THE DEATH SHIP: A STRANGE STORY.*

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9187, 17 October 1888, Page 3

THE DEATH SHIP: A STRANGE STORY.*

[NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.]

AN ACCOUNT OF A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, COLLECTED FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE MR. GEOFFREY FENTON, OF POPLAK, MASTER MARINER

By W. CLARK RUSSELL, Author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," "The Golden Hope," <tc, &c.

CHAPTER XLIV. SUSPENSE. It was something to have found out our whereabouts, to have gathered Vanderdecken's intention, and to be able to calculate the time of our arrival off the coast. On this I plumed myself, making pretty sure that if my questions had caused him to suspect some project in my mind, his memory •would lose its hold of the thing after a few hours. But I was mistaken, as you shall now see. Whilst we were seated at the last meal, with uh in that Death Ship formed of soup or wine for drink and such victuals as remained from dinner, I observed a peculiar air of distress and anxiety in Imogene's face. I do not know that she made the least effort to disguise it. A sharp gleam of resentment would sparkle in the soft violet depths of her eyes as she now and then turned them on Van Vogelaar or Vanderdecken, and then as they came to me they would soften into an exquisite wistfulness that was very near to a look of grievous pain. On the captain filling his pipe, I went on deck and stood out of sight of the cabin on the poop-front, wondering what Imogene's manner signified. Presently she joined me. The sun was gone down ; the stairs shone singly or in clouds of bright dust over our northward-pointing bowspirt: and th.e. air was'soft and faint with the delicate light of the moon, that was drawing out of her first quarter, and that could now rain her pearls with power into the dark waters under her. " What is amiss, dearest ?" said I, taking her hand in mine, and moved in a way I could not give expression to by the pallor of her face, her eyes showing large and dark, the paleness of lip and hair and throat —her whole countenance, yes, and her figure, too, stealing out of their realness into an eltin-like unsubstantiality to the wan complexion of the moon. She answered : " Did I not tell you I was sorry you had questioned Vanderdecken ? He is full of suspicion, and there is always Van Vogelaar at hand to exasperate his captain's temper and fancies by the poison of his own reptile nature." " Has Vanderdecken spoken to you of my questions ?" "No," she replied, "what has happened is this : Half-an-hour before supper I was in my cabin. The air was close, and I put the door on the hook and was near it, combing my hair. Vanderdenken came into the cabin and spoke to Prins. Soon afterwards Van Vogelaar entered and told the captain that he had been among the crew and informed that he hoped to make the coast in four or five days, and that on their arrival at Amsterdam they would receive additional pay for their labour at the pump. They talked a little, but I should not have heeded them had not I suddenly caught the sound of your name. On this 1 left off combing my hnir and crept close to the door. Vanderdeckpn said, ' I believe he hath some scheme, lie shrunk from my gaze and the colour mounted to his cheeks. He quitted me with the air of one whose conscience is like an exposed nerve.' " "Heaven defend us!" I exclaimed, "your true Dutchman is very fit to be a hangman. Yet this unholy creature did certainly look at me to some purpose. 'Twas time I walked off!" She continued : " Van Vogelaar answered, 'I would not trust that man further away from me than my hand could seize him. Skipper, I ask your pardon ; but was it wise, think you, to exhibit samples of the treasure below to this Englishman ? There is a noble fortune for him in those chests could he but come at them. What sort of egg is that which beyond question his mind is sitting upon, and that will presently be hatched V He is eager to learn your intentions. He manifests this eagerness in defiance of tho contempt and anger with which you have again and again crushed down his curiosity into the silence of terror. Suppose he hath some plot to secure the stranding of this ship; or that he intends her a mischief that shall force us to beach and perhaps abandon her? He is a sailor and an Englishman ;we are Hollanders. Skipper, the like of that man needs no help from sorcery to contrive our ruin.' Vanderdecken answered, ' He must be got rid of,' in a voice that showed how Van Vogelaar's talk worked in him. I did not need to look, Geoffrey, to know what sort of expression his face wore. They were silent awhile. Vanderdecken then said,' 'Twoulrl be mere barbarous, useless murder to take his life ; there is no evidence against him. But we have a right to protect ourselves since he hath been mad and ungenerous enough to raise our suspicions—' Van Vogelaar interrupted : ' Tis more than suspicion—'tis conviction with me, skipper—' ' This occurs to me as a remedy,' said Vanderdecken : 'he must be set ashore before we sail; but he shall not be left to starve. A musket and ammunition will provide him with food ; and he shall have a week's provisions. He is young, and with stout legs, and cannot miss his way to our settlement if he hold steadfastly to the coast.' The mate said, 'Ay, that will be dismissing him lovingly.' They then went to the other end of the cabin and talked, but I could not hear them." " It would be barbarous, useless murder,' , I cried, "to hang, or stab, or drown me ; kindness, nay, lovingness, to set me ashore with a week's provision and a fowling-piece, to give me a night to be torn to pieces in by wild beasts, or a week to be enslaved by the Homadods, or a month to perish of hunger ! The villains ! Iβ this to be their usage of me ?" " Geoffrey, if they put you on shore I will follow. The future that is good enough for you is good enough for me. And, indeed, I would rather die a hard death on shore than be left to miserably live with men capable of cruelly destroying # you." I reflected a little, and'said, "Their resolution keeps me safe for the present at all events. If I am to bo marooned they will let me alone meanwhile. Therefore I ! consider that their determination greatly improves our chances No ! there is nothing in their intention to scare me. I like their meaning so well that our prayer to God must be that Vanderdecken may not change his mind." She was at a loss to understand me until I pointed out that, as I gathered from her report, they would not send me ashore until just before they were about to sail, so that I should have plenty of time to look about me and consider the surest method of escaping, whilst, the ship was being careened and tiie leak repaired and the vessel in other ways doctored. " And, dearest," said I, "it has come to this with you, too : that sooner than remain with these fierce and dreadful people you will take your chance of that African coast you so greatly feared." " I will share your fortune, Geoffrey, be it life or death—let come what will," said she, nestling close and looking up afc me out of tho phantom faintness of her face with her large eyes, in whose liquid darkness tho moon was reflected in two stars. "My precious one ! I could not leave thee ! If the terrors of the shore—the fears of the savage, the wild beast, the poisonous serpent — triumphed over your desire of escape, I would remain with you, Imogene, if they would let me. 'Twould be a hard fate for us both, dearest, to wear out our lives in this ship. But we cannot be parted —not of our own will, at least, however God ra&y deal with us, or the knife or yard arm halter of these villains. Wherever you are, I must be —" " Yes !" she cried, passionately. " It may not indeed come to our delivering ourselves by using the coast. Another scheme is in my head, though of it I will say nothing, since too much of fortune must enter it to fit it for cold deliberation. But it may end in our escaping to the land and lurking there in hiding till the ship sails. And it makes my heart feel bold, Imogene, to hear you say that sooner than languish and m rably end your days in this accursed fabric, n will dare with me tl natural perils oi that shore." * The Proprietors of the New Zealand Herald have purchased the aole right to publish this story i in tba North Island oi New Zealand.

CHAPTER XLV. Bub for Imogene having overheard his conversation with Van Vogelaar, I should never have been able to guess that there was any change in Vanderdecken's resolution respecting me—l mean any chanee in hia intention to carry me to Europe in hie ship. There was the same uniformity in the variety of his moods ; he was sullen, haughty, morose, often insanely fierce, sometimes talkative, then falling into trances, in all such exhibitions as heretofore. In Van Vogelaar, however, there was a slight alteration. At moments I caught him peering at mo with a look in his eyes that might have answered very well as a dark malicious merriment of soul, of which the countenance was capable of expressing the villainous qualities only ; I mean nob the mirth also. Sometimes he would make ae though to converse, bub this I cut short, repelling him very fearlessly now that I understood his and his captain's plans, and that I had nothing to fear this eide the execution of them. On my side, I was extremely wary, walking cautiously in all I said and did, and never venturing a remark to Imogene, even when we had reason to believe we were absolutely alone, without sinking my voice after a careful, probing glance around, as if I expected to see a human ear standing out on any beam or bulkhead my sight went to. I busied myself in certain preparations in which I got Imogene to help me. Since, in any case, our escape to the land would have to be profoundly secret, 'twas necessary we should get ready a small stock of food to carry away with us, and I told Imogene to make some bags out of the stoutest stuff she could come at to store it in, and to privately convey to me such provisions as I indicated, which she, as well as I, was to secrete when alone, during Prins' absence, when the table was prepared. I said, "You have needles and thread," for she had told me that some of the apparel Vanderdecken lent or gave her she had been obliged to alter. " We shall require three or four bogs. Linen will do for the material." " There is plenty of linen," said she. " I will make the bags. But what is your project, Geoffrey? Tell me your full scheme —I may be able to put something to it." "I have two schemes," I answered; "I will speak only of the one that concerns the shore. Vanderdecken is sure to bring up close to the land ; I have little doubt of being able to swim the distance, and shall make a small frame of wood to sit about your waist on which you will float when I lower you into the water, and then I shall softly let myself down and tow you to the land by swimming." I thought to see her countenance change, but she regarded me fearlessly, indeed with an emotion as of triumph colouring her face. '' How am I to enter the water ?" she asked. "I will lower you from the quarter gallery outside your cabin," I replied, " the height is nofc great. The blackness under the counter will hide you, and I shall contrive to float us both away very quietly." She said, gazing at me fondly and smiling : " Everything is feasible, so far, Geoffrey But now imagine us arrived on shore." " I must carry you as far as your strength will suffer," 1 replied. " Of course Vanderdecken will send in pursuit of us, but there should be no lack of dense vegetation full of hiding-places. Yet in this, as in all other things, my dearest, we must rely upon God's help. That given, there is nothing: to fear ; denied—then it would be better for me if I threw myself overboard at once." "Geoffrey," she said, "I do not question you, dear heart, for dread of what we may encounter, but merely that by letting your plans lie in ray mind my girlish spirit may grow used to them, and unswervingly help you when the time comes." " Brave little woman ! ,: I cried ; " do not believe I could misjudge you. You would ask me what is to follow when this vessel quits the coast and leaves us alone there ? How can I answer ? We must attempt what others have successfully achieved, and struggle onwards to some settlement. I know—l know, my darling, that the outlook is black and affrighting. But consider what our choice signifies ; the fate that awaits us if you remain and I am marooned ; or the chances—meagre, indeed, but chances nevertheless—which offer if we escape to the land. And we shall be together, dearest." A sailor will wonder perhaps, to hear me speak of three or four bags of provisions, and wonder also that I should not see that if there was the least movement in the water when 1 lowered Imogene with these bags about her into it, the provisions would be spoiled by the wet. But 'tis proper to say here that this proposal to float her in a frame and tow her ashore by swimming was but an alternative scheme, which at all hazards I would go through with, if the other and less perilous venture should prove impracticable ; and in case this should be so, I said nothing about it, that by her growing accustomed to the dismal and dangerous project she would not tremble and shrink if it came, as I feared it might, to our having to escape ashore. Three small bags secured about my darling's shoulders) , well out of the water, were less likely to be wetted than one big one that must needs hang low, trice it as I might; and anyway the three would be as good as one, let the manner of our escape be what it would. She made me these bags, and I hid them in my cabin, along with some biscuit which had been taken from the wreck, a few pieces of salted meat cooked, a small jar of flour, a little silver cup for drinking, and other compact and portable things, such as the flat banana cakes the cook sent to the cabin, a bottle of marmalade of the size of a small picldo jar, and the like. These things she and I took from the table by degrees, and they were not missed. I would have given a finger for a musket and powder and balls ; but if there was an arm-chest on board neither she nor I knew where to find it. And suppose it had been possible for me to have secreted a musket—what they used, I believe, for shooting game and cattle were matchlocks with barrels about three and a-half feet long and the bore of the bigness of a horse-pistol, and cartridges in small hollow canes, each holding a charge of powder—ammunition was not to be had without asking. She stitched me four bags, but three I found when loaded would be as heavy a load as it was prudent to put upon her; because when I came to look about me for wood for a frame for her to float in, I could only meet with five small pieces ; and even the purloining of these was attended with prodigious anxiety and trouble, as you will judge when I say that to get them I had to watch till I was unobserved and then kick a piece, as if by accident, under a gun, or to any corner where it might lie until I could carry it below under cover of the night. All these things I hid under the bedplace in my cabin, where I had very little fear of their being found; for the good reason that, to my knowledge, no one ever entered the berth. Meanwhile, the wind held bravely, with —on the third day—but a few hours of stagnant atmosphere and a flat and brilliant sea, followed by a shift into the westward of south that worked into a hearty wind, before which the Death Ship drove under all cloths, the clear water gushing from her scuppers to the clanking and snouting of her pump. Bearing in mind our situation, after the tempest, as given me by Vanderdecken, and narrowly, if furtively, observing the courses we made, I kept a dead reckoning of our progress—for by this time 1 could measure the vessel's pace with my eye as correctly as ever the log could give it—and when the fifth day arrived I knew that at eight o'clock that morning either we were some twelve leagues distant from the African coast or that Vanderdecken was amazingly wrong in his calculations. My excitement bade fair to master melt needed a power of will such as I could never have supposed I possessed to subdue my demeanour to that posture of calmness which the captain and his mates were used to see in me. Happily Imogene was at hand to control any exhibition of impatience or anxiety. " Let them suspect nothing in your manner," she would say. " Van Vogelaar watches you closely ; the least alteration in you might set him conjecturing. Who knows what fancies his base and malignant mind is capable of? His heart is bent on your destruction, and thouph he hopes that must follow your being left alone on tho coast, yet a change in your ordinary manner might fill his cruel soul with fear that you had some plan to escape with your life: in which case I fear, Geoffrey,

he would torment and enrage Vender* decken into slaying you, either here or dh shore." Well, as I have said, ab eight o'clock that morning I reckoned we were some twelve leagues distant from the coast. The breeze had slackened somewhat, but it still blew a fresh air, and the-water being quiefe and such small Bwell as there was, together with the billows, chasing us, our speed waa a fair five and a-half knots. Yet there was no sign to advertise us of the adjacency of land. A few Cape hens flew along with us on our starboard beam, but this kind of sea-fowl had accompanied the ship when we were as far south as ever we were driven since I had been in her, and they could nob be supposed to signify more than that wo were " off" the South African headland— which term may stand for the measure of a vast extent of sea. The ocean was of aa deep and glorious a blue as ever I had beheld it in the middle of the Atlantic. My suspense grew into torment; anxiety became anguish, the harsher and fiercer for the obligation of restraint. There was no dependence to be placed on Vanderdecken'a reckoning. For several days he had been hove-to, and his log would certainly neither tell him his drift nor how the currents served him. My only hope then was in the supernatural guiding of the ship. I might believe, at least, that the instincts of the sea-bird would come to ono whose dreadful and ghostly existence lay in an aimless furrowing- of the mighty waters, and chat he would know how to steer when the occasion arose, as does the ocean-fowl whose bed is the surge as its pinion is its pillow, but whose nest must be sought in rocky solitudes, leagues and leagues below that sea-line in whose narrow circle you find the creature flying. I dared not seem to appear to stare earnestly ahead ; the part I had to play was that of extreme indifference ; yet, swifb as were the looks I directed over either bow, my eyes would reel with the searching! passionate vehemence of my stare, and tho blue horizon wave to my sight as though it) swam upon a swooning view. Shortly after twelve o'clock I was standing alone on the forward end of the poop., when I observed a clear shade of blue haze upon the horizon directly ahead. I watched it a little while, believing it no more than a darkening in the dye of the sky that way ; but on bringing my eyes to it a second time, I found a fixity in the atmospheric outlining of the shadow that was not to be mistaken for anything but the blue faintness and delicate dim heads of a distant, hilly coast. I turned, with a leap of hearb that was a mingling of rapture and dread, to win Imogene by my manner, to view the land, too ; but she stood with Vanderdecken near the tiller, with her back upon me, apparently watching the motions of a bird that steadily flew along with us, some three cables' length on our larboard quarter, flying no faster than we sailed, yet going through the air as straight as a belated homeward-bound rook. One of the men forward saw the azure shadow, and seemed to call the attention of two or Uiree others to it in that voiceless, mechanical way which furnished a ghostlier and grislier character to the bearing and movements of the crew, than ever they could have taken from the paleness of their faces, and the glittering, unreal vitality of their eyes only ; and they went towards the beak to look, dropping whatever jobs they might have been upon, with complete disregard of discipline. Broad as the day was, abounding as the scene with the familiar and humanisingglory of the blessed golden sunshine and the snow-topped peaks of shallow liquid sapphire ridges, yet the figures of those men, showing under the swelling and lifting foot of the foresail, peering under the sharp of their hands against the foreheads, silent in postures of phlegmatic observation, gave the whole picture of the ship a wild and dismal colour and appearance; and the black melancholy, the cold unholiness of it, stole biting as polar frost-smoke to the senses through the genial splendour of the noontide. Yet like those men did I stand looking with my hand against my brow, for there was a wonderful and almost blinding magnificence of light upon the shivering waters under the sun that was now floated north, but the resplendent haze did not dim the substantial line that was growing with a deepening hue into the atmosphere, and already methought I could discern the curve and sweep of inland airy altitudes with the dainty silver of clouds streaking them. ." Land, Herr Fen ton !" cried a voice in my ear. I started. Van Vogelaar stood close beside me, pointing with a pale leathern forefinger, his harsh and rugged face smileless, though his eyes grinned with malice as they lay fastened upon mine. " I see it, mynheer," I replied, coldly. "It should rejoice your English soul," he exclaimed. " Your countrymen will nob count you as a mariner of theirs if you love not the land ! See ! remote and faint though it be, how substantial even in its blue thinness doth it show ! No sea-sickness there," Herr Fen ton ! No hollow seas yawning black as vaults !" Had this man been of the earth, I needed but to catch him by the scroff and breech and bring his spine to my knee to kill him. And he looked so much as if I could have served him so that it was hard to regard him without pity. I said quietly : " Will that be the land the captain desires to make ?" '■ "Ay," he answered, snarlingly, "the Dutch are sailors." . I thought to myself, "Yes, when they have the Devil for a sea-cunny they will hit their port." " You will be glad to step ashore if bub: for half-an-hour ?" said he, looking afc me. "That is a matter that concerns your master," I answered, turning from him. A low ha ! ha ! broke from him, muffled as the sound of a saw worked under deck, as musical, too, and as mirthless. Yeb Imogene's quick ear caught it, and she turned swiftly to look. And methought it) had penetrated further yet; for upon the heels of it there rose up, as an echo, from the cabin, that harsh and rusty cry : " ®23p %n al HirtmrnJ." (To be continued.]