CHAPTER XI.
THE DEAD HELMSMAN.
I proved right in the estimate I had formed from the fore-top of the size of the wreck. Her burthen was within four hundred tons. We gradually drove down to her, and when we were within musket-shot Vanderdecken ordered the topsail to be laid aback. The breeze had freshened, the little surges ran in a pouring of silver-gushing heads, the broad-backed swell rose in brimming violet to our channels, and our ship rolled upon it helpless as an egg-shell. The wallowing of the wreck, too, was like the plashing and struggling of some sentient thing heavily labouring, with such fins or limbs as God had given it, to keep itself afloat.
That there was no lack of water in her was certain; yet, having the appearance of a ship that had been for some days abandoned, at which time it might be supposed that her people would imagine her to be in a sinking condition, it was clear that in a strange accidental way the leak had been healed, possibly by some substance entering and choking it. All three masts were gone within a foot or two of the deck. Her hull was a dark brown, that looked black in the distance against the blue, with the mirror-like flashing from the wet upon it; she had a handsome stern, the quarter-galleries supported by gilt figures, wherefrom ran a broad band of gilt along her sides to the bows. Under her counter there stole out in large, white characters, with every heave of her stern, the words "Prince of Wales," and 'twas startling to see the glare of the letters coming out in a ghastly, staring sort of way from the bald brow of the swell, as it sloped from the gilded stern. Her name proved her English. You could see the masts had been cut away, by the hacked ends of the shrouds snaking out into the hollows and swellings over the side. Her decks were heavily encumbered with what sailors call "raffle"—that is, the muddle of ropes, torn canvas, staves of boats and casks, fragments of deck fittings and so forth, with which the ocean illustrates her violence, and which she will sometimes for weeks, ay, and for months, continue to rock and nurse, and hold intact for very affection of the picture as a symbol of her wrath when vexed by the gale, and of her triumphs over those who daringly penetrate her fortresses to fight her. The confusion to the eye was so great, and rendered so lively and bewildering by the hulk's rolling that, scan her as you would, it was impossible to master details with any sort of rapidity.
Suddenly Imogene, grasping my wrist in her excitement, exclaimed, "See! there is a man there—he seems to steady himself by holding the wheel—look now, Geoffrey, as she rolls her decks at us!"
I instantly saw him. The wheel was in front of the break of the poop, where the cuddy or round-house windows were; and erect at it stood a man, on the starboard side, one hand down clutching a spoke at his waist, and his left arm straight out to a spoke to larboard, which he gripped. Methought he wrestled with the helm, for he swerved as a steersman will who struggles to keep a ship's head steady in a seaway.
"Is he mad?" cried I. "Ay, it must be so! Famine, thirst, mental anguish, may have driven him distracted. Yet, even then, why does not he look towards us? Why, were he actually raving, surely his sight would be courted by our presence."
"Pray God he be not mad," whispered Imogene; "he is certain to be a sailor and an Englishman; and if he be mad, and brought here, how will these men deal with him?"
"Yes; and I say, too, pray God he be not mad!" I cried; "for back me with a hearty English sailor and I believe—yes, I believe I could so match these fellows as to carry the ship, without their having the power to resist me, to any port I chose to steer for to the eastward;" for with her cry of, "He is sure to be a sailor and an Englishman," there swept into my brain the fancy of securing the crew under hatches, and imprisoning Vanderdecken and his mates in their cabins—the least idle, in sober truth, of all the schemes that had presented themselves to me.