"Only this, sir," he exclaimed, with his face yet more clouded, and speaking in a low voice, as one might in a sacred building, "I never yet knew or heard of a ship reporting to another of having met the Dutchman without that other a-meeting of the Ghost too afore she ended her voyage."
"If that be so," I cried, not liking to hear this, for Matthews had been to sea for thirty-five years, and he now spoke with too much emotion not to affect me, "for God's sake don't make your thoughts known to the crew, and least of all to the captain, who is already so uneasy on this head that when he mentions it he talks as if his mind were adrift."
"Mr. Fenton," said the carpenter, "I never yet knew or heard of a ship reporting to another of having met the Dutchman, without that other meeting the Ghost too afore she's ended her voyage," and thus speaking he smote his bed heavily with his fist.
I was startled by the emphasis his repeating his former words gave to the assurance, and smoked in silence. He put down his pipe and lay awhile looking at me as though turning some matters over in his mind. The swing of the flame, burning from the spout of the lamp put various expressions, wrought by the fluctuating shadows, into his sick face, and it was this perhaps that caused his words to possess a power I could not feign to you by any art of my pen. He asked me if I had ever seen the Dutchman, and on my answering "No," he said that the usual notion among sailors was that there is but one vessel sailing the seas with the curse of Heaven upon her, but that that was a mistake, as it was an error in the same way to suppose that this ocean from Agulhas round to the Mozambique was the only place in which the Phantom was to be met.
"There's a ship," said he, "after the pattern of this here Dutchman, to be found in the Baltic. She always brings heavy weather, and there's small chance afterwards for any craft that sights her."
"I've been trading in the Baltic for five years without ever hearing that," said I.
"But it's true all the same, Mr. Fenton; you ask about it, sir, when you get back, and then you'll see. There's another vessel, of the same pattern, that's to be met down in the mouth of the Channel, 'twixt Ushant and the Scillies, and thereabouts. A man I know, called Jimmy Robbins, saw her, and told me the yarn. He was in a ship bound home from the Spice Islands; they were in soundings, and heading round for the Channel; it was the morning watch, just about dawn, weather slightly thickish; suddenly a vessel comes heaving out of the smother from God knows where! Jim Robbins was coiling down a rope alongside the mate, who, on seeing the vessel, screams out shrill, like a woman, and falls flat in a swound; Jim, looking, saw it was the Channel Death Ship, a large pink, manned by skeletons, with a skull for a figurehead, and a skeleton captain leaning against the mast, watching the running of the sand in an hour-glass he held. She was seen by twelve others, besides Jim and the mate, who nearly died of the fright. And the consequence of meeting her was, that the ship Jim Robbins was in was cast away on the following night on the French coast, down Saint Brihos way, and thirty-three souls perished."
The gravity with which he related this, and his evident keen belief in these and the like superstitions, now rendered the conversation somewhat diverting; for, as I have elsewhere said, though I never questioned the existence of the one spectral ship, in a belief in which all mariners are united, holding that the deep, which is full of drowned men, hath its spirits and its apparitions equally with the land, yet when it came to such crude mad fancies as a vessel manned by skeletons, why, of course, there was nothing for it but to laugh, which I did, heartily enough, though in my sleeve, for seamen are a sensitive people, easily afronted, more especially in any article of their faith. However, he succeeded, before I left him, in exciting a fresh uneasiness in me by asseverating, in a most melancholy voice, and with a very dismal face, that our having spoken with the snow that had sighted the Dutchman was certain to be followed by misfortune; and these being amongst the last words he exchanged with me before I left his cabin, I naturally carried away with me on deck the damping and desponding impression of his posture and appearance as he uttered them, which were those of a man grieved, bewildered, and greatly alarmed.