The Death Ship (Vol. 1-3). William Clark Russell
prove some eclipse of my reason from which my mind would float out bright afresh ere long, I followed the great figure of the captain, but with a step so faltering from weakness and grief, that he, perceiving my condition, took me by the elbow and supported me up the ladder to the cabin under the poop.
Whether it was this courtesy or owing to a return of my manhood—and I trust the reader will approve the candour with which I have confessed my cowardice—whatever might be the reason, I began now to look about me with a growing curiosity. The interior into which Captain Vanderdecken conducted me, was of a dingy yellowish hue, such as age might complexion delicate white paint with. An oil lamp of a very beautiful, elegant and rare pattern, furnished with eight panes of glass, variously and all choicely coloured with figures of birds, flowers and the like, though the opening at the bottom let the white light of the oil-flame fall fair on to the table and the deck, swung by a thin chain from a central beam. The cabin was the width of the ship, and on its walls were oval frames, dusky as old mahogany, each one, as I suspected, holding a painting. Over the door by which the cabin was entered was a clock and near it hung a cage with a parrot in it. Of ports I could see no remains, and supposed that by day all the light that entered streamed through the windows on either side the door.
The deck was dark as with age. At the after end there were two state cabins bulkheaded off from the living room, each with a door. The several colours of the lamp caused it to cast a radiance like a rainbow, and therefore it was hard to make sure of objects amid such an intricacy of illumination; but, as I have said, the sides of the cabin were a sickly dismal yellow, and the furniture in it was formed of a very solid square table, with legs marvellously carved, and a box beneath it, two benches on either hand, and a black high-backed chair—the back of withered velvet, the wood framing it cut into many devices—at the head or sternmost end of it.
All these things were matters to be quickly noticed. The captain, first removing his cap, pointed to a bench, and lifting his finger, with a glance at the starboard cabin, said in a low tone, "Sir, if you speak be it softly, if you please," and then directed his eyes towards the entrance from the deck, standing erect, with one hand on the table, and manifestly waiting for the person he had styled Prins to arrive. A ruby-coloured lustre was upon his face; his waist down was in the white lamplight. He had a most noble port, I thought, such an elevation of the head, such disdainful and determined erectness of figure, as made his posture royal. There was not the least hint in his face of the Dutch flatness and insipidity of expression one is used to in those industrious but phlegmatic people. His nose was aquiline, the nostrils hidden by the moustachios which mingled with his noble Druidical beard. His forehead was square and heavy, his hair was scanty, yet abundant enough to conceal the skin of his head; his eyes were black, impassioned, relentless, and a ruby star now shone in each which gave them a forbidding and formidable expression as they moved under the shadow of his shaggy brows. He wore a coat of stout cloth confined by buttons, and a belt round his waist. This, with his small clothes which I have described, formed a very puzzling apparel, the like of which I had never seen. There were no rents, nor darns nor patches—nothing to indicate that his attire was of great age. Yet there was something in this commanding person that caused me to know, by feelings deeper than awe or even fear, by instincts indeed not explicable, such as must have urged in olden times the intelligence to the recognition of those supernatural beings you read of in Scripture, that he was not as I was, as are other men who bear their natural parts in the procession from the cradle to the grave. The tremendous and shocking fears of Captain Skevington recurred to me, and methought as I gazed at the silent, majestic seaman, that the late master of the Saracen who, by his ending, had shown himself a madman might, as had other insane persons in their time, have struck in one of his finer frenzies upon a horrible truth; the mere fear of which caused me to press my hands to my eyes with a renewal of mental anguish, and to entreat in a swift prayer to that Being, whom he who stood before me had defied, for power to collect my mind and for quick deliverance from this awful situation.
Not a syllable fell from the captain till the arrival of Prins, a parched-faced, bearded man, habited in a coarse woollen shirt, trousers of the stuff we call fearnought, and an old jacket. He made nothing of my presence nor condition, scarce glancing at me.
"Get this Englishman a change of clothes," said the captain. "Take what may be needful from my cabin. They will hang loose on him but must serve till his own are dry. Quick! you see he shivers."
All this was expressed in Dutch, but as I have before said, of an antique character, and therefore not quickly to be followed; whence I will not pretend that I give exactly all that was spoken, though the substance of it is accurately reported.
The man styled Prins went to the larboard cabin at the end, whilst the captain, going to the table, pulled from under it a great drawer, which I had taken to be a chest, from which he lifted a silver goblet and a strangely-fashioned stone bottle.
"Drink, sir," he exclaimed, with a certain arrogant impetuosity in his way of pouring out the liquor and extending the goblet.
'Twas neat brandy, and the dose a large mouthful; I tossed down the whole of it, and placed the goblet, that was very heavy and sweetly chased, on the table with a bow of thanks.
"That will put fire into your blood," said he, returning the cup and bottle to the drawer, and then folding his arms and looking at me under his contracted brows, with his back to the lantern whilst he leaned against the table. "Are you fresh from your country?"
I told him that we had sailed in April from the Thames, and had lately come out of Table Bay.
"Is there peace between your nation and mine?" he inquired, speaking softly, as though he feared to awaken some sleeper, though, let his utterance be what it would, 'twas always melodious and rich.
I answered, "No; it grieves me to say it, but our countries are still at war. I will not pretend, sir, that Great Britain has acted with good faith towards the Batavian Republic; their High Mightinesses resent the infraction of treaties; they protest against the manner in which the island of St. Eustatia was devastated; they hope to recover the Cape of Good Hope, and likewise their possessions in the Indies, more particularly their great Coromandel factory."
Mere courtesy would have taught me to speak as soothingly as possible of such things, though, but for the brandy, I doubt if my teeth would not have chattered too boisterously for the utterance of even the few words I delivered. In honest truth, I felt an unspeakable awe and fear in addressing this man, who surveyed me with the severest, most scornful gaze imaginable from the height of his regal stature.
"Of what are you speaking?" he exclaimed, after a frowning stare of amazement; then waved his hand with a gesture half of pity, half of disdain. "You have been perilously close to death," he continued, "and this idle babble will settle into good sense when you have shifted and slept." He smiled contemptuously with a half-look around, as though he sought another of his own kind to address, and said as one thinking aloud, "If Tromp and Evertzens and De Witt and De Ruyter have not yet swept them off the seas 'tis only because they have not had time to complete the easy task!"
As he said this the clock over the door struck two. The chimes had a hollow, cathedral-like sound, as though indeed it was the clock of a cathedral striking in the distance. Glancing at the direction whence these notes issued, I was just in time to witness the acting of an extraordinary piece of mechanism, that is to say, there arose to the top of the clock-case, that was of some species of metal—the dial plate of blue enamel protected with horn instead of glass—there arose, I say, the figure of a skeleton, imitated to the life, holding in one hand an hour-glass on which he turned his eyeless sockets by a movement of the head, whilst with the other hand he grasped a lance or spear that, as I afterwards perceived, he flourished to every stroke of the clock-bell, as though he pierced something prostrate at his feet. The figure shrank into the inside of the clock when the chimes were over. As if to complete the bewilderment under which I laboured, scarce had the second chime of the clock rung its last vibration, when a harsh voice croaked out in Dutch—
"Wy Zyn al Verdomd!"
I started, and cried out involuntarily and faintly, "My God!"
"It was the parrot that spoke," said Captain Vanderdecken, with a softening of his looks, though he did not