A Bottomless Grave

  In the meantime the rascals outside were growing impatient. They tapped at the shutter, rapped loudly on the door, even tried to burst it in; but like all ships’ doors it opened outwards, so that the task they set themselves was not an easy one. Still, I knew that we could not hold the place for long, and I felt a queer shudder run down my back as I thought of the squat, one-eyed villain, the master of my fate. I turned despairingly to the speaking-tube. Our only chance of salvation was through those sturdy Scotsmen. If they failed us, or were prisoners, we were as good as lost.

  As I placed my ear to the tube I heard the voice of our second engineer, Duncan Macpherson, cry out, ‘Hallo, there! What the de’il’s the matter wi’ them? Goodness, goodness, goodness!’ And then he began to shriek and whistle like a madman.

  ‘Duncan, Duncan,’ I cried, as soon as he had stopped his noise.

  ‘Ay, man, it’s me,’ came up the answer. ‘So ye’re there? I’ve been tryin’ to speak to ye for the last half-hour. What’s the matter?’

  ‘The ship is in the hands of the coolies. The captain has been killed; the mate and I are in the chart-room, prisoners. Have you any one with you?’

  ‘Only the third, and the third officer. The chief went up an hour ago, and I’m afraid they’ve nabbed him. Can’t ye get out of the house and make a rush for it?’

  ‘We have no arms of any description. The pirates swarm the bridge. They are even now trying to force the door.’

  ‘Dear, dear! and it’s almost as bad wi’ us. They tried to rush us here, but we managed to shut them out. Every time I look up I see a dirty face peerin’ down through the gratin’.’

  A pause followed, during which the monotonous clank, clank of the engines was mixed with the scratchings and scrapings on the wood outside. Presently the voice came again,

  ‘Are ye there, Anderson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’ that if ye could only use this speakin’-tube in some way or other, I could send ye up a beautiful jet of hot water that would peel the skin off any blasted pirate between hell and Hong Kong.’

  ‘It can’t be done,’ I added despairingly. ‘The pipe only rises a foot above the locker. It would be no use. We should scald ourselves.’

  ‘Ah, now, if ye only had a nice length of tubin’ ye might do somethin’.’

  My heart gave a quick throb. I remembered the piece in the locker. When I told him of it he said, ‘Verra weel. When ye have fixed it on, just ye whistle down and let me know.’

  In a moment I had the tubing out of the locker, and to my delight found that it was in splendid preservation, and some nine or ten feet in length. To unscrew the wooden cup and fix the tube over the pipe was done with a rapidity which must have astonished the mate, who, pale and speechless, stood clinging to the ring of the shutter. In the drawer, which was full of odds and ends, I found plenty of good stout lashing, and with this I securely bound the tubing to the pipe.

  I do not think the whole business could have taken more than half a minute; yet short as it was the blows upon the chart-house redoubled, as though our assailants were trying to beat in the door with hammers or axes. There was no time to be lost. I whistled down the tube and told the engineer I was ready.

  ‘Verra weel,’ he answered. ‘Just look out that ye dinna scald yoursel.’

  I held the nozzle of the tube towards the door.

  ‘Now,’ I said to the mate, ‘when I say the word, you fling open the window. I think we have a very pretty surprise in store for them.’

  ‘If it comes off,’ he answered. ‘But you know, there is many a slip ’twixt cup and lip.’

  I felt like pointing the hose at him and giving him the first dose, but at that moment my attention was arrested by a curious smoky smell which came in from under the door.

  ‘Look, look,’ shrieked the mate, ‘they’re going to burn us out!’ and he fairly jumped with terror.

  ‘Not at all,’ I answered, enjoying the joke in a deadly sort of way, ‘they’re going to smoke us out.’

  ‘And that Ning-po varnish bums like hell.’ He was referring to the new coat of varnish we had but lately given the deckhouses. ‘Oh, my God, my God!’ he moaned, ‘why did I ever come to sea?’

  I wondered why, though I had scant time for wonder. With almost incredible swiftness the smoke grew in volume, a thick, pungent smoke which proclaimed the use of tar. Presently the crackling of wood was heard. I knew it would not be long before the house was ablaze. And still no message from below! Had anything happened? Had the engineer’s calculations in any way proved faulty? The mate groaned and moaned, mixing his supplications to heaven with strings of the most abandoned oaths. It was horrible to hear him, even more horrible to see him as he shrank back closer and closer in the corner, his face ghastly, his eyes vacant with terror. A little more of it and I knew he would be a raving madman. Well, poor devil, so much the better for him. Before this day was over I might have cause to envy him such a merciful stroke of Providence.

  My eyes stung with the smoke: I knew that I was inhaling it in great mouthfuls. I developed a sudden coughing and sneezing. The mate, I believed, was already half-unconscious. What with the smoke and my streaming eyes I could scarcely see him. The situation was becoming intolerable. And still no sign from the engineer! Had he failed in his attempt?

  At the thought the cold perspiration oozed out of me, and for a moment or two my faculties were numbed. Pulling myself together with a great effort I turned to the mate to tell him to open the window—for it was better to die by the knives of the pirates than be choked in this fashion—when I felt the hose in my hand tremble. A moment’s acute suspense; then followed a sudden hissing of wind, and out spluttered a torrent of steam and boiling water.

  ‘Open, open!’ I cried excitedly.

  With a last effort, and like a man in a dream, the mate swung back the shutter, and then fell senseless to the floor.

  In an instant a dozen hideous, grinning wretches, bared knives in their hands, rushed to the aperture, the one-eyed scoundrel, Wing, to the fore. The next moment he threw himself back with a horrible shriek, for I had turned the hose fair in his face, and the steam and boiling water had blinded and scalded him. The others stopped, surprised, awestruck; but before they had time to realise the situation, I served three or four others in a similar manner. These set up a horrible screaming, struggling fiercely to get away; but before the bridge was cleared of them a dozen at least were howling with pain.

  Once the bridge was clear I opened the door of the chart-room and extinguished the flames, which were rapidly getting a good hold of the woodwork. This I did by means of the invaluable hose. Then, looking away aft, a curious sight met my gaze. The fellows whom I had scalded had all fled to the after-part of the ship, where they were joined by about twenty or thirty others, the whole lot, by the way they shrieked and gesticulated, evidently being in a state of great excitement. Then suddenly out of the engine-room skylight I saw the head and shoulders of the second engineer rise. In one hand he held the big brass nozzle of our fire hose. The next moment it spouted out a perfect torrent of steam and boiling water. The engineer clambered out on to the deck and coolly walked towards the mutineers. About twenty yards off he stood and directed the scalding flood upon them. Some ran this way and that way, others dashed madly past him with fearful shrieks, but I doubt if a single one escaped a horrible scalding.

  After that we had no more trouble with our passengers. The ringleaders were all ironed and handed over to the authorities at Singapore, which port we reached in the early hours of the following day. About a month afterwards six of them, including the one-eyed Wing, who had been nearly scalded to death, ‘suffered the extreme penalty of the law’.

  Our mate, thanks to the energetic manner in which he had suppressed the outbreak, was at once given command of the ship.

  The Three Souls

  by ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN

  Literary collaborations have always been few and far between, certainly
where tales of terror are concerned, and successful partnerships rare indeed. Two Continental authors who managed to write so well together that the critic Edward Wright described their work as ‘reading like the production of a single mind’ were the Alsatian friends Emile Erckmann (1822–1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826–1890).

  Erckmann met Chatrian in Phalsbourg, his home town, in 1847, where Chatrian was an usher in the college at which Erckmann was studying law. Their decision to start writing together was followed by the publication of their first book, Contes Fantastiques, that same year. For nearly forty years they collaborated on novels, short stories, poems and plays, until a quarrel and lawsuit over alleged slander broke up their friendship and partnership. The death of Chatrian a year after the legal case was quite probably hastened by the bitter end of their long relationship.

  Specialising in military history and tales of their native Alsace, Erckmann–Chatrian also produced many successful plays, of which the most well known today is probably The Polish Jew, produced here by Sir Henry Irving under the title The Bells. As well as these and other literary works, they were fond of producing the occasional tale of terror. Precious few have survived to this day—readers interested in seeing more can find three of their stories in other books I have edited—though they were among the most original and entertaining tales of their kind on the Continent in those days. Apart from one or two books of their longer stories, such as The Man Wolf (1876) and The Wild Huntsman (1877), few of their weird stories have appeared here at all. ‘The Three Souls’, a tale from their first volume, does not seem to have been published in Britain in English since it was written. I think that this translation, by Eithne Feamley-Whittingstall, will bring to a wider audience the talents of two of Europe’s finest and least regarded writers of tales of terror. In this rare tale, they deal in chilling fashion with an exceedingly original piece of metaphysics. In the days it was written, all things were possible . . .

  In 1815 I was doing my sixth year of transcendental philosophy in Heidelberg. University life is the life of a lord: you get up at midday: you smoke your pipe: you empty one or two small glasses of schnapps: and then you button your overcoat up to your chin, put on your hat in the Prussian manner over the left ear and you go quietly to listen, for half an hour, to the well known Professor Hâsenkopf. Everyone is free to yawn or even to go to sleep if that suits him.

  When the lecture is over, you go to the inn, stretch your legs under the table; the pretty serving girls rush about with dishes of sausages, slices of ham and tankards of strong beer. You hum a tune, you drink, you eat. One whistles for the inn’s dog Hector, the other grabs Charlotte or Gretel by the waist.... At times fighting breaks out, cudgel blows shower down, tankards totter and beer mugs fall. The watch comes and he arrests you and you go and spend the night in jail.

  And thus, the days, the months and the years pass! One meets, in Heidelberg, future princes, dukes and barons; one also meets the sons of cobblers, schoolmasters and respectable business men. The young lordlings keep to their own clique, but the rest mingle in brotherly fashion.

  I was thirty-two then, my beard was beginning to turn grey; the tankard, pipe and sauerkraut were going down in my estimation. I felt in need of a change. Such was my melancholy state of mind, when towards the end of the spring of this year, 1815, a horrible event occurred which taught me that I didn’t know everything, and that the philosophical career is not always strewn with roses.

  Among my friends was a certain Wolfgang Scharf, the most unbending logician that I have ever met. Imagine a small gaunt man, with sunken eyes, white lashes, red hair cut short, hollow cheeks adorned by a bushy beard and broad shoulders covered in magnificent rags. To see him creeping along the walls, a cob of bread under his arm, his eyes ablaze, his spine arched, you would have thought he was an old tom cat looking for his queer. But Wolfgang thought only of metaphysics. For the past five years he had been living on bread and water in a garret in the old part of the town. Never had a bottle of foaming beer or Rhine wine cooled his ardour for knowledge, never had a slice of ham weighted down the course of his sublime meditations. As a consequence the poor devil was frightening to look at. I say frightening because, in spite of his apparent state of marasmus, there was in his bony frame a terrifying cohesive force. The muscles of his jaws and hands stood out like cords of steel; moreover, his shady look averted pity.

  For some reason, this strange being, in the midst of his voluntary isolation, seemed to have time for me. He would come and see me and, seated in my armchair, his fingers shaking convulsively, he would share with me his metaphysical lucubrations. One day he touched on a subject which found me lacking a suitable answer.

  ‘Kasper,’ he said to me in a sharp voice, and, proceeding through interrogation in the manner of Socrates, ‘Kasper, what is the soul?’

  ‘According to Thales it is a sort of magnet. According to Plato, a substance which moves of its own accord. According to Asclepius, an arousal of the senses. Anaximander says that it is a compound of earth and water, Empodocles the blood, Hippocrates a spirit spread through the body. Zeno, the quintessence of the four elements. Xenocrates . . .’

  ‘Good! good! But what do you think is the substance of the soul?’

  ‘Me, Wolfgang? I say, with Lactantius, that I know nothing about it. I am an Epicurean by nature. Now according to the Epicureans, all judgement comes from the senses; as the soul does not fall under my senses, I am unable to judge.’

  ‘However, Kasper, remark that a crowd of animals such as fishes or insects live deprived of one or more senses. Who knows if we possess all the senses? If there don’t exist some which we’ve never even thought of?’

  ‘It’s possible, but in doubt I refrain from passing judgement.’

  ‘Do you think, Kasper, that one can know something without having learnt it?’

  ‘No. All knowledge proceeds from experience or study.’

  ‘But then, my friend, how does it come about that the hen’s chicks, as they come out of the egg, start to run about, to take their food by themselves? How does it happen that they recognise the sparrowhawk in the middle of the clouds, that they hide under their mother’s wings? Have they learnt to know their enemy in the egg?’

  ‘It’s instinct, Wolfgang. All animals obey instinct.’

  ‘And so it appears that instinct consists of knowing what one has never learnt?’

  ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘You are asking too much of me. What can I say?’

  He smiled disdainfully, flung the flap of his ragged coat over his shoulder and went out without saying another word.

  I considered him a madman, but a madman of the harmless sort. Who would have thought that a passion for metaphysics could be dangerous?

  Things really started to happen when the old cake-seller, Catherine Wogel, suddenly disappeared. This good woman, her tray hanging by a pink ribbon from her stork-like neck, usually presented herself at the inn at about eleven o’clock. The students joked readily with her, reminding her of some childhood escapades, of which she made no secret and laughed fit to split her sides.

  ‘Ha! why yes!’ she would say, ‘I haven’t always been fifty! I’ve had some good times! Well! afterwards ... do I regret it? Ah! if only it could all begin again!’

  She would breathe a sigh and everyone would laugh.

  Her disappearance was noticed on the third day. ‘What the devil has become of Catherine?’ ‘Could she be ill?’ ‘That’s odd, she looked so well the last time we saw her.’

  It was learnt that the police were looking for her. As for me, I didn’t doubt that the poor old woman, a little too affected by kirsch, had stumbled into the river.

  The following morning as I left Hâsenkopf’s lecture, I met Wolfgang, skirting the pavements of the cathedral. He had hardly noticed me when he came up to me with his eyes agleam. He said, ‘I am looking for you Kasper ... I am looking for you. The hour of triumph has come . . . you are going to follow me.’

  His loo
k, his gesture, his pallor, betrayed extreme agitation. As he seized me by the arm, dragging me towards the square of the Tanners, I could not help an indefinable feeling of fear, without having the courage to resist. The side street which we hurriedly followed plunged behind the cathedral, into a block of houses as old as Heidelberg. The roofs leaning at right angles; the wooden balconies where fluttered the washing of the lower classes; the exterior stairs with their worm-eaten handrails; the hundreds of ragged figures, leaning out of the attic windows and looking eagerly at the strangers who were penetrating their lair; the long poles, going from one roof to the other, laden with bloody hides; then the thick smoke escaping from zigzag pipes at every floor; all this blended together and passed before my eyes like a resurrection of the Middle Ages. The sky was fine, its azure angles scalloped by the old gables, and its luminous rays stretching out now and then over the tumble-down walls, added to my emotion by the strangeness of the contrast.

  It was one of those moments when man loses all presence of mind. I didn’t even think of asking Wolfgang where we were going.

  After the populous neighbourhood where poverty swarms, we reached the deserted square where Wolfgang lived. Suddenly Wolfgang, whose dry, cold hand seemed riveted to my wrist, led me into a hovel with broken windows, between an old shed, abandoned long since, and the stall of the abattoir.

  ‘You first,’ he said.

  I followed a high wall of dry earth, at the end of which was a spiral staircase with broken steps. We climbed across the debris and, although my friend didn’t stop repeating to me in an impatient voice ‘higher. . . higher . . .’ I stopped at times, gripped by terror, on the pretext of getting my breath and examining the recesses of the gloomy dwelling, but really to deliberate whether it wasn’t in fact time to flee.