The Death Ship: A Strange Story, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

The officer who steered stood erect, peering at us under his hand. The ship, God knows, was plain to their view now—the age and rottenness of her timbers, her patch-work sails, the sickliness of such ghastly and dismal hue as her sides discovered, the ancientness of her guns and swivels; above all, the looks of the crew watching the boat's approach—an array of figures more shocking than were they truly dead, newly unfrocked of their winding sheets and propped up against the rail to horribly counterfeit living seamen.

"Why have they ceased rowing?" cried Imogene, in a voice of bitter distress, and withdrawing her hand from my arm to press it upon her heart.

As she spoke a sudden commotion was perceptible among the men in the boat; the officer shrilly crying out some order, flung himself, as one in a frenzy, in the sternsheets; the larboard oars sparkled, and the desperate strokes of the men made the foam fly in smoke, whilst the starboard hands furiously backed-water to get the boat's head round swiftly, and before you could have counted ten she was being pulled, in a smother of froth, back to the frigate.

I was about to leap to the side and shout to them, but at the instant Vanderdecken turned and looked at me. Then it flashed upon my mind, "If I hail the boat, he and Van Vogelaar, all of them, may imagine I design to inform the frigate of the treasure!"—and the apprehension of what might follow such a suspicion held my feet glued to the deck.

"They have guessed what this ship is!" said Imogene, in a voice full of tears.

I could not speak for the crushing disappointment that caused the heart in me to weigh down, heavy as lead. I had made sure of the officer stepping on board, and of his delivering the girl and me from this accursed ship on hearing my story, and acting as a British naval officer should when his duty as a sailor, or his chivalry as a man, is challenged; in conformity with that noble saying of one of our most valiant admirals, who, on being asked whither he intended to carry his ship—"To Hell!" he answered, "if duty commands!"

Yet one hope lingered, though faintly indeed; the captain of the frigate had imperiously commanded the boat to be manned, as I gathered by his manner of waving away the officer, who had addressed him in a remonstrant manner; would he suffer the return of the boat's crew until they had obeyed his orders?

I watched. Headlong went the boat, smoking through the billows which arched down upon her from the windward, and her oars sparkled like sheet lightning with the panic-terror that plied them; the excitement in the ship was visible enough, discipline had given way to superstitious fear. I could see the captain flourishing his arm with threatening gestures, lieutenants and midshipmen running here and there, but to no purpose. The whole ship's company, about three hundred sailors and marines as I supposed, knew what ship we were, and the very frigate herself as she rolled without way, looked like some startled beast mad for flight, the foam draining from her bows to the slow pitching, as a terrified steed champs his bit into froth, and shudder after shudder going up out of her heart of oak into her sails, as you would have said to watch the tremble and filling and backing of them to the wind.

It was as I had feared, and had the captain of the man-of-war promised to blow his ship and men into a thousand atoms if the boat's crew refused to obey his orders to board us, they would have accepted that fate in preference to the hideous alternative adventure. In a trice the pinnace was alongside the frigate, the crew over the rail, and the boat hoisted. The yards on the main flew round, royals and topgallant-sails were set, studding-sails were run aloft, and before ten minutes had elapsed since the boat had started to board us, the frigate, under a whole cloud of canvas, was heeling and gently rolling and pitching over the brilliant blue sea, with her head north east, her stern dead at us, the gilt there and the windows converting her betwixt her quarters into the appearance of a huge sparkling square of crystal, the glory of which flung upon her wake under it a splendour so great that it was as though she had fouled a sunbeam and was dragging the dazzle after her.

I looked at Imogene; her beautiful eyes had yearned after the ship into the dimness of tears.