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New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 9

* Fenton, you’ve been a bit of a reader in your time. I believe. Did your appetite that way ever brine: you to dip into magio, necromancy, the Blaok Art, and the like of such stuff ?'

He asked me this with a certain strangeness of expression in his eyes, and I thought it proper to fall into his humour. So I replied that in the course of my reading I might have come across hints of shah things, but that I had given them too little attention to qualify me to reason about them or to form an opinion. ‘I recollect when I was a lad,’ ha said, passing my answer by, so to speak, ‘hearing an old lady that was related to my mother, tell of a trick that was formerly practiced and credited, too ; a person stood at a grave and invoked the dead, who made ans-ver.’ I smiled, thinking that only au old woman would talk thus.

‘ Stop !’ cried ho, but without temper. ‘ She said it was common for a necromancer to invoke and obtain replies; but that thongh answers were returned, they wore not spoken by the dead, but by the Devil. The proof being that death is a separation of the soul from tiro body, that the immortal soul cannot inhabit the corpse that is mere dust, that therefore the dead cannot speak, themselves, but that the voices which seem to proceed from them are uttered by the Evil One.’

* Why the Evil One ?’ said I. ‘.Because he delights in whatever is out of nature, and in doing violence te the harmonious fabric of the universe.’

‘That sounds like a good argument, sir,’ said I, still smiling. * But,’ continued he, ‘ suppose the case of men now living, though by the laws of nature they should have died long ainae. Would you say that they exist as a corpse does when invoked—that is, by the possession and voice of the Devil, or that they are informed by the same souls which were iu them when they uttered their first cry in this life.’

* Why, sir,’ I answored, ‘ seeing that the soul is immortal, there is no reason why it should not go on inhabiting the clay it belongs to, so long as that clay continues to possess the physical power to be moved and controlled by it.’ ‘ That's a shrewd view,’ said he, seemingly well pleased. ‘ But see here, my lad ! our bodies are built to last three score and ten years. Some linger to a hundred ; but so few beyond, that every month of continued being renders them mors and more a sort of prodigies. As the end of a long life approaches—Bay a life of ninety years—there is such decay, such dry-rot, that the whole frame is but one remove from ashes. Now-, suppose there should be men living who are known to be at least a Hundred and fifty years old—nay, add an average of forty to each man and call them one hundred and ninety years old—but who yet exhibit no signs of .mortality ; would you not say that the bounds of Nature having been long since passed, their bodies are virtually corpses, imitating life by a semblance of soul that is properly the voice and possessiou of the Devil ?’

‘ How about Methu3aleh, and others of those ancient times ?’

‘ I’m talking of to-day,’ he answered. ‘Tislike turning up the soil to work back into ancient hiatory ; you come across things which there’s no making anything of.’ ‘ But what man is there now living who has reached to a hundred and ninety ?’ cried ], still struck by his look, yet, in spite of that, wondering at his gravity, for there was a determination in his manner of reasoning that made me see he was in earnest.

* Well,’said he, smoking very slowly, ‘the master of that snow, one Samuel Bullock, of Llotherhithe, whom I recollect as a mate of a priva'eer some time since, told me that when he was off the Agulhas Bank, he made out a sail upon his starboard bow, braced up, and standing west-sou.west. There was something so unusual and surprising about her rig, that the probability of her being an enemy went clean out of his mind, and he held on, influenced by the sort of curiosity a man might feel who follows a sheeted figure at night, not liking the job, yet constrained to it by sheer force of unnatural relish. ’Twas the first dogwatch ; the sun drawing down ; but daylight was yet abroad -when the stranger was within hail upon their starboard quarter, keeping a close luff, yet points off, on account of the antique fit of her canvas. Bullock, as he talked, fell a-trembling, though no Btouter-hearted man sails the ocean, and I could see the memory of the thing working in himlike a bloody conscience. He cried out, “ May the bountiful God grant that my ship reaches home in safety !" I said, “ What vessel was she, think you ?” “Why, captain,’’ says he, “ what but the vessel which ’tis God’s will should continue sailing about these seas I started to hear this, and asked if he saw any of the crew. He replied that only two men were to be seen one Btearing at a long tiller on the poop deck, aud the other pacing near him on the weather side. “ I seized the glass,” said he, and knelt down, that those 1 viewed should not observe me, and plainly catched the face of him who walked.” ’ ‘ How did Bullock describe him, sir ?’ I said. ‘Ha said he wore a great beard and was very tall, and that he was line a man that had died and that when dug up preserved liis death-bed aspect ; he was like such a corpse artificially animated, and most terrible to behold from his suggestions of death-in-life. I presaed him to tell me more, but he is a person scanty of words for the want of learning. However, his fears were the clearest relation he could give me of what he had seen.’ . ‘lt was the Phantom Ship he saw, you think, sir ?’ said I. ‘I am sure. He bid me dread the sight of it more than the combined navies of the French and the Dutch. The apparition was encountered in latitude twenty miles south of thirty-six degrees. ’Tis a spectre to be shunned, Fenton, though it cost us every rag of sail we own to keep clear.’ ‘Then what you would say, Captain,’ said I, ‘is, that the people who work that ship have ceased to bo living men by reason of their great age, which exceeds by many years our bodies’ capacity of wear and tear; and that they are actually corpses influenced by the Devil—who is warranted by the psme Diyine permispioq we find recorded in

the Book of Job, to pursue frightful and unholy ends.’ \ ‘ ‘lt is tho only rational view,’ he answered. ‘lf the . Phantom Ship bo still afloat, and navigated by a crew, they cannot be men in the sense that this ship’s company are men.’

‘ Well, sir,’said I, cheerfully, ‘ 1 reckon it will ho all one whether they be fiends, or flesh and blood miraculously wrought to last unto the world’s end, for it is a million to nothing that we don’t meet her. The Southern Ocean is a mighty Sea, a ship is but a little speck, and once we get the Madagascar coast on our bow we shall be out of the 1 Death Ship’s preserves.’ However, to my surprise, I found, that he maintained a very earnest posture of mind in this matter. To begin with ho did not in the least question the existence of the Dutch craft ; he had never beheld her, but he knew those who had, aud related tales of dismal issues of such encounters. The notion that the crew were corpses, animated into a mocking similitude of life, was strongly fixed in his miud : and ho obliged me to tell him all that I 1 could remember of magical, ghostly, supernatural circumstances I had read about or heard of, until 1 noticed it was half-an-hour after nine, and that, at this rate, my watch on deck would come round before I had had a wink of sleep. However, though I went to my cabin, it was not to rest. L lay for nearly two hours wide awake. No doubt tho depression I had marked in myself had exactly fitted my mind for such fancies as the captain had talked about. It was indeed impossible that I should soberly acoopt his extraordinary view touching the eudevilment of the 'crew of the Death Ship. Moreover, I hope lam too good a Christian to believe in that Satyr whioh was the coinago of crazy fanatical heads in tho Dark Ages, that cheaplyimagined Foul Fiend created to terrify the weak-mindod with a vision of spl't-hoofs, legs like a beast’s, a barbed tail, flaming eyes, and ncstriis discharging the sickening fumes of sulphur. But concerning the Phantom Ship herself, the Flying Dutchman as she has been styled —’tis aspectre that has too often crossed the path of the mariner to admit of its existence being questoned. If there he spirits on land,, why not at sea, too ? There are scores who believe in apparitions, not on the evidence of their own eyes—they may never have beheld such a sight —but on the testimony of witnesses sound in their religion and of unassailable integrity ; and why should we not accept the assurance of plain, honest sailors, that there may be occasionally encountered off the Agulhas Bank, and upon the southern and eastern coast of the. African extremity, a wild and ancient fabric, rigged after a fashion long fallen into disuse, and manned by a crew figured as presenting sometbing of the aspect of death in their unholy and monstrous vitality ? I turned this matter freely over in my mind as I lay in my little cabin, my thoughts finding a melancholy musical setting in the melodious sobbing of water washing past under the open port, and snatching distressful impulses from the gloom about me, that was rendered clond-like by the moon which was climbing above our mastheads, and clothing the va3t placid scene outside with, the beauty of her icy light ; and then at seven bells fell fast asleep, but was called half-an-hour later, at midnight, to relieve Mr Hall, whose four hours’ spell below had come round. (To be continued)