Overdue: The Story of a Missing Ship

by Harry Collingwood

The derelict Dutch barque.

Nothing further of any importance occurred until, having worked our way slowly up past the west and north-west coast of Australia, we found ourselves to the northward of the Ombay Passage, the entrance of which—or, rather, Savou Island, which may be said to lie in the fairway of the southern entrance—I hit off to a hair, much to my own secret gratification and the admiration of the boatswain and carpenter. Then one night, toward the end of the middle watch, the wind having fallen very light, the carpenter, whose watch it happened to be, came down below in a great state of perturbation to inform me that, although nothing could be seen, all hands had been terribly alarmed by the sound of a bell tolling at no great distance.

My first thought upon hearing this news was of a bell buoy marking the position of some dangerous rock or shoal toward which we might be drifting; but I quickly dismissed that idea, for bell buoys were much less numerous in those days than they are now. Moreover there was no mention of any such thing on the chart or in the directory. I therefore came to the conclusion that there must be some other cause for the sounds, and, without waiting to don any of my day clothing, went on deck to investigate.

Upon stepping out on deck the reason why nothing could be seen at once became apparent, for the night was as dark as a wolf’s mouth—so dark indeed, that, even after I had been up on the poop long enough for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, nothing was visible save the feeble light of the low-turned cabin lamps shining through the skylight, the faint glow of the binnacle lamps upon the helmsman’s face and hands and the upper part of the wheel, and the ghostly image of some twelve feet of the mainmast, part of the fife rail round it, and such portions of the running gear as were belayed to the pins therein, all glimmering uncertainly in as much of the cabin light as made its way out on deck, through the door by which I had emerged. Beyond these patches of dim illumination, and the coming and going of a spark on the forecastle, where one of the watch sucked meditatively at his pipe, all was opaque darkness, unrelieved by even the occasional glimpse of so much as a solitary star.

The night was as quiet as it was dark, for the wind, light all through the preceding twenty hours, had at length fallen away to nothing, and the ship was motionless, save for the slight heave of the swell which, stealing along through the blackness, would occasionally take her under the counter and give her a gentle lift that would cause all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it. In the midst of it all there would come the clear, metallic clang of a bell—a single stroke, as though someone away out there in the offing were tolling for a funeral. It was a ship’s bell that was being struck, there could be no doubt about that; but why was it being tolled? That was the question that puzzled me, and, as I could clearly see, had excited the superstitious alarm of the carpenter and the hands forward. The sound was so clear and distinct that I felt convinced it must emanate from a craft at no very great distance, and Chips and I accordingly united our voices in a stentorian hail of “Ship ahoy!” repeating it at least half a dozen times. But no reply came to us out of the darkness, save the occasional “ting” of the bell; nor was any light shown to indicate the whereabouts of our mysterious neighbour. This being the case, and feeling satisfied that the stranger could do us no harm so long as she came no closer to us than she was, I instructed Chips to report the matter to the boatswain when the latter came on deck at eight bells, requesting him to keep a sharp lookout during the remaining hours of darkness, and to call me at daylight, and then went back to my cabin and turned in again.

I had scarcely closed my eyes, as it seemed to me, when I was awakened by Polson, who was shaking me by the shoulder as he reported:

“It’s just gone four bells, Mr Troubridge, and there’s daylight enough abroad to show us that the ringin’ that have been worryin’ us comes from a barque ’bout half a mile to the east’ard of us. Her mizenmast is over the side, and she looks as if she might have been afire; but I don’t see nobody aboard of her except the chap what’s hangin’ over the poop rail, and it’s him that seems to be tollin’ the bell.”

“All right, boatswain,” I replied, “I’ll be on deck directly, and take my bath as usual under the head-pump, after which we will have a good look at our neighbour.”

Springing out of my bunk, I passed through the main cabin out on deck, and so forward into the eyes of the ship, where one of the watch, having rigged the head-pump in readiness for washing decks, sluiced me for a couple of minutes with clear, cool, sparkling salt water. The refreshment from this exhilarating shower bath, after a night spent in a close sleeping-cabin, was indescribable; and having given myself a good towelling I returned aft to my cabin to dress for the day, taking a cursory glance at the strange barque as I went. As the boatswain had said, she was about half a mile distant from us, and her mizenmast was over the side, still fast to the hull by the rigging, which had not been cut away.

Half an hour later, having given the scrubbers time to get off the poop, I once more hied me on deck, this time taking the ship’s telescope with me; and now, seating myself upon a convenient hencoop, I proceeded to acquire as much knowledge of the stranger as was to be obtained with the aid of a reasonably good set of lenses. I saw that the vessel was a craft of probably a trifle over three hundred tons, her hull painted green, from her rail down to her zinc sheathing. She was lying in such a position that the Mercury was broad on her port bow, and my first glimpse of her showed that she carried a name upon her head-boards, which name, after a while, I made out to be Braave. She was, therefore, doubtless Dutch. For a little while after that I was unable to make out anything further about her, for she lay right in the wake of the newly risen sun, the dazzle of which obliterated all detail; but after the lapse of about a quarter of an hour the sun crept a trifle away to the south of her, while some slight movement on the part of both vessels helped me. Then, although her port side was still in shadow, a dark stain on the green paint beneath one of her scuppers attracted my attention, and set me wondering what it could possibly be; for there was a sinister suggestiveness about its appearance that I did not want to accept.