He stirred in the chair and rose unsteadily to his feet as the freighter wallowed in the trough. ‘It’s that late that I’m sleepy. So I’ll catch forty winks. The wind is holding steadily now, and should be dropping soon, and we’ll be on our way. Tell Mr McNulty to stand by in case we need him. Keep a weather eye peeled for a shift in the wind. And if things don’t get better, call me up again.’
‘Aye, sir,’ said Bruno.
III
Near three o’clock in the morning, some time after the ship’s chronometer had rung out five bells, the wind began to slacken. The heavy dangerous sea did not abate in force, but the rain vanished and the wind dropped off so sharply that the spume on the breaking crest was no longer visible.
Down in the black hole of Calcutta, where the gleaming polished propeller-shaft faithfully ground out its r.p.m.’s,
McNulty, the chief engineer, felt the Mary Watson gaining headway. The wind which had held them back now dissipated, allowing her, even at dead slow, to forge ahead.
Where before the freighter had expended only enough energy to equalize her position in the wind, now she was under way once more. And McNulty, a Scotchman who liked scones, Scotch and Beethoven, was glad of it. A few minutes later, and the engine room, telegraphed from the bridge, clanged its way to half speed.
NcNulty marked the telegraph gyrations, and then turned up the turbine engine. It was a pleasure to feel ih&Mary Watsonbite steadily and head due east once more.
On the bridge, where the remnants of the wind still howled past the corners, Bruno noted his course on the chart. He felt very good. But he was enough of a realist to know that they were not out of the woods yet. He no longer doubted they would make the passage safely; but he was afraid that in making it the Mary Watson would reach Zanzibar with a stove-in hatch.
Still there was no choice. The gale had blown them far west of their course, and they had lost both precious time and fuel. Bruno telephoned the captain, and the old man agreed with him that the steady old tub should be pushed with as much speed as she could safely handle in the seaway.
At three-fifteen, the ragged clouds vanished, and the darkness of the bridge was suddenly illumined with pale moonlight. It was very faint, for streaky will-o’-the-wisps still scurried across its slender face. But there was, at least, some visibility and Bruno was heartened.
The wave crest ran high, but no longer broke. The glassy hollows, where salt bubbles split rapidly, were long and deep. One moment, as the Mary Watson topped a grayback, Mr Bruno could see miles of ridged, pocked-marked sea. Then would follow the awesome drop into the trough, where the horizon would merely be at the top of the next wave away.
Eastbound, the sea was on their comers, and the Af ary Watson rolled alarmingly in the swell. But her speed steadied her somewhat, even though the going was very wet forward. And
Bruno knew that by dawn the Cape of Good Hope would be astern.
Franklin, the second officer, presently joined Bruno on the bridge. It was not his stint, but it had been a rotten night to sleep, and Franklin was just as glad to be out of his bunk.
At three-thirty a.m., a strange intensity pervaded the entire ship. Overhead, the moon suddenly hid itself behind a bulky cloud. There was only the faintest indication of moonlight left upon the turbulent crest.
In his cabin Captain John Lowrie, who had been snoring lustily, suddenly awoke out of a sound sleep for no reason at all and sat up in his bunk, disturbed and apprehensive.
In the engine rooms, McNulty, who had all but surrendered his duties to his assistant, McAdoo, content that the ship was well out of trouble, returned suddenly to his post, vaguely worried and not knowing why.
In the galley, where the ship’s cook had bedded himself down for the night, Toby, the ship’s cat, who had been sleeping serenely upon the breadbox, suddenly awoke, backed to a comer and began to growl, the long hairs down his back standing straight up on end.
On the bridge they felt it, too. Bruno looked up from his place at the chart table and shivered. He was not cold, and he did not know why he had done it. Franklin, who had been sitting in the chair that Captain Lowrie had vacated, suddenly stirred uneasily and rubbed the backs of his hands briskly.
‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had the strangest feeling - ’
Bruno met his eyes. They stared at each other.
The starboard door of the bridge opened, and Captain Lowrie walked in. He did not say anything, just walked to the chart table and sat down beside Bruno. There was a frown on his face and he looked worried.
‘It was as if,’ Captain Lowrie would tell his wife some months later, in Boston, ‘we had all gone to a concert. It was that moment of great sense of silence, as the baton goes up just before the music begins.’
It was like that, that charged moment before the baton drops, when you can almost imagine you hear the music even before it has begun. The sea, there, pounding on her starboard quarter, might have been a kettle-drum. The dying wind, still whining high, might have been the first violin.
And under their feet, the freighter dropped into a deep and darkened valley. The boat wallowed there a moment, panting, and then with sovereign dignity forced her blunt bow up the wall of water which came rushing on. And when she reached the peak of that watery mountain she paused, as if to survey the studded voyage before her.
Young Murphy at the helm suddenly gaped into the faintly luminescent night before his eyes.
‘In the name of Heaven!* Murphy said hollowly.
The other three - Captain Lowrie, Bruno, and Franklin -moved as one man. They sprang to their feet, instantly aware of Murphy’s contorted face.
It was fear, Captain Lowrie knew. He had seen it often enough. The eyes, all white and glazed, the blanched skin, the dropped jaw which hung on Murphy’s chest, the quivering mouth. They, too, faced the sea and watched expectantly beyond the waves.
Out of the night, like a great white ghost, they saw the ship. She was about a hundred feet long, her sails all set and filled. Captain Lowrie had never seen such a colour in sails before. Blood red they were, like a dying sunset; the strangest colour his eyes had ever seen: for the moonlight was faint, and in the back of his mind he wondered how sails of any colour could be that bright.
She was on the starboard tack, heeled well over, and she had a white bone in her teeth. There were moving shadows of men on her decks. The Mary Watson was bound east, but this strange schooner with her blood-red sails was bound due north and she seemed to come right at them.
Her speed was amazing. She seemed to plunge ahead much faster than the wind which filled her sails.
Through binoculars, Captain Lowrie could see a name upon her bow; but it was hazy and indistinct through the glass, and he could not make it out.
But he could make out her figurehead. At the base of the bowsprit, wet and glistening as the heavy bow plunged into the waves, he made out the grinning death’s head.
Three masts, sticking up into the sky nakedly like inverted streaks of lightning, a death’s head at the bow, blood-red sails; a schooner in a storm at the Cape of Good Hope, and an oath with the Devil.
‘The Dutchman!’ Captain Lowrie roared. ‘The Flying Dutchman!’
IV
Bruno wrenched the binoculars away from the captain's gra o and peered out into the night himself. The glasses trembled m his hand. They were seven-power glasses and hard to hold upon the scene, but he managed it a moment and then dropped them from his eyes; and he was white and shaking.
‘It’s not The Dutchman,’ he said savagely. ‘It’s a ship, a sailing ship, and she’s running without lights. Sheer off, helmsman, sheer off to port. She'll strike us!’
But Franklin had already wrested the wheel from the quartermaster and he was bringing it hard over. The freighter’s bow swung northward from east, and in the cross-sea the Mary Watson rolled dangerously.
‘She’s a phantom,’ Captain Lowrie said hoarsely. ‘She’s the Dutchman out of Holland, trying to
round the Cape.’
‘You’re mad!9 Bruno snapped. ‘She’s just a ship, an old sea trader, perhaps.’
Captain Lowrie had the binoculars again. He held them on her bow as she came closer to them. ‘Fliegende Hollander,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘It’s there on the bow, under the bowsprit, as plain as day. Look for yourself, man! Her name is there, right there - the Fliegende Hollander, and her hailing port is Amsterdam.’
‘It’s your imagination; you are all filled up with the Dutchman’s lore,’ Bruno replied.
And then he said nothing more. There was no time to say anything more. Silently and tensely, they watched her come. She was a savage ship, and she laid the water white around her bow, her bowsprit stabbing the sea like a guard sword.
She was very close now; so close that they could see the sailors on her deck. They seemed to be Norwegian. And back on the poop deck, by the great helm, there stood a tall, broad man with a great black cape around his shoulders.
His nose was large, and he had a heavy beard; and as the schooner bore upon them, Captain Lowrie could see this man wave a burly hand.
For a moment, it looked as if she would strike them near the stem, as if to slash the combing and the screw clean off, and leave the rest of the Mary Watson floating in the ocean, a powerless hulk. In that breathless moment, Captain Lowrie saw her flag, curling out to leeward above the blood-red sails. It was the flag of Holland.
Bruno saw it too. ‘It could be a Dutch ship, and nothing more,’ he whispered. ‘A Dutch ship, an ordinary ship, and nothing more.’ He was talking to reassure himself, but they all heard him.
‘She’s the Dutchman,’ Captain Lowrie said, quietly now. ‘Stand by for a crash.’
But there was no crash. The black ship, when she had forced the Mary Watson to turn due north, suddenly sheered off. They could see her captain, that big bearded man at the helm, swinging the wheel hard, and her bow, with a death’s head for a figurehead, swung off the freighter’s stem and turned northwest.
Swiftly she was abaft. They saw her dip into the deep trough between two towering crests. Only her curling flag and the tops of the three masts were left visible. And suddenly they sank down, too, and seemed to vanish.
When the next wave away reached that spot to lift her to its top, she did not rise. Indeed, she was no longer there.
‘She’s gone!’ Franklin gasped.
‘Gene, indeed,’ Captain Lowrie said.
Bruno, his brow lined with multiple wrinkles, peered intently at the spot where he had last seen her. ‘Has she sunk?’ he said.
'Did she go down?’
Nobody answered his questions. Captain Lowrie murmured, ‘He sheered off. Did you see him sheer off? He didn’t mean to strike us in the first place. He was satisfied to push us off our course. That was all he wanted. It was as plain as day; and having done that he’s gone and vanished like any good ghost should.’ The blood was flowing back into Bruno’s cheeks. He straightened, and felt more assured.
‘Ghost, my eye!’ he snapped. ‘He would have cut us in half if he hadn’t seen us at the last moment. The captain of that ship is a fool. I wish we could have got her name, and reported her. He picked a fine stormy night to be running without lights. ’
He scanned the turbulent seas for some sign of her. But there was none. ‘But where did she go?’
Captain Lowrie did not attempt to answer him. He addressed himself to Franklin.
‘Bring her back, mister,’ he said. ‘Bring her back on the eastbound route. I don’t know the meaning of it, but it’s over and done. So let’s be on our way again, with the sea on the quarter. This old lady is panting - she never did like a following sea. ’ Franklin brought back the helm, and the Mary Watson soon turned slowly eastward, where a faint leaden glow was beginning to touch the sky, off in eternity where the sea met the heavens.
The telephone rang. Captain Lowrie answered it. It was McNulty, calling from the black hole of Calcutta, annoyed and bothered. ‘Captain, sir,’ he said, ‘must we be staying in a following sea? When my screws are near the surface, they all but shake my shaft out of its bearings.’
‘I’ve other things to worry about beside your shaft,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘The course is my concern, and the shaft is yours, Mr McNulty. So mind your P’s and Q’s. There’ll be no more following seas if we can help it. But then again, I ain’t in a position to make any promises.’
He hung up abruptly.
About ten minutes had passed since they had last seen the three-masted will-o’-the-wisp bury itself in that trough.
The wind had all but died. The rain had definitely vanished.
The seas were beginning to drop. But only slightly. The cloud which hid the moon passed on, and the night was once again filled with a silver glow.
The four men stood up at the weatherbreak now, watching the night sharply. Only Captain Lowrie’s face seemed relaxed. Murphy’s was afraid. Bruno’s was taut. Franklin’s was harried.
And while they stood there, they felt it again, that strange fluttering feeling upon their heartstrings. Like violins in tremolo. Bruno shivered; his hands felt icy cold.
‘Mind the helm,’ Captain Lowrie said sharply.
Franklin had raised his left hand. He pointed it out past the weatherbreak. In awed, sepulchral tone he said, ‘Look!’
They looked. But Captain Lowrie had already seen it. ‘Aye,’ he said coolly. ‘She’s back again.’
Mr Murphy, the quartermaster, tried to keep his teeth from chattering. But he could not manage it. The cracking sound of them filled the bridge.
It was true enough. She was back again. But this time she came from the north. All of her sails were set, and her lee scuppers were awash. She was running close-hauled, and her bow was under a wall of water most of the time.
Bruno stared at the flag upon his own mast. It curled to the south. That meant the wind had shifted.
‘But how,’ Bruno asked in a choked voice, ‘can she run close-hauled against the wind which is directly astern of her?’
‘She ain’t no ordinary ship,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘And not a ship to be afraid of, either, mister,’ he remarked to the trembling quartermaster. ‘Only three hours back, I offered the Dutchman a tow around Good Hope, if need be. It ain’t like one good seaman to return ill to another good seaman, when only good has been offered. He means well, no doubt. But what he means, I can’t yet fathom.’
Bruno said, ‘But the wind has all but died. How can a ship point down with such speed when there isn’t any wind to push her?’
• • • •
‘I told you, mister,’ answered Captain Lowrie, ‘she ain’t no ordinary ship.’
No more was said. They all stood stock still, tense, and watched her come. She had seemed far ahead of them to port when they first sighted her again. But already she was much closer. There was white water all around her. She seemed to slash at the ocean. The Mary Watson's own speed had carried her far ahead, so that now the schooner with the red sails was sharply off the port bow.
‘A mirage,’ Bruno said thickly. ‘A mirage.’ He spoke with hope, not with conviction. He, too, like the quartermaster, was trembling.
The schooner seemed so close now that they could have thrown a belaying pin upon her deck. And suddenly her intentions were plain. She held her way, adamantly, and every man on the fated bridge knew what she would do.
She was going to cut across their bow. Cut across them, sharp and close, impailing herself upon their forepiece if necessary. She would not give way this time, she would not sheer off. The bearded man at her helm, firm and resolute, had frozen there.
Captain Lowrie sprang to the engine-room telegraph and swung it to full speed astern. In the engine room, McNulty went crazy, wondering what was happening topside.
The Mary Watson groaned and paused in the seaway as her single engine went into reverse. The lone screw churned the water white behind her, imparting a terrific vibration through her hull, which threatened
to split the rusty plates asunder.
The freighter almost made it, but not quite. Despite her revolving screw pulling her full speed astern, her impetus carried her forward. Under her bow, where her anchors clung to their niches, the schooner with the blood-red sails passed. She looked big and real now, although the men on her deck still seemed to be shadows.
Captain Lowrie and the others braced themselves for the crash. Surely it would be her beam, directly in their path. In a moment, there would be the splintering wood of her hull flying up, smacked by the steel bow of the Mary Watson. But she moved faster than even they had reckoned.
Her beam flashed by. Her foam-drenched combing went next, so close to the sharp prow of the freighter that the wash, compressed between the two, catapulted straight up high into the air and crashed upon the freighter’s forepiece.
Captain Lowrie said, in a quiet low voice, ‘We’ll hit her stern, sure.’ Automatically, he braced himself.
The other men seemed to be caught in a sort of paralysis.
V
It came. It was dull, not sharp. For all they knew, it might have been the blow of a chance sea. But they felt it distinctly.
A tremor ran through the Mary Watson's spine. Captain Lowrie found himself on the exposed port wingtip of the bridge, shouting wildly. Bruno, inside, telegraphed the engine room to stand by.
There was no sound of broken wood. No sound, in fact, except the great roaring silence which swelled in their ears. The freighter paused, her screws stilled, and lolled there in the glassy interim which divided the crests.
Bruno stuck out his head from within the bridge. ‘Where did she go?’
But Captain Lowrie could not answer that question, for he did not know himself. Where had she gone indeed? Captain Lowrie had seen her gaunt black stem go off the starboard, the windows high in the transom all soundlessly shattered. He had seen the gaping gash in her combing and bowline, where the Mary Watson had eaten into the plunking.
Mysterious Sea Stories Page 11