THE DEATH SHIP
THE DEATH SHIP
A STRANGE STORY;
AN ACCOUNT OF A CRUISE IN "THE FLYING DUTCHMAN," COLLECTED
FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE MR. GEOFFREY FENTON, OF POPLAR,
MASTER MARINER.
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL,
AUTHOR OF
"THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR," "THE GOLDEN HOPE," "A SEA QUEEN,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
1888
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED BY
TILLOTSON AND SON, MAWDSLEY STREET
BOLTON
CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--WE TELL OUR LOVE AGAIN 1
II.--WE SIGHT A SAIL 10
III.--THE DEATH SHIP IS BOARDED BY A PIRATE 28
IV.--MY LIFE IS AGAIN ATTEMPTED 56
V.--A TEMPEST BURSTS UPON US 79
VI.--WE SPRING A LEAK 112
VII.--IMOGENE FEARS FOR ME 131
VIII.--LAND 155
IX.--WE BRING UP IN A BAY 174
X.--THE WEATHER HELPS MY SCHEME 203
XI.--MY POOR DARLING 222
XII.--I AM ALONE 244
THE DEATH SHIP.
CHAPTER I.
WE TELL OUR LOVE AGAIN.
I had passed from the deck, where I slept, to the cabin in too great a
hurry to notice the weather. Now, reaching the poop, I stood a moment
or two to look around, being in my way as concerned about the direction
of the wind as Vanderdecken himself.
It still blew fresh, but the heavens lay open among the clouds that
had thickened their bulk into great drooping shining bosoms, as
though indeed the crystalline blue under which they sailed in solemn
procession mirrored the swelling brows of mighty snow-covered
mountains. The sea ran in a very dark shade of azure, and offered a
most glorious surface of colours with the heave of its violet hills
bearing silver and pearly streakings of sunshine and foam upon their
buoyant floating slopes, and the jewelled and living masses of froth
which flashed from their heights and stormed into their valleys as they
raced before the wind which chased them with noisy whistlings and notes
as of bugles. The Death Ship was close-hauled--when was the day to come
when I should find her with her yards squared?--but on the larboard
tack, so that they must have put the ship about since midnight; and the
sun standing almost over the mizzen topsail yard-arm showed me that we
were doing some westing, for which I could have fallen on my knees and
thanked God.
The captain and the mate were on deck, Vanderdecken abreast of the
tiller, Van Vogelaar twenty paces forward of him, both still and
stiff, gazing seawards with faces whose expressionlessness forbade
your comparing them to sleeping dreamers. They looked the eternity
that was upon them, and their ghastliness, the age and the doom of the
ship, fell with a shock upon the perception to the horrible suggestions
of those two figures and of the face at the tiller, whose tense and
bloodless skin glared white to the sun as the little eyes, like rings
of fire eating into the sockets beneath the brows, glanced from the
card to the weather edges of the canvas.
Yet I found comfort in their entranced posture and disregard of me,
for the less I engaged their attention the safer I should be whilst in
their ship, and memory being with them a deceptive and erratic quality,
I might hope in time to find that they had forgot to hate me.
I quitted the poop, not choosing to keep myself in view of
Vanderdecken and Van Vogelaar, and walked about the quarter-deck,
struggling hard with the dreadful despondency which clouded my mind,
whilst imagination furiously beat against the iron-hard conditions
which imprisoned me, as a bird rends its plumage in a cage, till my
heart pulsed with the soreness of a real wound in my breast. The
only glimmer of hope I could find lay, as I had again and again told
Imogene, in the direction of the land. But who was to say how long a
time would pass before the needs of the ship would force Vanderdecken
shore-wards? And if the wind grew northerly and came feeble, how many
weeks might we have to count ere this intolerable sailer brought
the land into sight? Oh! I tell you, such speculations were sheerly
maddening when I added to them the reflection that the heaving of the
land into view might by no means prove a signal for our deliverance.
However, by the time Imogene arrived on deck I had succeeded in
tranquilising my mind. She took some turns with me and then went to
the captain on the poop and stayed with him, that is, stood near him,
though I do not know that they conversed, till he went to his cabin;
whereupon I joined her, neither of us deigning to heed the mate's
observation of us, and for the rest of the morning we were together,
knitting our hearts closer and closer whilst we talked of England, of
her parents, the ship her father had commanded, and the like, amusing
ourselves with dreams of escape, till hope grew lustrous with the fairy
light our amorous fancies flung upon it. And lo! here on the deck of
this Death Ship, with Van Vogelaar standing like a statue within twenty
paces of us, and the dead face of a breathing man at the tiller, and
silent sailors languidly stirring forwards or voicelessly plying the
marline-spike or the serving-mallet aloft, where the swollen canvas
swayed under the deep-breasted clouds like spaces of ancient tapestry
from which time has sponged out all bright colours--here, in this
fated and faded craft, that surged with the silence of the tomb in her
through hissing seas and aslant whistling winds, did I, in the course
of our talk, find myself presently speaking of my mother, of the little
town in which she lived, of the church to which, under God, I would
lead my sweetest, there to make her my bride!
She blushed rosy with delight, and I marked the passionate gladness of
her love in the glance she gave me, as she lifted the fringes of her
white eyelids to dart that exquisite gleam, whilst she held her chaste
face drooped. But looking, as though some power drew me to look, at
Van Vogelaar, I met his malignant stare full, and the chill and venom
of his storm-bruised countenance fell upon my heart like a sensible
atmosphere and poison.
For the life of me I could not help the shudder that ran through my
frame. "Do you believe," said I, "that the men of this Death Ship have
any power of blighting hope and emotion by their glance? The mere
sighting of this vessel, it is said, is sufficient to procure the doom
of another!"
She shook her head as though she would say she could not tell.
"There is something," said I, "to ice the strongest man's blood in the
expression Van Vogelaar sometimes turns upon me. There is an ancient
story of a bald-pated philosopher who, at a marriage-feast, looked
and looked a bride, and the wondrous pavilion which the demons she
commanded had built, into emptiness. He stared her and her splendours
into thin air, sending the bridegroom to die with nothing but memory to
clasp. There may be no philosophy in yonder Dutch villain, but surely
he has all the malignity of Apollonius in his eyes."
"Do you fear he will stare me into air?" said she, smiling.
"I would blind him if I thought so," said I, with a temper that owed
not a little of its heat to the heavy fit of superstition then upon me.
"In the times of that rogue it was believed a man could pray another
dead; but did one ever hear of a stare powerful enough to dematerialise
a body? Sweet one, if that pale ruffian there could look you into
space, what form would your spirit take? Would you become to me, as did
the girl of his heart to the old poet--
"The very figure of that Morning Star
That, dropping pearls and shedding dewy sweets,
Fled from the greedy waves when I approached."
"He cannot part us!" she exclaimed. "Let me be your Morning Star,
indeed, flying to you from the greedy waves, not from you, Geoffrey!
Do not speak to me of Van Vogelaar, nor look his way. Tell me again,
dear, of your mother's home; talk to me of flowers--of English
flowers--and of that old church."