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

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 XII.
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—

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 XIII.
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 XIV.
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 XV.
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!