“Yes, doctor,” I said. “In brief, your argument is that life is a thing, state, fact, or element, call it what you like, which requires the Material through which to manifest itself, and that given the Material, plus the conditions, the result is life. In other words, that life is an evolved product, manifested through matter and bred of conditions—eh?”
“As we understand the word,” said the old doctor. “Though, mind you, there may be a third factor. But, in my heart, I believe that it is a matter of chemistry—conditions and a suitable medium; but given the conditions, the brute is so almighty that it will seize upon anything through which to manifest itself. It is a force generated by conditions; but, nevertheless, this does not bring us one iota nearer to its explanation, any more than to the explanation of electricity or fire. They are, all three, of the outer forces—monsters of the void. Nothing we can do will create any one of them, our power is merely to be able, by providing the conditions, to make each one of them manifest to our physical senses. Am I clear?”
“Yes, doctor, in a way, you are,” I said. “But I don’t agree with you, though I think I understand you. Electricity and fire are both what I might call natural things, but life is an abstract something—a kind of all-permeating wakefulness. Oh, I can’t explain it! Who could? But it s spiritual, not just a thing bred out of a condition, like fire, as you say, or electricity. It’s a horrible thought of yours. Life’s a kind of spiritual mystery—”
“Easy, my boy!” said the old doctor, laughing gently to himself. “Or else I may be asking you to demonstrate the spiritual mystery of life of the limpet, or the crab, shall we say.” He grinned at me with ineffable perverseness. “Anyway,” he continued, “as I suppose you’ve all guessed, I’ve a yarn to tell you in support of my impression that life is no more a mystery or a miracle than fire or electricity. But, please to remember, gentlemen, that because we’ve succeeded in naming and making good use of these two forces, they’re just as much mysteries, fundamentally as ever. And, anyway, the thing I’m going to tell you won’t explain the mystery of life, but only give you one of my pegs on which I hang my feeling that life is as I have said, a force made manifest through conditions—that is to say, natural chemistry—and that it can take for its purpose and need, the most incredible and unlikely matter; for without matter it cannot come into existence—it cannot become manifest—”
“I don’t agree with you, doctor,” I interrupted. “Your theory would destroy all belief in life after death. It would—”
“Hush, sonny,” said the old man, with a quiet little smile of comprehension. “Hark to what I’ve to say first; and, anyway, what objection have you to material life after death? And if you object to a material framework, I would still have you remember that I am speaking of life, as we understand the word in this our life. Now do be a quiet lad, or I’ll never be done:
“It was when I was a young man, and that is a good many years ago, gentlemen. I had passed my examinations, but was so run down with overwork that it was decided that I had better take a trip to sea. I was by no means well off, and very glad in the end to secure a nominal post as doctor in the sailing passenger clipper running out to China.
“The name of the ship was the Bheotpte, and soon after I had got all my gear aboard she cast off, and we dropped down the Thames, and next day were well away out in the Channel.
“The captain’s name was Gannington, a very decent man, though quite illiterate. The first mate, Mr. Berlies, was a quiet, sternish, reserved man, very well-read. The second mate, Mr. Selvern, was, perhaps, by birth and upbringing, the most socially cultured of the three, but he lacked the stamina and indomitable pluck of the two others. He was more of a sensitive, and emotionally and even mentally, the most alert man of the three.
“On our way out, we called at Madagascar, where we landed some of our passengers; then we ran eastward, meaning to call at North-West Cape; but about a hundred degrees east we encountered very dreadful weather, which carried away all our sails, and sprung the jibboom and foret’gallantmast.
“The storm carried us northward for several hundred miles, and when it dropped us finally, we found ourselves in a very bad state. The ship had been strained, and had taken some three feet of water through her seams; the maintopmast had been sprung, in addition to the jibboom and foret’gallantmast, two of our boats had gone, as also one of the pigstys, with three fine pigs, these latter having been washed overboard but some half-hour before the wind began to ease, which it did very quickly, though a very ugly sea ran for some hours after.
“The wind left us just before dark, and when morning came it brought splendid weather—a calm, mildly undulating sea, and a brilliant sun, with no wind. It showed us also that we were not alone, for about two miles away to the westward was another vessel, which Mr. Selvern, the second mate, pointed out to me.
“‘That’s a pretty rum-looking, packet, doctor,’ he said, and handed me his glass.
“I looked through it at the other vessel, and saw what he meant; at least, I thought I did.
“‘Yes, Mr. Selvern,’ I said. ‘She’s got a pretty old-fashioned look about her.’
“He laughed at me in his pleasant way.
“‘It’s easy to see you’re not a sailor, doctor,’ he remarked. ‘There’s a dozen rum things about her. She’s a derelict, and has been floating round, by the look of her, for many a score of years. Look at the shape of her counter, and the bows and cutwater. She’s as old as the hills, as you might say, and ought to have gone down to Davy Jones a good while ago. Look at the growths on her, and the thickness of her standing rigging; that’s all salt encrustations, I fancy, if you notice the white colour. She’s been a small barque; but, don’t you see, she’s not a yard left aloft. They’ve all dropped out of the slings; everything rotted away; wonder the standing rigging hasn’t gone, too. I wish the old man would let us take the boat and have a look at her. She’d be well worth it.’
“‘There seemed little chance, however, of this, for all hands were turned to and kept hard at it all day long repairing the damage to the masts and gear; and this took a long while, as you may think. Part of the time I gave a hand heaving on one of the deck capstans, for the exercise was good for my liver. Old Captain Gannington approved, and I persuaded him to come along and try some of the same medicine, which he did; and we got very chummy over the job.
“We got talking about the derelict, and he remarked how lucky we were not to have run full tilt on to her in the darkness, for she lay right away to leeward of us, according, to the way that we had been drifting in the storm. He also was of the opinion that she had a strange look about her, and that she was pretty old; but on this latter point he plainly had far less knowledge than the second mate, for he was, as I have said, an illiterate man, and knew nothing of seacraft beyond what experience had taught him. He lacked the book knowledge which the second mate had of vessels previous to his day, which it appeared the derelict was.
“‘She’s an old ’un, doctor,’ was the extent of observations in this direction.
“Yet, when I mentioned to him that it would be interesting to go aboard and give her a bit of an overhaul, he nodded his head as if the idea had been already in his mind and accorded with his own inclinations.
“‘When the work’s over, doctor,’ he said. ‘Can’t spare the men now, ye know. Got to get all shipshape an’ ready as smart as we can. But, we’ll take my gig, an’ go off in the second dog-watch. The glass is steady, an’ it’ll be a bit of gam for us.’
“That evening, after tea, the captain gave orders to clear the gig and get her overboard. The second mate was to come with us, and the skipper gave him word to see that two or three lamps were put into the boat, as it would soon fall dark. A little later we were pulling across the calmness of the sea with a crew of six at the oars, and making very good speed of it.
“Now, gentlemen, I have detailed to you with great exactness all the facts, both big and little, so that you can follow step by
step each incident in this extraordinary affair, and I want you now to pay the closest attention. I was sitting in the stern-sheets with the second mate and the captain, who was steering, and as we drew nearer and nearer to the stranger I studied her with an ever-growing attention, as, indeed, did Captain Gannington and the second mate. She was, as you know, to the west-ward of us, and the sunset was making a great flame of red light to the back of her, so that she showed a little blurred and indistinct by reason of the halation of the light, which almost defeated the eye in any attempt to see her rotting spars and standing rigging, submerged, as they were, in the fiery glory of the sunset.
“It was because of this effect of the sunset that we had come quite close, comparatively, to the derelict before we saw that she was all surrounded by a sort of curious scum, the colour of which was difficult to decide upon by reason of the red light that was in the atmosphere, but which afterwards we discovered to be brown. This scum spread all about the old vessel for many hundreds of yards in a huge, irregular patch, a great stretch of which reached out to the eastward, upon the starboard side of the boat some score or so fathoms away.
“‘Queer stuff,’ said Captain Gannington, leaning to the side and looking over. ‘Something in the cargo as ’as gone rotten, and worked out through ’er seams.’
“‘Look at her bows and stern,’ said the second mate. ‘Just look at the growth on her!’
“There were, as he said, great clumpings of strange-looking sea-fungi under the bows and the short counter astern. From the stump of her jibboom and her cutwater great beards of rime and marine growths hung downward into the scum that held her in. Her blank starboard side was presented to us—all a dead, dirtyish white, streaked and mottled vaguely with dull masses of heavier colour.
“‘There’s a steam or haze rising off her,’ said the second mate, speaking again. ‘You can see it against the light. It keeps coming and going. Look!’
“I saw then what he meant—a faint haze or steam, either suspended above the old vessel or rising from her. And Captain Gannington saw it also.
“‘Spontaneous combustion!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ll ’ave to watch when we lift the ’atches, ’nless it’s some poor devil that’s got aboard of ’er. But that ain’t likely.’
“We were now within a couple of hundred yards of the old derelict, and had entered into the brown scum. As it poured off the lifted oars I heard one of the men mutter to himself, ‘Damn treacle!’ And, indeed, it was not something unlike it. As the boat continued to forge nearer and nearer to the old ship the scum grew thicker and thicker, so that, at last, it perceptibly slowed us.
“‘Give way, lads! Put some beef to it!’ sang out Captain Gannington. And thereafter there was no sound except the panting of the men and the faint, reiterated suck, suck of the sullen brown scum upon the oars as the boat was forced ahead. As we went, I was conscious of a peculiar smell in the evening air, and whilst I had no doubt that the puddling of the scum by the oars made it rise, I could give no name to it; yet, in a way, it was vaguely familiar.
“We were now very close to the old vessel, and presently she was high about us against the dying light. The captain called out then to ‘in with the bow oars and stand by with the boat-hook,’ which was done.
“‘Aboard there! Ahoy! Aboard there! Ahoy!’ shouted Captain Gannington; but there came no answer, only the dull sound his voice going lost into the open sea, each time he sung out.
“‘Ahoy! Aboard there! Ahoy!’ he shouted time after time, but there was only the weary silence of the old hulk that answered us; and, somehow as he shouted, the while that I stared up half expectantly at her, a queer little sense of oppression, that amounted almost to nervousness, came upon me. It passed, but I remember how I was suddenly aware that it was growing dark. Darkness comes fairly rapidly in the tropics, though not so quickly as many fiction writers seem to think; but it was not that the coming dusk had perceptibly deepened in that brief time of only a few moments, but rather that my nerves had made me suddenly a little hypersensitive. I mention my state particularly, for I am not a nervy man normally, and my abrupt touch of nerves is significant, in the light of what happened.
“‘There’s no one on board there!’ said Captain Gannington. ‘Give way, men!’ For the boat’s crew had instinctively rested on their oars, as the captain hailed the old craft. The men gave way again; and then the second mate called out excitedly, ‘Why, look there, there’s our pigsty! See, it’s got Bheotpte painted on the end. It’s drifted down here and the scum’s caught it. What a blessed wonder!’
“It was, as he had said, our pigsty that had been washed overboard in the storm; and most extraordinary to come across it there.
“‘We’ll tow it off with us, when we go,’ said the captain, and shouted to the crew to get down to their oars; for they were hardly moving the boat, because the scum was so thick, close in around the old ship, that it literally clogged the boat from moving. I remember that it struck me, in a half-conscious sort of way, as curious that the pigsty, containing our three dead pigs, had managed to drift in so far unaided, whilst we could scarcely manage to force the boat in, now that we had come right into the scum. But the thought passed from my mind, for so many things happened within the next few minutes.
“The men managed to bring the boat in alongside, within a couple of feet of the derelict, and the man with the boat-hook hooked on.
“‘’Ave ye got ’old there, forrard?’ asked Captain Gannington.
“‘Yessir!’ said the bowman; and as he spoke there came a queer noise of tearing.
“‘What’s that?’ asked the Captain.
“‘It’s tore, sir. Tore clean away!’ said the man, and his tone showed that he had received something of a shock.
“‘Get a hold again, then!’ said Captain Gannington irritably. ‘You don’t s’pose this packet was built yesterday! Shove the hook into the main chains’ The man did so gingerly, as you might say, for it seemed to me, in the growing dusk, that he put no strain on to the hook, though, of course there was no need—you see the boat could not go very far of herself, in the stuff in which she was imbedded. I remember thinking this, also as I looked up at the bulging side of the old vessel. Then I heard Captain Gannington’s voice:
“‘Lord, but she s old! An’ what a colour, doctor! She don’t half want paint, do she? Now then, somebody, one of them oars.’ An oar was passed to him, and he leant it up against the ancient, bulging side; then he paused, and called to the second mate to light a couple of the lamps, and stand by to pass them up, for darkness had settled down now upon the sea.
“The second mate lit two of the lamps, and told one of the men to light a third, and keep it handy in the boat; then he stepped across, with a lamp in each hand, to where Captain Gannington stood by the oar against the side of the ship.
“‘Now, my lad,’ said the captain to the man who had pulled stroke, ‘up with you, an’ we’ll pass ye up the lamps.’
“The man jumped to obey, caught the oar, and put his weight upon it; and as he did so, something seemed to give way a little.
“‘Look!’ cried out the second mate, and pointed, lamp in hand. ‘It’s sunk in!’
“This was true. The oar had made quite an indentation into the bulging, somewhat slimy side of the old vessel.
“‘Mould, I reckon,’ said Captain Gannington, bending towards the derelict to look. Then to the man:
“‘Up you go, my lad, and be smart! Don’t stand there waitin’!’
“At that the man, who had paused a moment as he felt the oar give beneath his weight began to shin’ up, and in a few seconds he was aboard, and leant out over the rail for the lamps. These were passed up to him, and the captain called to him to steady the oar. Then Captain Gannington went, calling to me to follow, and after me the second mate.
“As the captain put his face over the rail, he gave a cry of astonishment.
“‘Mould, by gum! Mould—tons of it. Good lord!’
“A
s I heard him shout that I scrambled the more eagerly after him, and in a moment or two I was able to see what he meant—everywhere that the light from the two lamps struck there was nothing but smooth great masses and surfaces of a dirty white coloured mould. I climbed over the rail, with the second mate close behind, and stood upon the mould covered decks. There might have been no planking beneath the mould, for all that our feet could feel. It gave under our tread with a spongy, puddingy feel. It covered the deck furniture of the old ship, so that the shape of each article and fitment was often no more than suggested through it.
“Captain Gannington snatched a lamp from the man and the second mate reached for the other. They held the lamps high, and we all stared. It was most extraordinary, and somehow most abominable. I can think of no other word, gentlemen, that so much describes the predominant feeling that affected me at the moment.
“‘Good lord!’ said Captain Gannington several times. ‘Good lord!’ But neither the second mate nor the man said anything, and, for my part I just stared, and at the same time began to smell a little at the air, for there was a vague odour of something half familiar, that somehow brought to me a sense of half-known fright.
“I turned this way and that, staring, as I have said. Here and there the mould was so heavy as to entirely disguise what lay beneath, converting the deck-fittings into indistinguishable mounds of mould all dirty-white and blotched and veined with irregular, dull, purplish markings.
“There was a strange thing about the mould which Captain Gannington drew attention to—it was that our feet did not crush into it and break the surface, as might have been expected, but merely indented it.
“‘Never seen nothin’ like it before! Never!’ said the captain after having stooped with his lamp to examine the mould under our feet. He stamped with his heel, and the mould gave out a dull, puddingy sound. He stooped again, with a quick movement, and stared, holding the lamp close to the deck. ‘Blest if it ain’t a reg’lar skin to it!’
The William Hope Hodgson Megapack Page 30