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

CHAPTER XX.
I HOLD A CONVERSATION WITH THE CREW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where do the crew sleep?" said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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