The Phantom Death, etc.

by William Clark Russell

I returned to the cabin, and the boatswain joined me, and we stood beside the table conversing, anxiously watched by several men who had stationed themselves at the skylight.

“What we’ve got to do,” said I, “is to keep a bright look-out for ships, and borrow some one to steer us home from the first vessel that will lend us a navigator. We’re bound to fall in with something soon. Meanwhile, you’re a smart seaman yourself, Matthews, as well qualified as any one of them who have died to sail the ship, and there’s surely some intelligent sailor amongst the crew who would relieve you in taking charge of the deck. I’ll do all I can.”

“The question is, where’s the vessel now?” said the boatswain.

“Fetch me the log-book,” said I, “and see if you can find the chart they’ve been using to prick the courses off on. We should be able to find out where the ship was at noon yesterday. I can’t enter that cabin. The sight of the poor fellow makes me sick.”

He went to the berth and passed through the door, and might have left me about five minutes, evidently hunting for the chart, when he suddenly rushed out, roaring in his thunderous voice, “I’ve discovered it! I’ve discovered it!” and fled like a madman up the companion steps. I was startled almost to the very stopping of my heart by this sudden furious wild behaviour in him: then wondering what he meant by shouting “he had discovered it!” I walked to the cabin door, and the very first thing my eye lighted upon was a small snake, leisurely coiling its way from the head to the feet of the corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a rifle-barrel, and it then tapered to something like whipcord to its tail. It was about two feet long, snow white, and speckled with black and red spots.

This, then, was the phantom death! Yonder venomous reptile it was, then, that, creeping out of some secret hiding-place, and visiting the unhappy men one after another, had stung them in their sleep, in the darkness of the cabin, and vanished before they had struck a light and realized indeed that something desperate had come to them!

Whilst I stood looking at the snake, whose horror seemed to gain fresh accentuation from the very beauty of its snow-white speckled skin and diamond-bright eyes, the boatswain, armed with a long handspike, and followed by a number of the crew, came headlong to the cabin. He thrust the end of the handspike under the belly of the creature, and hove it into the middle of the berth.

“Stand clear!” he roared, and with a blow or two smashed the reptile’s head into a pulp. “Open that cabin window,” said he. One of the men did so, and the boatswain with his boot scraped the mess of mashed snake on to the handspike and shook it overboard.

“I told you they was poisoned,” he cried, breathing deep; “and, oh my God, Mr. West—and I humbly ask your pardon again for having suspected ye—do you know, sir, whilst I was a-talking to you just now I was actually thinking of taking up my quarters in this here cabin this very night.”