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

by William Clark Russell

"A sailor is supposed to rest the better for the rocking of seas and the crying of wind," said he, with a mocking, contemptuous tone in his accents. "That saying is intended no doubt for the Dutch seamen; the English mariner nobly shines as a sailor in his own records, but you will admit, sir, that he is never so happy as when he is ashore."

"Sir," I replied, suppressing my rising temper with a very heavy effort, "I fear you must have suffered somewhat at the hands of the English sailor that you should never let slip a chance to discharge your venom at him. I am English, and a sailor, too, and I should be pleased to witness some better illustrations of Dutch courage than the insults you offer to a man who stands defenceless among you, and must be beholden, therefore, wholly to your courtesy."

He said, in a sneering, scornful voice, "Our courtesy! A member of a dastardly crew that would have assassinated me and my men with their small arms, hath a great claim upon our courtesy!"

"I was aft, and ignorant of the intentions of the men when that thing was done," said I, resolved not to be betrayed into heat, let the struggle to keep calm cost what it would.

To this he made no reply, then after a pause, said in a mumbling voice as if he would, and yet would not have me hear him, "I brought a curse into the ship when I handed you over the side; the devil craved for ye, and I should have let you sink into his maws. By the holy sepulchre, there are many in Amsterdam who would have me keel-hauled did they know this hand had saved the life of an Englishman!" And he tossed up his right hand with a vehement gesture of rage.

I was a stoutly-built fellow, full of living and healthy muscle, and I do solemnly affirm that it would not have cost me one instant of quicker breathing to have tossed this brutal and insulting anatomy over the rail. But it was not only that I feared any exhibition of temper in me might end in my murder; I felt that in the person of this ugly and malignant mate I should be dealing with a sentence that forbade his destruction, that must preserve him from injury, and that rendered him as superior to human vengeance as if his body had been lifeless. And what were his insults but a kind of posthumous scorn, as idle and contemptible as that inscription upon a dead Dutchman's grave in Rotterdam, in which the poor Holland corpse after eighty years of decay goes on telling the world that in his opinion Britons are poor creatures?

I held my peace, and Van Vogelaar went to the break of the poop, whence he could better see what the men were doing upon the main-yard. The enmity of this man made me feel very unhappy. I was never sure what mischief he meditated, and the sense of my helplessness, the idleness of any resolution I might form in the face of the supernatural life that encompassed me, made the flying midnight seem inexpressibly dreary and dismal, and the white foam of the sea carrying the eye to the ebony cloud-girdle that belted the horizon, suggested distances so prodigious that the heart sank to the sight of them, as to thoughts of eternity.

I was running my gaze slowly over the weather sea-board, whence came the endless procession of ridged billows like incalculable hosts of black-mailed warriors, with white plumes flying and steam from the nostrils of their steeds boiling and pouring before them, and phosphoric lights upon them like the shining points of couched spears, when methought a dim pallid shadow, standing just under a star that was floating a moment betwixt two flying shores of cloud, was a ship; and the better to see, I sprang on to the rail about abreast of the helmsman, for my support catching hold of some stout rope that ran transversely aft out of the darkness amidships. What gear it was I never stopped to consider, but gripping it with my left hand swayed to it erect upon the rail, whilst with my right I sheltered my eyes against the smarting rain of spray, and stared at what I guessed to be a sail. I have said that the creaming and foaming of the waters flung from the vessel's sides and bows made a light in the air, and the sphere of my sight included a space of the poop-deck to right and left of me, albeit my gaze was fastened upon the distant shadow.

All on a sudden the end of the rope I grasped was thrown off the pin to which it was belayed and I fell overboard. 'Twas instantaneous! And so marvellously swift is thought that I recollect even during that lightning-like plunge thinking how icy-cold the sea would be, and how deep my dive from the great height of the poop-rail. But instead of striking the water, the weight of me swung my body into the mizzen-channels by the rope my left hand desperately gripped. I fell almost softly against a shroud coming down to a great dead-eye there and dropped in a sitting posture in the channel itself which to be sure was a wide platform to windward and therefore lifted very clear of the sea, spite of the ship's weather rolls. My heart beat quickly, but I was safe: yet a moment after I had liked to have perished, indeed, for the rope I mechanically grasped was all at once torn from my fingers with so savage a drag from some hand on deck that nothing but the pitting of my knee against a dead-eye preserved me from being tweaked into the hissing caldron beneath. I could see the rope plain enough as it was tautened, through the pallid atmosphere and against the winking of the stars sliding from one wing of vapour to another, and perceived that it was the main-brace, the lowering of the yard or reefing the sail having brought it within reach of my arm. Then, with this, there grew in me a consciousness of my having noticed a figure glide by me whilst I stood on the rail; and, putting these things together, I guessed that Van Vogelaar, having observed my posture, had sneaked aft to where the main-brace—that was formed of a pendant and whip—was made fast and had let go of it, never doubting that, as I leaned against it, so, by his whipping the end off the pin it would let me fall overboard!