THE PHANTOM SHIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5551, 24 February 1886, Page 3

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

[By a Seafarer.] I spent an hour at Weevil's house the other night in the East End, and met there a friend of his. Captain Bitt, well known as old Paul Bitt, about the docks that way. Weevil had shipped his Sunday clothes to do the honours of his house in, and looked a very amart and hearty old man in his velvet waistcoat, high shirt collar, and black cloth frock coat. Bitt is an old fellow with little eyes sunk deep in his head, as though driven below their ! natural bearings by the gales of wind he had peered into, yet they are not so deep as to conceal the good humour and North country shrewdness that twinkled in them. ! He stands about Weevil's height, and has the restlessness of the seaman, incessantly slewing himself on his chair to look at Weevil or me whilst speaking, occasionally jumping on to his feet, and pacing the little room with the same pendulum Btep he would employ in walking a quarter deck. There were no ladies to apologise to for filling our pipes, and we had not been long seated before the room grew dim with tobacco smoke. Old Weevil was in the midst of an opinion he was delivering upon the subject of over-in-Burance, whilst Bitt sat jerkily watching him with his face full of eager and triumphant argument, when we heard a sort of sullen knock on the hall door, and in a moment or two a servant entered, and said, "Please, sir, Captain Spanker." Weevil started, and I thought looked as if he would like to tell the servant not to show Spanker in, but if that were his wish, it was too late, for the Captain had followed upon the girl's heels, and stood in the doorway as she backed out into the passage. I looked up with surprise at the immenselytall, long-legged, knock-kneed, long-armed, and, I may add, long-haired figure that was in the act of advancing to shake hands with Weevil. That he was a nautical man I could scarcely for the moment believe, though I am not amongst those who suppose that the sailor is an unmistakable object for dress and peculiarities. He had a long, gaunt, yellow face, that terminated at the chin in a small bush of wiry grey hair. His eyes were uncommonly large and fine, intensely black, and full of lustre, and the squareness and character of his forehead suggested no small intellectual power. But I do not know that I ever saw a more melancholy face. Parson Adams slightly tipsy, and in a condition of mind bordering upon tearfulness, might convey some idea of what Spanker looked like as he thrust forth one immense leg, and extended his long right arm, with the sleeve of his coat high enough to show a thin and very bony wrist, and approached Weevil. "Well, Spanker," exclaimed my friend, "flow are yon, Captain? There's a chair. Put your hat down;" and here old Weevil introduced Bitt and myself. Spanker saluted us each with a melancholy nod, and said in a deep and hollow voice, but with a distinctly cultivated accent, "I hope I don't intrude, Weevil. I could not guess, of course, that you were entertaining friends. If this climate had the warmth of the golden South, instead of being an atmosphere saturated with damp, every precipitated drop of which is rendered poisonous by a hundred noxious elements, why then people would leave their windows open, and a man by being able to see into his friend's room could judge for himself whether he was likoly to prove a trespasser or not." "What will you have, Spanker?" said Weevil, looking at me with a peculiar expression, whilst I gazed with real curiosity at the new comer's grotesque figure, and his extraordinary features, whose peculiarities took fresh accentuation from his language and articulation. "A little brandy," answered Spanker, in a dismal and depressing voice that vibrated upon the ear like the burr in a Scotchman's speech. Bitt looked frightened of him ; it was evident that they had not met before ; and old Weevil seemed suddenly to think a little explanatiou necessary. " Bitt, Spanker's one of us, I must tell you. Had the old Doldrum for five years, likewise the North Pole, that was burnt whilst lying off Madras; Spanker saving hia life by a miracle." "By a spare boom," Baid Spanker. "It was a miracle, too, though, and I recollect keeping a shark off for two hours by kicking it." " I knew the ships," said Bitt, with a glance at Spanker's clothes and legs, as if he couldn't reconcile them with the nautical calling. " Many more ships, young man, many more ships that I've had command of might you know," said Spanner, sepulchrally, fixing his glowing eyes upon little Bitt, whilst he loaded a huge meerschaum pipe out of Weevil's tobacco jar. "I suppose you aro aware, sir (he continued), that it was said of old that those who go down to the sea in ships see many wonders." " Yes," said Bitt uneasily, " I have heard the saying." "Is your friend a nautical man, Weevil ? " asked Spanker, referring to Bitt. "Aye! Pure Stockholm," responded Weevil laughingly, " and this gentleman ? " continued Spanker, turning his hatchet face upon me. " They call me a Seafarer," I responded, struck by the peculiar power and brilliancy of his fine eyes. " Ha ! " he exclaimed, " and, pray, what wonders, sir," addressing Bitt, " was it your fortune to encounter whilst at sea?" "Why," answered Bitt, "the only striking wonder I can recall is my coming out of it alive and whole after forty year." " Did you ever see a ghost ? " said Spanker, with an impetuosity that made Bitt start. " What sort of a ghost ?" answered Bitt, looking at Weevil as though he would have Spanker restrict his conversation to his friend. " What sort of a ghost ! " cried the melancholy man in a voice of mingled pity and scorn, surveying Bitt by beginning at his foot and sending his burning eyes travelling up his waistcoat to his hair, " Why, man, I mean a thing that is visible but impalpable ; an apparition that would arrest your footstep though you could walk through it ; an embodiment of passion and sorrow and remorse as thin as the viewless air, yet as substantial as Weevil there." Here Weevil, pulling out an immense pockethandkerchief, asked me if I didn't find the room rather warm. I am afraid I was too much interested by Spanker to answer him. " What sort of a ghost?" continued Spanker, raising his voice and sending a flaming glance at Bitt, " Why, man, something as dry as the grey ash in your pipe, but as full of misery as living human heart could contain ; something you dare not touch with your material fingera, lest the afflicted essence should crumble away in powder, yet so real that this pipe isn't solider," and he brought his meerschaum down with a whack upon the table. I oould see my friend Weevil growing unhappy. It was evident he knew what was coming. For my part, I was not sorry I sat near the door. Little Bitt, nervously nursing his knee, said, with his pipe between his teeth, "Singular things, ghosts ; but I have no acquaintance with them, and don't want to have it." " And pray, sir," said I, speaking very deferentially, for I protest the man frightened me with his long arms and blazing eyes, " where may you have seen the particular kind of ghost you refer to, I mean tho powdery and afflicted ghost? Not at sea, surely?" I added, venturing a joke, " for unless the fo'k'sle ia very much changed, a nautical ghost need be at no pains to keep himself damp." Weevil looked at roe with a woebegone

face, as niuoh as to say, "Now for it." I had manifestly drawn the plug, and the contents were bound to flow. Captain Spanker put down his pipe, emptied his glass, smoothed his hair down with his large hands, clasped his fingers tightly upon his somewhat shabby waistcoat, and, fixing his eyes upon the wall directly over Bitt'a head, began as follows : — " I commanded the old Doldrum in 1851 ; this was the third time that I had had charge of her. We were bound to Bombay with a general cargo. She was a lumping 6ort of craft, with bows like an apple, wall-sided and flat-bottomed, but a good ship, stiff as a church, and dry as a bloater, though for rolling, Weevil, there never was an old cask that could beat her. She had short topgallantmasts, and a sawed-off looking stern, with her name Doldrum, in glaring white letters right across it, bo that I've seen them sometimes in a dead calm standing in the shadow under the counter like the poet's epitaph — a name written in water. "We were to the westward of the Cape, south of the Trades, and it was summer time in the Southern Hemisphere. Ever since we had the Trades, which had proved light winds and promising us a long voyage, we had met with variable breezes, chiefly head winds and mighty bothersome. I've known the old Doldrum do eight knots with a gale of wind on the quarter, but then I kept her under a press of canvas that promised to blow the masts over the bow. That being her best rate you may imagine there was not much to be got out of her on a bowline. I left the deck one evening when a soft air was breathing right over the stern, just enough to give the ship steerage way. We'd got stunsails out on both sides, and the Doldrum was quietly rolling in a dreamy sort of way over the long Bwell that came so unwrinkled to the counter you'd see the reflection of a star widening out like wire upon the rounded heave of it. Young man," said Spanker, continuing to speak with his eyes fixed on the wall over Bitt's head, "you'll have used the sea long enough to know what I mean, when I say that 'twas one of those nights you get on the polar verge of the tropics, when a sort of hush seems to have been sounded throughout the visible creation, when the weak blowing of the draught of air is like the breath of old Ocean regularly following the rising and falling of its breast, when the stars wink drowsily, as though the spirit of the repose was being felt by them, when the ship like a sentient creature nods to tha soft cradling movement, while the dark air amongst her rigging, full of sparkles of starlight like constellations of fire-flies is made solemn and mysterious by the tender flapping of the canvas striking with faint hollow notes down upon the deck, as though by heavens ! Bitt, the air was full of phantoms flapping their invisible wings. Eh, man ! eh, man ! isn't it so, isn't it so?" turning his lustrous eyes first upon Weevil then upon me, and then fixing a look upon little Bitt that appeared to steady that mariner's attention as the uncomfortable anatomy in Coleridge's poem constrained the Wedding Guest. The strange, gaunt man continued without waiting for an answer : " Bitt, when I left the deck it was half-past nine. The chief mate had charge, there was a hand at the wheel, forward all was dark and still. I stood a moment in the companion to watch the rising moon. It Btole up out of the sea upon our port quarter, a mighty crimson globe, as though, Weevil— and this was the fancy it begot — the passions of its inhabitants were direr and deadlier even than those which animate the people of this earth, and that the blood-like appearance came of the stainings of a thousand frightful battle-fields." "The moon is not inhabited," said Bitt, mildly. Weevil winked at him. Spanker, taking no notice, proceeded : " But the unholy looking light of the majestic orb softened into rose, and then into gold even as I watched. Her sun-coloured Bparkling beam delicately flashed up the sea-line all round, and showed an expanse as bare as a desert plain. Mark that, gentlemen. Bare as a desert plain," he repeated, in his raven notes, and sighing deeply. " I went below, entered my cabin, and lay down. I fell asleep, but woke suddenly with a start of terror, and heard my heart thundering in my ears. I sat up in my cot, and stared around the cabin. Nothing stirred. I listened, but heard nothing save the quick hammering of the pulse in my ears. My forehead was bedewed with perspiration, my hands ice-cold and clammy. What could this signify ? I could feel the ship swayed by the swell, and the scuttle in my cabin was filmed over with the sheen of the yellow moonshine. I knew that all must be well with the ship. No cry had aroused me. What, then, had caused this sudden leaping up out of sleep that should have been soothed by the deep silence ? " I dropped out of my cot, and crept up the companion in my socks. I stood as before in the companion - way, looking around me. The moon had now soared to the mizzen-topsail yardarm. The sea all that way was clear, but when I cast my eyeß to starboard I saw so strange and wonderful a sight that the mere naming of it to you sets my heart beating violently afresh." He helped himself to some brandy and water whilst we watched him in silence. "The spectacle, gentlemen," he continued, with a tremble in his deepthroated voice, " was a ship built after a pattern rendered familiar to us moderns by Dutch and other paintings of a century and a half to two centuries ago. 'Twas not that there was not light enough, for the moon was gushing her radiance down upon the thing in a perfect rain of soft gold; it was a sort of vagueness in her, an uneubatantiality that was yet well this Bide of immateriality, which rendered her elusive to my gaze. I mean there were points in her, features of her construction, that were not determinable by the sight. Thiß much I can tell you, she was painted yellow, if yellow were the dim, churchyard hue that I marked her hull was coated with. She was low in the bowß, with a great spring aft, crowned by a kind of double poop, one above another, and what I could see of her stern was almost pear-shaped, supposing the fruit inverted with the stalk sliced off. She had three masts, each with a large protected circular top, resembling turrets ; sails of the texture of cobwebs hung from her square yards, and I could Bee the Btars shining through them. I could also see figures watching us or moving along her rail, faint and glimmering shapes, pallid as any dim lustre of phosphorus flashing out from her sickly side as she rolled. There was an indescribable smell in the air as of decayed timber. Pah!" he exclaimed, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, " 'twas the sickliest flavour of decay, such as you sniff on entering an old vault full of coffins mouldering to dust. I ran to the chief mate, who was leaning against the rail, with his arms folded upon his chest and his back to the phantom . He was sleeping heavily, breathing 1 with a stertorous sound. I shook him violently, but could not waken him. An indescribable fear now possessed me. I strode on trembling knees to the helmsman, but found him in a deep sleep too, erect, but supported by his grip of the spokes. His chin was upon his bosom, and his breathing was like that of one who suffocates. I would have called to the men forward, but had no voice. Nay, what I dreaded was that I should find them as the mate and the helmsman were. I staggered to the rail, and seizing a belaying pin for support stood looking, incapable of more. Even as I watched I noticed the crawling of little lambent flames from the sides of the ship, and upon her mas?ts and her yards. They were like the shinings you see in rotten wood, and they made the picture of that ship horrible. Whither had she come ? "What ghostly wind had blown her to where she was ? When I had stepped below, the sea was bare as I told you. There she lay dead abreast of us within easy hailing distance, and some magical power within her enabled her to keep her place, neither passing us nor suffering us to drop her by a fathom, though the light wind still blew, and we with extended sternsailu were crawling before it. Presently I noticed a figure remarkable for his stature uprear himself on the taffrail, the boldest point of the hull, where his shape stood out against the Moonshine on this side, and the low-lying stars beyond. 'Twas evident to me, by bis motions and gestures that he was hailing me, but I could hear

no sound. He swung his arms with a move* ment of entreaty and misery, and presently I beheld another figure approach him, and hand him what I could distinctly perceive to be a speaking-trumpet, but still no sound reached me. The figure left the taffrail and disappeared, and in a minute or two a little boat, lowered apparently from the side of the ship that was hidden from me, stole into the moonlight out of the shadow of the tall stem. The boat slipped along the water, urged by a pair of oars that were Boundless as they dipped, and emitted no sparkle, nor stirred the least gleam of phosphorous upon the water. She came close under where I was standing. There were three men in her, and they turned their faces up to me, and the one who waß in the Btern sheets, and who was clearly the shape that had sought to speak with me from the taffrail, stood up. His lips moved, he waved his hands, but either he was voiceless, or the spell that had fallen upon the ship was on me too, and had turned me stone deaf. Would you have me describe those faces and those men, Captain Bitt? Draw me a nightmare that has wrenched you with agony in your slumbers and I will tell you, man, you lie ! . Tour brush or your pencil or your pen is false to the horror, and waking memory cheats you." He emptied his glass and rose from his chair. We instantly got up, too, not knowing what his next move might be, though I suspect that Weevil was influenced by the wish that, by his prompt rising, he might make Spanker understand he had had enough of him. " Weevil," exclaimed the sad, gaunt man, "lama trespasser. Good night." " Not at all," said Weevil, cheerily ; " but, since you will go, why, then, good night." Spanker looked hard at me and very forbiddingly at little Bitt. "Good night, gentlemen," said he, giving us a singular bow, and, taking up his hat and stick, he stalked like a tragedy actor out of the room and out of the house. " Poor fellow !" I exclaimed. " Doocid rum ship that," said Captain Bitt, with the old merry twinkle coming into his little eyes. •' He didn't tell us her name, though." " I know it," observed Weevil, with a sigh. " What ?" asked Bitt. " The Sunstroke/ said Weevil.