MY LIFE IS ATTEMPTED.
Heading out to sea afresh! Once again pointing the ship's beak for the
solitude of the ocean, and starting as it might be on a new struggle
that was to end in storm and defeat, in the heavy belabouring of
the groaning structure by giant surges, and in a sickening helpless
drift of God alone knew how many leagues, ere the sky brightened into
blueness once more!
Never had I so strongly felt the horror and misery of the fate which
Vanderdecken's hellish impiety had brought down upon his ship and
her company of mariners as now, when I saw the yards braced up on
the starboard tack, and the vessel laid with her head to the south
and west. The fresh wind seemed to shriek the word "Forever!" in her
rigging, and the echo was drowned in the wild sobbing sounds that rose
out of each long, yearning wash of the sea along her dimly shining
bends.
How was I to escape? How deliver Imogene?
I was a sailor, and whilst the ocean found me business, whilst it
defined the periods of its detentions of me, I loved it! The freedom of
it was dear to my heart; it was my home; it was a glass in which was
mirrored the image of the Creator I worshipped. But the prospect of
continuously sailing upon it in the Death Ship, of fighting its subtle
winds and furious storms to no purpose, converted it into a melancholy
waste--a liquid plain of desolation--a mere Hell of waters upon whose
sandy floor Hope, with tempest-torn wings, would speedily lie drowned,
whilst its surface should grow maddening with the reflected icy
sparkling of that Starry Crux, which shone but as a symbol of despair
when the eye sought it from these accursed decks and beheld the quick
light of its jewels trembling over the yard-arms of the Death Ship.
Shortly after midnight the wind freshened, and it came on to blow
with some weight. I had been in my cabin an hour, lying there broad
awake, being rendered extraordinarily uneasy by my thoughts. The sea
had grown hollow, and the ship plunged quickly and sharply with a
heavy thunderous noise of spurned and foaming waters all about her.
It was sheer misery lying intensely wakeful in that desolate cabin,
that would have been as pitchy black as any ancient castle dungeon
but for the glimmering lights, which were so much more terrible than
the profoundest shade of blackness could be, that had there been any
hole in the ship where the phosphor did not glow, I would cheerfully
have carried my bed to it, ay, even if it had been in the bottom of
the fore-peak or in the thickest of the midnight of the hold. The
rats squeaked, the bulkheads and ceilings seemed alive with crawling
glow-worms, groans as of dying, cries as of wounded men sounded out of
the interior in which lay stowed the pepper, mace, spices and other
Indian commodities of a freight that was hard upon an hundred and fifty
years old!
I suspected from the motions of the ship and the hollow, muffled
roarings outside, that a gale of wind was brewing, and I resolved to go
on deck and take a look at the weather since I could not sleep, for if
the wind was north west it would give us such a further drift to the
eastwards as would set the African coast at a fearful distance for our
round-bowed sea-wagon to come at. On the other hand, the gale might
have veered to a quarter favourable to heading for Cape Agulhas. Should
this happen, how would the Curse operate? Would the ship be permitted
to near the Cape before being blown back? But I suspected the operation
of no fixed laws in this doom. To suffer the Death Ship to draw close,
to fill the minds of the crew with triumphant assurance of their
weathering the Cape of Storms, would be a mere hideous tantalising of
them that could surely form no part of the sentence which obliterated
from their minds the recollection of past failures. For, let the
readers of my narrative bear this steadfastly in view: that if
Vanderdecken and his men knew of a surety that they were never to pass
the cape into the South Atlantic Ocean, then, as beings capable of
thinking and acting, they would long ago have desisted from the attempt
and sought rest--if they could not procure death for themselves--haply
in that same island of Java from which they had sailed.
I crawled into my clothes by feeling for them, and groped my way on to
the poop. The sky was black with low-flying cloud, from the speeding
rims of which a star would now and again glance, like the flash of a
filibuster's fusil from the dark shrubbery of a mountain slope. But
there was so much roaring spume and froth all about the ship, that a
dim radiance as of twilight hung in the air, and I could see to as high
as the topmast heads.
I stepped at once to the binnacle without noticing who had the watch
and found the ship's head south-east by south. I could not suppose
the ancient magnet showed the quarters accurately, but, allowing for
a westerly variation of thirty degrees, the indication came near
enough to satisfy me that the wind was as it had been ever since the
night I first entered this ship--right in our teeth for the passage of
the Cape, and that though we might be sluggishly washing through it
close-hauled, we were also driving away broadside on, making a clean
beam course for the heart of the mighty Southern Ocean.
This vexed and harassed me to the soul, and occasioned in me so
lively a sympathy with the rage that adverse gales had kindled in
Vanderdecken, that had he contented himself with merely damning the
weather instead of flying in the face of the Most High and behaving
like some foul fiend, I should have deeply pitied him and considered
his case the hardest ever heard of. The main-yard was lowered and a row
of men were silently knotting the reef-points. The topgallant-sails had
been handed, reefs tied in the topsails, and the vessel looked prepared
for foul weather.
But though the wind blew smartly, with weight in its gusts and plenty
of piping and screaming and whistling of it aloft, there was no marked
storminess of aspect in the heavens, sombre and sullen as was the
shadow that ringed the sea-line, and fiercely as flew the black clouds
out of it in the north west; and with this appearance I essayed to
console myself as I stood near the mizzen-shrouds gazing about me.
Seeing a figure standing near the larboard-shrouds, I stepped over
and found it to be Van Vogelaar. My direct approach made some sort of
accost a formal necessity, but I little loved to speak with this man,
whom I considered as wicked a rascal as ever went to sea.
"These nor'-westers are evil winds, mynheer," said I, "and in this sea
they appear to have the vitality of easterly gales in England. What is
the weather to be like? For my part, I think we shall find a quieter
atmosphere before dawn."
He was some time in answering, feigning to watch the men reefing the
mainsail, though by the light of the white water I could catch the
gleam of his eyes fixed upon me askant.
"What brings you on deck at this hour?" said he, in his rasping, surly
voice.
I answered, quietly, that feeling wakeful and hearing the wind, I rose
to view the weather for myself.
"A sailor is supposed to rest the better for the rocking of seas and
the crying of wind," said he, with a mocking, contemptuous tone in his
accents. "That saying is intended no doubt for the Dutch seamen; the
English mariner nobly shines as a sailor in his own records, but you
will admit, sir, that he is never so happy as when he is ashore."
"Sir," I replied, suppressing my rising temper with a very heavy
effort, "I fear you must have suffered somewhat at the hands of the
English sailor that you should never let slip a chance to discharge
your venom at him. I am English, and a sailor, too, and I should be
pleased to witness some better illustrations of Dutch courage than the
insults you offer to a man who stands defenceless among you, and must
be beholden, therefore, wholly to your courtesy."
He said, in a sneering, scornful voice, "Our courtesy! A member of a
dastardly crew that would have assassinated me and my men with their
small arms, hath a great claim upon our courtesy!"
"I was aft, and ignorant of the intentions of the men when that thing
was done," said I, resolved not to be betrayed into heat, let the
struggle to keep calm cost what it would.
To this he made no reply, then after a pause, said in a mumbling voice
as if he would, and yet would not have me hear him, "I brought a curse
into the ship when I handed you over the side; the devil craved for ye,
and I should have let you sink into his maws. By the holy sepulchre,
there are many in Amsterdam who would have me keel-hauled did they know
this hand had saved the life of an Englishman!" And he tossed up his
right hand with a vehement gesture of rage.
I was a stoutly-built fellow, full of living and healthy muscle, and
I do solemnly affirm that it would not have cost me one instant of
quicker breathing to have tossed this brutal and insulting anatomy
over the rail. But it was not only that I feared any exhibition of
temper in me might end in my murder; I felt that in the person of
this ugly and malignant mate I should be dealing with a sentence that
forbade his destruction, that must preserve him from injury, and that
rendered him as superior to human vengeance as if his body had been
lifeless. And what were his insults but a kind of posthumous scorn, as
idle and contemptible as that inscription upon a dead Dutchman's grave
in Rotterdam, in which the poor Holland corpse after eighty years of
decay goes on telling the world that in his opinion Britons are poor
creatures?
I held my peace, and Van Vogelaar went to the break of the poop, whence
he could better see what the men were doing upon the main-yard. The
enmity of this man made me feel very unhappy. I was never sure what
mischief he meditated, and the sense of my helplessness, the idleness
of any resolution I might form in the face of the supernatural life
that encompassed me, made the flying midnight seem inexpressibly dreary
and dismal, and the white foam of the sea carrying the eye to the ebony
cloud-girdle that belted the horizon, suggested distances so prodigious
that the heart sank to the sight of them, as to thoughts of eternity.
I was running my gaze slowly over the weather sea-board, whence came
the endless procession of ridged billows like incalculable hosts
of black-mailed warriors, with white plumes flying and steam from
the nostrils of their steeds boiling and pouring before them, and
phosphoric lights upon them like the shining points of couched spears,
when methought a dim pallid shadow, standing just under a star that
was floating a moment betwixt two flying shores of cloud, was a ship;
and the better to see, I sprang on to the rail about abreast of the
helmsman, for my support catching hold of some stout rope that ran
transversely aft out of the darkness amidships. What gear it was I
never stopped to consider, but gripping it with my left hand swayed
to it erect upon the rail, whilst with my right I sheltered my eyes
against the smarting rain of spray, and stared at what I guessed to be
a sail. I have said that the creaming and foaming of the waters flung
from the vessel's sides and bows made a light in the air, and the
sphere of my sight included a space of the poop-deck to right and left
of me, albeit my gaze was fastened upon the distant shadow.
All on a sudden the end of the rope I grasped was thrown off the pin
to which it was belayed and I fell overboard. 'Twas instantaneous!
And so marvellously swift is thought that I recollect even during
that lightning-like plunge thinking how icy-cold the sea would be,
and how deep my dive from the great height of the poop-rail. But
instead of striking the water, the weight of me swung my body into the
mizzen-channels by the rope my left hand desperately gripped. I fell
almost softly against a shroud coming down to a great dead-eye there
and dropped in a sitting posture in the channel itself which to be
sure was a wide platform to windward and therefore lifted very clear
of the sea, spite of the ship's weather rolls. My heart beat quickly,
but I was safe: yet a moment after I had liked to have perished,
indeed, for the rope I mechanically grasped was all at once torn from
my fingers with so savage a drag from some hand on deck that nothing
but the pitting of my knee against a dead-eye preserved me from being
tweaked into the hissing caldron beneath. I could see the rope plain
enough as it was tautened, through the pallid atmosphere and against
the winking of the stars sliding from one wing of vapour to another,
and perceived that it was the main-brace, the lowering of the yard or
reefing the sail having brought it within reach of my arm. Then, with
this, there grew in me a consciousness of my having noticed a figure
glide by me whilst I stood on the rail; and, putting these things
together, I guessed that Van Vogelaar, having observed my posture, had
sneaked aft to where the main-brace--that was formed of a pendant and
whip--was made fast and had let go of it, never doubting that, as I
leaned against it, so, by his whipping the end off the pin it would let
me fall overboard!
I was terribly enraged by this cowardly attempt upon my life and was
for climbing inboard at once and manhandling him, ghost or no ghost;
then changed my mind and stayed a bit in the channel considering what
I should do. Thin veins of fire crawled upon this aged platform as
upon all other parts of the ship; but the shrouds coming very thick
with leather chafing-gear to the dead-eyes made such a jumble of black
shapes, that I was very sure Van Vogelaar could not see me if he should
take it into his head to peer down over the rail.
After casting about in my mind, the determination I arrived at was
to treat my tumble from the rail as an accident, for I very honestly
believed this: that if I should complain to Vanderdecken of his mate's
murderous intention, I would not only harden the deadly malignity of
that ghastly ruffian's hatred of me, insomuch, that it might come to
his stabbing me in my sleep, but it might end in putting such fancies
into the captain's head as should make him desire my destruction, and
arrange with his horrid lieutenant to procure it. Indeed, I had only to
think of Amboyna and the brutal character of the Dutch of those times,
and remember that Vanderdecken and his men belonged to that age, and
would therefore have the savagery which one hundred and fifty years of
civilization, arts, and letters have somewhat abated in the Hollanders,
to determine me to move with very great wariness in this matter.
But I had been dreadfully near to death, and could not speedily
recollect myself. The white heads of the surges leaped, boiled and
snapped under the channels, like wolves thirsting for my blood; and the
crying of the wind among the shrouds, in whose shadows I sat, and the
sounds it made as it coursed through the dark night and split shrilly
upon the ropes and spars high up in the dusk, ran echoes into those
raving waters below, which made them as much wild beasts to the ear as
they looked to the eye.
But little good could come of my sitting and brooding in that
mizzen-channel; so, being in no mood to meet the villain, Van Vogelaar,
I very cautiously rose, and with the practised hand of a sailor crawled
along the lap of the covering-board, holding by the rail but keeping
my head out of sight, and reached the main-chains, whence I dropped
on to the deck unseen among the tangled thickness of the shrouds, and
slided, as stilly as the ghostliest man among that ghastly crew could
tread, to my cabin.