"I have not a doubt," said he, "that it was but the shadow of this vessel—the San Ildefonso—we saw on that night. The captain permitted me to examine the ship's log, and I found that at the same hour she was running upon a wind, and close hauled; that her cabin lamp was broken by an accident, that the watch on deck had just shaken out her jib, and by some accident let the jib-sheet fly, and that the mate ordered the spanker to be hauled more aft, that she might answer her helm better. Could we have stronger proofs of what I then asserted, that what we saw was but the dioptrical refraction of a vessel under canvas elsewhere?"
"It was a startling episode," said I, though his meaning was not very clear to me; "thus we need not be surprised that foremast-men like Tom Lambourne and others will maintain to the end of their days that it was the Flying Dutchman they saw, and nothing else!"
"Very likely; but according to tradition, Vanderdecken is seldom seen in these seas," replied Hislop, laughing; "he is always cruising in Table Bay, or knocking about in the seas off the Cape of Good Hope, as any old salt will readily tell you. He may generally be known by his carrying a press of sail, royals, sky-scrapers, and every thing, when other craft can scarcely carry steering canvas or double-reefed courses; and he always sends off a boat with letters for Amsterdam, addressed to people who have been in their graves for two hundred years or more. Some of these letters are addressed to William II., Prince of Orange (father of our William III.), who died in 1660, and are offering him five thousand guilders and as many Indian mohurs, payable at the bank of Amsterdam, if he will grant them a pardon."
"For what?" I asked.
"Crimes committed on board. Other letters are addressed by the crew to their relations, in places that no longer exist, such as the Haarlem gate and Cinghel-street; and these letters are alike dangerous to take or refuse."
"Why?"
"Because they bring mischief if left on board, and if refused, a typhoon comes on and sinks you."
"He is a pleasant craft to be overhauled by, certainly!"
"No one knows the origin of the legend," said Hislop; "some say she was a Dutch Indiaman, returning laden with great wealth, when her voyage was arrested by dreadful acts of piracy and murder which were committed by her crew. To punish them, Heaven sent on board a pestilence, which reduced them to a small number of wasted and worn spectres, who sailed from port to port offering all their ill-gotten gold as the price of rest, of shelter, of prayers for their sinful souls, and burial for their shrunken bodies; but they can never die; and thus from every haven and harbor, from every shore and town, their dreadful aspect, and the unexplained plague which devoured, without destroying them, even as the vulture preyed upon the vitals of Prometheus without their being consumed, always procured their expulsion, till finding they were shunned by all the world, they were compelled at last to cruise off Table Bay, the scene of their crimes, where their spectre ship, always the precursor of a storm, must haunt that sea until the day of doom; as Scott has it,—
"——that phantom ship, whose form
Shoots like a meteor though the storm,
When the dark scud comes driving hard,
And lowered is every topsail yard,
And canvas wove in earthly looms
No more to brave the storm presumes;
THEN, 'mid the war of sea and sky,
Top and top-gallant hoisted high,
Full spread and crowded every sail,
The Dæmon Frigate braves the gale;
And well the doomed spectators know
The harbinger of wreck and woe!"