THE DEATH SHIP A STRANGE STORY;

AN ACCOUNT OF A CRUISE IN "THE FLYING DUTCHMAN," COLLECTED FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE MR. GEOFFREY FENTON, OF POPLAR, MASTER MARINER. BY W. CLARK RUSSELL, AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR," "THE GOLDEN HOPE," "A SEA QUEEN," ETC., ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III LONDON HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET 1888 All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

[1]

CHAPTER I. 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[2] 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[3] 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[4] 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[5] 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[6] 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.

[7]

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."

[8]

"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—

"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[9] again, dear, of your mother's home; talk to me of flowers—of English flowers—and of that old church."

[10]

CHAPTER II. 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.[11] 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[12] 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[13] 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[14] 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[15] 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[16] 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.

[17]

"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."

[18]

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,[19] 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[20] 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[21] 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[22] 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."

[23]

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.

[24]

"Do you really believe her to be what you say, Geoffrey?" said Imogene.