Sir— sir— I am here! Your orders, sir?" bawled Arents.

Again roared out Vanderdecken, in a hurricane note fit to awaken the echoes of the inland mountains, "The Englishman is kidnapping Miss Dudley, and hath already seized the larger boat. Send the men from the pump to man the other boat!"

"No, by Heaven, you don't!" I shouted, mad with the excitement of the minute. The line that held us was severed; the boat's head swung round; I leaned half my length over the gunwale, caught the other boat, and severed the rope that secured her to the ship; then, in a frenzy of haste, tumbled a couple of oars over and pulled away. But I had not measured five boat's lengths when the fog in which the ship, even at that short distance, lay completely swallowed was gashed and rent by a blaze of red fire. The explosion of a musket followed. I knew, by the flame leaping out of the quarter-gallery, that it was Vanderdecken who had fired, and with set teeth strained with all my might at the oars.

A dead stillness reigned. The clanking of the chains had ceased. I could hear nothing but the grind of the oars in the pins, and the sound of the water seething to the unnatural vigour with which I rowed. After a little I paused to gather from the noise of the surf how the boat headed. I bent my ear and found that the boiling was on my left.

"How does it strike you, Imogene?" I asked, in a broken voice, being terribly distressed for breath.

She answered, very low, "The sound is on your left."

"That should signify," said I, "that we are heading out to sea. The breakers are heavy in the west, and 'tis down there the noise of them seems greatest. We must head right out, or this bay will prove worse than a rat-trap."

As I spoke I heard the scattering reports of some six or eight muskets discharged one after another, but the glare of the explosions was absorbed by the fog.

"Ha!" cried I; "they shoot in hope!"

I fell to rowing again, and held to the weighty job stoutly for a good quarter-of-an-hour. Weighty it was, for not only was the boat extremely cumbrous about the bows— if one square end of her more than another could be so termed— the oars were heavy, the blades being spoon-shaped, though flat, and the harder to work not only for the breadth of the boat, but because of the pins being fixed too far abaft the seats.

I had now not much fear of being chased. Even if they found the boat I had liberated by sending men overboard to swim in search of it— there was movement enough in the water to glide it very swiftly into obscurity— I did not apprehend they would venture to pursue me in so great a fog. I threw in my oars and listened. A faint air stirred in the blackness, and if I was correct in supposing that we were heading seawards, then this draught was coming about south-east. The sound of the surf was like a weak rumbling of thunder. I strained my hearing to the right— that is, to starboard, for I sat with my back to the bows; but though indeed I could catch a faint, far-off moan of washing waters that way, the noise of the boiling was on our left.

"I am sure we are out of the bay," said I; "were we penetrating it we should be by this time among the breakers. I heartily pray now this fog will soon thin out. It may whiten into something like light when the moon rides high. There is a faint wind, and I should be glad to step the mast and set the sail. But that isn't to be done by feeling. Besides, there is no rudder, and what there may be in the stern to steady an oar with I cannot conceive."

I paused, thinking she would speak. Finding she was silent, and fearing her to be cold and low-hearted, I said: "My dearest, you will gain confidence with the light. Meanwhile, we have good reason to be grateful for this blackness. They might have killed us could they have seen the boat, for they were prompt with their fire-arms."

"Geoffrey, dear," she exclaimed, in the same low voice I had before noticed in her, "I fear I am wounded."

"Wounded!" I shrieked, springing to my feet.

"The instant Vanderdecken fired— if it was he—" she continued, "I felt a stinging blow in my shoulder. I am very cold just there; I am bleeding, I believe."

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" I cried, for now she spoke at some little length I could hear in her voice the pain she was in; and the feebleness of her voice was like to break my heart, as was the thought of her suffering and bleeding in silence until I had rowed the boat a long distance from the ship.

I felt for her, and took her in my arms, but the shiver that ran through her warned me that my caress increased her pain. I would have given ten years of my life for a light. 'Twas maddening to have to sit in such blackness, with nothing but a dim star or two of the green sea-glow rising with the invisible heave of the water to the gunwale for the eye to rest upon, and to think of my precious one bleeding— perhaps wounded to death— utterly concealed from me, so that I could not staunch her wound, nor comfort her except by speech, nor help her in any way. 'Twas the doing of Vanderdecken! the murderer! Oh, why, when there was all the wide black air for the shot to whistle through, had it struck my life, my love, the darling whom I had snatched to my heart from the huge desolation of the deep, and from the horrible companionship of beings accurst of God?

I groped about for the cloak I had flung into the boat, and found it; I made a bed of it, and pulling off my jacket rolled it up into a pillow. I felt for her again, and told her that the bleeding might lessen if she would lie down. She answered, "I will lie down, dearest."

I took her in my arms very tenderly and carefully, and laid her upon the cloak with the wounded shoulder uppermost, covered her as far as the skirts of the cloak would suffer, and chafed her hands. I was in so great a confusion and agony of mind that had I heard the dip of the oars astern and knew Vanderdecken was after me in the other boat, I should not have let go her hand. I could not have stirred from my kneeling posture beside her to help myself. But now that we were out of the bay, as I might be sure by the sound of the surf, I knew that our keel would be in the grip of the westerly current, and that whether I rowed or not every hour must increase our distance from the Death Ship, and improve our prospect of escape.

I asked her if she was thirsty, understanding how quickly wounded persons crave in this direction. She answered "No;" but, as I believed, out of the sweetness of her heart, to save me anguish by any kind of confession of suffering beyond what she had already owned to. Believing her to be bleeding all the time, I held her hand, in constant expectation of feeling it frosted and turning heavy with death. The sea, in its mighty life of a thousand centuries, has upborne many dismal and affrighting pictures to the chill eye of the moon, to the fiery inspection of the sun, to the blindness of the cloud-blackened sky; but none worse than what our boat made; no torments direr than what I suffered. I could not see her face to observe whether she smiled upon me or not; the love in her eyes was hidden from me, and my heart could take no comfort from imagination when, for all I knew, the glazing of approaching dissolution might have iced those liquid violet impassioned depths into an unmeaning stare.

Add to her lying in the blackness, wounded and bleeding; add to the anguish with which I probed the ebon smother for the merest glimpse of her, till my eyes burned like red-hot balls of fire under my brows; add to this, those elements of mystery, of horror, which entered into and created that black, sightless time; the desolate thunder of surf, defining to the ear the leagues and leagues of savage coast aswarm with roaring beasts, with hissing reptiles, with creatures in human form fiercer and of crueller instincts than either; the magnitude of the ocean on whose breathing breast our tiny bark lay rocking; the wondrous darkness of the deep shadow of the fog upon the natural gloom of the night; the commingling of sullen and mysterious tones in the sulky obscurity— notes that seemed to come out of the seaward infinity, that seemed to rise from each swinging respiring fold under us, in voiceless sound that made you think of a moody conscience in some labouring breast troubling the ear of imagination with mutterings whose audibility was that of the inarticulate speech of phantoms.

Chapter 12

I Am Alone

IT WAS ABOUT midnight, as I was able presently to gather, when a sort of paleness entered into the fog; and hard upon the heels of this change, the air, that had been weakly breathing, briskened somewhat, fetching a deeper echo from the booming roll of the surf on the starboard side; and the water came to the boat in a shivering phosphoric light of ripples that set her a-dabbling.

The light brightening— that is the fog growing more luminous, without appearing to thin— the boat's outline lay visible, together with her furniture, such as the sail and the oars. I tenderly laid Imogene's cold hand down, and turning the sail over, found— as I had expected— the mast lying under it; and partly peering and partly groping, I made out an iron clamp fitted to the foremost thwart or seat, with an hollow under it in the bottom of the boat for receiving the heel of the mast.

I lifted the spar and very easily stepped it, discovering that the halliards for hoisting the sail were ready rove through a small block seized to the head of the mast. I hauled upon this rope to clear the sail, and perceived it to be shaped like a lug, fitted to a yard, only the yard was arched, causing the head of the sail to appear like a bow when the arrow is drawn upon it. Before setting the sail I went aft, and by dint of feeling and staring discovered a rope grummet or hempen hook fastened to the larboard horn, but close in, so that it lay out of sight against the boat's stern. 'Twas very clear that this was meant to receive an oar for steering; but whether or not it would serve my turn for that purpose; so without more ado I rove an oar through the grummet, then hoisted the sail, making the tack fast to the larboard horn on the bow, and came aft with the sheet.

The boat instantly felt the pressure, and the wind being abaft the beam, she slipped along like a sledge, as you will suppose, when I say that her bottom was shaped like the side of a pea-shell, and that her whole frame might have been imitated from one of those black pods of sea-weed which are furnished by nature with wire-like projections, and which may be found in plenty upon our sea-coast. The oar controlled her capitally.

The double motive I had for getting away from this place— first, to run out of the fog and so get light to enable me to minister to Imogene, and next to remove myself so far from the Death Ship as to render pursuit hopeless even should the thickness in the bay clear up and enable Vanderdecken to recover his boat which I had cut adrift; this double motive, I say, lifted my anxiety and eagerness to the height of madness. My dearest lay with her head towards me, and in the glistening white obscurity I could discern her pale face upon the pillow of my coat, but could not tell whether her eyes were open or shut. She did not moan; she lay as still as the dead. I asked her if she was in pain. She said "No," but in a voice so feeble that I had to bend my ear to catch the syllable.

I could not think of her but as slowly dying to the streaming away of her precious blood. What to do I knew not; and in addition to this dreadful state of despair was the obligation upon me to watch the boat and shrewdly and seriously attend to my course by the warning surf-thunder floating back against the wind from the echoing strand. From time to time I would address Imogene, always with a terror in me of winning no reply, of touching her and finding her dead. Once she answered that she believed the bleeding in her shoulder had stopped; the icy-coldness was gone, and there was a small smarting there as if she had been burnt, but nothing that she could not easily endure. But I knew by the tone of her voice that she spoke only to give me comfort; either that she was suffering above the power of her love for me to conceal in her faltering whispers or that her strength was unequal to the labour of utterance.

Yet, as I have said, what could I do? I was no chirurgeon; and I wonder that my heart did not break to the bending of my scorching eyes upon my love lying wounded and bleeding at my feet.

An hour passed; the fog still compassed us, but the white splendour of the moon was upon it. Methought that I heard Imogene whisper; I dropped on my knee, and she asked for water. I let go the steering oar, that jammed in the grummet and that could not therefore go adrift, and with great trouble found the little cup that I had hidden in one of the bags, and poured some water out of the pitcher into it. She moaned in pain when I put my arm under her head to raise it; but she drank greedily, nevertheless, and thanked me in a whisper when I tenderly let sink her head on to the jacket.

I resumed my place at the oar, and through the blackness drove the boat, the sail pulling briskly, the water shining very brightly in our wake, and, as my ear seemed to fancy, the noise of the surf dwindling somewhat, whence I conjectured we were hauling off the coast and standing more directly seawards. I do not know that I should have been without hope for my beloved if it had not been for the haunting and blasting thought that nothing but misery could attend association with Vanderdecken and his doomed ship. It seemed to me now— though on board I had been too eager to escape with her, too wrapped up in my love for such consideration to occupy my mind— that nothing less than the death of one of us could expiate our involuntary and unhappy connexion with the banned and fated craft. Ships that spoke her perished, often with all hands; misfortunes pursued those who merely sighted her. What sort of death could the Curse involve for one who had lived for years or for weeks in the monstrous fabric, who had conversed familiarly with her abhorred occupants, who had been admitted into close inspection of her secret life, beheld the enactment by Vanderdecken in his sleep of the impious and horrible drama of his Christ-defying wrath, eat of his bread, drank of his cup, yea, and hearkened with sympathy to his talk of home, to his yearning speech concerning those he loved there?

The sense of the doom that was upon her as upon me— upon her in her young and beautiful life, upon me in my love for her, upon both in the crushing separation of the grave, whether 'twas for her to die or for me; oh! I say, the sense of this thing weighed as iron and as ice upon my heart, crushing out all hope and leaving me as blind in my soul as my eyes were in the fog to steer the boat through the silence of that vaporous night, hearing nothing but the rippling of the water, and the blunted edge of the surf's wild beat, and beholding nothing but the outline of my dearest— of my dearest— stricken and dying at my feet!

Suddenly the fog broke up. It was then about two o'clock. The vapour floated into league-long streaks, lunar-tinted here and there into an ærial mockery of the rainbow, and over the edge of one great steam-like body the moon with an ice-like, diamond-splendour of radiance looked down upon us out of a pool of black sky. The lustre had something of the sharpness of daylight, only that the flooded pearl of it wore the complexion of death, all things showing out wan; and in that illumination the delicate gold of Imogene's hair melted into the extreme pallor of the forehead on which it stirred to the wind, and her lips were of the colour of her cheeks, and her half-closed lids like wax.

I let go the oar to kneel and look at her. She lay so still, with such unheeding eyes, that I made sure she was dead, and my brain reeled as though my heart had stopped.

I said hoarsely and hollowly, "Imogene."

The fringe of her eyelids trembled, and I marked a faint smile on her lips.

"Dearest," cried I, "how is it with thee?"

She returned no answer.

I said "I shall be able to see the wound now, and perhaps check the bleeding. I can cut the dress clear of the shoulder and you need not stir."

She exclaimed— but, my God, how feebly!—"Dearest, let me lie as I am," speaking with a sort of sigh between each word. And then she added, "Kiss me."

I pressed my lips to hers; they were cold as the mist that was passing away in wreaths and clouds. I saw how it was and let her have her way. It would have been cruel to touch her with more than my lips. And even though I should have cut away her apparel to the wound and saw it, what could I do? Suppose the bleeding internal— the bullet lodged within, the lung touched, or some artery severed?

A wild feeling seized me; I felt that I must leap upon a seat and rave out madly or my head would burst. The efforts to control myself left me trembling and weeping. I wiped from my brow the sweat that had leapt in drops there out of my weakness, and put my hand upon the oar afresh. The fog had settled away to leeward; it looked like a vast cliff of snow-covered ice, and the moonshine worked in it in shifting veins of delicate amber and dim steel-blue. Out of it, trending a little to the south of west, rolled the loom of the dusky land; it died out in the showering haze of the moonlight, whence ran the dark sea-line to right astern of us— nothing in sight but the land growing out of the fog. Over the horizon the stars hung like dew-drops, giving back the glory of the central luminary and set twinkling by the wind. They soared in sparkling dust, rich with large jewels, till they died out in the cold silvering of the sky round about the moon.

My hysteric fit sobered down and I fell to sharply thinking. The nearest refuge was Simon's Bay, and that would lie some three or four hundred miles distant. How long would it take me to sail the boat there? Why, 'twas a thing idle to calculate. Give me steady favourable winds and smooth seas and I could answer; but here was a boat that, like the ship she belonged to, was fit only to be blown along. She could not beat, she had no keel for holding to the water. Hence progress, if any was to be made, was so utterly a matter of chance that conjecture fell dead to the first effort of thought. If I was blown out to sea we might be picked up by a ship; if we were blown ashore I might contrive to find a smooth spot for landing; if the wind came away from the east and south it might, if it hung there, drive me round Agulhas and perhaps to Simon's Bay. That's how it stood— no better anyhow; but how much worse you may reckon when you reflect in what part of the ocean we were, when you consider the season of the year, how few in comparison with the mighty expanse of those waters were the ships which sailed upon it, how worthless the boat as a sea-going fabric, how huge the billows which the gales raised, how murderous the shore to which the breakers, roaring on it, might forbid escape.

Twice my darling moaned for water. Each time she thanked me with a smile, but the mere task of swallowing seemed to rob her lips of the power of pronouncing words. The moon went down in the west towards the black line of land, and when it hung a rusty-red over the ebon shadow under which trickled the blood-like flakes of its reflection, the dawn broke. For above an hour I had not been able to see Imogene, so faint had fallen the light of the westering orb, and for longer than that time had she neither moaned, nor whispered, nor stirred.

I directed my burning eyes into the east for the sun, and when the pink of him was in the sky, ere yet his brow had levelled the first flashing beam of day, I looked at Imogene.

I looked, and yet looked; then knelt. She was smiling, and by that I believed she lived; but when I peered into the half-closed lids— oh, great God! The sun flamed out of the sea in a leap then, and I sprang to my feet and cursed him with a scorching throat for finding me alone!

* * *

THE SEQUEL to this extraordinary narrative must be told by another pen.

On the morning of the second day of October, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six, the full-rigged ship Mary and James, bound from Tonquin to London, dropped anchor in Table Bay. She had scarcely swung to her cable when the gig was lowered, and her master, Captain William Thunder, a small, bow-legged man, with a fiery nose and a brown wig, entered her and was rowed ashore. He marched, or rather rolled, into the town, which in those days was formed of a mere handful of low-roofed, strongly-built houses, and knocking at one of them, situated not a musket shot distant from the grounds of the building of the Dutch East India Company, inquired for Mr. Van Stadens. The coloured slave, or servant, showed him into a parlour, and presently Mr. Van Stadens, an extremely corpulent Dutchman, entered.

They talked awhile of business, for Van Stadens was the South African agent for the owner of the Mary and James, and then said Captain Thunder:

"Mr. Van Stadens, I'm going to tell you the most wonderful thing you ever heard in all your life."

"By Gott, Toonder, and so shall you," replied Van Stadens.

"See here," said the captain, polishing his forehead with so much energy that he unconsciously shifted his wig, "we were about ninety miles to the eastwards of Agulhas, the weather clear, the wind about south, a quiet breeze, the ship under all plain sail, and the second officer in charge of the deck, when a hand aloft sung out there was a vessel three points on the lee bow. When we had her in sight from the poop and caught her fair in the glass, I was so much struck by the cut of her canvas, which was a lug, narrow in the head and secured to a yard more arched than either of my legs, that I bore down to see what was to be made of her by a close squint."

"So," said Van Stadens, crossing his legs and putting his hands upon his waistcoat in a posture of prayer.

"She proved to be a canoe or boat," continued Captain Thunder, "rounded at bottom like one of Crusoe's periaguas, with horns sticking out at each square end of her. She was, or I should say she had been, painted red inside. The blades of her oars, shaped like a Japanese fan, were also painted red. Her sail looked to be an hundred years old— I never saw the like of such canvas. The most perfect description of its colour, patches, texture would have sounded an abominable lie to me if I hadn't viewed it myself."

"So," said Van Stadens, nodding upon his four chins, which resembled layers of pale gutta-percha, with the elastic properties of that stuff.

"In fact," said Captain Thunder, "she was of the exact fashion of the boats you see in old Dutch paintings— ship's boats, I mean."

"How oldt?" asked Van Stadens.

"Two hundred years old," said Captain Thunder.

"Goot. Is dot der fonder, Toonder?"

"Not by all the distance from here to the top of Table Mountain, Mr. Van Stadens," answered the captain. "I said to the second mate, 'That's no natural boat, Mr. Swillig. If she belongs to the age in which she appears to have been built she ought to have been powder or ooze a hundred and fifty years ago. Can you make out anybody in her?' He said 'No,' and argued with me that there was something unnatural about her, and recommended that we should haul to the wind again and appear as if we hadn't seen her, but my curiosity was tickled and we stood on. Well, Mr. Van Stadens, we passed close and what we saw fetched a groan out of every man that was looking and brought our main-topsail to the mast in the wink of a muskeety's eye, sir. A girl lay dead in the bottom of the boat. She looked beautiful in death, in life she must have been as lovely as the prettiest of the angels of God. But her dress! Why, Mr. Van Stadens, it belonged to the time the boat was built in. Ay, as I sit here to say it!"

The Dutchman shook his head.

"You shall see it for yourself, sir— you shall see it for yourself!" cried Captain Thunder, with excitement. "We all said she had been floating about in that boat for two hundred years, and was a dead saint watched by the eye of God, and not to be corrupted as you and me would be. There were three Dagos in our crew, and when they saw her they crossed themselves. But that wasn't all— not nearly all. In the bows lay the figure of a seaman— an English sailor, dressed as my mate is. We thought he was dead, too, till we lowered a boat, when on a sudden he lifted his head out of his arms and looked at us. There was a shine in his eye that showed us his wits were gone. Such a haggard face, Mr. Van Stadens!— unshaven for weeks, and his hair all of a mat; yet you saw he had been a handsome man and was a young one too. Well, his being alive settled any hesitation I might have felt had they both been corpses. I sung out to my second mate to bring him aboard and the girl's body also, proposing decent burial; but the sailor man wasn't to be coaxed out of the boat; he grinned with rage to Mr. Swillig's invitations, flung himself upon the girl's body, howling like a dog when my men boarded him, and caused such a scuffle and a melee that both boats came very near to being swampt. They bound him with the painter, and brought him and the corpse on board along with three bags of provisions-such bags, Mr. Van Stadens, and such provisions, sir! But ye shall see 'em— ye shall see 'em, and a pitcher half full of water and a silver cup—"

"Eh?" grumbled Van Stadens.

"A silver cup."

"So," said the Dutchman. "Now ve com to der fonders."

"Ay, sir, as you say. Look here!"

He pulled a ring out of his waistcoat pocket and held it up. It was a diamond ring of splendour and beauty. The gems flashed gloriously and Van Stadens gaped at their brilliance like a wolf yawning at the moon.

"Vere got you dot, Toonder?

"Off the girl's finger. 'Tis but one, Mr. Van Stadens."

"But fon, hey! By toonder, Toonder, but dot ring is der fonderfullest part of your story as yet."

He took it in his hand and his eyes danced greedily to the sparkle of the beautiful bauble.

"Well," continued Captain Thunder, "we put the man into a spare cabin, and gave the job of watching him to the steward, a stout hearty fellow. The girl was stone-dead, of course. I ordered her dress, jacket and hat to be removed, likewise the jewellery about her— specially a noble rope of pearls—"

"By toonder, no! You shoke, Toonder!" cried Van Stadens.

"Ye shall see with your own eyes— ye shall see with your own eyes!" exclaimed the captain. "I gave these orders more with the idea of the things proving of use to identify her by than for their value. I never saw such under-linen, sir. 'Twas exquisitely fine and choice. Beyond description, Mr. Van Stadens. There was a ball-wound in her shoulder, with a caking of blood about it. That the fellow below had done this thing I could not suppose. There were no arms of any kind— if you except a big clasp knife— on him or in his boat. We buried the poor, sweet, murdered thing in her fine linen, giving her a sailor's hammock for a coffin and a sailor's toss for a last farewell. As for the boat, she looked unnatural and unlucky, and I think my men would have mutinied if I had ordered them to sling her over the side. We unstepped the mast and sent her adrift for the man she belongs to to pick up, if so be he stands in need of her."

"Vot man?" inquired Van Stadens.

"Vanderdecken," responded Captain Thunder, in a low voice, and with as much awe in his face as his fiery pimple of a nose would suffer to appear.

"Vot!" shouted Van Stadens. "Der Flying Deutchman!"

Captain Thunder nodded. The other smiled, and then broke into a roar of laughter.

"Hark, Mr. Van Stadens, wait till I've done," exclaimed Thunder, with his face full of blood. "All that day the man remained moody, with a lunatic's sullenness. He refused to eat or drink. I was in and out a dozen times but couldn't get him to speak. Well, sir, at nine o'clock in the night the steward came and told me he was asleep. He was watched all night, but never stirred; all next night, and the day after that, and the night after that, sir, but he never stirred. For sixty hours he slept, Mr. Van Stadens, or may I not leave this room alive! and I thought he meant dying in that fashion. Then he awoke, sat up and talked rationally. His mind had come back to him and he was as sensible as you or me."

"Vell?"

"Well, he fed and rested a bit, and then feeling stronger, he told me his story." And here Captain Thunder repeated what is already known to the reader.

Mr. Van Stadens listened with his fat face full of incredulity.

"'Tis fonderful, inteet," said he, "but it isn't true."

"I believe every word of it," said Thunder. "Blast the Flying Dutchman! who doubts him?"

"Your sailor man is mad," said Van Stadens.

"Oh, indeed," sneered Thunder. "Then account to me for the boat I saw him in, for his female companion lying dead of a gunshot wound; for this," said he, holding up the diamond ring, "and for other matters I'll show you when we get aboard."

"Ve vill go on boort at oonst," cried Van Stadens.

They repaired to the ship and found Geoffrey Fenton in the cabin. He looked haggard, weak, extremely sorrowful; but he was as sane as ever he had been at any time of his life. Thunder introduced Van Stadens, and to this Dutchman Fenton repeated his story, relating it so artlessly, with such minuteness of detail, above all unconsciously using so many old-fashioned Dutch words, which he had acquired from Vanderdecken, that the wonder in Van Stadens' face grew into a look of stupefaction. He muttered, frequently, "Fonderful! fonderful! By toonder, amazing!" But the measure of Captain Thunder's triumph over the agent's incredulity was not full till the articles belonging to Fenton— for so they were regarded— were produced. Van Stadens examined the pearls, the rings which poor Imogene had worn, the silver goblet, the antique dress, jacket and sealskin cap, Vanderdecken's velvet cloak, the pitcher, the articles of food which had been preserved, these things, I say, Van Stadens examined with mingled admiration and consternation, such as a man might feel to whom another exhibits a treasure he has sold his soul to the Devil for.

"Do you believe now!" cried Captain Thunder.

"It is fonderful! it is fonderful!" returned the Dutchman. "Do you go home with Toonder, Herr Fenton?"

"No," said Thunder, "I am sorry; I dare not do it. The crew have got scent of the experiences of our friend here and wouldn't sail with him for tenfold the value of the plate and silver in the Death Ship's hold."

"I do not blame them," said Fenton, with a melancholy smile.

"What I have proposed to Mr. Fenton is this, Mr. Van Stadens," said the captain: "You are a man of honour and will see that right is done to this poor gentleman."

"So," said Van Stadens.

"Let these articles be sold," continued Thunder.

"All but the diamond ring," interrupted Fenton.

"All but the diamond ring," said the captain. "No one need know how they were obtained; not a syllable of Mr. Fenton's story must be repeated; otherwise he'll get no ship to carry him home."

Van Stadens turned to Fenton and said in Dutch: "I will buy these goods from you. Their value shall be assessed to our common satisfaction. Meanwhile, a room in my house— my house itself— is at your service. Remain awhile to recruit your strength, and I will secure you a passage to Amsterdam in the Indiaman that is due here about the end of this month."

They shook hands, and half-an-hour later Fenton had taken leave of Captain Thunder and his ship.

It is proper to say here that the hospitable but shrewd Dutchman gave Fenton eight hundred dollars for the Vanderdecken relics, and when Fenton had sailed, sold them for three thousand ducatoons, of eighty stivers each, after clearing some thousands of dollars by exhibiting them.

The subsequent safe arrival of Geoffrey Fenton in Europe may be gathered from his narrative. Necessity forced him back to his old vocation and he continued at sea, holding various important commands down to the age of sixty. Among his papers is a curious note relating to the fate of the vessels which had encountered the Death Ship during the time to which his narrative refers. The Plymouth snow, after speaking the Saracen, was never again heard of; the Saracen was lost on one of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, but her people were saved to a man by the boats. The Centaur, three days after sighting the Death Ship, was dismasted in a hurricane and struggled into Simon's Bay in a sinking condition. The fate of the French corsair is not known, but it is satisfactory to know that the James and Mary reached the Thames in safety after an uneventful passage.

The End

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Volume 2
- Volume 3
- Volume 1