THE DUTCH SAILORS BOARD THE WRECK.
"Get the boat over," cried Vanderdecken, turning to Van Vogelaar, "and
go and inspect the wreck. Look to the man first: Heer Fenton declares
him dead; and particularly observe if there be aught that hath life in
it aboard."
On this, Van Vogelaar went forward, calling about him. In a few minutes
a white-faced seaman, with yellow beard trembling to the wind, and
his eyes looking like a rat's with the white lashes and pink retinas,
leisurely climbed aloft with a line in his hand, and swinging himself
on to the main-yard, slided out upon the horses to the extremity, or
yard-arm as it is termed, which he bestrode as a jockey a steed; and
then hauled up the line, to the end of which was hitched a tackle.
This tackle he made fast to the yard-arm, and by it, with the help of
steadying-ropes or guys, some of the crew on deck hoisted the little
boat out of the bigger one and lowered it away into the water alongside.
I watched this business with a sailor's interest, wondering that
so great a ship as this--great, that is, for the age to which she
belonged--should carry no more than two boats, stowed one in the
other after the fashion of the north-country coastmen. Nor was I less
impressed by the aged appearance of the boat when she was afloat. She
had the look of a slug with her horns, only that those continuations
of her gunnel rail projected abaft as well as from the bows. And when
Van Vogelaar and three of the crew entered her, then, what with the
faded red of her inner skin, the wide, red blades of the short oars,
the soulless movements of the seamen, the hue of their faces, the
feverish unnatural shining of their eyes like sunshine showing through
a cairngorm stone, their dried and corded hands, which wrapped the
handles of their oars like rugged parchment--the little but marvellous
picture acted as by the waving of a magic wand, forcing time back by a
century and a half and driving shudders through the frame of a beholder
with a sight whose actuality made it a hundredfold more startling and
fearful than had it been a vision as unsubstantial as the Death Ship
herself is mistakenly supposed to be.
The wreck being within hailing distance, the boat was soon alongside
her. The heavy rolling of the hull, and the sharp rise and fall of the
boat, would have made any human sailor mightily wary in his boarding
of the vessel, but if ever there was an endevilled wretch among the
Phantom's horrible crew, Van Vogelaar was he. The fiend in him stayed
at nothing. The instant the boat had closed the wreck the fellow
leaped, and he was on deck and walking towards the figure at the wheel,
whilst the other--that is to say, two of them--were waiting for the
hull to swing down for them to follow.
The mate went up to the figure, and seemed to address him; then,
receiving no reply, he felt his face, touched his hands, and pulled
to get that amazing grip relaxed, but to no purpose. The others now
joining him, they all stared into the figure's face; one lifting
an eyelid and peering into the eye, another putting his ear to the
figure's mouth. Van Vogelaar then came to the side, and shouted in his
harsh and rusty voice that it was a dead man. Vanderdecken imperiously
waved his hand, and cried, "Fall to exploring her!" and motioned
significantly to the sky, as if he would have the mate misgive the
weather, though there was no change in the aspect of the pearly wreaths
and glistening beds of vapour, and the draught was still a gentle
breeze.
"Dead!" I whispered to Imogene; "yet I feared it!"
"Will he have been English, think you, Geoffrey?" she said.
"Yes!" cried I, feeling a heat rising to my cheeks, "name me a
foreigner that would so gloriously have confessed his nation!
English?--ay, a thousand times over! For what does that posture
indicate, that stern holding to his place, that dutiful grip of his
iron hands? What but those qualities which give the British sailor the
dominion of the deep, and which rank him foremost among the noblest
spirits the world has ever seen? He has died at his post--one of
thousands who have as heroically perished."
I noticed Vanderdecken looking at the body. There was deep thought in
his imperious, menacing expression, with a shadow of misery that his
fierce and glittering eyes did but appear to coarsen and harshen the
gloom of, and I wondered to myself if ever moments came when perception
of his condition was permitted to him, for it truly appeared as though
there were a hint of some such thing in him now whilst he gazed at
the convulsive figure at the wheel, as if--Jesus have mercy upon
him!--the sight of the dead filled his own deadly flesh with poignant
and enraging yearnings, the meanings of which his unholy vitality was
unable to interpret.
When Van Vogelaar had spent about half-an-hour on the wreck, he and
the others dropped over the side into the boat and made for us. We had
scarce shifted our position, for the courses being hauled up and the
topgallant-sails lowered, there was too little sail abroad for the
weak wind then blowing to give us drift, and the swell that drove us
towards the wreck would also drive the wreck from us. The mate came
over the side, and stepping up to the captain, said, "She is an English
ship, freighted with English manufacture; I make out bales of blanket,
clothing and stores, which I imagine to have been designed for troops.
"What water is in her?"
"Seven and a quarter feet by her own rod."
"Her pump?"
"She hath two--both shattered and useless."
"Does she continue to fill?"
"I believe not, sir; I would not swear to it; she rolls briskly, but,"
said he, sending his evil glance at the wreck, "it does not appear that
she is sunk deeper since we first made her out."
"Yonder figure at the wheel is dead you say?"
"As truly dead a Briton as ever fell to a Dutchman's broadside."
I exchanged a swift look with Imogene. "His eyes are glassy; his
fingers clasp the spokes like hooks of steel. He must have died on a
sudden--perhaps from lightning--from disease of some inward organ--or
from fear." And there was the malice of the devil in the sneer that
curled his ugly mouth as he spoke, taking me in with a roll of his
sinister eyes.
I watched him coldly. Remonstrance or temper would have been as idle
with this man and his mates as pity to that unrecking heart of oak out
there.
"What is to be come at?" demanded Vanderdecken, with passionate
abruptness.
The other answered quickly, holding up one forefinger after another
in a computative tallying way whilst he spoke, "The half-deck is free
of water, and there I find flour, vinegar, treacle, tierces of beef,
some barrels of pork, and five cases of this--which hath the smell of
tobacco, and is no doubt that plant." And he pulled out of his pocket
a stick of tobacco, such as is taken in cases to sea to be sold to the
crews.
Vanderdecken smelt it. "'Tis undeniably tobacco," said he, "but how
used?" His eye met mine; I took the hint, and said: "To be chewed,
it is bitten; to be smoked, it has to be flaked with a knife--thus,
mynheer." And I imitated the action of cutting it.
Some of the crew had collected on the quarter-deck to hear the mate's
report, and seeing the tobacco in the captain's hand and observing
my gestures, one of them cried out that if it was like the tobacco
the Englishman had shown them how to use 'twas rare smoking! Whether
Vanderdecken had heard of my visit to the forecastle I do not know:
he seemed not to hear the sailor's exclamation, saying to me, "Yes,
mynheer, I see the convenience of such tablets; they hold much and are
easily flaked." And then, sweeping the sea and skies with his eyes, he
cried: "Get the other boat over: take a working party in her and leave
them aboard to break out the cargo. The smaller boat will tow her to
and fro. Arents, you will have charge of the working party--you, Van
Vogelaar, will bring off the goods and superintend the transhipments.
Away, now! There is stuff enough there to fill the hollowest cheek with
fat and to sweeten the howl of a gale into melody. Away, then!"
There was excitement in his words, but none in his rich and thunderous
voice, nor in his manner; and though there seemed a sort of bustle in
the way the men went to work to hoist out the large boat, it was the
very ghost of hurry, as unlike the hearty leaping of sailors, fired
with expectation, as are the twitchings of electrified muscles, to the
motions of hale limbs controlled by healthy intellect.
Yet, to a mariner, what could surpass the interest of such a scene?
As I leaned against the bulwark with Imogene, watching the little
boat towing the big one over the swell, with now a lifting that put
the leaning, toiling figures of the rowers clear against the delicate,
vaporous film over the sky at the horizon--the red blades of the oars
glistening like rubies as they flashed out of the water, and the white
heads of the little surges which wrinkled the liquid folds melting all
about the boats into creaming silver, radiant with salt rainbows and
prismatic glories--and now a sinking that plunged them out of sight
in a hollow, I said to my dear one, "Here is a sight I would not have
missed for a quintal of the silver below. I am actually witnessing
the manner in which this doomed vessel feeds and clothes herself, and
how her crew replenish their stores and provide against decay and
diminution. What man would credit this thing? Who would believe that
the Curse which pronounced this ship imperishable should also hold
her upon the verge of what is natural, sentencing her to a hideous
immortality, and at the same time compelling the crew to labour as if
her and their life was the same as that of other crews, in other ships."
"If they knew their doom they would not toil," she answered; "they
would seek death by famine or thirst, or end their horrible lot by
sinking the ship and drowning with her."
"How far away from the dread reality is the world's imagination of
this ship, and the situation of her people!" cried I. "She has been
pictured as rising out of the waves, as sailing among the clouds, as
being perpetually attended by heavy black storms, and thunder claps and
blasts of lightning! Here is the reality--as sheer a piece of prose at
first sight as any salvage job, but holding in the very heart of its
simplicity so mighty, so complicate, so unparalleled a wonder, that
even when I speak to you about it, Imogene, and suffer my mind to
dwell upon it, my mind grows numb with a dread that reason has quitted
her throne and left me fit only for a madhouse!
"You tremble!" she whispered, softly; "nay, you think too closely of
what you are passing through. Let your knowledge that this experience
is real rob it of its terror. Are we not surrounded with wonders which
too much thought will make affrighting? That glorious sun; what feeds
his flaming disk? Why should the moon shine like crystal when her soil
perchance is like that of our own world, which also gleams as silver
does though it is mere dust and mould and unreflecting ashes? Think of
the miracles we are to ourselves and to one another!"
She pressed my hand and pleaded, reproved and smiled upon me with
her eyes. Was she some angelic spirit that had lighted by chance on
this Death Ship, and held it company for very pity of the misery and
hopelessness of the sailor's doom? But there was a human passion and
tenderness in her face that would have been weakness in a glorified
spirit. Oh, indeed, she was flesh and blood as I was, with warm lips
for kissing, and breasts of cream as a pillow for love, and golden hair
too aromatic for phantasy.