CHAPTER XI._The Death Ship: A Strange Story, Vol. 1 (of 3)

A CRUEL DISASTER BEFALLS ME.

The mere putting into words the suspicion that had been troubling all

our minds made one man in action of the whole crew, like the firing of

forty pieces of ordnance in the same instant. Whatever the sailors held

they flung down, and, in a bound, came to the waist on the starboard

side, where they stood, looking at the ship and making, amid that

silence, the strangest noise that ever was heard with their deep and

fearful breathing.

"Great thunder!" broke in one of them, presently, "d'ye know what that

shining is, mates? Why, it's the glow of timbers that's been rotted by

near two hundred years of weather."

"Softly, Tom!" said another; "'tis Hell that owns her crew; they have

the malice of devils, and they need but touch us to founder us."

"Wait, and you shall see her melt!" exclaimed one of the two foreigners

who were among our company of seamen. "If she is, as I believe, she

will be manned by the ghosts of wicked men who have perished at sea;

presently a bell shall strike, and she must disappear!"

As this was said there was a commotion forward, and the carpenter,

borne by two stout hands, was carried into the midst of the crew, and

propped up so that he might see the ship. I was as eager as any of the

most illiterate sailors on board to hear what he had to say, and took

a step the better to catch his words. A whole minute went by whilst he

gazed; so strained and anticipative were my senses that the moments

seemed as hours. He then said, "Mates, yonder's the Death Ship, right

enough. Look hard, and you'll mark the steeve of her bowsprit with the

round top at the end of it, and the spring of her aft in a fashion more

ancient than is the ages of any two of the oldest men aboard. Note the

after-rake of her mizzen-mast, and how the heel of the foremast looks

to step in the fore-peak. That's the ship--born in 1650--Vanderdecken

master--what I've often heard tell of--raise my head, mates!"

And here, whether through pain or weakness or horror, he fainted, but

being laid upon the deck, and some water thrown over his face, he came

to in a short while, and lay trembling, refusing to speak or answer

questions.

A slight thinning of the vapour that hid the moon had enabled us to

remark those points in the ship the carpenter had named; and whilst he

was being recovered from his swoon, the moon looked down from a gulf

in the mist, but her light was still very tarnished and dim, though

blurred and distorted as was her appearance, yet there instantly formed

round her the same halo or wan circle that was visible before she was

hidden. But her apparition made a light that exquisitely answered to

those two lines of Shakespeare--

"Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger washes all the air."

For such radiance as fell really seemed like a cleansing of the

atmosphere after the black smother that had encompassed us, and now we

could all see the ship distinctly as she lay on our quarter with her

broadside somewhat to us, her yards trimmed like our own, and her sails

hanging dead.

It was the solemnest sight that ever mortal eye beheld. The light left

her black, so there was no telling what hue she showed or was painted.

Her bows lay low in the water after the old fashion, with head-boards

curling to her beak, that doubtless bore an ornament, though we could

not distinguish it. There she rose like a hill, broken with the

bulwarks that defined her waist, quarter-deck and short poop. This was

as much as we could discern of her hull. Her foremast stood close to

where the heel of her bowsprit came; her mizzen-mast raked over her

stern, and upon it was a yard answering to the rig of a felucca; the

clew of its sail came down clear of a huge lantern whose iron frame,

for all the glass in it was broke and gone, showed like the skeleton of

some monster on her taffrail. It was a sight to terrify the stoutest

heart to see the creeping of thin, worm or wire-like gleamings upon

the side she showed to us. I considered at first she was glossy and

that those lights were the reflection of the phosphoric fires in the

water under her; but it was soon made plain that this was not so, as,

though to be sure a greenish glare of the true sea-flame would show

against or near her when she slightly leaned, as we did, to the swell,

this charnel-house or touch-wood glimmer played all along her without

regard to the phosphorescence under her.

Now, ever since I was first going to sea, I had, as I have said,

believed in the existence of the Spectre Ship, which all mariners I

have sailed with feared to encounter; but so many imaginative stories

had come of her--some feigning, as the carpenter's version showed, that

she was a death ship, filled with spectres who navigated her; others

that she was a spectral bark, laden with souls, against whom the gates

of Purgatory were closed; others that she was a vessel for ever beating

against gales of wind, sometimes appearing in a tempest that surrounded

her when the rest of the ocean was smooth, sometimes rising from the

waves, sometimes floating among the clouds, buffetting up there as

though the masses of insubstantial vapour were solid and massy folds

and acclivities; I say I had heard so many stories that they had ended

in leaving me with a belief of my own, which was that the Phantom

Ship--rightly so named--was an airy incorporeal thing--a vision to

be encountered but rarely in these parts, a sea-ghost that had been

too often beheld in the course of years to be denied, and as truly a

spectre in its way as any that may be read of in Holy Writ, or that

has stood at the bedsides of men and women and delivered messages from

futurity.

This being my belief, then, though I was mightily terrified by the

ancient shape of the ship and the mystery of her purpose, and the

darkness and silence that clothed her, I could not believe that

she was the true spectre that the sailor dreads; for, that she was

as substantial as our vessel--"a quarry of stout spurs and knotted

fangs"--was undeniable, not more from her quiet, heaving motion than

from the dull sounds I had now and again caught of the movement of her

gear aloft, such as the scraping of a rope in a block, or the soft

slap of a cloth against a spar by the heave of the fabric setting some

light sail a-fanning.

"What think you of her, Fenton?" said Mr. Hall, speaking softly, but

with much of his excitement and uneasiness gone. "Does she resemble the

craft that the master of the snow told Captain Skevington he sighted

hereabouts?"

"Why, yes, I think so," said I; "but it does not follow that she is the

Phantom Ship. The Plymouth hooker's yarn owed a good deal to terror,

and it would not lose in its passage through the brain of a lunatic, as

I fear poor Skevington was."

"She has a very solid look--she is a real ship, but the like of her I

have never seen, save in old prints. Mark those faint fiery stripes and

spirals upon her. I do not understand it. The wood that yields such

light must be as rotten as tinder and porous as a sponge. It could not

swim."

By this time the mysterious ship had floated out her whole length,

unless it were our vessel that had slewed and given us that view of

her. No light save the lambent gleams on her sides was to be seen.

We could hear no voices. We could discern no movement of figures or

distinguish any outline resembling a human shape upon her. On a sudden,

my eye was caught by an illumination overhead that made a lustre strong

enough to enable me to see the face of Mr. Hall. I looked up conceiving

that one of our crew had jumped aloft with a lantern, and saw at our

main yard-arm a _corpus sant_ or St. Elmo's light, that shone freely

like a luminous bulb, poised a few inches above the spar. Scarce had

this been kindled, and whilst it was paling the faces of our seamen

who stared at it, there suddenly shone two bright meteors of a similar

kind upon the strange ship; one on top of the topgallant-masthead that

was the full height of the main spars, and one on the summit of a mast

that stood up from the round top at the end of the bowsprit and that

in olden times, before it was discontinued, would have been called

the sprit-topmast. They had something of the glory of stars; their

reflection twisted like silver serpents in the dark waters; and as

though they had been flambeaux or lamps, they flung their spectral glow

upon the strangely-cut sails of the vessel, upon her rigging and spars,

sickling all things to their starry colour, dimly illuminating even the

distant castle-like poop, showing clearly the dark line of bulwarks,

whilst a deeper dye of blackness entered into the hull from the shadow

between the _corpus sants_ on high and their mirroring beneath.

"Thanks be to God for the sight of those lights!" exclaimed a deep

voice, sounding out among the men. "It's a saint's hand as kindles

them, I've heared; and there'll be a breeze with luck behind it

presently."

"See, Mr. Hall!" cried I, pointing; "do you observe the figures of men?

Look along the line of the forecastle--one, two, three--I count six

there; and look right aft on that bit of a poop. Do you mark a couple

of shapes viewing us as if with folded arms?"

"Yes!" He paused, staring, then added, "Those lights are familiar

enough to me, I've seen them scores of times," speaking in whispers,

which trembled back to their former notes of consternation, "but

there's something frightful about them now--and yonder one," pointing

to our yard-arm, "and the sight they show. She's no natural ship," he

said, pulling off his cap, and passing his hand over his forehead.

"Would to God a breeze would come and part us."

"Hail him again, sir!"

"Hail him you, my throat is dry."

I walked right aft to bring me more abreast of the silent motionless

figures on the stranger's poop, and jumping on to the rail caught hold

of the vang of the spanker-gaff to steady myself, and putting a hand

to my mouth, roared out, "Ship ahoy! What ship is that?" and stopped

breathless, so that I seemed to hear the echoes of my own voice among

the sails of the stranger.

"What ship is that?" now came back in a deep, organ-like note, and the

two figures separated, one walking forward, and the other stepping, as

I had, on to the bulwark over the quarter-gallery.

"The Saracen, of London, bound to Indian ports," I responded.

"I will send a boat!" cried the man, in the same deep-throated voice.

"If you do, we'll fire into it!" screamed a seaman on our deck.

"Mates--Mr. Hall, you see now what he is! Keep them off!--keep them

off!" at which there was a sudden hurrying of feet, with many clicking

sounds of triggers sharply cocked, by which I knew our men had armed

themselves.

The _corpus sant_ at our yard-arm vanished; in a few seconds it showed

itself afresh midway up the mainmast, making a wild light all around

it; those on the stranger burned steadily, and I believed a third had

been kindled on her till I saw it was a lantern carried along the deck.

There was a stillness lasting some minutes. What they were about we

could not see; anon came a creaking, as of ropes travelling in blocks,

then a light splash; the lantern dropped jerkily down the ship's side,

plainly grasped by a man; flashes of phosphorus broke out of the water

to the dip of oars, like fire clipped from a flint. I felt a faint air

blowing, but did not heed it, being half-frenzied with the excitement

and fear raised in me by what I could now see--thanks to the light of

the St. Elmo fires, and the mystic crawlings of flames on the vessel's

sides. I saw a boat, square at both ends, with the gunwale running out

into horns, rowed by two figures, whilst a third stood upright in the

bows, holding high a lighted lantern in one hand, and extending his