“There are some ships always unlucky. But the luck is mostly the fault of the skipper.
“Take, for instance, the loss of the Golden Arrow or the big clipper Pharos, that was found adrift in the doldrums without a man aboard her. Everything was in its place and not a boat was lowered. Even the dishes lay upon the table with the food rotten in them, but there wasn’t a soul to tell how she came to be unmanned. She was an unlucky ship, for on her next voyage out she stayed. No one has seen plank or spar of her for twelve years. But the skipper and mate who left her adrift outside of the Guinea current were well known to deep-water men.
“I’m no sky-pilot, and I don’t mean to say a skipper who prefers a pretty stewardess to an ugly one—or none at all—is always a bad man, but I do say that a skipper who cuts off a man’s lime-juice, gives him weevils for bread, and two-year-old junk for beef, has got enough devilry in him for anything, and is apt to have things comfortable in the after-cabin.
“It was nothing but scurvy that killed young Jim Douglas, so they said; but what about Hollender, the skipper, who brought him in along with nineteen others?
“I went to see Jim in the hospital, and he was an awful sight. His eyes rolled horribly, but he took my hand and held it a long time; then he tried to talk. His mind wasn’t steady and he often lost his bearings, but there was something besides delirium behind his tale.
“‘Her curse is on us, Gantline,’ he kept whispering. I held him, but he lay mumbling. ‘Dan died, too, an’ we sewed him up in canvas like a ham, an’ over he went; but it wouldn’t have helped, for the water was as rotten as it lays in the deadwood bilge. ’Twas the ghost of the skipper’s wife holding us back—her curse did the business, an’ I knew it.’ Then he calmed down and talked more natural.
“‘She came aboard with the child, an’ Hollender’s stewardess wouldn’t wait on her. Black-eyed she-devil that woman. An’ the skipper grinned, an’ the poor thing cried an’ cried. “Don’t treat me so; have mercy!” But he just grinned. “You can go forward an’ live with the mate if you don’t like it,” he said. She just cried an’ cried. One night she came on deck an’ rushed to the rail. She had her baby with her an’ she hesitated.
“’“Shall we go aft?” I said to Dan. “It’s mutiny an’ death,” says he.
“‘Then she cursed us all—an’ went over the side——’ Jim lay quiet after this for a minute, then he began:
“‘Slower, slower, slower. No wind, two hundred days out, an’ the water as rotten as it is in the deadwood bilge. The cat—I mean the mate—went up on the forecastle, an’ he never came back. We ate him, an’ tied his paws around our necks for luck. No wind, an’ the sails slatted to and fro on the yards. Midnight, an’ bright moonlight when it struck us, an’ tore our masts out an’ drove us far out of the path of ships, an’ we lay there with the boats gone, water-logged till we rigged enough gear to drift home by—— Help! Gantline, help! The curse of the woman was on the ship, for there wasn’t a man aboard——’