"He is dead!" said I, for this was forced upon me, spite of the erect and life-like posture of the figure, and what resembled the straining of his arms to steady the wheel.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DUTCH SAILORS BOARD THE WRECK.
"Get the boat over," cried Vanderdecken, turning to Van Vogelaar, "and go and inspect the wreck. Look to the man first: Heer Fenton declares him dead; and particularly observe if there be aught that hath life in it aboard."
On this, Van Vogelaar went forward, calling about him. In a few minutes a white-faced seaman, with yellow beard trembling to the wind, and his eyes looking like a rat's with the white lashes and pink retinas, leisurely climbed aloft with a line in his hand, and swinging himself on to the main-yard, slided out upon the horses to the extremity, or yard-arm as it is termed, which he bestrode as a jockey a steed; and then hauled up the line, to the end of which was hitched a tackle. This tackle he made fast to the yard-arm, and by it, with the help of steadying-ropes or guys, some of the crew on deck hoisted the little boat out of the bigger one and lowered it away into the water alongside.
I watched this business with a sailor's interest, wondering that so great a ship as this—great, that is, for the age to which she belonged—should carry no more than two boats, stowed one in the other after the fashion of the north-country coastmen. Nor was I less impressed by the aged appearance of the boat when she was afloat. She had the look of a slug with her horns, only that those continuations of her gunnel rail projected abaft as well as from the bows. And when Van Vogelaar and three of the crew entered her, then, what with the faded red of her inner skin, the wide, red blades of the short oars, the soulless movements of the seamen, the hue of their faces, the feverish unnatural shining of their eyes like sunshine showing through a cairngorm stone, their dried and corded hands, which wrapped the handles of their oars like rugged parchment—the little but marvellous picture acted as by the waving of a magic wand, forcing time back by a century and a half and driving shudders through the frame of a beholder with a sight whose actuality made it a hundredfold more startling and fearful than had it been a vision as unsubstantial as the Death Ship herself is mistakenly supposed to be.
The wreck being within hailing distance, the boat was soon alongside her. The heavy rolling of the hull, and the sharp rise and fall of the boat, would have made any human sailor mightily wary in his boarding of the vessel, but if ever there was an endevilled wretch among the Phantom's horrible crew, Van Vogelaar was he. The fiend in him stayed at nothing. The instant the boat had closed the wreck the fellow leaped, and he was on deck and walking towards the figure at the wheel, whilst the other—that is to say, two of them—were waiting for the hull to swing down for them to follow.
The mate went up to the figure, and seemed to address him; then, receiving no reply, he felt his face, touched his hands, and pulled to get that amazing grip relaxed, but to no purpose. The others now joining him, they all stared into the figure's face; one lifting an eyelid and peering into the eye, another putting his ear to the figure's mouth. Van Vogelaar then came to the side, and shouted in his harsh and rusty voice that it was a dead man. Vanderdecken imperiously waved his hand, and cried, "Fall to exploring her!" and motioned significantly to the sky, as if he would have the mate misgive the weather, though there was no change in the aspect of the pearly wreaths and glistening beds of vapour, and the draught was still a gentle breeze.
"Dead!" I whispered to Imogene; "yet I feared it!"