The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea

by William Hope Hodgson

  Meanwhile, things were happening. Mr. Tompkins, the ex-prize-fighter, grew more and more fervid in his “religious talks” with the Captain, his gray goatee wagging earnestly by the hour, in admonition and advice concerning the ways and wiles of Satan, of whom few men had more expert knowledge than big Captain Bully Keller. Also, what I might describe as the Captain’s boiler-pressure was rising daily.

  The lid blew off finally, and with great violence, on the tenth day out. One of the men, a stranger to Captain Bully Keller’s record, and not recognising in this much-restrained Captain anything resembling human dynamite, was so ill-advised as to “answer back” the Captain on some trivial point concerning the position of the ship’s head, during his trick at the wheel. The result was painful to the man and necessitated his retiring to his bunk for a week to convalesce.

  This proved the end of Captain Keller’s enforced regeneration. Having, as it might be said, “tasted blood,” he cut loose liberally, and went forward to the fo’cas’le to indulge in one of his orgies.

  He was concluding a most enjoyable hammering of two of the men’s heads together, when he heard the quiet voice of Mr. Tompkins, in the starboard fo’cas’le doorway.

  “Cap’n! Sir! Cap’n!” he was saying in a grieved voice. “You’m backsliding, Cap’n. Take a holt on yourself, Cap’n, an’ come away aft with me, an’ me an’ missus’ll help ye wrastle in prayer, to drive the eevil sperrit outen you—come, now, Cap’n. It’s never too late—”

  “You get to hell out of here, ’fore I smash you, you psalm-singing, chin-wagging goat, you!” bellowed Captain Bully Keller, in his old-time voice.

  Mr. Jackson, his bucko Mate, away aft on the poop, heard it, and smiled the only way he could smile, which I’ve explained earlier. This was something he could understand. The Skipper was himself again.

  In the starboard fo’cas’le doorway, Mr. Tompkins, ex-prize-fighter, winner of over sixty first-class heavy-weight fights, hesitated, in conflict with the “natural eevil” which had “riz” up in him at the “brand’s” remark. Then Mr. Tompkins won—quite as great a battle, in its way, as any he had ever won in the ring.

  “Are you going, you—you, hymn-swiping gazoot, or am I going to lay you out stiff, to teach you to keep to you own part of the ship!” bellowed Captain Bully Keller, again.

  And Mr. Tompkins, ex-prize-fighter, winner of over sixty fights, turned and walked aft slowly, without a word.

  VII

  “I reck’n I’m standin’ right in the shoes of law an’ Providence,” said Captain Bully Keller, later, in answer to Mr. Tompkin’s gentle remonstrances. “I’m Cap’n of this ship, Sir, an’ I reckon Cap’n of a ship is the nearest thing to the A’mighty you’ll get in this world; an’ if I choose to do anything, why, I guess I’m the man as does it; an’ I’m right weary o’ psalm-singing! An’ likewise, Mister, this end of the ship is where you belong, an’ don’t you need to be told twice again, or maybe I’ll forget ye’re a passenger and an old wheat-sheaf, an’ I’ll be giving you a tonic ye’ll not forget in a hurry.”

  “Joseph!” said Mrs. Tompkins’s voice, at that moment, from the companion-way, “can I speak with ye a moment, Joseph?”

  “Your pardon, Cap’n,” said Mr. Tompkins; “the missus wants me a moment.”

  He crossed the poop to where his wife stood in the companion-way. “Well, M’ria?” he said.

  “Joseph,” said his wife, very small, and very white-faced with inward anger. “Ye know, Joseph, I’ve always stood for you bein’ converted; an’ I just thanked God on me two knees, when ye turned reeligious, an’ quit fightin’, did I not, Joseph?”

  “That’s so, wife,” said Mr. Tompkins.

  “Well,” said his wife, “me that’s for peacefulness an’ godliness, an’ that’s helped pluck many a brand from the burnin’, me that thanked God when I won ye to peaceful decent ways, I say, Joseph, go an’ fight that man, an’ bring him low. I’ve stood here an’ harked to things he’s said to ye, an’ I’m fair woun’ up!” Her voice rose and cracked, shrilly, in a final brief command: “Fight the brute, Joseph! Beat him up good!”

  There was a sudden roar of laughter from where the Mate stood on the poop, and the Helmsman grinned broadly; for they caught the last few words of Mrs. Tompkins’s injunctions.

  The Mate walked forward to where Captain Bully Keller stood near the break of the poop. “She’s tellin’ the old codger to beat you up, Cap’n!” Mr. and Mrs. Tompkins heard the Mate say, in no modulated voice. “I guess, Cap’n, you’ve sure riled the old lady!”

  Mrs. Tompkins clenched her small, rather thin hands. “Joseph!” she said “Go right now an’ beat him up, or you’re no husband o’ mine!”

  “Nay, M’ria,” said Mr. Tompkins, in his quiet composed way. “I’ve had more’n one fight wi’ meself, an’ I’ve won. An’ you’ll be the first to say I was right, when you’m less upset, wife. Maybe I can yet soften him.”

  Mrs. Tompkins turned and went down the stairs into her cabin, where she sat for an hour, staring at the bulkhead and fighting to drive out the storm that possessed her small body. And meanwhile, up on deck, Mr. Tompkins, ex-prize-fighter, continued with invincible self-command to ply the “soft word”; but with about as much effect as if he had tried “genteel conversation” with a polar bear suffering from a sense of suppressed spiritual injuries.

  VIII

  “Feyther!” came a shrill cry, early in the morning hours, just after daybreak the following morning. And then the sounds of heavy blows, and of someone sobbing, breathlessly, as each blow was struck. Then again the shrill cry of “Feyther! Feyther!”

  At the first cry, Mr. Tompkins, dressed in flannel drawers and shirt, had leaped from his bunk with an agility astonishing in so heavily built a man. And now he was on the companion steps, taking them four at a time, in great muscular bounds.

  “Feyther!” came the cry again, shriller.

  “Comin’, son,” said Mr. Tompkins, in his deep voice.

  Then he arrived, a quick-moving, human fighting machine, as dangerous as any angry tiger and as precise as a modern quick-firing gun.

  Mr. Jackson, the big bucko Mate, was thrown bodily a dozen feet along the poop-deck, and Nibby was picked up, from where the Mate had let him drop—for the man had been ropes-ending the lad with the end of the main brace, and Nibby was being violently sick, owing to the weight of the blows he had received.

  As Mr. Tompkins held his son in a position to ease his vomiting, Mr. Jackson got up off the poop-deck, and for the first time realised who it was that had attacked him.

  “My beloved oath!” he shouted, and charged down on the ex-prize-fighter. “I’ll gi’e you what I was givin’ the kid, you bloomin’ billy-goat, you!” he roared, and swung a powerful, clumsy right-hand punch at Mr. Tompkin’s head.

  Mr. Tompkins evaded the punch, and then, with Nibby in his arms, started to run for the companion-way, with the Mate thudding along the poop-deck in his wake.

  Abruptly, something new happened—a small thin figure, wrapped in a sheet, darted up through the companion-way on to the poop. It had thin, grey hair, done in three or four spiky plaits, that stuck out from its head at various angles; and it called out a shrill, tense direction: “Put Nibby down, Joseph. I’ll tend him. Beat that beast up good, an’ look out for the other, he’s comin’.”

  Nibby’s father lowered his son quickly on to the seat that ran all along the skylight, and jumped to one side. Nibby’s mother, small though she was, gathered the boy up against her bosom and glanced over her shoulder, to see how her man dealt with the bucko Mate.

  The ex-prize-fighter made a quick job of it, and the bucko Mate (accounted formidable enough against the usual port-sweepings and degenerates supplied by the shangai-houses) made but a pitiable show against the grim fighter he had pursued with such fatuous confidence.

  Had Mr. Tompkins been minus his long goatee and eminently respectable side-whiskers, the Mate might have recognized “old Bowleg Jo, the one-to
n-punch merchant”; but he was oblivious just then to the fact and, a moment later, to all the facts of life; for the bulk of Mr. Tompkins slid, with an almost incongruous grace, under the bucko’s great round-arm-punch, and immediately afterward the Mate’s chin made a brief but unforgettable acquaintance with the historic “one-ton-punch” right fist of Mr. Tompkins, and the thud his body made, as it struck the deck, seemed to shake the vessel.

  “Look out, Jo-o-seph!” shrilled Mrs. Tompkins; and her husband hove himself round in his track, like a great agile cat, and met the silent ugly rush of Captain Bully Keller, who had just raced up out of his cabin, in time to see the Mate go down senseless on the deck.

  Now, this sixteen stone of fight and violent evil was a very different proposition from that of the bucko Mate; and the ex-prize-fighter was well aware of the fact. He side-stepped the charging Captain, and tried a rib punch as he passed under his swing; but the Captain chopped it down in a way that showed he knew more about scientific fighting than Mr. Tompkins had supposed.

  The Captain came round on his toes, and jumped in at Mr. Tompkins, hitting right and left at his face. The ex-prize-fighter slipped the right-hand-punch, and pushed up the left, like lightning. As he did this, his left foot went forward, and his left fist traveled upward about eight inches, and struck the underside of Captain Bully Keller’s jaw. The Captain’s head went back, and Mr. Tompkins brought in his right, with a short radius swing against the side of the Captain’s neck.

  The blow sounded exactly like a butcher’s mallet hitting a piece of lean beef, and the Captain rocked just for one brief instant on his feet. Then he had recovered, for he was as strong as a bullock.

  He jumped back a couple of paces and kicked off his slippers. “Now you goat-wagger, I’m going to maul you, by God, yes!” And he dashed in at the easily poised figure of the ex-prize-fighter.

  Mr. Tompkins sidestepped him, sliding his head in under the ponderous right-hand swing that the captain left fly, with a deep malignant grunt. As the Captain overshot him, Mr. Tompkins was, just for one brief moment, a little on his rear, and in that instant of time he smote the great stern of Captain Bully Keller with his open left palm, even as an empathic matron “corrects” a child, in a hasty moment.

  The sound of the ugly slap rang fore and aft along the decks, and suddenly there was a roar of laughter from forward; for both watchers had streamed out of the fo’cas’le to watch the stupendous spectacle of the invincible Keller getting a hammering—at last!

  Now the slap had done no harm, for all that it was so hearty. It was nothing more than a natural ebullition of spirit on the part of Mr. Tompkins at finding himself, with a clear conscience, enjoying all the charm and intense zest of a first-class scrap. But the effect of that same slap on Captain Bully Keller, coupled with the laughter it had evoked, was to turn him temporarily into a madman. Just try to get it—sixteen stone, odd, of muscle and evil berserk rage! That was the particular kind of human tornado that came round, roaring, at Mr. Tompkins.

  The Captain made one spring, and caught him by the hair of his head with his left hand, and his goatee beard with the other, and swung him clean off his feet.

  The method of attack was somewhat unorthodox, according to Mr. Tompkins’s lights, and it lacked nothing of vigour. The Captain swung him around bodily, in a half-circle, with his feet off the deck. Then the hair and beard simultaneously refused duty. They came out in two handfuls, and Mr. Tompkins shot sprawling with a crash on to his hands and knees on the poop-deck.

  Captain Bully Keller roared like a great bull and charged down at the smaller man, his hands full of beard and hair. He kicked Mr. Tompkins in the face with his bare foot, cutting a great gouge under his left eye with his nails.

  But Mr. Tompkins caught the foot, and Captain Bully Keller promptly fell on him; and as he opened his hands to save himself, the light breeze blew a couple of tufts of hair and beard hither and thither along the poop.

  And then Captain Bully Keller got a nasty surprise and a very bad jar to his system, all in one and the same moment. As he sprawled an instant, grabbing for hold a-top of Mr. Tompkins’s extremely broad and muscular back, the ex-prize-fighter descended for the first time to rough-and-tumble methods, and slewed half over on his side, and drove his right elbow backward and outward in a terrible jolting elbow-punch under the Captain’s jaw.

  The blow was a tremendous one, as any fighting man will understand, and would have put ninety-nine men in a hundred to sleep instanter; but, with Captain Bully Keller it merely drove his head back for a couple of seconds and produced a vaguely stunned sensation, followed immediately by a gorgeous riot of toothache; for every tooth in his jaws had been jarred as if by a blow from a hammer.

  Then Bully Keller was himself again; but things had changed considerably; for in that brief time of temporary “numbness” on the part of his enemy, Mr. Tompkins had hove himself out from under Bully Keller and was on his feet, waiting for his man.

  Nor had he more than a bare half-second; for the Skipper hurled himself up from the deck, with an inarticulate bellowing, and rushed the squat figure of the ex-prize-fighter. Right and left, right and left, he punched, grunting like an animal, with every blow, and had any one of them got home on a vital mark, they would have been enough, literally, to kill an average man! But here Mr. Tompkins was very truly at his own game, and he slipped and side-stepped round a small portion of the poop-deck, with the Captain pursuing him, hitting and grunting, grunting and hitting; but never once reaching him in any fashion calculated to do serious damage.

  Then, suddenly, Mr. Tompkins stopped dead in his wonderful circle of retreat, and one leg stiffened behind him rigidly, like a steel bar, at the identical moment that his right fist shot out in one of the famous “one-ton-punches” which had won him so many of his fights.

  The tremendous blow took the Captain a little (not more than a full inch) below the point of the jaw, and all of Mr. Tompkins’s strength and skill had gone to that blow; moreover, the punch had taken the captain in the midst of his storming rush, and the suddenly rigid leg of the prize-fighter stiffened to take the enormous shock of the sixteen stone man’s charge, at the moment of impact.

  Captain Bully Keller’s jaw cocked up abruptly, in the absurdly helpless fashion that a man’s head does go up, when he gets a punch of that kind from a certain angle; his great arms were suddenly adrift, and his ponderous shoulders were all at once untensed from fierce effort to an inexpressible inanition. He went backward one step, two steps, then a third, still with his head cocked up in that absurd way.

  Mr. Tompkins dropped his own hands to his sides with a satisfied expression. He knew, from his extensive experience, that he had just administered a knock-out blow, of a foot-energy (if I may so express it, without appearing Irish) of several hundred pounds.

  The Captain’s body paused a moment, inertly, in its backward stagger. Then, lurched rearward, with one final, dragging step, and seemed on the point of collapsing. And then, in that moment, the Captain’s chin came down slowly from its cocked-up angle, and he stared at Mr. Tompkins with half-glazed eyes, his face totally expressionless. It was most extraordinary. The man was knocked out of time and place. It would take him anything from ten minutes to two hours to come round from such a blow as he had received, and here he was still standing on his feet and staring at his opponent.

  The ex-prize-fighter stared, silent and fascinated. From away forward there was a low hum of talk that came clear through the chill morning air—just that sound and no other—except the odd creak of the masts, and the whine, whine, of the gear in the leads and blocks, and the odd slat, slat, of the reef-points away up aloft.

  And then, in all that silence, Captain Bully Keller spoke, in a queer toneless, creaking voice: “Say,” he said, “where am I?” The glazed look left his eyes as he spoke, and his shoulders lost their flaccid appearance; and abruptly, intelligence came into his eyes and face—and then memory.

  Mr. Tompkins continued to stare
. In all his years of fighting he had never seen a man make such a recovery—the man’s vitality must be as stupendous as his physique. Suddenly, Mr. Tompkins got on the defensive. He received the knowledge of the Captain’s complete recovery just in time; for in that same moment Captain Bully Keller leaped at him and smashed in a flurry of right and left hand punches.

  With a feeling of amazement in his brain, Mr. Tompkins slipped and guarded and sidestepped busily, until the sudden charge had eased a little. The Captain was not hitting quite so hard, which proved that the “knock-out” punch he had received had taken steam from the boiler.

  Then Mr. Tompkins saw an opportunity and stepped in smartly. He drove three upper-cuts hard to the old place, and as the Captain gave back he put in a tremendous right-and-left punch, aimed at the mark; but, as he expressed it to himself afterward, the man seemed to have ribs down to his knees. It was like punching into the side of a horse.

  Yet the blows had effect; and a minute later he drove in a very heavy punch again, to the jaw, this time a little more on the side, and fairly knocked Captain Bully Keller off his feet.

  During the whole of the fight Mr. Tompkins had not yet received one dangerous punch; but now he paid for a moment of carelessness; for the Captain came up off the deck, as quick as a cat, and made one jump at him, and struck, before the prize-fighter’s hands were up. The blow took Mr. Tompkins on the forehead, and knocked him literally head over heels, over the low sail-locker hatch.

  Captain Bully Keller let out a roar, sprang to the rail, hauled out an iron belaying pin and jumped over the hatch to make an end of Mr. Tompkins.

  “Look out, Jo-o-seph!” shrieked Mrs. Tompkins, and loosed Nibby. She ran round to the starboard side, just as the Captain caught her husband by the throat. She dropped the sheet and flew at him—a skinny wraith of wifely devotion. She grasped the pin itself with her two hands, just as the Captain struck, and was hurled bodily a dozen feet, still clinging to the pin; but she had saved her husband; for Mr. Tompkins seized the chance, and hove himself sideways; then jumped, and got safely to his feet, his head singing like a kettle, and his whole system badly jarred.