THE DEATH SHIP:

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9151, 5 September 1888, Page 3

THE DEATH SHIP:

A STRANGE STORY.* an ACCOUNT op a CRUISE IN THE. flying dutchman, COLLECTOR FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE MR. GEOFFREY FENTON, OF POPLAR MASTER MARINER By W. CLARK RUSSELL, Author of " The Wreck of the Grosvenor," "The Golden Hope," Ac., &c. [All Rights Reserved.] CHAPTER XXX. f«E DEAD HELMSMAN. I proved right in the estimate I had formed from the foretop of the size of the wreck. Her burthen was within four hundred tons. Wo gradually drove down to her, and when we were within musketshot, Vanderdecken ordered the topsail to be laid aback. The breeze had freshened, the little, surges ran in a pouring of silver gushing heads, the broad-backed swell rose in brimming violet to our channels, and our ship rolled upon it helpless as an egg-shell. The wallowing of the wreck, too, was like the plashing and struggling of some sentient thing heavily labouring, with such fins or limbs as God had given it, to keep itself afloat. That there was no lack of water in her was certain ; yet, having the appearance of a ship that had be .-it for some days abandoned, at which time it might be supposed t hat her people would imagine her to be in a sinking condition, it was clear that in a strange accidental way the leak had been healed, possibly by some substance entering and choking it. All three masts were gone within a foot or two of the deck. Her hull was a dark brown, that looked black in the distance against the blue, with the mirrorlike flashing from the wet upon it; she had a handsome stern, the quarter-galleries supported by gilt figures, wherefrom ran a broad band of gilt along her sides to the bows. Under her counter there stole out in large white characters, with every heave of her stern, the words Prince of Wales," and 'twas startling to see the glare of the letters coining out in a ghastly, staring sort of way from the bald brow of the swell, as it sloped from the gilded stern. Her name proved her English. You could see the masts had been cut away, by the hacked ends of the shrouds snaking out into the hollows and swellings over the side. Her decks were heavily encumbered with what sailors call " rattle"—that is, the muddle of ropes, torn canvas, staves of boats and casks, fragments of deck-fittings, and so forth, with which the ocean illustrates her violence and which she will sometimes for weeks, ay, and for months, continue to rock and nurse, and hold intact for very affection of the picture as a symbol of her wrath when vexed by the gale, and of her triumphs over those who daringly penetrate her fortresses to fight her. The confusion to the eye was so great, and rendered so lively and bewildering by the hulk's rolling, that scan her as you would, it was impossible to master details with any sort of rapidity. Suddenly Imogene, grasping my wrist in her excitement, exclaimed, "See ! there is a man there—he seems to steady himself by holding the wheel—look now, Geoffrey, as she rolls her decks at us !" I instantly saw him. The wheel was in front of the break of the poop, where the cuddy or round house windows were; and erect at it stood a man, on the starboard side, ona hand down clutching a spoke at his waist, and his left arm straight out to a spoke to larboard, which he gripped. Methought he wrestled with the helm, for he swerved as a steersman will who struggles to keep a ship's head steady in a seaway. "Is he mad ?" cried I. " Ay, it must be so! Famine, thirst, mental anguish, may have driven him distracted. Yet, even then, why does not he look towards us? Why, were he actually raving, surely his sight would be courted by our presence." " Fray God he be not mad," whispered Imogene ; "he is certain to be a sailor and an Englishman ; and if he be mad, and brought here, how will these men deal with him ?" " Yes ; and I say, too, pray God he be not mad !" I cried ; "for back me with a hearty English sailor and 1 believe—yes, I could so match these fellows as to carry the ship, without their having the power to resist me, to any port I chose to steer for to the eastward ; for with her cry of "He is sure to be a sailor and an Englishman," there swept into my brain the fancy of securing the crew under hatches, and imprisoning Vanderdeeken and his mates in their cabins—the least idle, in sober truth, of all the schemes that had presented themselves to me. "Hush!" she exclaimed, breathlessly, and as she closed her lips to the whisper, Vanderdeeken came up to us, but not to speak. He stood for some minutes looking at the wreck, with the posture and air of one deeply considering. The seamen forward gazed with a heavy steadfastness, too, some under the sharp of their hands, some with folded hands. I heard no speech among them. Yet though their stillness was that of a swoon, their eyes shone with an eager light, and expectation shaped their pallid, deathlike faces into a high and straining look. There were no signs of life aboard the wreck, saving the figure of the man that swayed at the wheel. 1 was amazed that he should never glance towards us. Indeed, I am not sure that the whole embodied ghastliness of our Death Ship matched in terror what you found in the sight of that lone creature grasping the wheel, first bringing it a little to the right, then heaving it over a little to left, fixedly staring ahead, as though such another curse as had fallen upon this Dutch ship had come like a blast of lightning upon him, compelling him to go on standing at yonder helm, and vainly striving to steer the wreck —as terribly corpse-like as any man among us, and as shockingly vital, too ! Jt struck my English love of briskness a3 strange that Vanderdeeken should not promptly order the boat over, or give orders that should have reference to the abandoned hull ; yet I could not help thinking that his Holland blood spoke in this pause, and that there intermingled with the trancelike condition that was habitual in him, the phlegmatic instincts of his nation that gradual walking to a decision, which in Scotland is termed " takin' a thocht." After a while he said to me : " Mynheer, the wreck hath an English name ; she will be of your country, therefore. May I beg of you to take my trumpet and hail that person standing at the wheel?" " I shall not need your trumpet, sir," said I, at once climbed upon the rail, and thinking to myself that 'twas odd if there was not wanted a trumpet with a voice as thunderous as the crack o' doom to bring thatsilent, forward-staring man's face round to his shoulder. " Wreck ahoy !" I bawled with my hand to my cheek, and the wind took the echo of my voice clear as a bell to the hulk, I shouted again, and yet again ; then dismounted. "He is deaf!" said Vanderdeeken. " He is dead !" said I, for this was forced upon me, spite of the erect and life-like posture of the figure, and what resembled the straining of his arms to steady the wheel. CHAPTER XXXI. THE DUTCH SAILORS HOARD THE WRECK. " Get the boat over," cried Vanderdeeken, turning to Van Vogelaar, "and go and inspect the wreck.. Look to the man first: I]err Fenton declares him dead; and particularly observe if there be aught that hath life in it aboard." On this, Van Vogelaar went forward, calling about him. In a few minutes a white-faced seaman, with yellow beard trembling to the wind, and his eyes looking like a rat's with the white lashes and pink retinas, leisurely climbed aloft with a line in his hand, and swinging himself on to the main-yard, slided out upon the horses to the extremity, or yardarm as it is termed, which ho bestrode as a jockey a steed ; and i hen hauled up the line, to the end of which was hitched a tackle. This tackle he made fast to the yardarm, and by it, with the help of steadying ropes, or guys, some o' the crt a' 0:1 deck hoisted the little boat out of the bigger o~e and lowered it away into the water alongside. I watched this business with a sailor's interest, wondering that so great a ship as this—great, that is, for the age to which she belonged—should cj.rry no more than two boats, stowed one in the other after the fashion of the north country coastmen. Is or was I less impressed by the aged ap- " The Proprietors of the New '/.v.aland Herald have purchased l lie sole riylit to publish this story i is the fierih iaUcd ol £i«w ZeaJ/iad.

pearance of the boat when she was afloat. She had the look of a slug with her horns, only that those continuations of her gunnel rail projected abaft as well as from the bows. And when Van Vogelaar and three of the crew entered her, then, what with the faded red of her inner skin, the wide, red blades of the short oars, the soulless movements of the seamen, the hue of their faces, the feverish unnatural shining of their eyes like sunshine showing through a cairngorm stone, their dried and corded hands, which wrapped the handles of their oars like rugged parchmentthe little but marvellous picture acted as by the waving of a magic wand, forcing time back a century and a half and driving shudders through the frame of a beholder with a sight whose actuality made it a hundredfold more startling and fearful than had it been a vision as unsubstantial as the Death Ship herself is mistakenly supposed to be. The wreck being within hailing distance, the boat was soon alongside her. The heavy rolling of the hull and the sharp ruse and fall of the boat, would have made any human sailor mightily wary in his boarding of the vessel; but if ever there was an endevilled wretch among the phantom's crew, Van Vogelaar was he. The fiend in him stayed at nothing. The instant the boat had closed the wreck the fellow leaped, and he was on deck and walking towards the figure at the wheel, whilst the othersthat is to say, two of them—were waiting for the hull to swing down for them to follow. . Tbe mate went up to the figure, and seemed to address him ; then, receiving no reply, he felt his face, touched his hands, and pulled to get that amazing grip relaxed, but to no purpose. The others now joining him, they all stared into the figure's face ; one lifting an eyelid and peering into the eye, another putting his ear to the figure's mouth. Van Vogolaar then came to the side, and shouted in his harsh and rusty voice that it was a dead man. Vanderdecken imperiously waved his hand, and cried, " Fall to exploring her !" and motioned significantly to the sky, as if he would have the mate misgive the weather, though there was no change in the aspect of the pearly wreaths and glistening beds of vapour, and the draught was still a gentle breeze. " Dead !" I whispered to l'mogene ; "yet I feared it." 1 noticed Vanderdecken looking at the body. There was deep thought in his imperious, menacing expression, with a shadow of misery that his fierce and glittering eyes did but appear to coarsen and harsheh the gloom of; and 1 wondered to myself if ever moments came when perception of his condition was permitted to him, for it truly appeared as though there were a hint of some such thing in him now whilst ho gazed at the convulsive figure at the wheel, as ifJesus have mercy upon him ! —the sight of the dead tilled his own deadly flesh with poignant and enraging yearnings, the meanings of which his unholy vitality was unable to interpret. When Van Vogelaar had spent about half an hour on tho wreck, he and the others dropped over the side into tbe boat and made for us. We had scarce shifted our position, for the courses being hauled up and the topgallant sails lowered, there was too little sail abroad for the weak wind then blowing to give us drift, and the swell that drove us towards ohe wreck would also drive the wreck from us. The mate came over the side, and stepping up to the captain, said, " She is an English ship, freighted with English manufacture ; I make out bales of blanket, clothing, and stores, which I imasrine have been designed for troops." " What water is in her ?" " Seven and a quarter feet by her own rod." "Her pump?" " She hath two —both shattered and useless." " Does she continue to fill?" " I believe not, sir ; I would not swear to it; she rolls briskly, but," said he, sending his evil glance at the wreck, " it does not appear that she is sunk deeper since we first made her out." " Yonder figure at the wheel is dead you say ?" " As truly dead a Briton as ever fell to a Dutchman's broadside." I exchanged a swift look with Imogene. " His eyes are glassy ; his fingers clasp the spokes like nooks of steel. He must have died on a sudden —perhaps from lightning—from disease of some inward organor from fear." And there was the malice of the devil in the sneer that curled his ugly mouth as he spoke, taking me in with a roll of his sinister eyes. I watched him coldly. Remonstrance or temper would have been as idle with this man and his mates as pity to that unrecking heart of oak out there. "What is to be come at?" demanded Vanderdecken, with passionate abruptness. The other answered quickly, holding up one forefinger after another in a compilative tallying way whilst he spoke. "The half-deck is free of water, and there I find flour, vinegar, treacle, tierces of beef, some barrels of pork, and five cases of this— which hath the smell of tobacco, and is no doubt that plant." And he pulled out of his pocket a stick of tobacco, such as is taken in cases to sea to be sold to the crews. Vanderdecken smelt it. " 'Tis undeniably tobacco," said he, ''but how used?" His eye met mine ; I took the hint, and said : " To be chewed, is is bitten ; to be smoked, it has to bo flaked with a knife— thus, mynheer." And I imitated the action of cutting it. Some of the crew had collected on the quarter-deck to hear the mate's report, and seeing the tobacco in the captain's hand, and observing my gestures, one of them cried out that if it was like the tobacco the Englishman had shown them how to use, 'twas rare smoking ! Whether Vanderdecken had heard of my visit to the forecastle I do not know ; he seemed not to hear the sailor's exclamation, saying to me, "Yes, mynheer, 1 see the convenience ot such tablets; they hold much and are easily flaked." And then, sweeping the sea and skies with his eyes, he cried : " Get the other boat over ; take a working party in her and leave them aboard to break out the cargo. The smaller boat will tow her to and fro. Arents, you will have charge of the working partyyou, Van Vogelaar, will bring off the goods and superintend the transhipments. Away, now ! There is stuff enough there to fill the hollowest cheek with fat, and to sweeten the howl of a gale into melody. Away, then !" There was excitement in his words, but none in his rich and thunderous voice, nor in his manner ; and though there seemed a sort of bustle in the way the men went to work to hoist out the large boat, it was the very ghost of hurry, as unlike the hearty leaping of sailors, fired with expectation, as are the twitchings of electrified muscles to the motions of "hale limbs controlled by healthy intellect. Yet, to a mariner, what could surpass the interest of such a scene? As I leaned against the bulwark with Imogene, watching the little boat towing the big one over the swell, with now a lifting that put the leaning, toiling figures of the rowers clear against the delicate, vaporous film over the sky at the horizon, the red blades of the oars glistening like rubies as they flashed out of water, and the white heads of the little surges which wrinkled the liquid folds melting all about the boats into creaming silver, radiant with salt rainbows and prismatic glories ; and now a sinking that plunged them out of sight in a hollow passed the round, dark-blue back, off whose slant our ancient fabric had just now rolled. I said to my dear one, "Here is a sight I would not have missed for a quintal of the silver below ; I am actually witnessing the manner in which this doomed vessel feeds and clothes herself, and how her crew replenish their stores and provide against decay and diminution. What man would credit this thing? Who would believe that the Curse which pronounced the ship imperishable should also hold her upon the verge of what is natural, sentencing her to a hideous immortality, and at the same time compelling the crew to labour as if her and their life was the same as that of other crews in other ships ?" "If they knew their doom " they would not toil," she answered ; " they would seek death by famine or thirst, or end their horrible lot by sinking the ship and drowning with her." "How far away from the dread reality is the world's imagination of this ship, and the situation of her people?" cried I. " She has been pictured as rising out of the waves, as sailing among the clouds, as being perpetually attended by heavy black storms, and thunder claps and blasts of lightning ! Here is the reality—as sheer a piece of prose at first sight as any salvage job, but holding in the very heart of its simplicity so mighty, so complicated, so unparalleled a wonder, that even when I speak to you about it, Imogene, and suffer my

mind to dwell upon it, my mind grows numb with a dread that reason has quitted her throne and left me fit only for a mad- J house i j " You tremble !" she whispered, softly. ! " Nay, you think too closely of -what you are passing through. Let your knowledge ■that' this experience is real rob it of its terror. Are we not surrounded with wonders which too much thought will make affrighting ? That glorious sun ; what feeds his flaming disc ? Why should the moon shine like crystal when her soil perchance is like that of our own world —which also gleams as silver does though it is mere dust and mould and unreflecting ashes ? Think of the miracles we are to ourselves and to one another !" She pressed my hand, and pleaded, reproved, and smiled upon me with her eyes. Was she some angelic spirit that had lighten by chance on this Death Ship, and held it company for very pity of the misery and hopelessness of the sailors' doom ? But there was a human passion and tenderness in her face that would have been weakness in a glorified spirit. Oh, indeed, she was flesh and blood as I was, with warm lips for kissing, and breasts of cream as a pillow for love, the golden hair too aromatic for phantasy ! CHAPTER XXXII. THE DUTCHMEN OBTAIN REFRESHMENTS. Above an hour passed before the big boat, deeply laden, was towed by the little one from the wreck. Of what a proportion of her freight was composed I could not tell, much of it being in parcels and casks. They had made sure of the tobacco by bringing away, at once, all that they could find. I observed a number of hams stitched up in canvas, and some sacks of potatoes, two bags of which were lost by the bottoms bursting whilst they were being hoisted, on which Van Vogelaar broke into several terrible oaths in Dutch, though 'twas like a dramatic rehearsal of a ranting and bullying scene, for Vanderdecken took no notice, and the men went on hoisting and lowering away in the old phlegmatic mechanic fashion as though they were deaf. There were likewise other kinds of provisions of which I need not tease you with the particulars. I believe that all the loading of the boat — in this her first trip, I mean—consisted of articles of food ; for some of the parcels which puzzled me proved to contain cheeses and the others might therefore as well represent stores of a like kind. " Is it their custom to bring away the provisions first ?" I asked Imogene "As a rule," she answered, "they take whatever comes to handthat is, if the articles be such as may be of use. What they chiefly secure as soon as possible is tobacco and spirits; then provisions and clothing; and then any treasure they may. come across, and afterwards any portion of the cargo they may fancy that is light to handle, such as silks, pottery, and so forth." " But they cannot take very much," said I, "or a few meetings of this kind would j sink their ship for them with overloading." "There are many of us," she replied, "and the provisions they bring away do not last very long. The pottery they use, and it is soon broken. Silk and such materials as they bring are light; and then, my dear, they do not meet wrecks every day, nor of the wrecks they meet may you count one in five that yields enough to sink this ship by a foot." "I am heartily sorry," said I " that they should find so much to eat aboard yonder hulk. With so goodly a store of provisions Vanderdecken will not require to run in to land to shoot ; and until this ship brings up I see no chance for ourselves." She sighed and looked sadly into the water, insomuch that she suggested an emotion of hopelessness ; but in an instant she flashed out of her expression of melancholy weariness into a smile and gave me the deep perfections of her violet eyes to look into, as if she knew their power over me and shaped their shining influence for my comfort and courage. When the boat was discharged of her freight, the men's dinner was passed over 'the side for the fellows to eat in snatches, working the while to save time. The wind remained weak and quiet, but it was inevitable that the hamper we showed aloft should give us a drift beyond the send of the swell ; and to remedy this, Vanderdecken clewed up his topsails and took in all his canvas, leaving his ship to tumble under bare poles, and by this means he rendered the drift of the vessel down upon the wreck extremely sluggish and scarcely perceptible. All day long the big boat was towed to and fro, making many journeys and regularly putting off from the wreck very deep with freight. Vanderdecken ate his dinner on deck. You would have found it hard to reconcile any theory of common human passions, such as cupidity, rapacity, and the like, with his bloodless face and graveyard aspect ; and yet it was impossible to mistake the stirring of the true Dutch instincts of the patient but resolved greed in the air he carried whilst he waited for the return of the boat, in his frequent levelling of the telescope at the wreck as one who doubted his people and kept a sharp eye on them, in, the eagerness his posture indicated as he hung over the rail watching the stuff as it was handed up or swayed by yardarm tackles over the side, and the fierce [Ksremptoriness of the questions he put to Van Vogelaar as to what he had there, how much more remained, and so on, though nothing that tho mate answered, satisfactory as must have been the account he gave, softened the captain's habitual savageness or in any degree humanised him. Of the majesty of his deportment I have spoken ; likewise of the thrilling richness of his voice, the piercing fire of his fine eyes, and of his mien and bearing, so haughtily stately in all respects as to make one think of him, after a Pagan fashion, as of some god fallen from his high estate ; but for all that he was a Dutchman at heart, dead-alive as he was ; as true to his Holland extraction in 179(5 as he had been a hundred and fifty years earlier, when he was trading to Bataviaand nimbly getting money, and saving it, too, with as sure a hand as was ever swung in Amsterdam. The threads and lines and beds of vapour extending all over the sky served to reverberate tho glory of the sunset, as the crags and peaks of mountains fling onwards the echoes of the thunder-clap. In the east it was all jasper and sapphire, reds and greens, and a lovely clear blue slowly burning to a cornelian in the zenith, where the effulgence lay in a pool of deep red with a haze of light like fine rain floating down upon it, half white, half of silver; then followed a jacinthine hue, a lustrous red most daintly delicate, with streaks of clear green liac the beryl, till the eye came to the west, where the sun, vastly enlarged by refraction, hung in enormous bulk of golden fiery magnificence amid halfcurtained pavilions of living splendour, where 'twas like looking at some newly wrought fairy world robed in the shillings of the Heaven of Christ to see the lakes and lagoons of amber, purple, and yellow, the seas of molten gold, the starry flamings in the chrysolite brows of vapour, and the sky fading out north and south in lights and tints as fair as the reflections in the wet pearly interior of a sea shell gaping on a beach towards the setting sun. The small swell traversing the great red light that was upon the sea put lines of flowing glory under the tapestries of that sunset, and the appearance was that of an eager shouldering of the effulgence into the grey of the south quarter, as though old Neptune sought to honourably distribute the glory all around, and render the western sea board ambient. Then it was, while the lower limb of the luminary yet sipped from the horizon the gold of his own showering, that the picture of the wreck, and the Death Ship heaving pale and stripped of her canvas, became the wonder that my memory must for ever find it. How steadfastly the dead seaman at the wheel kept watch ! The quieted sea now scarce stirred the rudder, and the occasional light movements of the figure seemed like starts in him, motions of surprise at the Dutchmen's ant-like pertenaciousness in their stripping of the hull. And they ? In that many-coloured western blaze they partook more of the character of corpses, in those faces of theirs which stared our way or glimmered for a breath or two over the bulwarks, than ever I had found visible in them by moonlight or lamp light or the chilling dimness of a stormy dawn. The sun vanished and the pale grey of evening stole like a curtain drawn by spirit-hands out of the eastern sea and over the waning glories of the skies, with a star or two glittering in its skirts ; and the wind from the north blew with a sudden weight and a long moaning, making the sea whence it came ashen with gußhings of foam which ran into a colour of thin blood on passing the confines of the western reflection. Van derdecken seizing his trumpet, sent a loud command through it to the wreck ; but the

twilight was a mere windy glimmering under the stars, which shone very brightly among the high small clouds by the time the boats had shoved clear of the hull and were heading for us, and the night had come down dark, spite of the stars and the silver paring of moon, ere the last fragment of the freight of rope, sail, and raffle from the wreck had been passed over the side from the big boat. It grew into a wild scene then ; the light of the lantern-candles dimly throwing out the bleached faces and dark figures of the seamen as they hoisted the boats and stowed them one inside the other, the ship rolling on the swell that had again risen very suddenly as though some mighty hand were striving to press it down and so forcing the fluid surface into larger volumes, the heads of the seas frothing spectrally as they coursed, arching and splashing out of the further darkness, the eastering slip of moon sliding like a sheering scytho among the networks of the shrouds and gear, and nothing to be heard but the angry sobbing of the waters beating themselves into hissing foam against the ship's side, and the multitudinous crying, as of a distant but piercing chorussing of many women and Boys, of the freshening wind flying damp through the rigging. It had been a busy day, it was still a busy time ; but never throughout the hours, if J save the occasional cursing of the mate, the captain's few questions, his command trumpetted to the wreck, my talk with Imogene, had human voice been heard. It was not so noticeable a thing, this silence of the ghostly crew, in the broad blaze of sunshine and amid an exhibition of labour that was like sound to the eye, as now, in the darkness with the wind freshening, sail to be made and much to be done—much of the kind that forces merchant seamen into singing out and bawling as they drag and pull and jump aloft. The wreck was a mere lump of blackness tumbling out to windward upon the dusky frothing welter, and I thought of the dead sentinel at the helm. What in the name of the saints was there in that figure to put into the sea the enormous solitude I found in the vast surface glimmering to where it melted in shadow against the low stars ? what was there in that poor corpse to fling a bleakness into the night wind, to draw an echo as chilling as a madman's cry out of the gusty moaning aloft, to sadden the very star-beams into dull and spectral twinklings ? The canvas shook as the silent sailors sheeted it home and voicelessly mastheaded the yards. At three bells in the first watch the Death Ship had been wore to bring her starboard tacks aboard, and under all the canvas she had she was leaning before a small gale with her head to the southward and westward, her sides and decks alive with the twistings of the mystic fires which darkness kindled in her ancient timbers, and her round weather-bow driving the rude black surge back into boiling whiteness. [To bo continued.]