The Death Ship: A Strange Story, Vol. 2 (of 3)

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

"Here are others," she continued—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I clasped my brow with bewilderment in my brain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V.
THE DEATH SHIP'S FORECASTLE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ha!" he exclaimed.

"Where do your crew sleep?"

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

"Is it a comfortable cabin?" said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI.
WE SIGHT A SHIP.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Directly after us," she replied.

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How heading, skipper?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where is the captain?" I asked.

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

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

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

"But how?"

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII.
WE WATCH THE SHIP APPROACH US.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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