There was a linen-locker opening out of the captain's cabin, and the top of it was finished so as to afford sufficient space for a small man to climb up there, and stow himself away against the deck. Nobody would ever think of looking there for a man, and it is just possible that the place was originally designed for purposes of concealment. 'Twas lucky for Joe that he was small, or he never could have got in there.
Waller came up as usual with his watch, and went on duty. Two or three of us asked him where he was when the British officer came aboard; at every question he assumed a wild appearance, and said he had been taken up in the air by the Flying Dutchman, carried to the North Pole, and then to the South Pole, and then back again to the Washington. The Dutchman held him by the scruff of the neck all the time, and he felt rather stiff and uncomfortable. The fact is, he was cramped so in the linen-locker that it's no wonder he didn't have the use of his joints for a day or so. After he had quizzed a few of us that way with his yarn about the Flying Dutchman, we quit talking with him on the subject. He was scared, and no mistake, and certainly he had good reason to be.
Haines suggested that he hoped my shipmate, Waller, was the only one on board to make any acquaintance with the Flying Dutchman. I had seen mention of this individual in some of the books I had read, but no explanation as to who he was; so I asked Haines about him.
"Does he have wings to fly with?" I inquired, "or does he float about the sky on a machine of some sort? Perhaps he isn't a man, but just the ghost of one."
CHAPTER V.
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN AND HIS HISTORY.—MEETING A SHIP WITH A STARVING CREW.—RELIEF AND SAILING IN COMPANY.
"As to the Flying Dutchman," said Haines, "there's a good many stories about him, and I don't know which is the true one. The one that's oftenest told about him is that a Dutch captain, who wasn't a Christian or anything else that's respectable, tried to get around Cape Horn with a heavy gale blowing right in his teeth. He swore by all the bad words he knew that he would do it; and as the gale grew worse and his crew was frightened, he laughed at them as he drank his beer and smoked his pipe. They got up a mutiny, and tried to make him run into port somewhere; and he threw overboard every man who had joined in it.
"They do say," said Haines, almost in a whisper, "that the Holy Ghost came down on the ship, and this Dutchman fired at it with his pistol! Of course he didn't hurt the Holy Ghost at all; but the bullet went through his own hand, and paralyzed his arm. He cursed God, and was then condemned to navigate the seas forever, without putting into port, having nothing but gall to drink and red-hot iron to eat, and to be standing watch all the time."