The Death Ship: A Strange Story, Vol. 1 (of 3)

CHAPTER VI.
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:—

"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,

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 VII.
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 VIII.
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:—

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 IX.
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 X.
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 XI.
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—