In all men, even in the dullest, there is a vein of imagination; whilst, like an artery, it holds sound, all is well. But sometimes it breaks, God knows how, for the most part, and then what is in it floods the intelligence often to the drowning of it, as the bursting of a vessel of the body within sickens or kills with hemorrhage. I considered some such idea as this to be applicable to Captain Skevington. Here was apparently a plain, sturdy sailor, qualified to the life for such talk as concerns ships, weather, ladings and the like; yet it was certain he was exceedingly superstitious, believing in such a Devil as the ancient monks figured forth, also in the possession of dead bodies by demons who caused them to move and act as though operated upon by the souls they came from their mothers with, with a vast deal of other pitiful fancies; and now, through our unhappy meeting with that miserable snow, he had let his mind run on the Phantom Ship so vehemently that he was not only cocksure we should meet the Spectre, but had reasoned the whole fabric and manning of her out on two issues; either that her hands were survivors of her original crew, persons who had cheated Nature by living to an age the like of which had not been heard of since the days of Moses and the prophets, beings who,
Like a lamp would live to the last wink
And crawl upon the utmost verge of life;
or that they were mariners who, having arrived at the years when they would have died but for being cursed, had been seized upon by the Devil, quickened by him, and set a-going with their death-hour aspects upon them.
These reflections occupied my mind after he had left me, and I don't mind confessing that what with my own belief in the Death Ship, coupled with the captain's notions and the fancies they raised in me, along with the melancholy vagueness of the deep, hazy with moonshine, the stillness, and the sense of our drawing near to where the Spectre was chiefly to be met, I became so uneasy that I contrived to spend the rest of my watch on deck within a few paces of the wheel, often addressing the helmsman for the sake of hearing his voice; and I tell you I was mighty pleased when midnight came round at last, so that I could go below and dispatch the mate to a scene in which his heavy mind would witness nothing but water and sky, and a breeze much too faint to be profitable.
CHAPTER VII.
I CONVERSE WITH THE SHIP'S CARPENTER ABOUT THE DEATH SHIP.
And now for six days it veritably seemed as if we were to be transformed into the marine phantom that, unsubstantial as she might be, yet lay with the heaviness of lead upon Captain Skevington; for, being on the parallel of Agulhas, a little to the south of that latitude, and in about sixteen degrees west longitude, it came on to blow fresh from the south-east, hardening after twenty-four hours into a whole gale with frequent and violent guns, and a veering of it easterly; and this continued, with a lull of an hour or two's duration, for six days, as I have said. 'Twas a taste of Cape weather strong enough to last a man a lifetime. The sea lay shrouded to within a musket-shot by a vapour of slatish hue that looked to stand motionless, and past the walls and along the roof of this wild, dismal, cloud-formed chamber, with its floor of vaults and frothing brows, the wind swept raving, raising a terrible lead-coloured sea, with heads which seemed to rear to the height of our maintop, where they broke, and boiled like a cauldron with foam, great masses of which the hands of the gale caught up and hurled, so that the lashing of the spray was often like a blinding snowstorm, but so smarting that the wind was as if charged with javelins.
Look upon the chart and you will see that for measureless leagues there is in these waters no land to hinder the run of the surges. Hence, when a fierce gale comes on from the east, south or west, the seas which rise are prodigious beyond such language as I have at command to express. We lay-to under a storm staysail with topgallant-masts struck, yards on deck and the lower yards stowed on the rail, the hatches battened down and everything as snug as good seamanship could provide. Our decks were constantly full of water; by one great sea that fell over into the waist there were drowned no less than six of the sheep we had taken in at the Cape, with a hog and many fowls; the carpenter's leg was broken by a fall, and an able seaman was deeply gashed in the face by being thrown against a scuttlebutt; 'twas impossible to get any food cooked, and throughout that week we subsisted on biscuit, cheese and such dry and lean fare as did not need dressing. In short, I could fill a chapter with our sufferings and anxieties during that period.
I had supposed that when brought face to face with the stern harsh prose of such weather as this, the mournful, romantic stuff that filled the captain's head would have been clean blown out of it; but no! he repeatedly said to me, and I believe on more than one occasion to Mr. Hall, that he considered this weather as part of the ill-luck that was bound to come to us from our having spoken a vessel that had been passed within hailing distance by the Phantom Ship.