THE CAPTAIN SPEAKS AGAIN OF THE DEATH SHIP.
I had the first watch on the night of the day on which we left Table
Bay: that is, from eight till midnight; and at two bells--nine
o'clock--I was quietly pacing the deck, full of fancies struck into me
by the beauty of the stars, among which, over the starboard yard-arms,
hung the Southern Cross, shining purely, and by the mild glory of the
moon that, though short of a day or two of being full, rained down a
keen light that had a hint of rosiness in it, when Captain Skevington
came out of the cabin, and stepping up to me stood a minute without
speaking, gazing earnestly right around the sea-circle.
There was a small wind blowing and the ship, under full sail, was
softly pushing southwards with a pleasant noise as of the playing of
fountains coming from the direction of her bows.
"A quiet night, Fenton," said the captain, presently.
"Aye, sir; quiet indeed. There's been a small show of lightning away
down in the south-west. The wind hangs steady but a little faint."
"The sort of night for meeting with the Demon Ship, eh, Fenton?" cried
he, with a laugh that did not sound perfectly natural.
"There's no chance of such a meeting, I fear, sir."
"You fear?"
"Well," I exclaimed, struck by his quick catching up of me, "I mean
that as the Demon Ship, as you term her, is one of the wonders of the
world, the seeing of her would be a mighty experience--something big
enough in that way to keep a man talking about it all his life."
"God avert such a meeting!" said he, lifting his hat, and turning up
his face to the stars.
I suppose, thought I, that our drawing close to the seas in which the
Phantom cruises has stirred up his superstitious fears afresh.
"Did you speak to any one at Cape Town about Vanderdecken, sir?" said I.
"No," he answered. "I had got my bellyfull from the master of the snow.
What is there to ask?"
"Whether others have lately sighted the ship."
"Why, yes, I might have inquired, certainly, but it didn't enter my
head. Tell ye what, though, Fenton, do you remember our chat t'other
day about bodies being endevilled after they pass an age when by the
laws of great Nature they should die?"
"Perfectly well, sir."
"Now," continued he, "I was in company a few nights since where there
was one Cornelius Meyer present, a person ninety-one years old, but
surprisingly sound in all his faculties, his sight piercing, his
hearing keen, memory tenacious, and so forth. He was a Dutch Jew,
but his patriotism was coloured by the hue of the flag flying at
Cape Castle: I mean he would take the King of Great Britain and the
States-General as they came. When he left we talked of him, and this
led us to argue about old age. One gentleman said he did not know but
that it was possible for a man to live to a hundred-and-fifty, and said
there were instances of it. I replied, 'Not out of the Bible,' where
the reckoning was not ours. He answered, 'Yes, out of the Bible;' and
going to a bookshelf, pulled down a volume, and read a score of names
of men with their ages attached. I looked at the book and saw it was
honestly written, and being struck by this collection of extraordinary
examples, begged the gentleman's son, who was present, to copy the list
out for me, which he was so obliging as to do. I have it in my pocket,"
said he, and he pulled out a sheet of paper, and then going to the
hatch called to the boy to bring a lamp on deck.
This was done, the lamp put on the skylight, and putting the paper
close to it, the captain read as follows: "Thomas Parr, of Shropshire,
died Nov. 16, 1635, aged one hundred and fifty-two; Henry Jenkins, of
Yorkshire, died Dec. 8, 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine; James
Sands, of Staffordshire, died 1770, aged one hundred and forty; Louisa
Truxo, a negress in South America, was living in 1780, and her age was
then one hundred and seventy-five."
I burst into a laugh. He smiled too, and said, "Here in this list are
thirty-one names, the highest being that negress, and the lowest
one, Susannah Hilliar, of Piddington, Northamptonshire, who died
February 19th, 1781, aged one hundred. The young gentleman who copied
them said they were all honestly vouched for, and wrote down a list
of the authorities, which," said he, peering and bringing the paper
closer to his eyes, "consist of 'Fuller's Worthies,' 'Philosophical
Transactions,' 'Derham's Physico-Theology,' several newspapers, such
as the 'Morning Post,' 'Daily Advertiser,' 'London Chronicle,' and a
number of inscriptions."
I could have been tolerably sarcastic, I daresay, when he mentioned the
authority of the newspapers, always understanding that those sheets
flourish mainly on lies, and I should have laughed again had I not been
restrained by the sense that Captain Skevington was clearly "bitten" on
this subject, actually worried by it, indeed, to such lengths, that if
he did not mind his eye it might presently push into a delusion, and
earn him the disconcerting reputation of being a madman; so I thought I
would talk gravely, and said, "May I ask, sir, why you should have been
at the pains to collect that evidence in your hand about old age?"
"A mere humour," said he, lightly, putting the paper away, "though I
don't mind owning it would prodigiously gratify me if I could be the
instrument of proving that men can overstep the bounds of natural life
by as many years again, and yet possess their own souls and be as true
to their original as they were when hearty young fellows flushed with
the summer colours of life."
Some fine rhymes coming into my head, I exclaimed, "Cowley has settled
that point, I think, when he says:--
'To things immortal time can do no wrong,
And that which never is to die for ever must be young.'"
"A noble fancy indeed!" cried the captain. He reflected a little, and
said, "It would make a great noise among sailors, and perhaps all men,
to prove that the mariners who man the Death Ship are not ghosts and
phantoms as has been surmised, but survivors of a crew, men who have
outlived their fellows, and are now extremely ancient, as these and
scores of others who have passed away unnoticed have been," said he,
touching his pocket where the paper was.
"When, sir, did Vanderdecken sail from Batavia?" I asked.
"I have always understood about the year 1650," he replied.
"Then," said I, calculating, "suppose the average age of the crew to
have been thirty when the Curse was uttered--we'll name that figure for
the sake of argument--in the present year of our Lord they will have
attained the age of hard upon one hundred and eighty."
"Well?" said he, inquiringly, as though there was yet food for
argument.
I shook my head.
"Then," he cried, with heat, "they are endevilled, for it must be one
of two things. They can't be dead men as the corpse in the grave is
dead."
"One could only judge by seeing with one's eyes," said I.
"I hope that won't happen," he exclaimed, taking a hasty turn; "though
I don't know--I don't know! A something here," pressing his brow,
"weighs down upon me like a warning. I have struggled to get rid of the
fancy; but our being chased by the Dutchman shows that we did not meet
that Plymouth snow for nothing; and, by the thunder of Heaven, Fenton,
I fear--I fear our next bout will be with the Spectre."
His manner, his words, a gleam in his eye, to which the lantern lent
no sparkle, sent a tremor through me. He caused me to fear him for a
minute as one that talked with certainty of futurity through stress of
prophetic craze. The yellow beams of the lantern dispersed a narrow
circle of lustre, and in it our figures showed black, each with two
shadows swaying at his feet from the commingling of the lamplight and
the moonshine. The soft air stirred in the rigging like the rustle of
the pinions of invisible night-birds on the wing; all was silent and in
darkness along the decks, save where stood the figure of the helmsman
just before the little round-house, outlined by the flames of the
binnacle lamp; the stillness, unbroken to the farthest corners of the
mighty plain of ocean, seemed as though it were some mysterious spell
wrought by the stars, so high it went, even--so one might say--as a
sensible presence to the busy, trembling faces of those silver worlds.
In all men, even in the dullest, there is a vein of imagination;
whilst, like an artery, it holds sound, all is well. But sometimes
it breaks, God knows how, for the most part, and then what is in it
floods the intelligence often to the drowning of it, as the bursting
of a vessel of the body within sickens or kills with hemorrhage.
I considered some such idea as this to be applicable to Captain
Skevington. Here was apparently a plain, sturdy sailor, qualified to
the life for such talk as concerns ships, weather, ladings and the
like; yet it was certain he was exceedingly superstitious, believing in
such a Devil as the ancient monks figured forth, also in the possession
of dead bodies by demons who caused them to move and act as though
operated upon by the souls they came from their mothers with, with
a vast deal of other pitiful fancies; and now, through our unhappy
meeting with that miserable snow, he had let his mind run on the
Phantom Ship so vehemently that he was not only cocksure we should meet
the Spectre, but had reasoned the whole fabric and manning of her out
on two issues; either that her hands were survivors of her original
crew, persons who had cheated Nature by living to an age the like of
which had not been heard of since the days of Moses and the prophets,
beings who,
Like a lamp would live to the last wink
And crawl upon the utmost verge of life;
or that they were mariners who, having arrived at the years when they
would have died but for being cursed, had been seized upon by the
Devil, quickened by him, and set a-going with their death-hour aspects
upon them.
These reflections occupied my mind after he had left me, and I don't
mind confessing that what with my own belief in the Death Ship, coupled
with the captain's notions and the fancies they raised in me, along
with the melancholy vagueness of the deep, hazy with moonshine, the
stillness, and the sense of our drawing near to where the Spectre
was chiefly to be met, I became so uneasy that I contrived to spend
the rest of my watch on deck within a few paces of the wheel, often
addressing the helmsman for the sake of hearing his voice; and I tell
you I was mighty pleased when midnight came round at last, so that I
could go below and dispatch the mate to a scene in which his heavy mind
would witness nothing but water and sky, and a breeze much too faint to
be profitable.