THE CENTAUR FLIES FROM US.
Now the Dutch flag had not been flying twenty minutes when, my sight
being keen, I thought I could perceive something resembling a colour at
the fore-royal masthead of the ship. I asked Imogene if she saw it. She
answered "No." I said nothing, not being sure myself, and was unwilling
to intrude upon the four men standing to windward by asking for the
telescope. On board our ship they had set the sprit-topsail, and the
forward part of the dull, time-eaten, rugged old vessel resembled a
Chinese kite. She was doing her best; but let her splutter as she would
'twas for all the world like the sailing of a beer-barrel with a mast
steeped in the bunghole. And this, thought I, was the vessel that
gave the slip to the frigate belonging to Sir George Ascue's squadron!
The wake she made was short, broad and oily--a square, fat, glistening
surface of about her own length--not greatly exceeding the smoothness
she would leave aweather if drifting dead to leeward under bare poles;
different indeed from that suggestion of comet-like speed which you
find in the fleecy swirl of a line of foaming waters boiling out from
the metalled run of a fleet cruiser, and rising and falling and fading
into dim distance like a path of snow along a hilly land.
On board yonder ship they would have perspective glasses of a power
very different from the flat lenses in Vanderdecken's tubes; and since
by this time it was certain they had us large in their telescopes, what
would they be thinking of our huge, old-fashioned tops, fitter for the
bowmen and musqueteers of Ferdinand Magellan and Drake than for the
small-armsmen of even the days of the Commonwealth, of the antique cut
of our canvas and the wild and disordered appearance its patches and
colour submitted, of the grisly aspect of the wave-worn, storm-swept
hull, of the peaked shape and narrowness of our stern, telling of times
long vanished, as do the covers of an old book or the arches in an
ancient church?
Imogene and I continued our walk up and down, talking of many things,
chiefly of England, whereof I gave her as much news, down to the time
of the sailing of the Saracen, as I carried in my memory, until,
presently coming abreast of the group of four, still on the weather
quarter, every man of whom, turn and turn about, had been working away
with the telescope at the ship, Vanderdecken called me by name and
stepped over to us with the glass in his hand.
"Your sight is younger than ours, mynheer," said he, motioning towards
Jans and the two mates. "What flag do you make yonder vessel to be
flying at her fore-topgallant masthead?"
I took the glass and pointed it, kneeling to rest it as before, and
the instant the stranger came within the lenses I beheld Britannia's
glorious blood-red St. George's Cross blowing out--a great white
flag betwixt the fore-royal yard and the truck that rose high above.
Pretending to require time to make sure, I lingered to gather, if
possible, the character of the ship. From the cut of her sails, the
saucy, admirable set of them, the bigness of the topsails, the hungry
yearning for us I seemed to find in the bellying of the studding-sails
she had thrown out, it would have been impossible for a nautical eye
to mistake her for anything but a State ship, though of what rate I
could not yet guess. There was a refraction that threw her up somewhat,
and in the glass she looked to be swelling after us in a bed of
liquid boiling silver, with a thin void of trembling blue between the
whiteness and the sea-line.
I rose and said, "The colour she shows is English."
Vanderdecken turned savagely towards the others and cried, "English!"
Arents let fly an oath; Jans struck his thigh heavily with his open
hand; Van Vogelaar, scowling at me, cried, "Are you sure, sir?"
"I am sure of the flag," said I; "but she may prove a Frenchman for all
I know."
Vanderdecken clasped his arms tightly upon his breast and sank into
thought, with the fire in his eyes levelled at the coming ship.
"See there, gentlemen!" I exclaimed. "A gun!"
Bright as the morning was I had marked a rusty red spark wink in the
bow of the vessel like a flash of sunshine from polished copper; a
little white ball blew away to leeward expanding as it fled. An instant
after, just such another cloudy puff swept into the jibs and drove out
in a gleaming trail or two. Presently the reports reached our ears in
two dull thuds, one after the other.
Vanderdecken stared aloft at his canvas, then over the side, and joined
the others. My excitement was intense; I could scarce contain myself. I
knew there was a British squadron at the Cape, and 'twas possible that
fellow there might be on a reconnoitring or cruising errand.
"You are sure she is English?" Imogene whispered.
"She is a man-of-war; she is flying our flag. I don't doubt she is
English," I replied.
The girl drew a long tremulous breath, and her arm touching mine--so
close together we stood--I felt a shiver run through her.
"You are not alarmed, Imogene?" I exclaimed, giving her her Christian
name for the first time, and finding a lover's sweetness and delight
in the mere uttering of it. She coloured very faintly and cast her gaze
upon the deck.
"What is going to happen?" she whispered. "Will they send you on board
that ship--keeping me?"
"No! they'll not do that. If she be an Englishman and has balls to feed
her cannon with----" I cried, raising my voice unconsciously.
"Hush!" she cried, "Van Vogelaar watches us."
We were silent for a space that the attention I had challenged should
be again given to the ship. During the pause I thought to myself, "But
can her guns be of use? How much hulling and wounding should go to the
destruction of a vessel that has been rendered imperishable by the
Curse of Heaven? What injury could musket and pistol, could cutlass
and hand-grenades deal men to whom Death has ceased to be, who have
outlived Time and are owned by Eternity?"
Vanderdecken, who had been taking short turns upon the deck with heated
strides, stopped afresh to inspect the ship, and as he did so another
flash broke from her weather-bow, and the smoke went from her in a
curl. The skipper looked at the others.
"She has the wind of us and sails three feet to our one. Let the
mainsail be hauled up and the topsail brought to the mast. If she be
the enemy her flag denotes, her temper will not be sweetened by a long
pursuit of which the issue is clear."
Van Vogelaar, scowling venomously, seemed to hang in the wind, on which
Vanderdecken looked at him with an expression of face incredibly fierce
and terrible. The posture of his giant figure, his half-lifted hand,
the slight forward inclination of his head as if he would blast his man
with the lightning of his eyes--it was like seeing some marvellous
personification of human wrath; and I whispered quickly into Imogene's
ear, "That will be how he appeared when he defied his God!"
It was as if he could not speak for rage. And swiftly was he
understood. In a breath Jans was rolling forward, calling to the men,
Arents was hastening to his station on the quarter-deck, and Van
Vogelaar was slinking to the foremost end of the poop. The crew, to
the several cries that broke from the mates and boatswain, dropped
from rail and ratline, where they had been standing staring at the
pursuing craft, and in ghastly silence, without exhibition of concern
or impatience, fell to hauling upon the clew-garnets and backing the
yards on the main.
So weak was the ship's progress that the bringing of the canvas to the
mast immediately stopped her way, and she lay as dead as a buoy upon
the heave of the sea. This done, the crew went to the weather side,
whence, as they rightly supposed, they would best view the approaching
vessel. Jans held to the forecastle, Arents to the quarter-deck, and
the mate hung sullen in the shadows cast by the mizzen-shrouds upon the
planks. My heart beat as quickly as a baby's. I could not imagine what
was to happen. Would yonder man-of-war, supposing her British, take
possession of the Braave?--that is, could she? English powder, with
earthquake power, has thrown up a mighty mountain of wonders; but could
it, with its crimson glare, thunder down the Curse by and in which,
this ship continued to sail and these miserable men continued to live?
I shuddered at the impiety of the thought, yet what ending of this
chase was to be conjectured if it were not capture?
Vanderdecken, on the weather quarter, watched the ship in his
trance-like fashion. How majestic, how unearthly, too, he looked
against the blue beyond, his beard stirring and waving like smoke in
a faintly moving atmosphere to the blowing of the wind! He wore the
aspect of a fallen god, with the fires of hell glittering in his eyes
and the passions of the damned surging dark from his soul to his face.
Imogene and I had insensibly gained the lee-quarter, and our whispers
were driven seawards from him by the breeze.
"How will this end?" I asked my sweet companion. "If there be potency
in the Curse this ship cannot be captured."
She answered: "I cannot guess; I have not known such a thing as this to
happen before."
"Suppose they send a prize crew on board--the Sentence will not permit
of her navigation beyond Agulhas--there is not a hawser in all the
world stout enough to tow this ship round the Cape. As it is, is not
yonder vessel doomed by her chasing us, by her resolution to speak us?"
There was a deep stillness fore and aft. No human voice broke the
silence. You heard but the purring of the surges frothing against
our sides, the flap of a sail to the regular roll of the fabric, a
groan from the heart of her, the soft shock of the sudden hit of a
billow. Nothing more. The silence of the unmeasurable deep grew into a
distinct sense undisturbed by the gentle universal hissing that went
up out of it. The sails of the oncoming ship shone to the gushing of
the sunlight like radiant leaning columns of a porphyritic tincture
breaking into moonlike alabaster with the escape of the shadows to the
sunward stare of the cloths. Bland as the fairy glory of the full moon
floating in a sea of ethereal indigo was the shining of those lustrous
bosoms, each course and topsail tremulous with the play of the golden
fringe of reef-points, and delicate beyond language was the pencilled
shadowings at the foot of the rounded cloths. Like cloud upon cloud
those sails soared to the dainty little royals, above the foremost of
which there blew Britannia's glorious flag, the blood-red cross of St.
George upon a field white as the foam that boiled to as high as the
hawse pipes with the churning of the shearing cutwater storming like
a meteor through the blue. Oh, she was English! You felt the blood of
her country hot in her with the sight of her flag that was like a crown
upon an hereditary brow, making her queen of the dominion of the sea,
roll where it would!
She approached us like a roll of smoke, and the wash of the froth
along her black and glossy bends threw out the mouths of her single
tier of cannon. She was apparently a thirty-eight-gun ship, and as
she drew up, with a luffing helm that brought the after-yard-arms
stealing out past the silky swells of the sails on the fore, you spied
the glitter and flash of the gold-coloured figure-head, a lion, with
its paw upon Britannia's shield. When she was within a mile of us
she hauled down her studding-sails, clewed up her royals and mizzen
topgallant sail, and drove quietly along upon our weather-quarter,
still heeling as though she would have us note how lustrous was the
copper, whose brightness rose to the water-line, and what finish that
ruddy sheathing, colouring the snow of the blue water leaping along it
with a streaking as of purple sunshine, gave to her charms.
All this while, the master, mates and crew of the Death Ship were as
mute as though they lay in their coffins. Vanderdecken leaned upon
his hand on the rail above the quarter-gallery, and the motion which
the heave of the ship gave to his giant form by the sweeping of it
up and down the heavens at the horizon emphasised his own absolute
motionlessness. Nevertheless, his gaze was rooted in the ship, and
the brightening of the angry sparkle in them to the nearing of the
man-of-war was a never-to-be-forgotten sight.
"How is this going to end?" I whispered to Imogene. "Is it possible
that they are still unable to guess the character of our vessel?"
The frigate had drawn close enough to enable us to make out the glint
of buttons and epaulets on the quarter-deck, the uniform of marines on
the forecastle, and the heads of seamen standing by the braces or at
the guns along the decks. She now hauled up her mainsail but without
backing her topsail, luffed so as to shake the way out of her, giving
us, as she did so, an oblique view of her stern very richly ornamented,
the glass of the windows flashing, and the blue swell brimming to her
name in large characters, "Centaur."
"Ship ahoy!" came thundering down through the trumpet at the mouth
of a tall, powerfully-built man erect on the rail close against the
mizzen-rigging: "What ship is that?"
Vanderdecken made no answer. The wind blew in a moaning gust over the
bulwark, and there was the sound of a little jar and shock as the old
fabric leaned wearily on the swell, but not a whisper fell from the
men. Meanwhile it was grown evident to me that our ship was greatly
puzzling the people of the frigate. It looked indeed as if the men
had left their stations to crowd to the side, for the line of the
bulwarks was blackened with heads. A group of officers stood on the
quarter-deck, and I could see them pointing at our masts as though
calling one another's attention to the Braave's great barricadoed tops,
to her sprit-topmast, the cut and character of her rigging, and to the
many signs that would convert her into a wonder, if not a terror, in
the eyes of sailors.
"Ship ahoy!" now came down again, with an edge of anger in the
hurricane note. "What ship is that?"
At this second cry Vanderdecken broke into life. He turned his face
forward. "Bring me my trumpet!" he exclaimed, in a voice whose rich,
organ-like roll must have been plainly heard on board the frigate,
whether his Dutch was understood or not. The ancient tube I had seen in
his cabin was put into his hand. He stepped to the rail, and placing
the trumpet to his mouth, cried, "The Braave."
"Where are you from?"
"Batavia!"
"Where bound?"
"Amsterdam!"
There was another pause. The line of heads throbbed with visible
agitation along the sides, and I saw one man of the group on the
quarter-deck go up to the captain, who was speaking our ship, touch his
cap, and say something. But the other imperiously waved him off with a
flourish of his trumpet, which he instantly after applied to his lips,
and shouted out, "Haul down your flag and I will send a boat."
Vanderdecken looked towards me. "What does he say?" he exclaimed.
I told him. He called to Van Vogelaar, who promptly enough came to the
halliards and lowered the flag to the deck. I watched the descent of
that crazy, attenuated, ragged symbol. To my mind it was as affrighting
in its suggestions of unholy survival as the whole appearance of the
vessel or the countenance and mechanic manners of the most corpse-like
man of the crew of her.
Scarce was the ensign hauled down when there came to our ears the
silver, cheerful singing of a boatswain's pipe, the main-topsail was
laid aback and the frigate's length showed out as she fell slightly
off from the luff that had held her canvas trembling in the wind. We
were too far asunder for the nice discernment of faces with the naked
eye, but methought since there seemed no lack of telescopes aboard the
frigate, enough should have been made out of the line of deadly faces
which looked over our bulwark-rail, to resolve us to the satisfaction
of that British crew.
Again was heard the silver chirping of the boatswain's whistle; a
pinnace was lowered, into which tumbled a number of armed seamen, and
the blades of eight oars flashed like gold as they rose feathering from
the first spontaneous dip.
"They are coming!" cried Imogene in a faint voice.
"Let us keep where we are," I exclaimed, "Vanderdecken does not heed
us. If we move his thoughts will fly to you, and he may give me
trouble. Dear girl, keep a stout heart. They will be sure to carry us
to the ship--proud to rescue you, at least; then, what follows must
come--you will be safe!"
She put her hand under my arm. Tall as were the bulwarks of the Braave,
there was swell enough so to roll the ship as to enable me with every
windward sway to see clear to the water where the boat was pulling.
With beating hearts we watched. On a sudden the oars ceased to rise and
fall; the seamen hung upon them, all to a man, staring at our ship with
heads twisted as if they would wring their necks; then, as if impelled
by one mind, they let fall their oars to stop the boat's way, all of
them gazing with straining eyeballs.
The officer who steered stood erect, peering at us under his hand. The
ship, God knows, was plain to their view now--the age and rottenness
of her timbers, her patch-work sails, the sickliness of such ghastly
and dismal hue as her sides discovered, the ancientness of her guns
and swivels; above all, the looks of the crew watching the boat's
approach--an array of figures more shocking than were they truly dead,
newly unfrocked of their winding sheets and propped up against the rail
to horribly counterfeit living seamen.
"Why have they ceased rowing?" cried Imogene, in a voice of bitter
distress, and withdrawing her hand from my arm to press it upon her
heart.
As she spoke a sudden commotion was perceptible among the men in the
boat; the officer shrilly crying out some order, flung himself, as one
in a frenzy, in the sternsheets; the larboard oars sparkled, and the
desperate strokes of the men made the foam fly in smoke, whilst the
starboard hands furiously backed-water to get the boat's head round
swiftly, and before you could have counted ten she was being pulled, in
a smother of froth, back to the frigate.
I was about to leap to the side and shout to them, but at the instant
Vanderdecken turned and looked at me. Then it flashed upon my mind,
"If I hail the boat, he and Van Vogelaar, all of them, may imagine I
design to inform the frigate of the treasure!"--and the apprehension of
what might follow such a suspicion held my feet glued to the deck.
"They have guessed what this ship is!" said Imogene, in a voice full of
tears.
I could not speak for the crushing disappointment that caused the
heart in me to weigh down, heavy as lead. I had made sure of the
officer stepping on board, and of his delivering the girl and me from
this accursed ship on hearing my story, and acting as a British naval
officer should when his duty as a sailor, or his chivalry as a man, is
challenged; in conformity with that noble saying of one of our most
valiant admirals, who, on being asked whither he intended to carry his
ship--"To Hell!" he answered, "if duty commands!"
Yet one hope lingered, though faintly indeed; the captain of the
frigate had imperiously commanded the boat to be manned, as I gathered
by his manner of waving away the officer, who had addressed him in a
remonstrant manner; would he suffer the return of the boat's crew until
they had obeyed his orders?
I watched. Headlong went the boat, smoking through the billows
which arched down upon her from the windward, and her oars sparkled
like sheet lightning with the panic-terror that plied them; the
excitement in the ship was visible enough, discipline had given way
to superstitious fear. I could see the captain flourishing his arm
with threatening gestures, lieutenants and midshipmen running here and
there, but to no purpose. The whole ship's company, about three hundred
sailors and marines as I supposed, knew what ship we were, and the very
frigate herself as she rolled without way, looked like some startled
beast mad for flight, the foam draining from her bows to the slow
pitching, as a terrified steed champs his bit into froth, and shudder
after shudder going up out of her heart of oak into her sails, as you
would have said to watch the tremble and filling and backing of them to
the wind.
It was as I had feared, and had the captain of the man-of-war promised
to blow his ship and men into a thousand atoms if the boat's crew
refused to obey his orders to board us, they would have accepted that
fate in preference to the hideous alternative adventure. In a trice the
pinnace was alongside the frigate, the crew over the rail, and the boat
hoisted. The yards on the main flew round, royals and topgallant-sails
were set, studding-sails were run aloft, and before ten minutes had
elapsed since the boat had started to board us, the frigate, under a
whole cloud of canvas, was heeling and gently rolling and pitching over
the brilliant blue sea, with her head north east, her stern dead at us,
the gilt there and the windows converting her betwixt her quarters
into the appearance of a huge sparkling square of crystal, the glory of
which flung upon her wake under it a splendour so great that it was as
though she had fouled a sunbeam and was dragging the dazzle after her.
I looked at Imogene; her beautiful eyes had yearned after the ship into
the dimness of tears.
"My dear, do not fret,", said I, again calling her my dear, for I still
lacked the courage to call her my love; "this experience makes me clear
on one point: we shall escape, but not by a ship."
"How, if not by a ship?" she cried, tremulously.
Before I could reply, Vanderdecken looked round upon us, and came our
way, at the same time telling Van Vogelaar to swing the topsail-yard
and board his main tack.
"'Tis in this fashion," he exclaimed, "that most of the ships I
meet serve me. It would be enough to make me deem your countrymen a
lily-livered lot if the people of other nations, my own included, did
not sheer off before I could explain my needs or learn their motives in
desiring to board us. What alarmed the people of that ship, think you,
mynheer?"
"Who can tell, sir?" I responded, in as collected a manner as I
could contrive. "They might suspect us hardly worth the trouble of
capturing----"
He motioned an angry dissent.
"Or," I continued, abashed and speaking hurriedly, "they might have
seen something in the appearance of your crew to promise a bloody
resistance."
"By the Holy Trinity!" he cried, with the most vehement scorn, "if such
a thing were conceivable I should have been glad to confirm it with a
broadside!" and his eye came from the frigate that was fast lessening
in the distance to his poor show of rust-eaten sakers and green-coated
swivels.
It was sure that he had no suspicion of the truth. Not knowing that he
and his ship were accurst, how was it possible for him to guess the
cause of the behaviour of the ships which fled from him? You would
suppose that he and the rest of the crew discovered many signs of
satisfaction and delight at this escape from a ship to whose commands
they had hauled down their flag; instead, they hung upon the rail
watching the frigate shifting her helm for a hasty flight without a
murmur, a note of speech; nothing appeared in them but a dull, leaden,
Dutch phlegmatic curiosity, if indeed this quality at all possessed
them, and when Van Vogelaar sang out to them to brace round the yards
on the main, they fell to the job of trimming sail and getting way on
the ship with an incredible ghastly indifference in their countenances
and in their movements, as they went about their silent labour.
Indeed, whatever passions they had seemed to pertain to what was to
come; I mean, the heaving in sight of a ship would make them eager for
tobacco or for whatever else they needed and she might have; but when
the incident, the adventure, the experience--call it what you will--was
passed, they turned a black and passionless mind upon it, without the
capacity of grief or gladness.
It was an hour after our usual dinner-time, and Prins arrived to tell
the captain the meal was on the table. He put Imogene's hand under
his arm caressingly, and I followed them with one wistful look at the
frigate that was already a toy and far off, melting like a cloud into
the junction of sapphire ether and violet ocean. I saw Vanderdecken
level a glance at her too, and as we entered the cabin he said,
addressing me, but without turning his head, and leading Imogene to
the table. "It will be a disappointment to you, mynheer, that your
countrymen would not stay to receive you?"
"It was your intention," said I, "that I should go with them?"
"Certainly," he answered, confronting me slowly and eyeing me
haughtily; "you are an Englishman, but you are not my prisoner."
"We may be more fortunate next time," I said, coldly.
"'Tis to be hoped!" said Van Vogelaar, who had followed last, speaking
in his harshest and sourest tone.
I turned to eye him; but at the moment the parrot, probably animated
by our voices, croaked out, hoarsely, "Wy Zyn al Verdomd!" on which
the fellow broke into a coarse, raw "ha! ha!" yet never stirring a
muscle of his storm-hammered face. 'Twould have been like fighting with
phantoms and fiends to war in words with these men. I am here, thought
I, and there is yonder sweetheart to rescue before I am done with
this Death Ship; and with a smile at her earnest, half-startled eyes I
seated myself.