As the skeleton sank, I could not but admire the aptness of the mechanism to the condition of the ship and her crew, for what could surpass the irony of this representation of Death perpetually foiled in his efforts to slay Time, which was yet the case of Vanderdecken and his men, whose mortality was constrained to an endless triumph over that force which drives all men born of woman through Nature into Eternity.
The parrot hanging near, I stayed yet to look at her and then spoke to the creature in my rugged Dutch, but to no purpose; with the slow motion of her kind she contorted herself until, with her beak uppermost, she brought her larboard eye to bear full upon me; and so fixed and unwinking was her stare that I greatly disliked it, nay, felt that if I lingered I should fear it, and was going when she brought me to a stand by a hollow "Ha! ha! ha!" just such a note as fancy would give to the ghost of a Dutchman, who had been large, fat and guttural when alive, could the spectre of such a one laugh in his coffin or in a vault. The age which this bird had attained made her mere appearance chilling to the blood, though I am aware these creatures are long-lived and that no man with certainty could say they might not flourish two hundred years and more. She was not bald. All her feathers were sound and smooth. Yet, as I made my way to my cabin, it terrified me into downright despondency to conceive of this parrot sharing in the Curse that Vanderdecken had provoked. For if this soulless fowl could be involved in the general fate merely because it happened to be in the ship, why might not my lot prove the same? Oh, my heart! To think of becoming one of the crew, partaking their horrid destiny, and in due course dying to live again accurst and miraculously, my soul—as theirs—existing in my body like one of those feeble lamps with which the ancients illumined their tombs!
But I was young and was not without an Englishman's courage. I could gaze backwards and perceive in my life no sin such as should fill me with remorse and hopelessness in a time like this. I believed in my Creator's goodness, and reaching my darksome cabin, I knelt down and prayed, and after awhile recollected myself and felt the warmth of my former spirit.
I was mighty pleased to recover my own clothes; they gave me back the sense of my being my true self again, whereas the masquerading attire Vanderdecken had lent me occasioned a wretched feeling as of belonging to the ship. When I had shifted myself, I neatly folded the captain's coat, breeches and the rest, and then sat down on my bed to think over my conversation with Miss Dudley. What to credit, what to make of her, I hardly knew. She was so beautiful where all was ugly, so fresh where all was decayed, so young where all was withered, so radiant where all was darksome that, on board such a ship as this, that had been consigned to the most dreadful doom the imagination of man could conceive of, how was I to know that she was not some part of the scheme of retribution—a sweet and dazzling tantaliser, a mocker of the home affections of the miserable ship's company, a lovely embodiment of the spirit of life to serve some purpose of an inscrutable nature in its influence upon such spiritual vitality as was permitted to the corpse-like beings who navigated this Death Ship.
But this was a fleeting fancy only, and was rendered utterly ridiculous by recurrence to her transporting figure, the golden warmth of her hair and complexion, and above all to the fragility of her lineaments, which stamped her mortal. No! her story was the truth itself; but this I understood, if Vanderdecken were never to comprehend his doom, there was stern assurance of his holding the girl to his ship until she died; because, as she had pointed out, he had adopted her and desired to take her home, and would never understand he was powerless to do so, even should time represent the truth to him in her face, should she ever grow old enough for wrinkles and grey hairs.
Had I been sent to deliver her? God knoweth, I thought. Yet, what was my own case? Would they refuse to let me leave them? Well, that idea did not frighten me, for he is a poor sailor who cannot find a means of escape from a ship he dislikes, even though she should be commanded by Old Nick himself. But suppose they compelled me to go, set me ashore in their boat, or hailed some unsuspecting vessel that would receive me. I should then be powerless to rescue Imogene from this frightful situation, for as to subsequently helping to succour her, first of all I doubted whether I should find a sailor in any part of the world willing to ship for a cruise in search of Vanderdecken's craft, and next, even if I should be able to range a line-of-battle ship alongside this venerable frame, how should human artillery advantage us in such a conflict? 'Twould be but another defiance of the Divine intention, and what mariner was to be found who would embark on any adventure against this dread Spectre of the Deep when, by so doing, he would feel that he was fighting a Vengeance which would swiftly deal with him for so great an act of impiety?
However, no good could come of meditations of this kind in that gloomy cabin filled with the echoes of the groaning in the hold and the washing and shocks of the seas without. I felt a seaman's curiosity to have a good look at a ship of which there were a thousand stories afloat in every forecastle throughout the world, and so I climbed through the hatch on deck, dressed in the style in which I had made my first appearance. The second mate, Antony Arents, conned the vessel, standing near the helm with his arms folded in a sullen, moody posture, even so as to resemble a man turned into stone. Vanderdecken was at the weather-rail, erect and noble-looking, his legs parted in the attitude of a stride that he might balance himself to the rolling deck. He stared fixedly to the windward, his great beard, disparted, blowing like smoke over either shoulder, and his brows lowered into a contemptuous scowl upon his sharp, burning eyes. The ship was under the same canvas I had before noticed on her. Her yards were as closely pointed to the wind as the lee braces could bring them, but whereas in our time a square-rigged vessel close-hauled can be brought to within six points, that is to say, if the gale be north she can be made to head east-north-east, yet this ship, as I easily gathered without looking at the compass, lay no closer than eight-and-a-half or nine points, the wind blowing west-north-west and we lying by as close as the trim of the yards would suffer us, at about south-by-west.
In short, we were being driven at the rate of some three or four miles an hour dead to leeward, broadside on. Now, as I am writing this in the main that all mariners may have a just and clear conception of the sort of ship Vanderdecken's vessel is, I particularly desire that this matter of her not being able to sail within eight or nine points of the wind be carefully noted; for, then you shall understand how fully with her own tackling, and yards and canvas, she helps out and fulfils her doom.
If ever you have read the account of my Lord Anson's voyage round the world, you will recollect, in the second chapter of Book II., the narrative, given at length, of the time occupied by the Gloucester in fetching and casting anchor off Juan Fernandez. She could make no way at all in beating or reaching. She was first sighted from the island on the 21st of June; she was still striving against the head wind on the 9th of July; then she was blown away, and reappeared on the 16th, and it was not until the 23rd of that month that she was seen opening the north-west point of the bay with a flowing sail, which means that she had a fair wind, and which may also be said to signify that had the wind not favoured her she might have gone on struggling for years without making the island. Think, now, of a vessel very nearly fitted as our ships are rigged, occupying thirty-two days—a whole month and a day atop—in covering a distance which, when the Gloucester was first sighted, was reckoned at four leagues!
Is it, then, surprising that a vessel constructed considerably more than a century earlier than the ships of Anson's squadron, in an age when the art of building was little understood, when a ship's hull was as tall as a great castle, when all things aloft were ponderous, when the immense beam, helped yet by the wide channels, gave such a spread to the shrouds that they could make of the breeze no more than a beam wind when braced up as sharp as the yards would come—is it surprising, I say, that this Dutchman, so constructed, should never be able to contend with a contrary wind? I am the more pleased to point this out because I have heard it particularly affirmed that if Vanderdecken were a good seaman he would laugh at a north-wester though there should be no other wind in those seas; for he need do nothing but make a long board to the south, to as far, say, as fifty degrees, in order, with his starboard tacks aboard, to pass the Cape and enter the Atlantic, where he would probably catch the south-east trade wind and so make good his return. But this presupposes no Sentence, even if the ship were capable of sailing close-hauled.