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

by William Clark Russell

Meanwhile the fair wind hung very steady, blowing about south, a pleasant breeze that yielded a pure blue sky and small puff-shaped clouds exceedingly white; the sea was also of a very lovely sapphire, twinkling and sparkling in the north like a sheet of silver cloth set a-trembling. The Braave stole along softly, with but little seething and hissing noises about her now that her yards lay braced well in. I would think whilst I watched her flowing sheets, the long bosoms of her canvas swelling forwards with the slack bolt-ropes arched like a bow, and the mizzen rounding from its lateen yard, backed by the skeleton remains of the great poop lantern, that she needed but the bravery of fresh paint, a new ancient, pennons and streamers, bright pettararoes or swivels, glass for the lanterns and gilt for her galleries and beak, to render her as picturesque and romantic a vessel as ever sailed in that mighty procession, in whose van streamed the triumphant insignia of the great Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese Admirals.

'Twas impossible to doubt that every man in the ship believed that he was going home this time. There was an air of alacrity in them that had never before been noticeable. They would look eagerly seawards over the bows, gazing thus for long minutes at a time. Whenever the log was hove I'd mark one or more inquire the speed of the men who had held the reel or dragged in the line, as they went forward. They smoked incessantly, with an air of dull and heavy satisfaction in their faces.

I observed a lifting, so to speak, of the stupor off Vanderdecken. His trances—I mean those sudden fits of death-like insensibility which I can only liken to cataleptic attacks—were few, whence I concluded that his spirit, or whatever might be the nature of the essence that owned his great and majestical frame for a tabernacle—had gathered an increase of vitality from the invigorated hope and brisk desires which the fair wind had raised. In Van Vogelaar I witnessed no change. Possibly the dark shadows of my fears being on him held him gloomy and malignant to my sight. Likewise, I was careful to keep a wide space between us, save at meals, and never to have my back upon him, for to be sure, if I was to be murdered by the rogue, it should not be for the want of a bright look-out on my part.

This state of things continued for three days. A powerful current runs to the westward in these seas, and adding its impulse to our progress, I calculated that in those seventy-two hours we made not less than an hundred and thirty-three leagues. As time passed my wonder increased, for though I knew not our position, and never durst ask Vanderdecken what situation his dead-reckoning assigned us, I could not conceive—recollecting the place in which the Saracen was when we sighted the Death Ship—that we had been blown, during the time I had been on board, into a very remote sea; and hence 'twas reasonable that I should think it wanted but a few days sailing after this pattern to carry us round the Cape. Therefore I say my wonder grew, for whilst it was impious to suppose that the Devil could contrive that this ship should outwit the Sentence, yet our steady progress caused me to waver in my faith in the stern assurance of the vessel's doom.

I would say to Imogene: "The breeze holds; see how steady is the look of the southern sky! Is it possible that this wind will carry her round?"

To which she would answer: "No, the change will come. Oh, Geoffrey, it will come, though no more than the ship's length lay between her and the limit which you believe the Curse has marked out for her upon this sea."

Then I would agree with her. But afterwards, coming on deck in the afternoon, or next morning, and finding the Death Ship pushing along, her head pointing north-west, her sails full, the wake sliding away astern in a satin smoothness, wonder and doubt would again possess me, and twenty odd fancies occur, such as, "Suppose the Sentence has been remitted! Suppose it be the Will of Heaven this ship should return to Amsterdam, that a final expiation of Vanderdecken's wrong-doing might be accomplished in his and his miserable crew's beholding with their own eyes the extinction of those houses they had yearned for, and the tombs—if aught of memorial in that way remain—of those hearts whose beating they hoped to feel upon their own?"

Such thoughts would set me talking to Imogene.

"Conceive of this ship's arrival in the Texel! What consternation, what astonishment would she arouse! What mighty crowds would flock to view her!" And in the hurry and ardency of my imagination, I would go on figuring the looks and behaviour of the people as our ghastly crew stepped ashore, asking one and another after their wives and children, those Alidas, Geertruidas, Titias, Emelies, Cornelias, Johannas, Fedoras, Engelinas, and Christinas, and those Antonys, Hendricks, Jans, Tjaarts, Lodewyks, Abrahams, Willems, Peters, and Fredericks, whose very memory, let alone their dust, was as utterly gone as the ashes in any pipe forward there when the fire had been tapped out of the bowl overboard.

During the night of the third day the wind held steadily. I left the deck a little before midnight, having passed some hours of the darkness in the company of my love, and our sails were then full with the prosperous wind, the ship passing along over the quiet sea in a great shadow, the stars very piercing, and the light of their colours sharp and lovely; but on coming from my cabin next morning, I found the breeze gone; the ship was rolling upon a swell coming with some power from the westwards; and the dead cloths of the canvas striking a small thunder into the motionless air as they beat against the masts with the weary, monotonous swaying of those spars.