I WITNESS THE CAPTAIN'S ENTRANCEMENT.
I had been on deck about a quarter of an hour when Vanderdecken, who
all this time was standing motionless at the rail looking--as who shall
tell with what fancies in him and what visions--at the windward sea,
came down to the lee of the house as though he all along knew I was
there, though I can swear he never once turned nor appeared to see me,
and said--
"Is the lady in the cabin?"
"She went to her room, sir," I replied.
"Did she tell you her story?" he said, bringing his beard to its place
with both hands, and viewing me with a severity that I began to think
might be as much owing to the cast of his features as to his nature.
I replied that she had told me how he had met with her in an open boat,
how her parents had perished, and how he had felt a father's pity and
love for her and was taking her home.
"To adopt her," he exclaimed. "She shall be a child of mine. My wife
will soon love her, and she will be a sister to my daughters. She has
no relatives, and such beauty and sweetness of heart as hers must be
cared for, since how does the world commonly serve such graces when
they meet in a friendless woman?"
Surely, thought I, he that can talk thus cannot be endevilled! And
yet does not the great Milton bestow the tenderness of a sister and
a daughter on Sin when she reconciles Satan and Death? Something of
human nature there must ever be even in those who most strictly merit
Heaven's chastisement; and the lustre of the glory in our beginning,
though it wane till its glow is no brighter than the dim, fiery
crawlings upon this ship's side at night, is never utterly extinguished
in the blackest spirit of us all.
I had no desire to talk of Miss Dudley lest I should put him into a
passion by some remark touching the number of years she had now been on
board, or by blundering in some other like manner. If she was to escape
through me it behoved me to keep my thoughts mighty close and secret,
for let what would be the state of being he had entered into in two
centuries of existence, his eyes were like a burning-glass, as though
he could focus by them the fires of suspicion and scorch a hole through
your body to your soul to learn what was passing there. So putting on
an easy manner and throwing a glance aloft and around, I said, "I fear,
mynheer, you find weather of this kind strain your ship a good deal."
"Like all vessels she will work in such seas as this," he replied.
"How often is she careened?" I asked.
"How often should she need it, think you?" he replied, with sudden
temper.
I said, warily, "I cannot imagine."
"I have commanded the Braave for five voyages," said he, softening a
little, "and only once--that is during the second voyage--did she prove
leaky. But this voyage she has been troublesome, and I have had to
careen her twice."
Twice only, thought I; but you could see that his memory had been
shaped so as to fit his doom, and that remembrance of all that
befell him and his crew from the time when his sentence was first
pronounced faded almost as swiftly as they happened, like clouds upon
the blankness of the heavens, so that the very changes that would
illustrate the passage of time to you or me, such as the alteration in
the rigs and shapes of the ships he met, or the growth into womanhood
of the girl he had rescued, would be as unmeaning to him and his
fellows as to men without memory. Yet was it manifestly part of the
Curse that he should have a keen and bright recollection of his house,
his family, Amsterdam, the politics and wars of his age and the like.
For if the faculty was wholly dead in him, he would be but as a corpse
without that craving for home which perpetuates his doom.
"Is there any good spot for careening on the coast, east of the Cape?"
said I, eager to gather all I could touching the practices and inner
life of this wondrous ship without appearing inquisitive.
He answered, "Yes, there is one good place, 'tis in a bay; I cannot
name it, but it is to be found by the peculiar shape of the mountains
at its back. If ever you should be in these seas and need to careen,
choose that place, for besides that you may refresh your crew with,
and lay in a good store of--when in season--oranges, plums, wild
apricot, lemons, plantains, and other fruits, with abundance of such
fish as cod, hake, and mullet, and comforts and dainties such as
plovers, partridges, guinea-fowl, and bustards; you will there find a
salt spring, the water of which, on boiling, yields salt enough for
any quantity of curing, and what should not be less useful to you as a
mariner to know is, that about the shore you find scattered a kind of
munjack which, when boiled with sand and tempered with oil, is as good
as pitch for paying your seams with."
So, thought I, and thither, then, is it that you are led when your ship
needs to be overhauled or when your provisions run low. With oakum
worked from such ropes as he would find on abandoned ships, and the
munjack he spoke about, he would have no trouble in keeping the frame
of the vessel tight, more especially as the supernatural quality that
was in his own life was in that of his ship likewise, so that the
timber stood as did his skin, albeit the one would often need repairs
just as the body of the other was sustained by meat and drink.
"I thank you for your information, captain," said I.
"If," he continued, "you let the plantain dry it will crush into
an excellent flour. The cakes we had at breakfast were formed of
plantain-flour."
"It is wonderful," said I, "how the mariner forces the sea and the land
that skirts it to supply his needs."
"Ay," he exclaimed. "It is as you say. But no sailors surpass the Dutch
in this particular direction."
It seemed as if he would go on speaking, but, looking, that I might
attend to his words, I observed that the whole man, with amazing
suddenness, appeared to undergo a change. He stood motionless, gazing
at the leeward sea, his features fixed, not the faintest working in
them, and nothing stirring but his beard. He was like one in a fit,
save for the frightful vitality he got from the glare in his eyes,
which were rooted as though they beheld a phantom. I drew away from him
with a shudder, for his aspect now was the most terrible revelation of
his monstrous and unearthly existence that had been made to me. The
change was of the violence of a catalepsy, and this quick transition
from the intelligent, if death-like, looks of a man, speaking of
homely matters to a mute, petrified figure, to which the fire of the
eyes imparted an inexpressible element of horror, so terrified me
that I felt the sweat-drops in the palms of my hands. As to reasoning
on this condition of his, why, I could make nothing of it. It looked
as if the death that was in his flesh and bones, finding his spirit,
or whatever it was that informed him, languid, as the senses became
through grief or sickness, asserted its powers till it was driven into
its hiding-place again by the re-quickening of the supernatural element
that possessed him. It was also apparent that this unnatural gift of
life did but give vitality to a corpse; and that even as a disinterred
body that still wears the very tint of life, as though but just dead,
falls into dust on the air of Heaven touching it, so do I strictly
believe that Vanderdecken and his crew would instantly crumble into
ashes, which the wind would disperse, were the power that keeps them
intelligent and capable of moving suspended. By which I mean that they
would not decay slowly, as the dead in Nature do, but that they would
dissolve into dust as men who deceased a hundred years ago.
These thoughts are not gay. But what think you of the reality? Never
could I so fully compass all the horror of the Curse as now, when I
turned my gaze from the figure at my side, majestic in his marble
motionlessness and alive in the eyes only, to the strained, grey,
streaming ancient ship, tossing her forking bowsprit to the sullen
gloom on high, bringing her aged, patched and dingy courses, groaning
at their tacks, with a sulky thunder against the screaming gale,
as though their hollows dimly reverberated yet the cannonading of
the vanished fleets of Blake and Tromp; washed by seas which fled
in snow-storms over her forward decks, heavily and dismally rolling
broadside to the wind that was blowing her with diabolic stubbornness
back along the liquid path that she had so lately sailed over! Think
of such a life as this, never-ending! Great Mercy! Would not even a
year of such a struggle prove to us distracting. Oh, 'tis a merciful
provision indeed that these poor wretches should have had all sense
of time killed in them, and that their punishment should lie in a
perpetual cheating of hope too short-lived as a remembrance to break
their hearts. Yet there were now two persons in this Death Ship to
whom such solace as was permitted to the accurst crew would not be
granted, and who, if they could not get away from the vessel, would
have to lead a more terrible life than even that of the Dutch mariners,
unless they destroyed themselves as Captain Skevington had. And for
some time I could think of nothing but how I was to rescue Miss Dudley
and make my own escape, for one thing I had already resolved: never to
leave the girl alone in this ship.