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. II
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
1888
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED BY
TILLOTSON AND SON, MAWDSLEY STREET
BOLTON
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I.--IMOGENE SAYS SHE WILL TRUST ME 1
II.--VANDERDECKEN EXHIBITS SOME TREASURE 17
III.--IMOGENE AND I ARE MUCH TOGETHER 37
IV.--THE GALE BREAKS 55
V.--THE DEATH SHIP'S FORECASTLE 80
VI.--WE SIGHT A SHIP 99
VII.--WE WATCH THE SHIP APPROACH US 120
VIII.--THE CENTAUR FLIES FROM US 138
IX.--VANDERDECKEN WALKS IN HIS SLEEP 168
X.--WE SIGHT A DISMASTED WRECK 191
XI.--THE DEAD HELMSMAN 204
XII.--THE DUTCH SAILORS BOARD THE WRECK 213
XIII.--THE DUTCHMAN OBTAINS REFRESHMENTS 227
XIV.--MY LIFE IS ATTEMPTED 239
XV.--MY SWEETHEART'S JOY 257
THE DEATH SHIP.
CHAPTER I.
IMOGENE SAYS SHE WILL TRUST ME.
A half-hour passed, and during that time I had sufficiently recovered
from the distressful croak of the parrot to wonder, as any sailor
would, how the ship was navigated; for I could not doubt that the clock
kept pretty close to the true time, since the easting and westing made
by the ship was small, never, perhaps, exceeding ten degrees; and the
circumstance of noon having struck set me wondering in what fashion
the captain and mates navigated the ship, whether they used the
cross-staff or relied on dead reckoning, or were supernaturally conned.
At half-past twelve arrived Prins, to prepare the table for dinner.
I was so dull that his coming was extremely welcome, and I watched
him go about his work with interest, not, perhaps, unmixed with fear.
Out of the great drawer, under the table, he withdrew the cloth,
knives, forks, silver goblets and the like, which had been set out for
breakfast; but his movements were those of a marionette rather than
a man's, he scarcely looked at what he did, putting a goblet here, a
knife and fork there and so on, with the lifeless air of an object
controlled by mechanism. Small wonder that the unhappy wretch should
know his business! He had been at it long enough! Yet it wrung my heart
to watch him and to think that he would still be arranging the cabin
tables for meals, and attending upon Vanderdecken and his mates when
Heaven alone knows how many times the wave of civilisation should have
followed the sun round the globe, and how often our British Islands
should have lapsed into their ancient savageness and emerged again.
Whilst he was at this work, Miss Dudley stepped out of her cabin. She
came to a stand, not instantly recognising me in my own clothes, but
quickly satisfying herself, she advanced with a smile and sat down near
me, with no further sign of timidity than a slight blush which greatly
heightened her beauty.
"Where is Captain Vanderdecken?" said she.
"I left him on deck three-quarters of an hour since," I answered. "We
were talking when he suddenly broke off, and I should have supposed him
in a fit but for his erect posture and the fiery life in his eyes."
"This happens to them all," said she, "as you will find out. I do not
know what it means or why it should be."
"Possibly," I exclaimed, recalling the conjecture I have already
written down, "the death in them grows too strong at periods, for the
power that sustains them, be it demoniac or not, and then follows a
failure of the vitality of the body, which yet leaves the spirit--as
one sees it flashing in Vanderdecken's eyes--strong enough to recover
the corporeal forces from their languor. But how terrible is all this
for you to be living familiarly with!--the sweet, fresh, human life of
the world your beauty would adorn and gladden, hidden from you behind
the melancholy sea-line, and the passage of months, yes, and of years,
finding you still aimlessly beating about these waters, with no better
companions than beings more frightful in their shapes and behaviour as
men than were they phantoms which the hand could not grasp and whose
texture the eye can pierce."
"What can I do, Mr. Fenton? Captain Vanderdecken will not part with
me. How can I escape?" she cried, with her eyes brimming. "If I cast
myself overboard, it would be to drown; if I succeeded in gaining the
shore when we anchored near to the coast, it would be either to perish
upon the broiling sands, or be destroyed by wild beasts, or be seized
by the natives and carried into captivity."
"But if a chance offered to make good your escape without the risks you
name, would you seize it?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Well," said I, speaking with such tenderness and feeling, such a glow
and yearning in my heart that you would say the tiny seed of love in my
breast, watered by her tears, was budding with the swiftness of each
glance at her into flower, "whilst I have been sitting melancholy and
alone I have turned over in my mind how I am to deliver you from this
dreadful situation. No scheme as yet offers, but will you trust me as
an English sailor to find a means to outwit these Dutchmen, ay, though
the Devil himself kept watch when they were abed?... One moment, Miss
Dudley--forgive me, it had not been my intention to touch upon this
matter until time had enabled you to form some judgment of me. But when
two are of the same mind, and the pit that has to be jumped is a deep
one, it would be mere foppery in me to stand on the brink with you,
chattering like a Frenchman about anything else sooner than speak out
and to the point as a plain seaman should."
"Mr. Fenton," she answered, "I will trust you. If you can see a way to
escape from this ship I will aid you to the utmost of my strength and
accompany you. You are a sailor; my father was of that calling, and as
an English seaman you shall have my full faith."
It was not only the words, but her pretty voice, her sparkling eyes,
her earnest gaze, the expression of hope that lighted up her face with
the radiance of a smile rather than of a smile itself, which rendered
what she said delightful to me. I answered, "Depend upon it your faith
will animate me, and it will be strange if you are not in England
before many months, nay, let me say weeks, have passed."
Here leaning her cheek in her hand she looked down into her lap with a
wistful sadness in her eyes.
Not conceiving what was passing in her mind, I said, "Whatever scheme I
hit upon will take time. But what are a few months compared with years
on board this ship--years which only death can end!"
"Oh!" she answered, looking at me fully, but with a darkness of tears
upon those violet lights, "I don't doubt your ability to escape and
rescue me, nor was I thinking of the time you would require or how long
it may be before we see England. What troubles me is to feel that when
in England--if it please God to suffer me to set foot once more upon
that dear soil--I shall have no friend to turn to." I was about to
speak, but she proceeded, her eyes brimming afresh: "It is rare that
a girl finds herself in my situation. Both my father and mother were
only children and orphans when they married, my mother living with a
clergyman and his wife at Rotherhithe as governess to their children
when my father met her. The clergyman and his lady are long since dead.
But were they living, they would not be persons I should apply to for
help and counsel, since my mother often spoke of them as harsh, mean
people. The few relations on my mother's side died off; on my father's
side there was--perhaps there yet is--an uncle who settled in Virginia
and did pretty well there. But I should have to go to that country to
seek him with the chance of finding him dead. Thus you will see how
friendless I am, Mr. Fenton."
"You are not of those who remain friendless in this world," said I,
softly, for can you marvel that a young man's heart will beat quickly
when such a beauty as Imogene Dudley is, tells him to his face that she
is friendless. "I implore you," I added, "not to suffer any reflection
of this sort to sadden or swerve you in your determination to leave
this ship----"
"No, no!" she interrupted, "it will not do that. Better to die of
famine among the green meadows at home than--oh!" she cried, with
hysterical vehemence, "how sweet will be the sight of flowers to me, of
English trees, and hedges blooming with briar roses and honeysuckles.
This dreadful life!" she clasped her hands with a sudden passionate
raising of her eyes, "these roaring seas, the constant screaming of
the wind that bates its tones only to make a desolate moaning, the
company of ghost-like men, the fearful sense of being in a ship upon
which has fallen the wrath of the majesty of God! Oh, indeed, indeed it
must end!" and burying her face in her hands she wept most grievously,
sobbing aloud.
"What will end, mynheer? And what is it that causes thee, Imogene, to
weep?" exclaimed the deep, vibratory voice of Vanderdecken.
I started, and found his great figure erect behind me, a certain
inquisitiveness in the expression of his face, and much of the light
shining in his eyes that I had remarked when he fell into that posture
of trance I have spoken of. I answered as readily as my knowledge of
his tongue permitted, "Miss Dudley weeps, sir, because this gale, as
others have before, retards the passage of your ship to Amsterdam; and
'tis perfectly natural, consistent, indeed, with the wishes of all men
in the Braave, that she should wish the baulking storm at an end."
He came round to his high-backed chair, and seated himself, and,
putting his arm along the table, gently took Imogene's wrist, and
softly pulled her hand away from her face, wet with her tears, saying,
"My dear, your fellow-countryman is right; it is the sorrow of every
creature here that this gale should blow us backwards, and so delay
our return; but what is more capricious than the wind? This storm will
presently pass, and it will be strange," he added, with a sudden scowl
darkening his brow, and letting go Miss Dudley's hand as he spoke,
"if next time we do not thrust the Braave into an ocean where these
north-westers make way for the strong trade wind that blows from the
south-east."
She dried her eyes and forced a smile, acting a part as I did; that is
to say, she did not wish he should suspect her grief went deeper than
I had explained; though I could not help observing that in directing
her wet, sweet, violet eyes, with her mouth shaped to a smile, upon
him, a plaintive gratitude underlay her manner, an admixture of pity
and affection, the exhibition of which made me very sure of the quality
of her heart.
To carry Vanderdecken's thoughts away from the subject he supposed Miss
Dudley and I had been speaking about, I asked her in Dutch what she
had been doing with herself since breakfast. She answered in the same
language that she had been lying down.
"Have you books?" said I.
"A few that belong to the captain. Some are in French and I cannot read
them. The others are in Dutch. There is also a collection of English
poetry, some of which is beautiful, and I know many verses by heart."
"Are these works pretty new?" said I.
She answered, "Of various years; the newest, I think, is dated 1647."
"Ay," said Vanderdecken, "that will be my friend Bloys Van Treslong's
book upon the tulip-madness."
Finding him willing to converse, I was extremely fretted to discover
that, owing to my ignorance of the literature and art of his time, I
could not "bring him out" as the phrase runs, for looking into the
Batavian story since, I find scores of matters he could have told me
about, such as the building of ships at Hoorn, the customs of the
people, the tulip-madness he had mentioned, the great men such as Jan
Six, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Van Campen who designed the Stadhuis and
others, some of whom--as happened in the case of the great Willem
Schouten--he may have known and haply smoked pipes of tobacco with.
But be this as it may, we had got back again to the gale when Prins
brought in the dinner, and in a few minutes arrived the mate, Van
Vogelaar, whereupon we fell to the meal, Imogene saying very little
and often regarding me with a thoughtful face and earnest eyes as
though, after the maiden's way in such matters, she was searching me; I
taciturn, the mate sullen in expression and silent, as his death-like
face would advertise the beholder to suppose him ever to be, and
Vanderdecken breaking at intervals from the deep musing fit he fell
into to invite me to eat or drink with an air of incomparable dignity,
hardened as it was by his eternal sternness and fierceness.
At this meal I found the food to be much the same as that with which
we had broken our fast. But in addition there was a roasted fowl and
a large ham; and into each silver goblet Prins poured a draught of
sherry--a very soft and mellow wine--which I supposed Vanderdecken had
come by through the same means which enabled him to obtain coats for
his own and his men's backs, and ropes for his masts and sails, and
brandy and gin for his stone jars--that is, by overhauling wrecks and
pillaging derelicts, for certainly strong waters were not to be got by
lying off the coast and going a-hunting.
Yet though the wine put a pleasant warmth into my veins, insomuch that
I could have talked freely but for the depressing influence of the
captain and his mate, them it no more cheered and heartened, it gave
them no more life and spirit than had they been urns filled with dust
into which the generous liquor had been poured. Several times, indeed,
whilst I was on board that ship, have I seen Vanderdecken, Vogelaar,
and Arents swallow such draughts of punch out of bowls, as would
have laid me senseless in five minutes, yet these capacious jorums
gave rise in them to not the least signs of jollity; as, indeed, how
should it have been otherwise, for their brains were dead to all but
the supernatural influence that kept them moving--dead as the works
of a going watch--and what is there in the fumes of wine to disorder
embodied ghosts?