CHAPTER XI.
MY POOR DARLING.
It was ten o'clock. For half-an-hour had I been sitting in the cabin alone waiting for Vanderdecken to come below and go to bed. I heard the parrot angrily clawing about her cage to the chiming of the bell, as if impatient of the slowness of the strokes and enraged by their disturbing notes; and when the last chime died out she violently flapped her wings and cried, with an edge of scream in the ordinary harshness of her voice, "Wy zyn al Verdomd!"
"Verdomd for you, you vile croaker!" thought I, involuntarily clenching my fist as I looked towards her. "Such another yell might bring Van Vogelaar out of his berth."
But she was never again to utter that curse in my hearing.
I went to the cabin door, and found the thickness boiling black about the decks, not an outline visible, nothing to be seen but the lantern-shine, dim as a glow-worm in the crystalline denseness. The clanking of the pump seemed to find twenty echoes in the great concealed fabric of round-tops and square yards on high. How ghostly the stillness with which the brake was plied! You listened till your ear seemed in pain for the sound of a human laugh, the growl of a human voice.
Whilst I stood looking into the thickness, Vanderdecken came down the quarter-deck ladder. The wet of the fog sparkled in his beard, and his fur cap glistened to the lamplight. He stood in the doorway and stared at me under his great heavy brows as though surprised, and even startled, to see me; then exclaimed, "Ach, I had forgotten you sleep in this cabin to-night. The lamp can be left alight, if you please."
"If you please, mynheer," said I, with a note of careless indifference in my voice. In fact I would rather have been in darkness, but it was my policy to seem as if his wishes were all the same to me, let them run as they would.
"Tell Prins when he comes, it is my order he should leave the lamp burning," said he, speaking quietly and in a manner that recalled my earliest impressions of him when he talked low lest he should disturb Imogene. He gave me a stiff bow and walked to his cabin.
Five minutes after arrived Prins.
"'Tis the captain's wish," said I, in a low voice, "that the lamp should be kept alight."
"Good, sir," he replied, imitating my soft speech.
"It is for my convenience; I sleep here as you know, that the pump may be less disturbing. Captain Vanderdecken is good enough to consult my comfort, but as the light is bright, pray dim it, Prins. That may be managed, I hope?"
"Easily," he answered, and climbed upon the table to come at the lamp.
"So," said he, turning down the mesh, "how is that, Herr Fenton?"
"A little fainter yet—so! I thank you, Prins. Have you made an end of your work? I am in no hurry to lie down."
He slipped off the table with a look round, and said: "My work is finished, Herr. You can take your rest at once for me." He yawned. "These African fogs make one gape. Good-night, sir."
"Good-night, Prins."
He halted in the doorway.
"I will shut this door to keep the damp out," he said. I motioned with my hand as though bidding him shut it, which he did, and I was left alone.
I wrapped Vanderdecken's large rich cloak about me, and stretched myself along the bench, using my arm as a pillow. I resolved to lie thus for at least half-an-hour, conceiving that this would be long enough to weary any one who should take it into his head to watch me through the cabin window. As to Vanderdecken, I did not fear his seeing me whilst he kept his door closed. The bulkhead of his berth was thick and apparently seamless, and his door fitted into overlaps of the jambs, for the exclusion of draughts of air after the fashion in old shipbuilding. I lay very quiet hearkening to the dulled beating of the pump and watching the clock, the great hand of which was just visible. When it came round so as to lie upon the quarter before the hour, I rose with the utmost stealth, arranging the cloak in such a fashion as to make the dark shape of it resemble a recumbent form, and holding my breath, stole on tiptoe to Imogene's cabin and pushed the door. It opened; I entered and pushed the door to again, and it jammed noiselessly upon the soft substance that had kept it closed before.
Imogene sat on the side of her bed, that exactly resembled the bed in Vanderdecken's room which I have described. She was fully dressed, and had on a fur or sealskin cap, with flaps for the ears. A small silver lamp of a very ancient pattern hung from a hook in the great beam that traversed the ceiling of her cabin, but she had trimmed or depressed the mesh into a feeble gleam. The little door that led to the quarter-gallery stood open. I kissed her cold forehead, and whispered, "Are you ready?"
"Yes!"
I held her hand whilst I could have counted ten, but found it steadier than mine.
"Come, dearest!" said I, and I stepped into the gallery.
The fog put an intolerable blackness into the air, and the chill of it was like frost upon the flesh. But for the phosphorescence of the sea, which I had before lamented, I should not have been able to see the boat under the counter. As it was, the tweaking of the line to the rise and fall of the Death Ship kept a small stir of water about the boat; the greenish-yellow shining showed through the fog and threw out the figure of the structure. The railing of the gallery rose to the height of my breast. I leaned over it, waving my hand in the blackness for the rope, and not catching it, bade Imogene seize my coat to steady me, and jumped on to the rail, and in a moment felt the line and grasped it; then dismounted, holding the rope. In a few seconds I had the boat's head—that was square and horned, as you will remember—fair under the gallery, and in that posture I secured her by hitching the slack of the line to the rail.
Everything continued to help us; first the fog, that made an astonishing blackness of the night, though I guessed this would grow into a pallid faintness presently, when the moon was up and had gathered power; next the phosphoric shinings upon which the boat rose and fell like a great blot of ink; then the noise of the pump, which, to the most attentive ear on deck, would absorb all such feeble sounds as our movements were likely to cause; and again, there was the small but constant grinding of the sudden jumping of the rudder to the action of the swell, very nicely calculated to lull the suspicions of Vanderdecken in the adjacent cabin should he be awake and hear us. But this I did not fear, for the quarter-gallery was outside the ship, and we worked in the open air, and made no noise besides.
Not a moment was to be lost; the halliards I had unrove from the mizzen-peak lay in a heap at my feet. I ran the length through, doubled it, and made a bowline-on-the-bight of the two thicknesses. This bight or loop I slipped over Imogene's shoulders, bringing the running or lowering part in front of her that there should be no pressure to hurt her tender breasts, and then took two turns round a stancheon on the quarter-gallery.
"Dearest," I whispered, kissing her, "keep a stout heart and do exactly as I bid. First, in what part of the cabin shall I find the pitcher and the provisions?"
"Between the foot of the bedstead and the door. They are covered with a dress."
"Right. I am now about to lower you into the boat. I will lower very gently. The moment your feet touch the boat, cough—but not loudly—as a sign for me to lower handsomely, for the rise and fall of the boat necessitates smart action. When you are safe—that is when you are gotten into the middle of the boat—sit down, and throw the rope off you. I will then send down the pitcher and bags by the line which you will cast adrift from them. It will then be my turn to join you."
So saying I took her in my arms and lifted her on to the rail, seating her there an instant, then taking in one hand the end of the rope which was twisted round the stancheon, with the other I gently slided her over the rail, easing her down with my arm round her till she hung by the line. In another moment she was in the boat.
I hauled up the line, went for the pitcher and bags and sent them down to her, she receiving and detaching them from the line with a promptitude equal to anything I could have hoped to find in that way in a sailor. I called to her softly—that she might know why I lingered—"I am going for the cloak," for the moment I saw it I had made up my mind to carry it off as a covering for Imogene.
I opened her cabin door breathlessly and peered out; then stole soft as a mouse to the cloak and threw it over my arm. The interior lay in a sullen gloom to the dim shining of the lamp. Our stock of provisions was small, and my eye catching sight of the chest under the table I recollected having seen Prins put a canvas bag full of biscuit into it after supper. This I resolved to take. So I went to the chest, raised the lid, and found the bag, but my hurry and agitation being great I let fall the lid which dropped with a noisy bang. Heaping curses upon my clumsiness, I fled like a deer into the cabin and on to the quarter-gallery, threw the cloak and bag into the boat, and followed headlong down the rope I had left dangling from the rail.
I was scarce arrived when the faint light that streamed from Imogene's berth into the quarter-gallery was obscured, and to my horror I saw the loom of a human shape overhanging the rail.
"Imogene! Imogene! Come back—come back!" rang out Vanderdecken's deep and thrilling voice. "Herr Fenton, restore to me the treasure thou wouldst rob me of and I swear not a single hair of thy head shall be harmed."
In mad haste I sawed through the rope that held the boat with my pocket-knife. He could not see, but he heard me; and springing on to the rail, roared, in his thunderous notes, "Arents, Arents, the Englishman hath seized one of the boats and is kidnapping Miss Dudley. Do you hear me? Speak—or you swing!"
I heard the clattering of heavy boots running along the tall echoing poop high over our heads.
"Sir—sir—I am here! Your orders, sir?" bawled Arents.
Again roared out Vanderdecken, in a hurricane note fit to awaken the echoes of the inland mountains, "The Englishman is kidnapping Miss Dudley, and hath already seized the larger boat. Send the men from the pump to man the other boat!"
"No, by Heaven, you don't!" I shouted, mad with the excitement of the minute. The line that held us was severed; the boat's head swung round; I leaned half my length over the gunwale, caught the other boat, and severed the rope that secured her to the ship; then, in a frenzy of haste, tumbled a couple of oars over and pulled away. But I had not measured five boat's lengths when the fog in which the ship, even at that short distance, lay completely swallowed was gashed and rent by a blaze of red fire. The explosion of a musket followed. I knew, by the flame leaping out of the quarter-gallery, that it was Vanderdecken who had fired, and with set teeth strained with all my might at the oars.
A dead stillness reigned. The clanking of the chains had ceased. I could hear nothing but the grind of the oars in the pins, and the sound of the water seething to the unnatural vigour with which I rowed. After a little I paused to gather from the noise of the surf how the boat headed. I bent my ear and found that the boiling was on my left.
"How does it strike you, Imogene?" I asked, in a broken voice, being terribly distressed for breath.
She answered, very low, "The sound is on your left."
"That should signify," said I, "that we are heading out to sea. The breakers are heavy in the west, and 'tis down there the noise of them seems greatest. We must head right out, or this bay will prove worse than a rat-trap."
As I spoke I heard the scattering reports of some six or eight muskets discharged one after another, but the glare of the explosions was absorbed by the fog.
"Ha!" cried I; "they shoot in hope!"
I fell to rowing again, and held to the weighty job stoutly for a good quarter-of-an-hour. Weighty it was, for not only was the boat extremely cumbrous about the bows—if one square end of her more than another could be so termed—the oars were heavy, the blades being spoon-shaped, though flat, and the harder to work not only for the breadth of the boat, but because of the pins being fixed too far abaft the seats.
I had now not much fear of being chased. Even if they found the boat I had liberated by sending men overboard to swim in search of it—there was movement enough in the water to glide it very swiftly into obscurity—I did not apprehend they would venture to pursue me in so great a fog. I threw in my oars and listened. A faint air stirred in the blackness, and if I was correct in supposing that we were heading seawards, then this draught was coming about south-east. The sound of the surf was like a weak rumbling of thunder. I strained my hearing to the right—that is, to starboard, for I sat with my back to the bows; but though indeed I could catch a faint, far-off moan of washing waters that way, the noise of the boiling was on our left.
"I am sure we are out of the bay," said I; "were we penetrating it we should be by this time among the breakers. I heartily pray now this fog will soon thin out. It may whiten into something like light when the moon rides high. There is a faint wind, and I should be glad to step the mast and set the sail. But that isn't to be done by feeling. Besides, there is no rudder, and what there may be in the stern to steady an oar with I cannot conceive."
I paused, thinking she would speak. Finding she was silent, and fearing her to be cold and low-hearted, I said: "My dearest, you will gain confidence with the light. Meanwhile, we have good reason to be grateful for this blackness. They might have killed us could they have seen the boat, for they were prompt with their fire-arms."
"Geoffrey, dear," she exclaimed, in the same low voice I had before noticed in her, "I fear I am wounded."
"Wounded!" I shrieked, springing to my feet.
"The instant Vanderdecken fired—if it was he—" she continued, "I felt a stinging blow in my shoulder. I am very cold just there; I am bleeding, I believe."
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" I cried, for now she spoke at some little length I could hear in her voice the pain she was in; and the feebleness of her voice was like to break my heart, as was the thought of her suffering and bleeding in silence until I had rowed the boat a long distance from the ship.
I felt for her, and took her in my arms, but the shiver that ran through her warned me that my caress increased her pain. I would have given ten years of my life for a light. 'Twas maddening to have to sit in such blackness, with nothing but a dim star or two of the green sea-glow rising with the invisible heave of the water to the gunwale for the eye to rest upon, and to think of my precious one bleeding—perhaps wounded to death—utterly concealed from me, so that I could not staunch her wound, nor comfort her except by speech, nor help her in any way. 'Twas the doing of Vanderdecken! the murderer! Oh, why, when there was all the wide black air for the shot to whistle through, had it struck my life, my love, the darling whom I had snatched to my heart from the huge desolation of the deep, and from the horrible companionship of beings accurst of God?
I groped about for the cloak I had flung into the boat, and found it; I made a bed of it, and pulling off my jacket rolled it up into a pillow. I felt for her again, and told her that the bleeding might lessen if she would lie down. She answered, "I will lie down, dearest."
I took her in my arms very tenderly and carefully, and laid her upon the cloak with the wounded shoulder uppermost, covered her as far as the skirts of the cloak would suffer, and chafed her hands. I was in so great a confusion and agony of mind that had I heard the dip of the oars astern and knew Vanderdecken was after me in the other boat, I should not have let go her hand. I could not have stirred from my kneeling posture beside her to help myself. But now that we were out of the bay, as I might be sure by the sound of the surf, I knew that our keel would be in the grip of the westerly current, and that whether I rowed or not every hour must increase our distance from the Death Ship, and improve our prospect of escape.
I asked her if she was thirsty, understanding how quickly wounded persons crave in this direction. She answered "No;" but, as I believed, out of the sweetness of her heart, to save me anguish by any kind of confession of suffering beyond what she had already owned to. Believing her to be bleeding all the time, I held her hand, in constant expectation of feeling it frosted and turning heavy with death. The sea, in its mighty life of a thousand centuries, has upborne many dismal and affrighting pictures to the chill eye of the moon, to the fiery inspection of the sun, to the blindness of the cloud-blackened sky; but none worse than what our boat made; no torments direr than what I suffered. I could not see her face to observe whether she smiled upon me or not; the love in her eyes was hidden from me, and my heart could take no comfort from imagination when, for all I knew, the glazing of approaching dissolution might have iced those liquid violet impassioned depths into an unmeaning stare.
Add to her lying in the blackness, wounded and bleeding; add to the anguish with which I probed the ebon smother for the merest glimpse of her, till my eyes burned like red-hot balls of fire under my brows; add to this, those elements of mystery, of horror, which entered into and created that black, sightless time; the desolate thunder of surf, defining to the ear the leagues and leagues of savage coast aswarm with roaring beasts, with hissing reptiles, with creatures in human form fiercer and of crueller instincts than either; the magnitude of the ocean on whose breathing breast our tiny bark lay rocking; the wondrous darkness of the deep shadow of the fog upon the natural gloom of the night; the commingling of sullen and mysterious tones in the sulky obscurity—notes that seemed to come out of the seaward infinity, that seemed to rise from each swinging respiring fold under us, in voiceless sound that made you think of a moody conscience in some labouring breast troubling the ear of imagination with mutterings whose audibility was that of the inarticulate speech of phantoms.
CHAPTER XII.
I AM ALONE.
It was about midnight, as I was able presently to gather, when a sort of paleness entered into the fog; and hard upon the heels of this change, the air, that had been weakly breathing, briskened somewhat, fetching a deeper echo from the booming roll of the surf on the starboard side; and the water came to the boat in a shivering phosphoric light of ripples that set her a-dabbling.
The light brightening—that is the fog growing more luminous, without appearing to thin—the boat's outline lay visible, together with her furniture, such as the sail and the oars. I tenderly laid Imogene's cold hand down, and turning the sail over, found—as I had expected—the mast lying under it; and partly peering and partly groping, I made out an iron clamp fitted to the foremost thwart or seat, with an hollow under it in the bottom of the boat for receiving the heel of the mast.
I lifted the spar and very easily stepped it, discovering that the halliards for hoisting the sail were ready rove through a small block seized to the head of the mast. I hauled upon this rope to clear the sail, and perceived it to be shaped like a lug, fitted to a yard, only the yard was arched, causing the head of the sail to appear like a bow when the arrow is drawn upon it. Before setting the sail I went aft, and by dint of feeling and staring discovered a rope grummet or hempen hook fastened to the larboard horn, but close in, so that it lay out of sight against the boat's stern. 'Twas very clear that this was meant to receive an oar for steering; but whether or not it would serve my turn for that purpose; so without more ado I rove an oar through the grummet, then hoisted the sail, making the tack fast to the larboard horn on the bow, and came aft with the sheet.
The boat instantly felt the pressure, and the wind being abaft the beam, she slipped along like a sledge, as you will suppose, when I say that her bottom was shaped like the side of a pea-shell, and that her whole frame might have been imitated from one of those black pods of sea-weed which are furnished by nature with wire-like projections, and which may be found in plenty upon our sea-coast. The oar controlled her capitally.
The double motive I had for getting away from this place—first, to run out of the fog and so get light to enable me to minister to Imogene, and next to remove myself so far from the Death Ship as to render pursuit hopeless even should the thickness in the bay clear up and enable Vanderdecken to recover his boat which I had cut adrift; this double motive, I say, lifted my anxiety and eagerness to the height of madness. My dearest lay with her head towards me, and in the glistening white obscurity I could discern her pale face upon the pillow of my coat, but could not tell whether her eyes were open or shut. She did not moan; she lay as still as the dead. I asked her if she was in pain. She said "No," but in a voice so feeble that I had to bend my ear to catch the syllable.
I could not think of her but as slowly dying to the streaming away of her precious blood. What to do I knew not; and in addition to this dreadful state of despair was the obligation upon me to watch the boat and shrewdly and seriously attend to my course by the warning surf-thunder floating back against the wind from the echoing strand. From time to time I would address Imogene, always with a terror in me of winning no reply, of touching her and finding her dead. Once she answered that she believed the bleeding in her shoulder had stopped; the icy-coldness was gone, and there was a small smarting there as if she had been burnt, but nothing that she could not easily endure. But I knew by the tone of her voice that she spoke only to give me comfort; either that she was suffering above the power of her love for me to conceal in her faltering whispers or that her strength was unequal to the labour of utterance.
Yet, as I have said, what could I do? I was no chirurgeon; and I wonder that my heart did not break to the bending of my scorching eyes upon my love lying wounded and bleeding at my feet.
An hour passed; the fog still compassed us, but the white splendour of the moon was upon it. Methought that I heard Imogene whisper; I dropped on my knee, and she asked for water. I let go the steering oar, that jammed in the grummet and that could not therefore go adrift, and with great trouble found the little cup that I had hidden in one of the bags, and poured some water out of the pitcher into it. She moaned in pain when I put my arm under her head to raise it; but she drank greedily, nevertheless, and thanked me in a whisper when I tenderly let sink her head on to the jacket.
I resumed my place at the oar, and through the blackness drove the boat, the sail pulling briskly, the water shining very brightly in our wake, and, as my ear seemed to fancy, the noise of the surf dwindling somewhat, whence I conjectured we were hauling off the coast and standing more directly seawards. I do not know that I should have been without hope for my beloved if it had not been for the haunting and blasting thought that nothing but misery could attend association with Vanderdecken and his doomed ship. It seemed to me now—though on board I had been too eager to escape with her, too wrapped up in my love for such consideration to occupy my mind—that nothing less than the death of one of us could expiate our involuntary and unhappy connexion with the banned and fated craft. Ships that spoke her perished, often with all hands; misfortunes pursued those who merely sighted her. What sort of death could the Curse involve for one who had lived for years or for weeks in the monstrous fabric, who had conversed familiarly with her abhorred occupants, who had been admitted into close inspection of her secret life, beheld the enactment by Vanderdecken in his sleep of the impious and horrible drama of his Christ-defying wrath, eat of his bread, drank of his cup, yea, and hearkened with sympathy to his talk of home, to his yearning speech concerning those he loved there?
The sense of the doom that was upon her as upon me—upon her in her young and beautiful life, upon me in my love for her, upon both in the crushing separation of the grave, whether 'twas for her to die or for me; oh! I say, the sense of this thing weighed as iron and as ice upon my heart, crushing out all hope and leaving me as blind in my soul as my eyes were in the fog to steer the boat through the silence of that vaporous night, hearing nothing but the rippling of the water, and the blunted edge of the surf's wild beat, and beholding nothing but the outline of my dearest—of my dearest—stricken and dying at my feet!
Suddenly the fog broke up. It was then about two o'clock. The vapour floated into league-long streaks, lunar-tinted here and there into an ærial mockery of the rainbow, and over the edge of one great steam-like body the moon with an ice-like, diamond-splendour of radiance looked down upon us out of a pool of black sky. The lustre had something of the sharpness of daylight, only that the flooded pearl of it wore the complexion of death, all things showing out wan; and in that illumination the delicate gold of Imogene's hair melted into the extreme pallor of the forehead on which it stirred to the wind, and her lips were of the colour of her cheeks, and her half-closed lids like wax.
I let go the oar to kneel and look at her. She lay so still, with such unheeding eyes, that I made sure she was dead, and my brain reeled as though my heart had stopped.
I said hoarsely and hollowly, "Imogene."
The fringe of her eyelids trembled, and I marked a faint smile on her lips.
"Dearest," cried I, "how is it with thee?"
She returned no answer.
I said "I shall be able to see the wound now, and perhaps check the bleeding. I can cut the dress clear of the shoulder and you need not stir."
She exclaimed—but, my God, how feebly!—"Dearest, let me lie as I am," speaking with a sort of sigh between each word. And then she added, "Kiss me."
I pressed my lips to hers; they were cold as the mist that was passing away in wreaths and clouds. I saw how it was and let her have her way. It would have been cruel to touch her with more than my lips. And even though I should have cut away her apparel to the wound and saw it, what could I do? Suppose the bleeding internal—the bullet lodged within, the lung touched, or some artery severed?
A wild feeling seized me; I felt that I must leap upon a seat and rave out madly or my head would burst. The efforts to control myself left me trembling and weeping. I wiped from my brow the sweat that had leapt in drops there out of my weakness, and put my hand upon the oar afresh. The fog had settled away to leeward; it looked like a vast cliff of snow-covered ice, and the moonshine worked in it in shifting veins of delicate amber and dim steel-blue. Out of it, trending a little to the south of west, rolled the loom of the dusky land; it died out in the showering haze of the moonlight, whence ran the dark sea-line to right astern of us—nothing in sight but the land growing out of the fog. Over the horizon the stars hung like dew-drops, giving back the glory of the central luminary and set twinkling by the wind. They soared in sparkling dust, rich with large jewels, till they died out in the cold silvering of the sky round about the moon.
My hysteric fit sobered down and I fell to sharply thinking. The nearest refuge was Simon's Bay, and that would lie some three or four hundred miles distant. How long would it take me to sail the boat there? Why, 'twas a thing idle to calculate. Give me steady favourable winds and smooth seas and I could answer; but here was a boat that, like the ship she belonged to, was fit only to be blown along. She could not beat, she had no keel for holding to the water. Hence progress, if any was to be made, was so utterly a matter of chance that conjecture fell dead to the first effort of thought. If I was blown out to sea we might be picked up by a ship; if we were blown ashore I might contrive to find a smooth spot for landing; if the wind came away from the east and south it might, if it hung there, drive me round Agulhas and perhaps to Simon's Bay. That's how it stood—no better anyhow; but how much worse you may reckon when you reflect in what part of the ocean we were, when you consider the season of the year, how few in comparison with the mighty expanse of those waters were the ships which sailed upon it, how worthless the boat as a sea-going fabric, how huge the billows which the gales raised, how murderous the shore to which the breakers, roaring on it, might forbid escape.
Twice my darling moaned for water. Each time she thanked me with a smile, but the mere task of swallowing seemed to rob her lips of the power of pronouncing words. The moon went down in the west towards the black line of land, and when it hung a rusty-red over the ebon shadow under which trickled the blood-like flakes of its reflection, the dawn broke. For above an hour I had not been able to see Imogene, so faint had fallen the light of the westering orb, and for longer than that time had she neither moaned, nor whispered, nor stirred.
I directed my burning eyes into the east for the sun, and when the pink of him was in the sky, ere yet his brow had levelled the first flashing beam of day, I looked at Imogene.
I looked, and yet looked; then knelt. She was smiling, and by that I believed she lived; but when I peered into the half-closed lids—oh, great God! The sun flamed out of the sea in a leap then, and I sprang to my feet and cursed him with a scorching throat for finding me alone!
The sequel to this extraordinary narrative must be told by another pen.
On the morning of the second day of October, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six, the full-rigged ship Mary and James, bound from Tonquin to London, dropped anchor in Table Bay. She had scarcely swung to her cable when the gig was lowered, and her master, Captain William Thunder, a small, bow-legged man, with a fiery nose and a brown wig, entered her and was rowed ashore. He marched, or rather rolled, into the town, which in those days was formed of a mere handful of low-roofed, strongly-built houses, and knocking at one of them, situated not a musket shot distant from the grounds of the building of the Dutch East India Company, inquired for Mr. Van Stadens. The coloured slave, or servant, showed him into a parlour, and presently Mr. Van Stadens, an extremely corpulent Dutchman, entered.
They talked awhile of business, for Van Stadens was the South African agent for the owner of the Mary and James, and then said Captain Thunder:
"Mr. Van Stadens, I'm going to tell you the most wonderful thing you ever heard in all your life."
"By Gott, Toonder, and so shall you," replied Van Stadens.
"See here," said the captain, polishing his forehead with so much energy that he unconsciously shifted his wig, "we were about ninety miles to the eastwards of Agulhas, the weather clear, the wind about south, a quiet breeze, the ship under all plain sail, and the second officer in charge of the deck, when a hand aloft sung out there was a vessel three points on the lee bow. When we had her in sight from the poop and caught her fair in the glass, I was so much struck by the cut of her canvas, which was a lug, narrow in the head and secured to a yard more arched than either of my legs, that I bore down to see what was to be made of her by a close squint."
"So," said Van Stadens, crossing his legs and putting his hands upon his waistcoat in a posture of prayer.
"She proved to be a canoe or boat," continued Captain Thunder, "rounded at bottom like one of Crusoe's periaguas, with horns sticking out at each square end of her. She was, or I should say she had been, painted red inside. The blades of her oars, shaped like a Japanese fan, were also painted red. Her sail looked to be an hundred years old—I never saw the like of such canvas. The most perfect description of its colour, patches, texture would have sounded an abominable lie to me if I hadn't viewed it myself."
"So," said Van Stadens, nodding upon his four chins, which resembled layers of pale gutta-percha, with the elastic properties of that stuff.
"In fact," said Captain Thunder, "she was of the exact fashion of the boats you see in old Dutch paintings—ship's boats, I mean."
"How oldt?" asked Van Stadens.
"Two hundred years old," said Captain Thunder.
"Goot. Is dot der fonder, Toonder?"
"Not by all the distance from here to the top of Table Mountain, Mr. Van Stadens," answered the captain. "I said to the second mate, 'That's no natural boat, Mr. Swillig. If she belongs to the age in which she appears to have been built she ought to have been powder or ooze a hundred and fifty years ago. Can you make out anybody in her?' He said 'No,' and argued with me that there was something unnatural about her, and recommended that we should haul to the wind again and appear as if we hadn't seen her, but my curiosity was tickled and we stood on. Well, Mr. Van Stadens, we passed close and what we saw fetched a groan out of every man that was looking and brought our main-topsail to the mast in the wink of a muskeety's eye, sir. A girl lay dead in the bottom of the boat. She looked beautiful in death, in life she must have been as lovely as the prettiest of the angels of God. But her dress! Why, Mr. Van Stadens, it belonged to the time the boat was built in. Ay, as I sit here to say it!"
The Dutchman shook his head.
"You shall see it for yourself, sir—you shall see it for yourself!" cried Captain Thunder, with excitement. "We all said she had been floating about in that boat for two hundred years, and was a dead saint watched by the eye of God, and not to be corrupted as you and me would be. There were three Dagos in our crew, and when they saw her they crossed themselves. But that wasn't all—not nearly all. In the bows lay the figure of a seaman—an English sailor, dressed as my mate is. We thought he was dead, too, till we lowered a boat, when on a sudden he lifted his head out of his arms and looked at us. There was a shine in his eye that showed us his wits were gone. Such a haggard face, Mr. Van Stadens!—unshaven for weeks, and his hair all of a mat; yet you saw he had been a handsome man and was a young one too. Well, his being alive settled any hesitation I might have felt had they both been corpses. I sung out to my second mate to bring him aboard and the girl's body also, proposing decent burial; but the sailor man wasn't to be coaxed out of the boat; he grinned with rage to Mr. Swillig's invitations, flung himself upon the girl's body, howling like a dog when my men boarded him, and caused such a scuffle and a melee that both boats came very near to being swampt. They bound him with the painter, and brought him and the corpse on board along with three bags of provisions-such bags, Mr. Van Stadens, and such provisions, sir! But ye shall see 'em—ye shall see 'em, and a pitcher half full of water and a silver cup——"
"Eh?" grumbled Van Stadens.
"A silver cup."
"So," said the Dutchman. "Now ve com to der fonders."
"Ay, sir, as you say. Look here!"
He pulled a ring out of his waistcoat pocket and held it up. It was a diamond ring of splendour and beauty. The gems flashed gloriously and Van Stadens gaped at their brilliance like a wolf yawning at the moon.
"Vere got you dot, Toonder?
"Off the girl's finger. 'Tis but one, Mr. Van Stadens."
"But fon, hey! By toonder, Toonder, but dot ring is der fonderfullest part of your story as yet."
He took it in his hand and his eyes danced greedily to the sparkle of the beautiful bauble.
"Well," continued Captain Thunder, "we put the man into a spare cabin, and gave the job of watching him to the steward, a stout hearty fellow. The girl was stone-dead, of course. I ordered her dress, jacket and hat to be removed, likewise the jewellery about her—specially a noble rope of pearls——"
"By toonder, no! You shoke, Toonder!" cried Van Stadens.
"Ye shall see with your own eyes—ye shall see with your own eyes!" exclaimed the captain. "I gave these orders more with the idea of the things proving of use to identify her by than for their value. I never saw such under-linen, sir. 'Twas exquisitely fine and choice. Beyond description, Mr. Van Stadens. There was a ball-wound in her shoulder, with a caking of blood about it. That the fellow below had done this thing I could not suppose. There were no arms of any kind—if you except a big clasp knife—on him or in his boat. We buried the poor, sweet, murdered thing in her fine linen, giving her a sailor's hammock for a coffin and a sailor's toss for a last farewell. As for the boat, she looked unnatural and unlucky, and I think my men would have mutinied if I had ordered them to sling her over the side. We unstepped the mast and sent her adrift for the MAN she belongs to to pick up, if so be he stands in need of her."
"Vot MAN?" inquired Van Stadens.
"Vanderdecken," responded Captain Thunder, in a low voice, and with as much awe in his face as his fiery pimple of a nose would suffer to appear.
"Vot!" shouted Van Stadens. "Der Flying Deutchman!"
Captain Thunder nodded. The other smiled, and then broke into a roar of laughter.
"Hark, Mr. Van Stadens, wait till I've done," exclaimed Thunder, with his face full of blood. "All that day the man remained moody, with a lunatic's sullenness. He refused to eat or drink. I was in and out a dozen times but couldn't get him to speak. Well, sir, at nine o'clock in the night the steward came and told me he was asleep. He was watched all night, but never stirred; all next night, and the day after that, and the night after that, sir, but he never stirred. For sixty hours he slept, Mr. Van Stadens, or may I not leave this room alive! and I thought he meant dying in that fashion. Then he awoke, sat up and talked rationally. His mind had come back to him and he was as sensible as you or me."
"Vell?"
"Well, he fed and rested a bit, and then feeling stronger, he told me his story." And here Captain Thunder repeated what is already known to the reader.
Mr. Van Stadens listened with his fat face full of incredulity.
"'Tis fonderful, inteet," said he, "but it isn't true."
"I believe every word of it," said Thunder. "Blast the Flying Dutchman! who doubts him?"
"Your sailor man is mad," said Van Stadens.
"Oh, indeed," sneered Thunder. "Then account to me for the boat I saw him in, for his female companion lying dead of a gunshot wound; for this," said he, holding up the diamond ring, "and for other matters I'll show you when we get aboard."
"Ve vill go on boort at oonst," cried Van Stadens.
They repaired to the ship and found Geoffrey Fenton in the cabin. He looked haggard, weak, extremely sorrowful; but he was as sane as ever he had been at any time of his life. Thunder introduced Van Stadens, and to this Dutchman Fenton repeated his story, relating it so artlessly, with such minuteness of detail, above all unconsciously using so many old-fashioned Dutch words, which he had acquired from Vanderdecken, that the wonder in Van Stadens' face grew into a look of stupefaction. He muttered, frequently, "Fonderful! fonderful! By toonder, amazing!" But the measure of Captain Thunder's triumph over the agent's incredulity was not full till the articles belonging to Fenton—for so they were regarded—were produced. Van Stadens examined the pearls, the rings which poor Imogene had worn, the silver goblet, the antique dress, jacket and sealskin cap, Vanderdecken's velvet cloak, the pitcher, the articles of food which had been preserved, these things, I say, Van Stadens examined with mingled admiration and consternation, such as a man might feel to whom another exhibits a treasure he has sold his soul to the Devil for.
"Do you believe now!" cried Captain Thunder.
"It is fonderful! it is fonderful!" returned the Dutchman. "Do you go home with Toonder, Herr Fenton?"
"No," said Thunder, "I am sorry; I dare not do it. The crew have got scent of the experiences of our friend here and wouldn't sail with him for tenfold the value of the plate and silver in the Death Ship's hold."
"I do not blame them," said Fenton, with a melancholy smile.
"What I have proposed to Mr. Fenton is this, Mr. Van Stadens," said the captain: "You are a man of honour and will see that right is done to this poor gentleman."
"So," said Van Stadens.
"Let these articles be sold," continued Thunder.
"All but the diamond ring," interrupted Fenton.
"All but the diamond ring," said the captain. "No one need know how they were obtained; not a syllable of Mr. Fenton's story must be repeated; otherwise he'll get no ship to carry him home."
Van Stadens turned to Fenton and said in Dutch: "I will buy these goods from you. Their value shall be assessed to our common satisfaction. Meanwhile, a room in my house—my house itself—is at your service. Remain awhile to recruit your strength, and I will secure you a passage to Amsterdam in the Indiaman that is due here about the end of this month."
They shook hands, and half-an-hour later Fenton had taken leave of Captain Thunder and his ship.
It is proper to say here that the hospitable but shrewd Dutchman gave Fenton eight hundred dollars for the Vanderdecken relics, and when Fenton had sailed, sold them for three thousand ducatoons, of eighty stivers each, after clearing some thousands of dollars by exhibiting them.
The subsequent safe arrival of Geoffrey Fenton in Europe may be gathered from his narrative. Necessity forced him back to his old vocation and he continued at sea, holding various important commands down to the age of sixty. Among his papers is a curious note relating to the fate of the vessels which had encountered the Death Ship during the time to which his narrative refers. The Plymouth snow, after speaking the Saracen, was never again heard of; the Saracen was lost on one of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, but her people were saved to a man by the boats. The Centaur, three days after sighting the Death Ship, was dismasted in a hurricane and struggled into Simon's Bay in a sinking condition. The fate of the French corsair is not known, but it is satisfactory to know that the James and Mary reached the Thames in safety after an uneventful passage.