The sight that met his eyes was a terrible one. Page 70.
"That's pretty tough, seems to me," I remarked. "Did he really have to do it all?"
"They do say," continued Haines, "that he's been doing it ever since, and that's more'n two hundred years ago. It's a misfortune to see his ship,—an awful misfortune! They say it's worse than to see the Devil to meet the Phantom Ship that the Flying Dutchman sails on. It always wants to speak to any vessel that comes within hailing distance, and always wants to send letters by her; but every ship that takes letters from her is sure to be lost."
"Well, then, if I was captain of a ship," said I, "and met the Flying Dutchman, I wouldn't take any of his letters for him."
"No more would I," said Haines; "but, what's more, when you see the Phantom Ship, even though you don't speak her or take letters from her, you are liable to have white squalls and hurricanes, waterspouts and tornadoes. He has a crew that are just as bad scoundrels as himself. They are thieves, cowards, murderers, and all such sort of fellows; and they have to do just as he does, stay on watch all the time, and eat and drink stuff that a Christian wouldn't and couldn't touch."
"Did you ever see the Flying Dutchman's ship?" I asked.
"N-o," said Haines, drawling out the word; "I've never seen the Phantom Ship myself, but I've a good many friends what has seen it. You're not likely to see him round these here latitudes; it's always away off somewhere, generally down by the Cape of Good Hope, and between that and Cape Horn. The Phantom Ship is always sailing with a fair wind and everything spread, and she looks like the great big ghost that she is. 'Tisn't such a very large ship, the kind of craft the Dutchmen used to have two or three hundred years ago; and the men that navigate her seem to know their business.
"There's another phantom ship a good deal older and bigger than the Flying Dutchman; so big is she that the ship I've been telling you about wouldn't make a yawl for her. The French sailors call her the Lightning Chaser; and she's so big that it takes her a year to make a tack. Once, when she was bound north, she got stuck in the Straits of Dover; but her captain smeared the port side of the ship with soap, and she crept through; but the soap scraped off against the British cliffs, and that's what makes 'em so white. When she got into the Baltic, the sea was too narrow, and they had to lighten her. The ballast that she threw over made the island of"—