OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE PHANTOM DEATH.
“No other writer so effectually carries his readers down to the sea in
ships, and even in steamers he never fails to give us the true salt
atmosphere.... ‘The Lazarette of the Huntress’ is undoubtedly one of
the most exciting tales ever written by a past-master in the art of
thrilling his readers, while the other ten yarns are all thoroughly
interesting.”—MANCHESTER COURIER.
“There is not one which is not entertaining, and many are positively
thrilling.”—SUN.
“We can cordially recommend it as being, in its way, equal to anything
that Mr. Clark Russell has yet written. Higher praise than this could
hardly be given to a collection of stories.”—SPEAKER.
“There is plenty of variety, and all are as good reading as those which
have previously come from the same author’s pen.”—SCOTSMAN.
“All full of adventure, and form capital reading.”—LLOYD’S WEEKLY NEWS.
“A collection of thrilling tales of the sea from the ever-felicitous
pen of Mr. Clark Russell, the most inventive and picturesque of modern
writers on maritime subjects.... In point of merit no distinction can
be made between these stories, for they are one and all absolutely
first-class.”—DAILY TELEGRAPH.
“Marked by Mr. Clark Russell’s genius, in which the horrible, the
grotesque, and the humorous are well contrasted. No other writer so
realises for us the moods of the sea, or tells tales of the sea with such
faithful and vivid presentation.”—LEEDS MERCURY.
“All alike intensely interesting, and instinct with the life and motion
of the ‘ever-changing, never-changing sea.’”—WEEKLY DISPATCH.
“One thing is certain about Mr. Clark Russell—whatever the story he
has to tell, he cannot write a page without imparting to it the briny
savour of the sea. His storms are impressive, his bright breezes are
exhilarating, but his rendering of a dead ocean calm is as unique as the
thing itself. It is a master’s work.”—ACADEMY.
“Mr. Russell keeps up a remarkable freshness of tone in his
sea-stories.... These stories vary a good deal in purport and incident,
but they are all attractive and ingenious.... Eleven half-hours of
thoroughly diverting fiction.”—ATHENÆUM.
“There is something picturesque, or weird, or sensational, in all of
them.... All are entertaining, all are especially suitable for readers
in a hurry, or readers who want something that will let thought be
quiet.”—BOOKMAN.
“The wonderful fertility of invention which we have once or twice
referred to as specially characteristic of Mr. Russell’s maritime novels
is well in evidence in this collection of stories. The best of them are
really excellent, and even those which are less good than the best stand
on an exceptionally high level.”—SPECTATOR.
“‘The Phantom Death’ has all the best characteristics of Mr. Russell’s
style—stirring plot, mastery of exact detail, and power of bringing each
picture vividly before the mind’s eye of the reader.”—ST. PAUL’S.
“All racy of the real sea, vigorously told, and exciting some admiration
at the fertility of the imagination which has contrived to create so many
diverse sensational incidents out of such similar materials without a
single instance of repetition.”—GUARDIAN.
NOVELS, ETC., BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.
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OVERDUE.
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ROUND THE GALLEY-FIRE.
IN THE MIDDLE WATCH.
ON THE FO’K’SLE HEAD.
A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE.
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
THE MYSTERY OF THE “OCEAN STAR.”
THE ROMANCE OF JENNY HARLOWE.
AN OCEAN TRAGEDY.
MY SHIPMATE LOUISE.
ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA.
THE GOOD SHIP “MOHOCK.”
THE PHANTOM DEATH.
IS HE THE MAN?
HEART OF OAK.
THE CONVICT SHIP.
THE LAST ENTRY.
THE TALE OF THE TEN.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._ each.
A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS.
THE DEATH SHIP.
THE SHIP: HER STORY. With 50 Illustrations by H. C. SEPPINGS
WRIGHT. Small 4to, cloth, 6_s._
THE “PRETTY POLLY”: A VOYAGE OF INCIDENT. With 12 Illustrations
by G. E. ROBERTSON. Large crown 8vo, cloth, gilt edges, 5_s._
THE CONVICT SHIP. POPULAR EDITION, medium 8vo, 6_d._
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 ST. MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.
THE PHANTOM DEATH
ETC.
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF
“MY SHIPMATE LOUISE,” “ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA,” ETC.
[Illustration]
A NEW IMPRESSION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1906
NOTE.
The author begs to thank the proprietors of the _Idler_, _To-Day_, the
_Strand Magazine_, the _Pall Mall Magazine_, and _Phil May’s Annual_, for
their kind permission to reprint the stories collected in this volume.
BATH,
_Dec. 1894_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE PHANTOM DEATH 1
BROKERS’ BAY 24
THE LAZARETTE OF THE “HUNTRESS” 46
A MEMORY OF THE PACIFIC 70
“SO UNNECESSARY!” 84
THE MAJOR’S COMMISSION 110
A NIGHTMARE OF THE DOLDRUMS 134
“TRY FOR HER IN FIFTY” 159
THE “CHILIMAN” TRAGEDY 185
THE SECRET OF THE DEAD MATE 217
THE TRANSPORT “PALESTINE” 241
_THE PHANTOM DEATH._
On the 24th of April, 1840, having finished the business that had carried
me into the Brazils, I arrived at Rio de Janeiro, where I found a vessel
lying nearly loaded, and sailing for the port of Bristol in four or
five days. In those times, passenger traffic between Great Britain and
the eastern coast of South America was almost entirely carried on in
small ships, averaging from 200 to 500 tons. The funnel of the ocean
mail steamer, with her gilded saloons and side wheels, which, to the
great admiration of all beholders, slapped twelve knots an hour out of
the composite fabric, had not yet hove into sight above the horizon of
commerce, and folks were very well satisfied if they were no longer than
three months in reaching the Brazilian coast out of the River Thames.
The little ship in which I took passage was a barque called the _Lord of
the Isles_; her burthen was something under four hundred tons. She was a
round-bowed waggon of a vanished type, with a square, sawed-off stern,
painted ports, heavy over-hanging channels, and as loftily rigged, I
was going to say, as a line-of-battle-ship, owing to her immense beam,
which gave her the stability of a church. I applied to the agent and
hired a cabin, and found myself, to my secret satisfaction, the only
passenger in the ship. Yes, I was rejoiced to be the sole passenger; my
passage out had been rendered memorably miserable by the society of as
ill-conditioned, bad-tempered, sulky a lot of wretches as ever turned in
of a night into bunks, and cursed the captain in their gizzards in a calm
for not being able to whistle a wind up over the sea-line.
The name of the skipper of the _Lord of the Isles_ was Joyce. He was
unlike the average run of the men in that trade. Instead of being
beef-faced and bow-legged, humid of eye and gay with grog-blossoms, he
was tall, pale, spare; he spoke low and in a melancholy key; he never
swore; he drank wine and water, and there was little or nothing in his
language to suggest the sailor. His berth was right aft on the starboard
side; mine was right aft also, next his. Three cabins on either hand
ran forward from these two after-berths. Two of them were occupied by
the first and second mates. Between was a roomy “state-cabin,” as the
term then was: a plain interior furnished with an oblong table and fixed
chairs, lighted by day by a large skylight, by night by a couple of brass
lamps.
We sailed away on a Monday morning, as well I recollect, out of the
spacious and splendid scene of the harbour of Rio, and under full breasts
of canvas, swelling to the height of a main-skysail big enough to serve
as a mizzen topgallant-sail for a thousand-ton ship of to-day, and
with taut bowlines and yearning jibs, and a heel of hull that washed a
two-foot wide streak of greenish copper through the wool-white swirl
of froth that broke from the bows, the _Lord of the Isles_ headed on a
straight course for the deep solitudes of the Atlantic.
All went well with us for several days. Our ship’s company consisted of
twelve men, including a boatswain and carpenter. The forecastle hands
appeared very hearty, likely fellows, despite their pier-head raiment of
Scotch cap and broken small clothes, and open flannel shirt, and greasy
sheath-knife belted to the hip. They worked with a will, they sang out
cheerily at the ropes, they went in and out of the galley at meal-time
without faces of loathing, and but one complaint came aft before our
wonderful, mysterious troubles began: the ship’s bread crawled, they
said, and, being found truly very bad, good white flour was served out in
lieu.
We had been eight days at sea, and in that time had made fairly good way;
it drew down a quiet, soft, black night with the young moon gone soon
after sunset, a trembling flash of stars over the mastheads, a murky
dimness of heat and of stagnation all round about the sea-line, and a
frequent glance of sea-fire over the side when a dip of the barque’s
round bends drove the water from her in a swelling cloud of ebony. I
walked the quarter-deck with the captain, and our talk was of England
and of the Brazils, and of his experiences as a mariner of thirty years’
standing.
“What of the weather?” said I, as we came to a pause at the binnacle,
whose bright disc of illuminated card touched into phantom outlines the
hairy features of the Jack who grasped the wheel.
“There’s a spell of quiet before us, I fear,” he answered, in his
melancholy, monotonous voice. “No doubt a day will come, Mr. West,
when the unhappy sea-captain upon whose forehead the shipowner would
be glad to brand the words ‘Prompt Despatch’ will be rendered by steam
independent of that most capricious of all things—wind. The wind bloweth
as it listeth—which is very well whilst it keeps all on blowing; for with
our machinery of trusses, and parrels, and braces, we can snatch a sort
of propulsion out of anything short of hurricane antagonism within six
points of what we want to look up for. But of a dead night and of a dead
day, with the wind up and down, and your ship showing her stern to the
thirty-two points in a single watch, what’s to be done with an owner’s
request of _look sharp_? Will you come below and have some grog?”
The second mate, a man named Bonner, was in charge of the deck. I
followed the captain into the cabin, where he smoked a cigar; he drank
a little wine and water, I drained a tumbler of cold brandy grog, then
stepped above for an hour of fresh air, and afterwards to bed, six bells,
eleven o’clock, striking as I turned in.
I slept soundly, awoke at seven o’clock, and shortly afterwards went on
deck. The watch were at work washing down. The crystal brine flashed over
the white plank to the swing of the bucket in the boatswain’s powerful
grasp, and the air was filled with the busy noise of scrubbing-brushes,
and of the murmurs of some live-stock under the long-boat. The morning
was a wide radiant scene of tropic sky and sea—afar, right astern on
the light blue verge, trembled the mother-o’-pearl canvas of a ship; a
small breeze was blowing off the beam; from under the round bows of the
slightly-leaning barque came a pleasant, brook-like sound of running
waters—a soft shaling as of foam over stones, sweet to the ear in that
heat as the music of a fountain. Mr. Bonner, the second mate, was again
in charge of the deck. When I passed through the companion hatch I saw
him standing abreast of the skylight at the rail: the expression of his
face was grave and full of concern, and he seemed to watch the movements
of the men with an inattentive eye.
I bade him good morning; he made no reply for a little, but looked at me
fixedly, and then said, “I’m afraid Captain Joyce is a dead man.”
“What is wrong with him?” I exclaimed eagerly, and much startled.
“I don’t know, sir. I wish there was a medical man on board. Perhaps
you’d be able to tell what he’s suffering from if you saw him.”
I at once went below, and found the lad who waited upon us in the cabin
preparing the table for breakfast. I asked him if the captain was alone.
He answered that Mr. Stroud, the chief mate, was with him. On this I went
to the door of Captain Joyce’s cabin and lightly knocked. The mate looked
out, and, seeing who I was, told me in a soft voice to enter.
Captain Joyce lay in his bunk dressed in a flannel shirt and a pair of
white drill trousers. All his throat and a considerable portion of his
chest were exposed, and his feet were naked. I looked at him scarcely
crediting my sight: I did not know him as the man I had parted with but
a few hours before. He was swelled from head to foot as though drowned:
the swelling contorted his countenance out of all resemblance to his
familiar face; the flesh of him that was visible was a pale blue, as if
rubbed with a powder of the stuff called “blue” which the laundresses use
in getting up their linen. His eyes were open, but the pupils were rolled
out of sight, and the “whites,” as they are called, were covered with red
blotches.
I had no knowledge of medicine, and could not imagine what had come to
the poor man. He was unconscious, and evidently fast sinking. I said to
Mr. Stroud, “What is this?”
The mate answered, “I’m afraid he’s poisoned himself accidentally. It
looks to me like poison. Don’t it seem so to you, sir? See how his
fingers and toes are curled.”
I ran my eye over the cabin and exclaimed, “Have you searched for any
bottles containing poison?”
“I did so when he sent for me at four o’clock, and complained of feeling
sick and ill. He was then changing colour, and his face was losing its
proper looks. I asked him if he thought he had taken anything by mistake.
He answered no, unless he had done so in his sleep. He awoke feeling very
bad, and that was all he could tell me.”
I touched the poor fellow’s hand, and found it cold. His breathing was
swift and thin. At moments a convulsion, like a wrenching shudder, passed
through him.
“Is it,” I asked, “some form of country sickness, do you think—some kind
of illness that was lying latent in him when we sailed?”
“I never heard of any sort of sickness,” he answered, “that made a man
look like that—not cholera even. And what but poison would do its work so
quickly? Depend upon it he’s either been poisoned, or poisoned himself
unawares.”
“Poisoned!” I exclaimed. “Who’s the man in this ship that’s going to do
such a thing?”
“It’s no natural illness,” he answered, looking at the livid, bloated
face of the dying man; and he repeated with gloomy emphasis, “He’s either
been poisoned, or he’s poisoned himself unawares.”
I stood beside Mr. Stroud for about a quarter of an hour, watching the
captain and speculating upon the cause of his mortal sickness; we talked
in low voices, often pausing and starting, for the convulsions of the
sufferer made us think that he had his mind and wished to sit up and
speak; but the ghastly, horrid, vacant look of his face continued fixed
by the stubborn burial of the pupils of his eyes; his lips moved only
when his frame was convulsed. I put my finger upon his pulse and found
the beat thread-like, terribly rapid, intermittent, and faint. Then,
feeling sick and scared, I went on deck for some air.
The second mate asked me how the captain was and what I thought. I
answered that he might be dead even now as I spoke; that I could not
conceive the nature of the malady that was killing him, that had
apparently fastened upon him in his sleep, and was threatening to kill
him within the compass of four or five hours, but that Mr. Stroud
believed he had been poisoned, or had poisoned himself accidentally.
“Poisoned!” echoed the second mate, and he sent a look in the direction
of the ship’s galley. “What’s he eaten that we haven’t partaken of? A
regular case of poisoning, does the chief officer think it? Oh no—oh
no—who’s to do it? The captain’s too well liked to allow of such a guess
as that. If the food’s been fouled by the cook in error, how’s it that
the others of us who ate at the cabin table aren’t likewise seized?”
There was no more to be said about it then, but in less than half an
hour’s time the mate came up and told us the captain was gone.
“He never recovered his senses, never spoke except to talk in delirium,”
he said.
“You think he was poisoned, sir?” said the second mate.
“Not wilfully,” answered Mr. Stroud, looking at me. “I never said that;
nor is it a thing one wants to think of,” he added, sending his gaze
round the wide scene of flashing ocean.
He then abruptly quitted us and walked to the galley, where for some
while he remained out of sight. When he returned he told the second
mate with whom I had stood talking that he had spoken to the cook, and
thoroughly overhauled the dressing utensils, and was satisfied that the
galley had nothing to do with the murderous mischief which had befallen
the skipper.
“But why be so cock-certain, Mr. Stroud,” said I, “that the captain’s
dead of poisoning?”
“I _am_ cock-certain,” he answered shortly, and with some little passion.
“Name me the illness that’s going to kill a man in three or four hours,
and make such a corpse of him as lies in the captain’s cabin.”
He called to the second mate, and they paced the deck together deep in
talk. The men had come up from breakfast, and the boatswain had set them
to the various jobs of the morning; but the news of the captain’s death
had gone forward; it was shocking by reason of its suddenness. Then,
again, the death of the master of a ship lies cold and heavy upon the
spirits of a company at sea; ’tis the head gone, the thinking part. The
mate may make as good a captain, but he’s not the man the crew signed
articles under. The seamen of the _Lord of the Isles_ wore grave faces
as they went about their work; they spoke softly, and the boatswain
delivered his orders in subdued notes. After a bit the second mate walked
forward and addressed the boatswain and some of the men, but what he said
I did not catch.
I breakfasted and returned on deck: it was then ten o’clock. I found the
main-topsail to the mast and a number of seamen standing in the gangway,
whilst the two mates hung together on the quarter-deck, talking, as
though waiting. In a few minutes four seamen brought the body of the
captain up through the companion hatch, and carried it to the gangway.
The corpse was stitched up in a hammock and rested upon a plank, over
which the English ensign was thrown. I thought this funeral very hurried,
and dreaded to think that the poor man might be breathing and alive at
the instant of his launch, for after all we had but the mate’s assurance
that the captain was dead; and what did Mr. Stroud know of death—that
is, as it would be indicated by the body of a man who had died from some
swift, subtle, nameless distemper, as Captain Joyce seemingly had?
When the funeral was over, the topsail swung, and the men returned to
their work, I put the matter to the mate, who answered that the corpse
had turned black, and that there could be no more question of his being
dead than of his now being overboard.
The breeze freshened that morning. At noon it was blowing strong, with a
dark, hard sky of compacted cloud, under which curls and shreds of yellow
scud fled like a scattering of smoke, and the mates were unable to get an
observation. Mr. Stroud seemed engrossed by the sudden responsibilities
which had come upon him, and talked little. That afternoon he shifted
into the captain’s berth, being now, indeed, in command of the barque. It
was convenient to him to live in that cabin, for the necessary nautical
appliances for navigating the ship were there along with facilities
for their use. Mr. Bonner told me that he and the mate had thoroughly
examined the cabin, overhauled the captain’s boxes, lockers, shelves and
the like for anything of a poisonous nature, but had met with nothing
whatever. It was indeed an amazing mystery, he said, and he was no longer
of opinion with Mr. Stroud that poison, accidentally or otherwise taken,
had destroyed the captain. Indeed, he now leaned to my view, that Captain
Joyce had fallen a victim to some disease which had lain latent in him
since leaving Rio, something deadly quick and horribly transforming, well
known, maybe, to physicians of the Brazils, if, indeed, it were peculiar
to that country.
Well, three days passed, and nothing of any moment happened. The wind
drew ahead and braced our yards fore and aft for us, and the tub of a
barque went to leeward like an empty cask, shouldering the head seas
into snowstorms off her heavy round bow, and furrowing a short scope of
oil-smooth wake almost at right angles with her sternpost. Though Mr.
Stroud had charge of the ship, he continued from this time to keep watch
and watch with Mr. Bonner as in the captain’s life, not choosing, I dare
say, to entrust the charge of the deck to the boatswain. On the evening
of this third day that I have come to, I was sitting in the cabin under
the lamp writing down some memories of the past week in a diary, when the
door of the captain’s berth was opened, and my name was faintly called.
I saw Mr. Stroud, and instantly went to him. His hands were clasped
upon his brow, and he swayed violently as though in pain, with greater
vehemence than the heave of the deck warranted; his eyes were starting,
and, by the clear light of the brace of cabin lamps, I easily saw that
his complexion was unusually dusky, and darkening even, so it seemed to
me, as I looked.
I cried out, “What is the matter, Mr. Stroud?”
“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, “I am in terrible pain—I am horribly ill—I am
dying.”
I grasped him by the arm and conducted him to his bunk, into which he
got, groaning and holding his head, with an occasional strange short
plunge of his feet such as a swimmer makes when resting in the water on
his back. I asked him if he was only just now seized. He answered that he
was in a deep sleep, from which he was awakened by a burning sensation
throughout his body. He lay quiet awhile, supposing it was a sudden heat
of the blood; but the fire increased, and with it came torturing pains in
the head, and attacks of convulsions; and even whilst he told me this
the convulsive fits grew upon him, and he broke off to groan deeply as
though in exquisite pain and distress of mind; then he’d set his teeth,
and then presently scream out, “Oh, my God! I have been poisoned—I am
dying!”
I was thunderstruck and terrified to the last degree. What was this
dreadful thing—this phantom death that had come into the ship? Was it
a contagious plague? But what distemper is there that, catching men in
their sleep, swells and discolours them even as the gaze rests upon them,
and dismisses their souls to God in the space of three or four hours?
I ran on deck, but waited until Mr. Bonner had finished bawling out some
orders to the men before addressing him. The moon was young, but bright,
and she sheared scythe-like through the pouring shadows, and the light
of her made a marvellous brilliant whiteness of the foam as it burst in
masses from the plunge of the barque’s bows. When I gave the news to
Mr. Bonner, he stared at me for some moments wildly and in silence, and
then rushed below. I followed him as quick as he went, for I had often
used the sea, and the giddiest dance of a deck-plank was all one with
the solid earth to my accustomed feet. We entered the mate’s berth, and
Mr. Bonner lighted the bracket lamp and stood looking at his shipmate,
and by the aid of the flame he had kindled, and the bright light flowing
in through the open door, I beheld a tragic and wonderful change in Mr.
Stroud, though scarce ten minutes had passed since I was with him. His
face was bloated, the features distorted, his eyes rolled continuously,
and frequent heavy twitching shudders convulsed his body. But the most
frightful part was the dusky hue of his skin, that was of a darker blue
than I had observed in the captain.
He still had his senses, and repeated to the second mate what he had
related to me. But he presently grew incoherent, then fell delirious, in
about an hour’s time was speechless and lay racked with convulsions; of
a horrid blue, the features shockingly convulsed, and the whites of the
eyes alone showing as in the captain’s case.
He had called me at about nine o’clock, and he was a dead man at two in
the morning, or four bells in the middle watch. Both the second mate
and I were constantly in and out with the poor fellow; but we could do
no good, only marvel, and murmur our astonishment and speculations. We
put the captain’s steward, a young fellow, to watch him—this was an hour
before his death—and at four bells the lad came out with a white face,
and said to me, who sat at the table, depressed and awed and overwhelmed
by this second ghastly and indeterminable visitation, that the chief mate
was dead, had ceased to breathe, and was quickly turning black.
Mr. Bonner came into the cabin with the boatswain, and they went into the
dead man’s berth and stayed there about a quarter of an hour. When they
came out the boatswain looked at me hard. I recollect that that man’s
name was Matthews. I asked some questions, but they had nothing to tell,
except that the body had turned black.
“What manner of disease can it be that kills in this fashion?” said I.
“If it’s the plague, we maybe all dead men in a week.”
“It’s no plague,” said the boatswain, in a voice that trembled with its
own volume of sound.
“What is it?” I cried.
“Poison!” he shouted, and he dropped his clenched fist with the weight of
a cannon-ball upon the table.
I looked at the second mate, who exclaimed, “The boatswain swears to the
signs. He’s seen the like of that corpse in three English seamen who were
poisoned up at Chusan.”
“Do you want to make out that both men have committed suicide?” I
exclaimed.
“I want to make out that both men have been poisoned!” shouted the
boatswain, in his voice of thunder.
There was a significance in the insolence of the fellow that confounded
and alarmed me, and the meaning was deepened by the second mate allowing
his companion to address me in this roaring, affronting way without
reproof. I hoped that the man had been drinking, and that the second
mate was too stupid with horror to heed his behaviour to me, and without
giving either of them another word I walked to my cabin and lay down.
I have no space here to describe the wild and terrifying fancies which
ran in my head. For some while I heard the boatswain and the second
mate conversing, but the cabin bulkhead was stout, the straining and
washing noises all about the helm heavy and continuous, and I caught not
a syllable of what they said. At what hour I fell asleep I cannot tell;
when I awoke my cabin was full of the sunshine that streamed in through
the stern window. I dressed, and took hold of the handle of the door,
and found myself a prisoner. Not doubting I was locked up in error, I
shook the door, and beat upon it, and called out loudly to be released.
After a few minutes the door was opened, and the second mate stood in the
threshold. He exclaimed—
“Mr. West, it’s the wish of the men that you should be locked up. I’m
no party to the job—but they’re resolved. I’ll tell you plainly what
they think: they believe you’ve had a hand in the death of the captain
and the chief mate—the bo’sun’s put that into their heads; I’m the only
navigator left, and they’re afraid you’ll try your hand on me if you have
your liberty. You’ll be regularly fed and properly seen to; but it’s the
crew’s will that you stop here.”
With that, and without giving me time to utter a word, he closed and
secured the door. I leaned against the bulkhead and sought to rally my
wits, but I own that for a long while I was as one whose mind comes
slowly to him after he has been knocked down insensible. I never for an
instant supposed that the crew really believed me guilty of poisoning
the captain and chief mate: I concluded that the men had mutinied, and
arranged with Mr. Bonner to run away with the ship, and that I should
remain locked up in my cabin until they had decided what to do with me.
By-and-by the door was opened, and the young steward put a tray
containing some breakfast upon the cabin deck. He was but a mule of a
boy, and I guessed that nothing but what might still further imperil me
could come of my questioning him, so in silence I watched him put down
the tray and depart. The meal thus sent to me was plentiful, and I drew
some small heart out of the attention. Whilst I ate and drank, I heard
sounds in the adjoining berth, and presently gathered that they were
preparing the body of the chief mate for its last toss over the side.
After a bit they went on deck with the corpse, and then all was still
in the cabin. I knew by the light of the sun that the vessel was still
heading on her course for England. It was a bright morning, with a wild
windy sparkle in as much of the weather as I could see through the cabin
window. The plunge of the ship’s stern brought the water in a roar of
milky froth all about the counter close under me, and the frequent jar of
rudder and jump of wheel assured me that the barque was travelling fast
through the seas.
What, in God’s name, did the men mean by keeping me a prisoner? Did they
think me a madman? Or that I, whose life together with theirs depended
upon the safe navigation of the barque, would destroy those who alone
could promise me security? And what had slain the two men? If poison,
who had administered it? One man might have died by his own hand, but
not both. And since both had perished from the same cause, self-murder
was not to be thought of. What was it, then, that had killed them,
visiting them in their sleep, and discolouring, bloating, convulsing, and
destroying them in a few hours? Was it some deadly malady subtly lurking
in the atmosphere of the after part of the vessel? If so, then I might be
the next to be taken. Or was there some devilish murderer lying secretly
hidden? Or was one of the crew the doer of these things? I seemed to
smell disease and death, and yearned for the freedom of the deck, and for
the sweetness of the wide, strong rush of wind.
The day passed. The second mate never visited me. The lad arrived with my
meals, and when he came with my supper I asked him some questions, but
obtained no more news than that the second mate had taken up his quarters
in the adjoining berth as acting captain, and that the boatswain was
keeping watch and watch with him.
I got but little rest that night. It blew hard, and the pitching of the
vessel was unusually heavy. Then, again, I was profoundly agitated and
in deep distress of mind; for, supposing the men in earnest, it was not
only horrible to be thought capable of murder, there was the prospect of
my being charged and of having to clear my character. Or, supposing the
men’s suspicion or accusation a villainous pretext, how would they serve
me? Would they send me adrift, or set me ashore to perish on some barren
coast, or destroy me out of hand? You will remember that I am writing of
an age when seafaring was not as it now is. The pirate and the slaver
were still afloat doing a brisk business. There often went a desperate
spirit in ships’ forecastles, and the maritime records of the time abound
with tragic narratives of revolt, seizure, cruelty of a ferocious sort.
Another day and another night went by, and I was still locked up in my
cabin, and, saving the punctual arrival of the lad with my meals, no man
visited me.
Some time about eight o’clock on the morning of the third day of my
confinement, I was looking through the cabin window at the space of grey
and foaming sea and sallow flying sky which came and went in the square
of the aperture with the lift and fall of the barque’s stern, when my
cabin door was struck upon, and in a minute afterwards opened, and the
boatswain appeared.
“Mr. West,” said he, after looking at me for a moment in silence with a
face whose expression was made up of concern and fear and embarrassment,
“I’ve come on my own part, and on the part of the men, sir, to ask your
pardon for our treatment of you. We was mistook. And our fears made us
too willing to believe that you had a hand in it. We dunno what it is
now, but as Jesus is my God, Mr. West, the second mate he lies dead of
the same thing in the next cabin!”
I went past him too stupefied to speak, and in a blind way sat down at
the cabin table and leaned my head against my hand. Presently I looked
up, and on lifting my eyes I caught sight of two or three sailors staring
down with white faces through the skylight.
“You tell me that the second mate’s dead?” said I.
“Yes, sir, dead of poison, too, so help me God!” cried the boatswain.
“Who remains to navigate the ship?” I said.
“That’s it, sir!” he exclaimed, “unless you can do it?”
“Not I. There’s no man amongst you more ignorant. May I look at the body?”
He opened the door of the cabin in which the others had died, and there,
in the bunk from which the bodies of Captain Joyce and Mr. Stroud had
been removed, lay now the blackened corpse of the second mate. It was
an awful sight and a passage of time horrible with the mystery which
charged it. I felt no rage at the manner in which I had been used by that
dead man there and the hurricane-lunged seaman alongside of me and the
fellows forward; I could think of nothing but the mystery of the three
men’s deaths, the lamentable plight we were all in through our wanting
a navigator, with the chance, moreover, that it _was_ the plague, and
not poison mysteriously given, that had killed the captain and mates,
so that all the rest of us, as I have said, might be dead men in another
week.
I returned to the cabin, and the boatswain joined me, and we stood beside
the table conversing, anxiously watched by several men who had stationed
themselves at the skylight.
“What we’ve got to do,” said I, “is to keep a bright look-out for ships,
and borrow some one to steer us home from the first vessel that will lend
us a navigator. We’re bound to fall in with something soon. Meanwhile,
you’re a smart seaman yourself, Matthews, as well qualified as any one of
them who have died to sail the ship, and there’s surely some intelligent
sailor amongst the crew who would relieve you in taking charge of the
deck. I’ll do all I can.”
“The question is, where’s the vessel now?” said the boatswain.
“Fetch me the log-book,” said I, “and see if you can find the chart
they’ve been using to prick the courses off on. We should be able to find
out where the ship was at noon yesterday. I can’t enter that cabin. The
sight of the poor fellow makes me sick.”
He went to the berth and passed through the door, and might have left me
about five minutes, evidently hunting for the chart, when he suddenly
rushed out, roaring in his thunderous voice, “I’ve discovered it! I’ve
discovered it!” and fled like a madman up the companion steps. I was
startled almost to the very stopping of my heart by this sudden furious
wild behaviour in him: then wondering what he meant by shouting “he had
discovered it!” I walked to the cabin door, and the very first thing my
eye lighted upon was a small snake, leisurely coiling its way from the
head to the feet of the corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a
rifle-barrel, and it then tapered to something like whipcord to its tail.
It was about two feet long, snow white, and speckled with black and red
spots.
This, then, was the phantom death! Yonder venomous reptile it was, then,
that, creeping out of some secret hiding-place, and visiting the unhappy
men one after another, had stung them in their sleep, in the darkness
of the cabin, and vanished before they had struck a light and realized
indeed that something desperate had come to them!
Whilst I stood looking at the snake, whose horror seemed to gain fresh
accentuation from the very beauty of its snow-white speckled skin and
diamond-bright eyes, the boatswain, armed with a long handspike, and
followed by a number of the crew, came headlong to the cabin. He thrust
the end of the handspike under the belly of the creature, and hove it
into the middle of the berth.
“Stand clear!” he roared, and with a blow or two smashed the reptile’s
head into a pulp. “Open that cabin window,” said he. One of the men did
so, and the boatswain with his boot scraped the mess of mashed snake on
to the handspike and shook it overboard.
“I told you they was poisoned,” he cried, breathing deep; “and, oh my
God, Mr. West—and I humbly ask your pardon again for having suspected
ye—do you know, sir, whilst I was a-talking to you just now I was
actually thinking of taking up my quarters in this here cabin this very
night.”
Thus much: and now to end this singular experience in a sentence or two.
Three days after the discovery of the snake we sighted and signalled a
large English merchantman bound to London from the Rio de la Plata. Her
chief officer came aboard, and we related our story. He asked to see the
snake. We told him we had thrown it overboard. On my describing it, he
informed me that he guessed it was the little poisonous reptile known in
certain districts of South America as the Ibiboboko. He returned to his
ship, and shortly afterwards the commander sent us his third officer,
with instructions to keep in company as long as possible.
_BROKERS’ BAY._
Brokers’ Bay is situated on the West Coast of England. You may search the
map for it in vain, and the reason why I call it by any other name than
that it bears will, when you have read this story, be as clear as the mud
in the water that brims to the base of Brokers’ cliffs. Brokers’ Bay is
a fine, curving sweep of land. For how many centuries the sea has been
sneakingly ebbing from it who can imagine? The time has been when the
galleon and the carack strained at their hempen ground tackle at anchors
six fathoms deep where the white windmill now stands within musket-shot
of the Crown and Anchor, and where the church spire darts the gleam of
its weathercock above the green thickness of a huddle of dwarf trees near
the little vicarage.
About fifty years ago a company of enterprising souls took it into their
heads to reclaim some of the land which the subtly and ceaselessly ebbing
sea, rising and falling with moon-like regularity, yet receding ever,
though noticeably only in spans of half-centuries, was leaving behind it.
They armed themselves with the necessary legal powers, they subscribed
all the capital they considered needful, and by processes of embanking,
draining, manuring, and the like, they succeeded in raising wheat and
grass, vegetables and flowers, where, since and long before the days of
the painted Briton, shuddering in the November blast, or perspiring away
his small clothes under the July sun, nothing had flourished but the dab
and the crab.
Yet the speculation on the whole was a failure. It was a patriotic
achievement in its way, and those concerned in it deserved well of the
nation; for if it be a fine thing to bleed for one’s country, how much
finer must it be to add to its dimensions, to enlarge its latitude and
longitude, and extend the home-sovereignty of the monarch? Yet, though
a pretty considerable village stood hard by the reclaimed land, houses
did not increase. The builder, whose Christian name is Jerry, came down
to Brokers’ Bay, and took a look around, and went home again, and did
nothing. He was not to be decoyed, he said. Brokers’ Bay was not the
right sort of place to start a town in, he thought. There was too much
mud, Mr. Jerry considered. He calculated that when the water was out
there was a full mile and three-quarters of slime. Oh yes, whilst the
slime was still slimy it reflected the sky just the same as if it had
been water, and it took a noble blood-red countenance of a hot sunset
evening, when the sea was a pink gleaming streak just under the horizon,
and it was very pleasing in that sort of way. But what were the doctors
going to say about all that mud, and what opportunities would a waste
of slush, extending one and three-quarter miles at ebb tide, provide
the local historian with when he came to write a guide-book and invent
Roman and Early English names for the immediate district, and deal with
the salubriousness of the climate, and give an analysis of the drinking
water? And what about the bathing? There was none. And what length of
pier would be wanted if the seaward end of it was to be permanently
water-washed?
The reclaimed ground was divided into lots for building; but nobody
built. The soil continued to be cultivated, nevertheless. Two
market-gardeners did very well out of it. A butcher rented thirty acres
of the pasture land; the remainder was variously dealt with in small ways
for growing purposes.
Now, that stretch of land had been reclaimed some fifteen years, when a
certain master mariner, whom I will call Captain Carey, arrived at the
adjacent village with the intention of taking a view of the Brokers’ Bay
foreshore. News that good land was cheap hereabouts had reached him up at
Blyth. He had unexpectedly come into a little fortune, had Captain Carey.
For years he had followed the coasting trade, working his way out through
the forescuttle into the captain’s cabin, and after thirty years of
seafaring, rendered more and more uncomfortable by gloomy anticipations
of the workhouse in his old age, he had been enriched by the will of an
Australian aunt, the amount being something between £9000 and £10,000.
Captain Carey had sprung from a West Country stock; his wife was a West
Country woman, and when they came into the Australian aunt’s legacy they
determined to break up their little home at Blyth and settle somewhere
on Western soil. So Captain Carey came to Brokers’ Bay, and with him
travelled his giant son, a youth of prodigious muscle, but of weak
intellect. A second Titan son was at this time at sea, working his way
towards the quarter-deck aboard an East Indiaman.
Captain Carey’s survey of the Brokers’ foreshore determined him on
purchasing a plot of land right amidships of the fine curve of reclaimed
soil. He bought four acres at a very low figure indeed, and then ordered
a small house to be built in the midst of his little estate. His wife
and her niece joined him and the giant half-witted son at the adjacent
village, and there the family dwelt at the sign of the Seven Bells whilst
the house was building.
It was quickly put together, and was then gay with a green balcony, and
it had motherly lubberly bay windows that made you think of a whaler’s
boats dangling at cranes, and the entrance was embellished with a
singular porch after the design of the retired master mariner, who had
recollected seeing something of the sort at Lisbon when he had gone as a
boy on a voyage to Portugal.
Captain Carey loved seclusion. Like most retired mariners, he hated to
be overlooked. This fondness for privacy, which grows out of a habit of
it, may be owing to there being no streets at sea, and no over-the-way.
The master of a vessel lives in a cabin all alone by himself—the Crusoe
of the after part of the ship. He measures his quarter-deck in lonely
walks; no eyes glittering above the bulwark rail watch his movements; his
behaviour as a man, his judgment as a seaman, but not his mode of life
as a private individual, are criticized by his crew. Hence, when a man
steps ashore after a long period of command at sea, he carries with him a
strong love of privacy, and much resolution of retirement. A great number
of little cottages by the ocean are occupied by solitary seamen, who pass
their time in looking through a telescope at the horizon, in arguing with
lonesome men of their own cloth, in smoking pipes at the Lugger Inn or at
the sign of the Lord Nelson, and turning in at night and turning out in
the morning.
To provide against being overlooked in case others should build hard
by, Captain Carey walled his little estate of four acres with a regular
bulkhead of a fence, handsomely spiked on top, and too tall even for his
giant son to peer over on tiptoe. In a few months the house was built,
papered, and in all ways completed; it was then furnished and the ground
fenced. Captain Carey and his family now took possession of their new
home. There was, first of all, Captain Carey, then Mrs. Carey, next the
giant young Carey (who had been known up in Blyth by the name of Mother
Carey’s chicken), and last, Mrs. Carey’s niece, a stout, active girl of
twenty, who helped Mrs. Carey in cooking and looking after the house;
for Carey, having been robbed, whilst absent on a coasting voyage, of a
new coat, a soft hat, a meerschaum pipe, and a few other trifles by a
maid-of-all-work, had sworn in hideous forecastle language never again to
keep another servant.
This happy family of Careys were very well pleased with their new home.
Old Carey was never weary of stepping out of doors to look at his house.
He seemed to find something fresh to admire every time he cast his eyes
over the little building. He and his son planted potatoes, onions,
cabbages, and other homely vegetables, and dug out and cultivated a very
considerable area of kitchen garden. They had not above three miles to
walk to attend divine worship. There were several convenient shops in
the adjacent village, not more than two miles and a half distant. There
was no roadway to speak of to Carey’s house, but in a very few weeks
the feet of the family and the tread of the tradespeople tramped out a
thin path over the reclaimed land to the village roadway, where it fell
with the sweep of the cliff to the level of the reclaimed soil. And the
view, on the whole, from Carey’s windows was fairly picturesque and
pleasing, even when the water was out and the scene was a sweeping flat
of mud. Afar on the dark blue edge of the sea hovered the feather-white
canvas of ships, easily resolved into denominationable fabrics by Carey’s
powerful telescope. The western sun glowed in the briny ooze till the
whole stretch of the stuff resembled a vast surface of molten gold. Here
and there, confronting Carey’s house, stood some scores of fangs of
rock, and when there was a flood-tide and a fresh in-shore gale the sea
snapped and beat and burst upon the beach with as much uproar as though
it were all fathomless ocean, instead of a dirty stretch of water with an
eighteen-foot rise of tide, and foam so dark and thick with dirt that,
after it had blown upon you and dried, it was as though you had ridden
through some dozen miles of muddy lanes.
The family had been settled about three months when the eldest son
arrived home from the long voyage he had made to China and the East
Indies. He was a tall, powerfully-built young man; but his education in
his youth had been neglected. Captain Carey, indeed, had not in those
days possessed the means to put him to school. Now, however, that the
skipper had come into a little fortune of, call it, £10,000, he resolved
to qualify his son for a position on the quarter-deck.
“Navigation I can teach him,” he said to his wife, “and if he was a
master-rigger he couldn’t know more about a ship. What he wants is the
sort of larning which you and me’s deficient in: the being able to talk
and write good English, with some sort of knowledge of history and the
likes of that; so that, should he ever get command of a passenger ship,
why, then, sitting at the head of the cabin table, he won’t be ashamed of
addressing the ladies and joining in the general conversation.”
So when this son arrived from China and the East Indies, the father,
instead of sending him to sea again, put him to read and study with a
clergyman who lived in the adjacent village, a gentleman who could not
obtain a living and who disdained a curacy.
Thus it came to pass that Captain Carey lived at home with his two sons
and wife and wife’s niece.
He stood in a bay window one day, and it entered his head to dig out a
pond and place a fountain in the middle of it.
“It’ll improve the property,” said Captain Carey, turning to his wife and
sons, who were lingering at the breakfast-table. “We’ll fix a pedestal
amidships of the pond and put a female statue upon it—one of them white
figures who keep their right hands aloft for the holding of a whirligig
fountain. There’s nothing prettier than a revolving fountain a-sparkling
and a-showering down over a noode statue.”
“You’ll be striking salt water, father, if you fall a-digging,” said the
sailor son named Tom.
“And what then?” exclaimed Captain Carey. “Ain’t brine as bright to the
eye as fresh water? And it’s not going to choke the fountain either.
Blessed if I don’t think the fountain might be set a-playing by the rise
and fall of the tide.”
When breakfast was ended, the father and the two sons stepped out of
doors to decide upon a spot in which to dig the pond for the fountain.
After much discussion they agreed to dig in front of the house, about a
hundred paces distant, within a stone’s throw of the wash of the water
when the tide was at its height.