THE DEATH SHIP'S FORECASTLE.
Next morning was clear and sunny. I was up betimes, being always glad
to get away from my cabin, in the which I needed all my long training
at sea to qualify me to sleep, not only because of the rats and the
noises in the hold, and those mystic fires in the timbers that never
failed to send a shudder through me if I opened my eyes upon them in
the darkness, but because of my bed, which was miserably hard and
wretched in all ways, and in which I would lie down dressed, saving my
boots and jacket, never knowing when I might not be obliged to spring
on deck in a hurry, though I took care to refresh myself o' morn by
going into the head, pulling off my shirt and sousing myself with a
bucketfull of salt water--'twas an old canvas bucket, I remember--no
man of the crew speaking to or noticing me.
This morning being very fine, the first bright day that had broken
since I had been in the ship, I thought, since it was early, an hour to
breakfast, Vanderdecken in his cabin and Arents alone on the poop-deck
with the man who steered, that I would look a little closely into the
vessel, and ascertain if possible where and how the men slept, where
they dressed their food and the like. But first I snatched a glance
around to see if any sail was in sight. No! 'Twas all dark-blue water
meeting the clear sky in an unbroken girdle, that by holding its
sapphire hue against the light azure of the heavens there, stood out
with surprising sharpness. The swell left by the gale was not gone, but
it came with a steady rhythmic flowing of folds from the north-west
that seemed to soothe rather than to vex the ancient ship, and the
heavings made the eastern sea-board a rich and dazzling spectacle, by
catching the brilliant white sunshine on the polish of their rounded
backs, and so carrying their burden of blinding radiance to the verge
of the visible deep.
The ship was under all the canvas she had. That studding-sails have
been for ages in use we know on the authority of Sir Walter Raleigh,
in his writings on the improvements in ships since Henry the Eighth's
days; yet I can answer that this Death Ship had no irons on her yards,
nor could I anywhere see any spars that answered to the booms used for
the spreading of those sails. However, even if she had been furnished
with such canvas, this morning it would have been no use to her;
for the breeze still hung, westerly and she was going close-hauled,
steering something to the west of north and moving through the water at
about three knots.
I spied the corpulent figure of Jans, the boatswain, forward of the
fore-mast. He was standing with his arms folded, staring ahead. His
posture somehow suggested a vacancy of mind, and you thought of him
as looking into God knows what distance, with the unmeaningness you
observe in the fixed gaze of a babe sucking.
I could not say whether the decks had been washed down; they seemed
damp, as if newly swabbed. One whom I supposed to be the ship's
carpenter was sawing wood near the house in which were the live stock.
Two others, hard by him, sat upon a sail, stitching at it. There was
a seaman in the fore-top, but what doing I could not see; little more
than his head showed above the barricade. I walked forward to where
the boatswain stood, and, on observing that he took no notice of me, I
touched him lightly on the shoulder.
He turned his round face, ghastly as death yet as fleshy and plump as
life, and gazed at me. I felt nervous--it was dreadful to accost these
conformations, which were neither men nor devils--but I was resolved
to go through with the business I had on hand, impelled by the thought
that if I was suffered to come off with my life from this experience
there would be that to relate to the world beyond anything which seamen
have told of the ocean life.
I said to him, "Good morning, Herr Jans. Here, to be sure, is a fine
sky with noble promise."
"True, sir," he answered, seeming to step out of the mystery of his
stillness and vacancy without effort. "She looks fairly up: but so
tedious a nor'-wester should be followed by a southerly gale!"
"Heaven grant it!" cried I, gathering courage from his civility. "You
will be glad to see old Amsterdam again, no doubt!"
"Ay," said he, "I warrant you; and my wife, Amana, too, and my
daughter, Tobina. Ha! ha!"
His laugh was like that of the parrot, mirthless; and not a wrinkle
stirred upon his countenance to give reality to his shocking merriment.
To come at what I wanted--for I did not wish Vanderdecken to arrive
and see me forward--I said "Yes, meetings are made sweeter by a little
delay. Pardon me, Heer: I am an Englishman not well acquainted with
the shipboard usages of the Dutch. In the ship of which I was second
mate, we had what is called a topgallant forecastle in which the crew
slept----"
He interrupted with a shake of the head. "I do not understand," said he.
This was not strange, for as I did not know the Dutch words, I called
it topgallant forecastle in English.
"They slept under a deck resembling the poop," said I.
"Ha!" he exclaimed.
"Where do your crew sleep?"
"Down there," he responded, pointing to a hatch answering to the
forescuttle of these times.
"Is it a comfortable cabin?" said I.
He made a face and spat behind his hand, which caused me to see that
sailors in all times have been alike in the capacity of grumbling, and
that even in this man, who by virtue of the age he had attained had
long ceased to be human and was kept alive only by the Curse it was his
lot to share with the skipper, the instincts of the seaman still lived,
a few sparks among blackened embers.
"Judge for yourself if you will," said he. "My last ship was the Maagt
van Eukhuysen, and though her forecastle raised a mutiny among us for
its badness, I tell you, mynheer, 'twas as punch is to stale cold water
compared to this."
He motioned me to descend, but I asked him to go first, for how was I
to guess what would be my reception if the men saw me entering their
abode unaccompanied? "Very good," said he, and catching hold of the
coaming he dropped his great figure through the hatch, and I followed.
We descended by a ladder in perfect correspondence with the rest of
the fittings of this ship--the hand-rails carved, and the steps a sort
of grating--different, indeed, from the pieces of coarse, rough wood
nailed to the bulkhead, which in these days form the road down through
the forescuttle. The light of the heavens fell fair through the hatch,
but seemed powerless to penetrate the gloom that lay around. I was
blinded at first, and stood a moment under the hatch idly blinking and
beholding nothing. Then stepping out of the sphere of the daylight,
there stole upon my sight the details of the place one by one, helped
by the wan, sputtering and smoking flame of a lamp shaped like a
coffee-pot, the waste or mesh coming out of the spout fed by what the
nose readily determined to be slush.
Jans stood beside me. "Can you see, mynheer?" said he.
"Ay, 'tis growing upon me by degrees," I replied.
"Master," exclaimed a hollow voice, proceeding from the darkest part of
this forecastle, "if you could help me fill the bowl of a tobacco-pipe
I should be grateful."
Very luckily I had the remains of what sailors term a prick of tobacco
in my pocket, which Prins when he dried my jacket had very honestly
suffered to remain there. The piece had been so hard pressed in the
making, and rendered so water-proof by the rum in it, that my falling
overboard had left it perfectly sweet and fit for smoking. By a stingy
and cautious use of the knife there was enough of it to give all hands
a smoke. I pulled it out and handed it to Jans to deliver to the man
who had addressed me. Jans smelt it and said "Yes, it was tobacco, but
how was it to be smoked?"
I pulled out my knife, and stepping into the light under the hatch, put
the tobacco upon one of the ladder-steps and fell to slicing or rather
shaving it, and when I had cut enough to fill a pipe bowl I rolled up
the shreds in my hands, and taking a sooty clay pipe from Jans, charged
it, and bade him light it at the lamp. He did so, speedily returning,
smoking heartily, puffing out great clouds, and crying out, "Oh, but
'tis good! 'tis good!"
It is tiring work cutting up this kind of tobacco, and Jans now
understanding how it was done, took the knife and the tobacco and shred
about an inch of it, there being in all between three and four inches.
Whilst this was doing I had leisure to gaze about me.
No sooner had Jans lighted his pipe, so that all could see he was
smoking, than from several parts of that gloomy interior there slided
a number of figures who quickly clustered around the ladder, over one
of whose steps or treads the boatswain leaned, pipe in mouth, whilst
he sliced and shaved. The daylight fell upon some of them, others were
faintly to be seen in the dim illumination which the lustre, passing
through the hatch, feebly spread. From rows of old hammocks, that died
out in the gloom, these men had dropped, and mariners half-perished
with hunger could not have exhibited more delirious eagerness for food
than did these unhappy creatures for a pipeful of the tobacco Jans was
at work upon. A dismaller and wilder, nay, a more affrighting picture
I defy the imagination to body forth. It was not only that many of
these unhappy people were half-naked--most of them still swinging in
their hammocks, when I descended--it was their corpse-like appearance,
as though a grave-yard had disgorged its dead, who had come together
in a group, quickened and urged by some hunger, lust or need common to
the whole, and expressing in many varieties of countenance the same
desire. All about Jans they crowded, fifteen or twenty men; some thin,
with their ribs showing, others with sturdy legs of the Dutch kind,
some nearly bald, some so hairy that their locks and beards flowed down
their backs and chests, some dark with black eyes, others round-faced
and blue-eyed; but every man of them looking as if he was newly risen,
Lazarus-like, from the tomb, as though he had burst the bondage of the
coffin, and come into this forecastle dead yet living, his body formed
of the earth of the grave, and his soul of the Curse that kept him
alive.
I had particularly hoped to see some of them sleeping, wondering what
appearance they presented in slumber; also whether such as they ever
dreamed, and what sort of expressions their faces wore. But the place
was too dark to have yielded this sight even had I been at liberty to
peer into their hammocks. When my eyes grew used to the twilight of the
slush-lamp and I could see plain, I found there was not much to whet
curiosity. Here and there stood a box or sea-chest. Against the aged
sides, hanging by nails or hooks, were coats, trowsers, oilskins, and
the like, most of them differing in fashion, swaying with the heaving
of the ship. Some odds and ends of shoes and boots, a canvas bucket
or two, a tall basket, in which were stowed the dishes and mugs the
men eat and drank with, completed, with the hammocks overhead, all the
furniture that I could distinguish of this melancholy, rat-gnawed, yea,
and noisome forecastle.
By this time Jans was wearied of slicing the tobacco, and the fellow
called Meindert Kryns was at work upon what remained of it. All who
had pipes filled them, and I was surprised to find how well off they
were in this respect, though my wonder ceased when I afterwards heard
that amongst other articles of freight Vanderdecken had met with in
a derelict were cases of long clay pipes. It was both moving and
diverting to watch these half-clad creatures smoking, their manner of
holding the smoke in their mouths for the better tasting of it, the
solemn joy with which they expelled the clouds; some in their hammocks
with their naked legs over the edge; others on the chests, manifestly
insensible to the chilly wind that blew down through the hatch. No man
spoke. If aught of mind there was among them, it seemed to be devoted
to keeping their pipe-bowls burning. Jans stood leaning against the
fore-mast, puffing at his pipe, his eyes directed into the gloom in the
bows. That he had forgotten the errand that brought him below, that
I had no more existence for him than would have been the case had I
never fallen from the rail of the Saracen, was clearly to be gathered
from his strange rapt posture and air. I touched him again on the
shoulder, and he turned his eyes upon me, but without starting. 'Twas
the easiest, nimblest way of slipping out of a condition of trance into
intelligence and life that can be conceived.
I wished to see all I dared ask to look at, and said, "Where do you
cook your food?"
"I will show you," he answered, and walked to some distance abaft the
forescuttle.
I followed him painfully, for I could scarce see; indeed, here would
have been total blackness to one fresh from the sunlight. There was a
bulkhead with an opening on the larboard hand; we passed through it,
and I found myself on a deck pretty well filled up at the after-end
with coils of cable, casks, and so forth; a windward port was open,
and through it came light enough to see by. In the middle of this deck
was a sort of caboose, situated clear of the ropes and casks. 'Twas,
in short, a structure of stout scantling, open on either side, and
fitted with brick-work contrived for a furnace and coppers for boiling.
A man--the cook, or the cook's mate--his feet naked, his shanks
clothed in breeches of a faded blue stuff, and his trunk in a woollen
shirt--was at work boiling a kind of soup for the crew's breakfast.
Another man stood at a dresser, rolling paste. This fellow was a very
short, corpulent person, with a neck so fat that a pillow of flesh lay
under the back of his head. Never in my time had I viewed a completer
figure of a Dutchman than this cook. You would have supposed that into
this homely picture of boiling and pie-making there would have entered
such an element of life and reality as was nowhere else to be found in
that accurst ship. Yet so little was this so, that I do not know that
in all the time I had been in the Braave I had beheld a more ghastly
picture. It was the two men who made it so; the unreality of their
realness, to comprehend which, if this phrase should sound foolishly,
think upon the vision of an insane man, or upon some wondrous picture
painted upon the eyes of the dying or opening upon the gaze of some
enthusiast.
The flames of the furnace shot a crimson glare upon the first of the
two men I have described; he never turned his head to look at me,
but went on stirring what was in the copper. The place had much of
the furniture of one of our present cabooses or galleys. There was a
kind of dresser and there were racks for holding dishes, an old brass
timepiece that was as great a curiosity in its way as the clock in the
cabin, a chair of the last century, a couple of wooden bellows, and
such matters.
I was moving, when the little, fat cook suddenly fell a-sniffing, and
turning to Jans, said, "Is there tobacco at last?"
"No," answered Jans; "this Heer had a piece which he has distributed.
'Tis all gone. But there is a smoke left in this pipe; take it."
He dried the sooty stem upon his sleeve, and handed it to the cook, who
instantly began to puff, uttering one or two exclamations of pleasure,
but with an unmoved countenance.
"Is there no tobacco on board?" said I, following Jans into the
forecastle.
"The skipper has a small quantity, but there is none for the crew," he
answered. "Had your ship supplied us with a little stock 'twould have
been a godsend; welcomer, sir, than the powder and shot you wantonly
bestowed upon our boat."
We were now in the forecastle, and this reference to the action of
the terrified crew of the Saracen, in the hearing of the seamen who
overhung their hammocks, or squatted on their chests, smoking, alarmed
me; so with a quickly uttered "Good-morning" addressed to them all, I
sprang up the ladder and gained the deck.