A TEMPEST BURSTS UPON US.
I did not, as I had told Imogene, need a second hint to secure my life
by night, however it might fall out with me in the day. By looking
about I met with a piece of ratline stuff which I hid in my cabin, and
when the night came I secured one end to the hook of the door, passing
the other end through the staple and then making it fast to my wrist;
so that, the door being shut, no one could enter without tweaking or
straining my arm with such violence as was sure to awake me.
Meanwhile the fair wind hung very steady, blowing about south, a
pleasant breeze that yielded a pure blue sky and small puff-shaped
clouds exceedingly white; the sea was also of a very lovely sapphire,
twinkling and sparkling in the north like a sheet of silver cloth set
a-trembling. The Braave stole along softly, with but little seething
and hissing noises about her now that her yards lay braced well in. I
would think whilst I watched her flowing sheets, the long bosoms of her
canvas swelling forwards with the slack bolt-ropes arched like a bow,
and the mizzen rounding from its lateen yard, backed by the skeleton
remains of the great poop lantern, that she needed but the bravery of
fresh paint, a new ancient, pennons and streamers, bright pettararoes
or swivels, glass for the lanterns and gilt for her galleries and beak,
to render her as picturesque and romantic a vessel as ever sailed in
that mighty procession, in whose van streamed the triumphant insignia
of the great Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese Admirals.
'Twas impossible to doubt that every man in the ship believed that he
was going home this time. There was an air of alacrity in them that
had never before been noticeable. They would look eagerly seawards over
the bows, gazing thus for long minutes at a time. Whenever the log was
hove I'd mark one or more inquire the speed of the men who had held
the reel or dragged in the line, as they went forward. They smoked
incessantly, with an air of dull and heavy satisfaction in their faces.
I observed a lifting, so to speak, of the stupor off Vanderdecken. His
trances--I mean those sudden fits of death-like insensibility which
I can only liken to cataleptic attacks--were few, whence I concluded
that his spirit, or whatever might be the nature of the essence that
owned his great and majestical frame for a tabernacle--had gathered
an increase of vitality from the invigorated hope and brisk desires
which the fair wind had raised. In Van Vogelaar I witnessed no change.
Possibly the dark shadows of my fears being on him held him gloomy and
malignant to my sight. Likewise, I was careful to keep a wide space
between us, save at meals, and never to have my back upon him, for to
be sure, if I was to be murdered by the rogue, it should not be for the
want of a bright look-out on my part.
This state of things continued for three days. A powerful current
runs to the westward in these seas, and adding its impulse to our
progress, I calculated that in those seventy-two hours we made not less
than an hundred and thirty-three leagues. As time passed my wonder
increased, for though I knew not our position, and never durst ask
Vanderdecken what situation his dead-reckoning assigned us, I could
not conceive--recollecting the place in which the Saracen was when we
sighted the Death Ship--that we had been blown, during the time I had
been on board, into a very remote sea; and hence 'twas reasonable that
I should think it wanted but a few days sailing after this pattern to
carry us round the Cape. Therefore I say my wonder grew, for whilst it
was impious to suppose that the Devil could contrive that this ship
should outwit the Sentence, yet our steady progress caused me to waver
in my faith in the stern assurance of the vessel's doom.
I would say to Imogene: "The breeze holds; see how steady is the look
of the southern sky! Is it possible that this wind will carry her
round?"
To which she would answer: "No, the change will come. Oh, Geoffrey, it
will come, though no more than the ship's length lay between her and
the limit which you believe the Curse has marked out for her upon this
sea."
Then I would agree with her. But afterwards, coming on deck in the
afternoon, or next morning, and finding the Death Ship pushing along,
her head pointing north-west, her sails full, the wake sliding away
astern in a satin smoothness, wonder and doubt would again possess me,
and twenty odd fancies occur, such as, "Suppose the Sentence has been
remitted! Suppose it be the Will of Heaven this ship should return to
Amsterdam, that a final expiation of Vanderdecken's wrong-doing might
be accomplished in his and his miserable crew's beholding with their
own eyes the extinction of those houses they had yearned for, and the
tombs--if aught of memorial in that way remain--of those hearts whose
beating they hoped to feel upon their own?"
Such thoughts would set me talking to Imogene.
"Conceive of this ship's arrival in the Texel! What consternation,
what astonishment would she arouse! What mighty crowds would flock to
view her!" And in the hurry and ardency of my imagination, I would go
on figuring the looks and behaviour of the people as our ghastly crew
stepped ashore, asking one and another after their wives and children,
those Alidas, Geertruidas, Titias, Emelies, Cornelias, Johannas,
Fedoras, Engelinas, and Christinas, and those Antonys, Hendricks, Jans,
Tjaarts, Lodewyks, Abrahams, Willems, Peters, and Fredericks, whose
very memory, let alone their dust, was as utterly gone as the ashes in
any pipe forward there when the fire had been tapped out of the bowl
overboard.
During the night of the third day the wind held steadily. I left
the deck a little before midnight, having passed some hours of the
darkness in the company of my love, and our sails were then full with
the prosperous wind, the ship passing along over the quiet sea in a
great shadow, the stars very piercing, and the light of their colours
sharp and lovely; but on coming from my cabin next morning, I found the
breeze gone; the ship was rolling upon a swell coming with some power
from the westwards; and the dead cloths of the canvas striking a small
thunder into the motionless air as they beat against the masts with the
weary, monotonous swaying of those spars.
The change had come! The swell was full of foreboding; it was as
my heart had foreseen, spite of the wonder and inventions of my
imagination; but nevertheless, the perception of that polished sea
heaving into the dimness of the distant sky, the sight of the deadness
of the calm that had slued the Death Ship till her sprit-topsail veiled
and disclosed the oozing sun as she bowed with her beak pointing into
the east, brought a disappointment that sickened me to the soul.
"Great God," I cried within myself, "is this experience to end only
with my death!" and I entered the cabin in so melancholy a mood that I
could scarce hold up my head for the heaviness in my eyes and brain.
Imogene was alone. I kissed her hand and fondled it. She instantly
observed my depression, and said, gently, "I feared this calm would
dishearten you. But it was inevitable, dear. It was impossible a change
of some kind should be delayed."
"Yes, but it breaks me down to think of another long, soul-starving,
stormy drive into the south-east, another terrible spell of
Vanderdecken's savage manners--of Van Vogelaar's murderous attempts,
and of the hopelessness afterwards. Oh, my love! the hopelessness
afterwards!--when the weather breaks and the wind blows fair again.
Will it never end?"
She cast her eyes down with a swift motion of her finger to her lips.
I turned, as Vanderdecken approached. The darkness of his inward rage
lay heavy upon the folds of his brow; 'tis no exaggeration to apply to
his appearance the strong words of Beaumont:
"There are a thousand furies in his looks,
And in his deadly silence more loud horror
Than, when in Hell, the tortur'd and tormentors
Contend whose shrieks are greatest!"
He came without speaking to his chair, turning his fiery eyes from
Imogene to me without saluting us. A moment after Van Vogelaar arrived.
We took our places, but none spoke. One side-long look the mate darted
at me under his parchment-coloured lids, and malice and hate were
strong in it. I could see that Imogene was awed and terrified by the
captain's manner. You dreaded to hear him speak. His stillness was that
of a slowly ripening tempest and his sultry, forbidding, darkening
bearing seemed to thicken the very atmosphere about him till you drew
your breath with labour. He drank a silver cupfull of wine, but ate
nothing.
The mate on the other hand plied his knife and fork with a surly
heartiness. For my part, I felt as though a mouthful must choke me;
yet I made out to eat that these men should not think I was afraid. I
believe Imogene would have gone to her cabin but for her anxiety to
support and encourage me, so to say, by her presence.
"What horrible curse do we carry in this ship," presently exclaimed
Vanderdecken, speaking with a hoarse muttering that had no note of
the familiar melodious richness, "that all winds which might blow us
westwards die before the meridian of Agulhas is reached? What is there
in these masts to poison the breeze? Do we spread sails woven in the
Devil's loom? Have we a Jonah among us?"
"Skipper!" cried Van Vogelaar, "Is it Herr Fenton, think you? Measure
the luck he carries by what hath happened since he has been in this
ship. Six days of storm!" He held up his fingers with a furious
gesture. "Twice, in a few hours, have our lives, our treasure, our
ship been imperilled! Note, now, this westerly swell, this stagnant
atmosphere, and a dimness in the west that will have grown into storm
and wind ere the afternoon watch be ended."
"He speaks to my prejudice," I exclaimed, addressing Vanderdecken;
"let him be candid. His tongue is injurious to the Hollander's love
of honour. Mynheer, consider: He talks of the six days of storm--that
weather had been brewed before my ship sighted yours. Of the English
man-of-war and the French pirate; why not of the wreck that yielded
you a bountiful store of needful things? He knows--as you do, Herr
Vanderdecken, that Englishmen--least of all English mariners--are not
among those who practise sorcery. This change is the concern of that
Being who has yet to judge this man. If he charges me with the control
of the elements, then, by the Majesty of Heaven, he basely lies even
in his rash and impious effort to do me, a weak and erring mortal,
honour!"
With which I turned upon the villain and stared at him with eyes fuller
of more potent fury flashed into them by the rage of my healthy,
earthly manhood than could possibly possess him out of that dusty
sepulchre of his body which lived by the Curse alone. He shrunk away
from me, looking at his skipper.
"Captain Vanderdecken," broke in the sweet voice of Imogene, "you will
not let Herr Van Vogelaar's intemperate accusations influence your
love of justice. Herr Fenton is not accountable for this calm; 'tis
monstrous to suppose it. Charge me sooner with witchcraft; I have been
longer in this ship than he; in that time you have met many adverse
winds; and if his being an Englishman is his wrong, hold me also
answerable for the failure of your hopes, since I am English too!"
He looked at her, then at me, then back to her, and methought her
beauty coloured the stormy cloud of his expression with a light of its
own, not softening it, but robbing it somewhat of its terror. He moved
his lips, talking to himself, folded his arms and leaned back, staring
straight up at the deck.
I fancied by saying more yet I could mend my case, and would not meet
Imogene's eye for fear of being checked.
"Captain Vanderdecken, I am here as a shipwrecked man--dependent
upon your generosity as a fellow-being, of which you have given me
so abundant an illustration that my heart sinks when I consider that
I am too poor to make you any return saving in thanks. Had I tenfold
the powers your mate imputes to me, could I work you evil? Give me
the control of the wind, and such a gale would follow this ship that
you should be speedily counting the date of your arrival at Amsterdam
in hours. Is it reasonable that I should seek to delay this voyage?
I, who have but these clothes in which I stand--who am divorced from
my home--who am helpless and defenceless among the enemies of my
country--among men from whom I should have nothing to hope if they had
not long given the world to know that their generosity as foes is alone
equalled by their heroism as mariners!"
He had slowly turned his eyes upon me when I began to speak, and now
made a haughty gesture with his hand as if bidding me hold my peace.
And perhaps my conscience felt the rebuke, though he merely designed to
let me know that I had said enough; for, between ourselves, I had as
little opinion of Dutch generosity as I had of Dutch valour, and should
have despised myself for this flattering had I been talking to human
beings.
Happily nothing more came of the tempest that lay muzzled in the
captain's breast. Whether my standing up for myself, my heated manner
towards his mate, gave a new turn to his mood, he did not speak again
of the change of weather, and as speedily as ceremony would permit, I
got up, made my bow, and went on deck.
The appearance in the west was sullen enough, though merely with a
faintness there that was unrelieved by any edging or shouldering
outline of cloud. A few patches of vapour lay streaked along the sky,
otherwise the heavens hovered in an unstained hollow, but of a faded,
watery blue, unwholesome and with a sort of blindness of fog in it; and
up in the north-east hung the sun, shorn of his rays, a squeezed yet
uncompacted mass of dazzle, like as I have seen him show when setting
in a belt of vapour that has not entirely hid him, and casting a wake
as dim as burning oil. The swell had grown in weight even while we had
been breaking our fast. There being not the faintest draught of air
to steady the vessel--no, not so much as to put the most delicate
curl of shadow upon the heads of the muddy-blue, grease-smooth, liquid
roundings which came with a sulky brimming to the channels. She rolled
with stupid heaviness, her sails rattling like a discharge from great
ordnance, and a sort of song-like cries twanging out from the sharp
fierce strains put upon the shrouds and backstays, and many noises in
her hold. You would have thought that her huge round-tops and heavy
furniture of spar and rigging would have given some regularity to her
pendulous swaying: but the contrary was the case, her action being
so jerky, abrupt, and unforegatherable by the legs, that walking was
impossible.
I passed the morning partly on deck, partly in the cabin, nearly all
the while in Imogene's society, Vanderdecken's passionate mood being
too vehement to suffer him to notice either me or my dearest. Indeed,
I sought the cabin chiefly to remove myself from his sight, for as
the weather darkened round his wrath mounted with it--visible in his
tempestuous stridings, and above all, in the flaming and cursing
eyes he would again and again level at the heavens; and I sometimes
felt that nothing less than my life might be the forfeit of my even
provoking his regard and constraining his attention to me in his
present satanic posture of mind.
When the dinner hour came, he fiercely ordered Prins to bring him
some drink on deck: he could not eat. All the morning he had been
directing his gaze into the south and north and east for any blurr of
the polished folds that should exhibit movement in the air in those
quarters; and from the undulating sea-line, which he searched in vain,
his eyes seemed to reel with the very sickness of wrath into the west
where, as I knew, the Curse was busy.
Imogene and I were as mute as images at table. We had agreed not to
utter a syllable whilst the mate was present, and some time before he
had finished his meal, we left the cabin for the quarter-deck, where
we sat hidden from Vanderdecken, who marched about the poop near the
tiller, with a tread whose echo rang through the solid deck, and with a
mien that made me ready to witness him at any minute repeat, waking and
sensible, the horrid blasphemous part he had performed in his sleep.
The faintness in the west deepened into thickness. The atmosphere grew
hot, and the fanning of the canvas that had before filled the decks
with chilling draughts became a refreshment. By two o'clock in the
afternoon the heads and shoulders of ponderous storm-clouds had shaped
themselves above the dingy blueish obscurity in the west; they jutted
up with a ghastly sheen of sickly bronze upon their peaks and brows
and made a very frightful appearance. You would have thought there was
a great motionless fold of heat suspended, viewless, in the middle
of the heavens, and that it was magnetically drawing up volumes of
black fumes from some pestilential land lying hidden behind the sea.
The strange light, rusty with the ominous storm-tinge, made the sea
appear round and hard, cheating the eye with the illusive complexion,
till the eastern sea-line looked thirty leagues distant, and not closer
westwards either, spite of its fading out in a jumble of ugly shadow
that way. The sky still had a dirty sort of blue where the sun went out
behind it, and I tell you 'twas scaring to find him sunk out of sight
in a kind of ether whose hue, deceptive as it was, caused it to look
clear enough for him to float in. It was in its way a sheer drowning of
the luminary, like the foundering of a flaming fabric in the sea.
The gloom stole gradually into darkness as though some giant hand
was warily drawing a sable curtain over our mastheads. Never did I
watch the growth of a storm with such awe as now filled me. To my
alarmed sight, the gathering seemed like an embodiment of the Curse
in dreadful, swelling, livid vapours, whose dull hectic, whose sallow
bronze glaring out of the murkiness, showed like the overflowing of the
blue and scarlet and sunlight fires pent up in those teeming surcharged
bosoms. My plain sense assured me that the tempest could not hold for
this Death Ship the menace that would render its aspect terrifying to
the mariner on board an earthly craft; yet it was impossible for my
instincts as a seaman to accommodate themselves to the supernatural
conditions which begirt me, and I found myself trembling for the safety
of the ship when I discovered that the tempest was suffered to grow
without an order being given to the men to shorten sail and prepare for
it.
I left Imogene and stepped furtively along the quarter-deck to command
the poop, and saw Vanderdecken standing aft, surveying the storm with
his arms folded, his chin depressed, and his face staring out ashenly
against the gloom. I watched him for some minutes, but never once did
he stir. Arents and Van Vogelaar were on the other side of the deck,
leaning over the rail, gazing at God knows what, but never speaking as
I could be sure in the silence that rested upon the ship. The men hung
about in groups forward; mere cunningly devised shapes of human beings
without the faintest stir of restlessness among them. Many of them
smoked, and the pale wreaths went from their paler lips into the air
straight as staffs.
"Imogene, look at that sky!" I whispered, "did mortal ever behold the
like of it?"
'Twas two o'clock; a tempest-coloured twilight, in which the sails to
the flattened swell swayed like visionary wings grown languid with long
flight, and feebly hovering and almost noiselessly beating over the
ship; out of the gloom over the side came now and again the yearning
moan of water, foamlessly laving the bends and run of the vessel; in
each death-like pause you heard the silence tingling in the air with
the low phantasmal muttering of a weltering sea, a sound as of an
imagination of unreal breakers upon a faery shore.
With hands clasped upon my arm, my darling looked as I pointed. In
the extreme west the shade of the heavens was a sort of dismal slate,
and there was an incessant winking of lightning all about it, like a
mad dancing of stars of piercing brilliance; this enlarged into dense
masses of dark vapour streaked as sand is ribbed by the action of surf;
then zenith-wards was a space of faint green sky, very dim as though
beheld through smoke, and past this lay a floating body of thin vapour
thickening over our mastheads into an amazing appearance of clouds like
to the bush that shags the New Holland slopes, merging eastwards into
a vast array of clouds twisted into the aspect of whirlpools, and in
their brooding motionlessness resembling vortices suddenly arrested
when most madly gyrating. But this description, though imitated to the
life, conveys not the least idea of the horrid appearance of that sky,
for there is nothing in words to express the effect upon the mind of
the contrast of the several shades of colour all combinating to fill
the sea with a malignant hue, and the keen throbbing of the lightning
low down, the washing sweep of the sick and ghastly ocean into the
western dusk, the stooping soot of the vaporous maelstroms overhead,
only waiting, as it seemed, for some storm-signal to start off every
one of them into a very madness of revolution, boiling out into wet and
crimsoned tempests.
After a little all these appearances melted into one great cloud of
an indigo tint, ridged with layers of black vapour and blackening
into very midnight on the western seaboard where the lightning was
shooting. The sea had strangely flattened; the weighty swells which
had precoursed the growth of the storm had run away down the eastern
waters; it was as though the hot heaviness of the rising and spreading
blackness had pressed down the ocean into a smooth plain.
As not an order had yet been given, not a clewline nor a halyard
touched, I had made up my mind to presently behold an astonishing
exhibition of magic; that is to say, I was to witness a sudden violent
blast of storm strike this Death Ship with every sail she carried
abroad, and no harm to come to her from it. All at once there was
a great stroke of lightning that flashed up the heavy oppressive
obscurity, and the whole ship leapt to the eye in a blaze of emerald
fire. There fell a few huge drops of rain, covering the decks with
circles as big as saucers. A sullen shock of thunder boomed in a single
report out of the west, and then it was that the voice of Vanderdecken
rang out like a vibratory echo of the deep storm-note that had died
away.
"Clew up the topsails and topgallant sails!"
"In sprit-sail and get the yard fore and aft!"
"Some hands this way and stow the mizzen!"
"Lower the main-yard and furl the sail!"
"Stand by to double reef the fore-course!"
These and other orders he delivered one by one, and they were repeated
by the two mates and the boatswain.
I cannot believe that any fantastic vision was ever wilder, stranger,
more impressive than the picture offered by the Death Ship when her
men went to work to snug her down. Their mechanically-moving shapes
hauling upon the ropes, running like shadows along the decks, vanishing
in the sullen, swarming thickness as they mounted the shrouds, every
man as silent as a spectre; the fitful trembling out of the whole
vessel to the white and green and violet glimmer of the yet distant
lightning; the dark sea dimly glancing into a kind of light, wan and
indeterminable as the sheen of stars in polished steel, under the play
of those western glitterings; the blackness overhead now settled down
to the eastern seaboard, over the horizon of which there yet hovered a
streak of dusty green--it was a spectacle to need the hand of Dante or
Milton.
Compar'd to these storms, Death is but a qualm,
Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermudas calm;
Darkness, Light's eldest brother, his birthright
Claims o'er the World!
It was as black as night. What the men were about, with what dispatch
they worked, it was impossible to see. No songs or cries came from them
to enable me to guess their movements. If ever Imogene and I exchanged
a word it was in a whisper, so heart subduing was the darkness and the
horrible element of suspense and uncertainty in it. I had her close
to the cabin-front under the poop, ready for the shelter of it at the
outburst. Ten minutes went by, and then it seemed to me as if a deeper
shade yet had penetrated the darkness. Suddenly, I heard a far-off
humming noise, a kind of growling sound, not to be likened to thunder,
though you seemed to catch the note of that too in the multitudinous
crying. It was as if the denizens of a thousand forests were flying
before the roaring of a tornado among the trees, every savage beast
raising its own savage cry as it went, the whole uproar so remote as to
resemble a mountain's reverberation of the horrible clamour leagues and
leagues distant inland.
"What is that?" cried Imogene.
Ere I could speak, the heavens were split in twain by a blast of
lightning that looked to fly like a dazzling shaft of flame from the
north sheer over our mastheads into the south. It was almost instantly
followed by a crash of thunder, ear-splitting as the explosion of the
batteries of a dozen first-rates all discharged at one moment. And then
fell the rain in a whole body of water, charged with hailstones as big
as pigeon's eggs. The fall raised such an uproar on our decks that you
looked to see the whole substantial fabric shattered by it. The surface
of the sea foamed in fire to that lashing of water and hail. There was
now a perpetual blaze of lightning, but the thunder merely deepened
the prodigious noise of the rushing wet without, its claps being
distinguishable in the dreadful tumult. We had immediately withdrawn to
the cabin, and closing the door, stood looking on through the window.
The decks were full of water, which, cascading through the ports and
all other freeing orifices, added its roaring to the other notes of the
tempest. The ship seemed on fire to as high as we could see with the
hellish and continual flaming of the lightning.
'Twas of several colours, and in the same breath you saw spars,
rigging, bulwark-rails, all blazing out as though lumined with brushes
dipped in blue and crimson, and star-white and yellow and dark violet
fires.
But no wind as yet; not a breath! That I could tell by the droop of
the fore-course hanging by its gear, and faintly fanning dark and wet
from its yard. But I knew it could not be far off. Those sounds I had
heard as of a thousand affrighted wild beasts were--my ear well knew
the noise--the echoings high in the middle air of a prodigious wind
bellowing as it swept the ocean into white rage. My heart beat swiftly;
all was so fearfully real that I could not grasp the supernatural
conditions of the life of this ship and crew, which had otherwise
assured me that the Curse that triumphed over the monarch Death must
be superior to the wildest hurricane that ever piled the ocean into
mountains.
"Hark!" I exclaimed, "it is upon us!" and as I spoke the gale smote
us like a bolt from heaven, falling upon us with a long and frightful
scream and amid a volley of lightning that made the sky a blinding
purple dazzle from sea-line to sea-line. I held with both hands to
one side of the frame of the window, and Imogene, half-swooning with
terror, lay against me, nothing but my body saving her from being
dashed against the side of the cabin. Such was the sharpness of the
angle to which the first frenzy of the liberated hurricane heeled the
vessel, that for some minutes I veritably believed she was foundering.
The ocean boiled in a flat plain of froth, and the ship lay steady upon
the enraged whiteness, with the rail of her bulwarks under, and you
heard amid the seething and shrill shrieking of the wind, the sound
of the water pouring on to her decks over the upper and quarter-deck
and forecastle-rails, as the cataract thunders, coiling with a pure
head, over the edge of some rocky abrupt. If I had opened the door--if
indeed I could have taken action on that violent headlong steep of
deck--it would have merely been to drown the cabin and Imogene and
myself. There was nothing to be done but attend the issue, and for
several minutes, I say, I stood holding on, my dearest clasping me and
so supporting herself, scarce knowing whether the vessel was under
water or not, unable to speak for the horrible clamour without, the
lightning continuously holding the fabric visible through the window in
its mani-coloured blaze, and the enduring steadiness of the hull upon
the flat foam putting a terror into the situation you would not have
remarked in her labouring in a hollow sea.
Presently, to my great joy, I perceived that she was recovering her
upright posture. They had succeeded in getting her to pay off, and
after a little, giving her tall stem to the gale, she went before it
as upright as a church, the water on her decks pouring away overboard,
the piercing fury of the wind robbed to the extent of the velocity with
which the vessel drove, and no other sound rising up off the sea but
the amazing hissing of foam.
"Curse or no Curse," said I, "Vanderdecken knows his business as a
sailor, and call me a Dutchman if here has not been a noble stroke of
seamanship!"
"Wy zyn al Verdomd!" said the parrot.