The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

by William Hope Hodgson

  He turned to the Second Mate.

  “So far as I can make out, Mr. Tulipson,” he remarked, “the danger seems to be only at night.”

  “It’s always been at night, Sir,” the Second answered.

  The Old Man nodded.

  “Have you anything to propose, Mr. Tulipson?” he asked.

  “Well, Sir,” replied the Second Mate. “I think you ought to have her snugged down every night, before dark!”

  He spoke with considerable emphasis. Then he glanced aloft, and jerked his head in the direction of the unfurled t’gallants.

  “It’s a damned good thing, Sir,” he said, “that it didn’t come on to blow any harder.”

  The Old Man nodded again.

  “Yes,” he remarked. “We shall have to do it; but God knows when we’ll get home!”

  “Better late than not at all,” I heard the Second mutter, under his breath.

  Out loud, he said:

  “And the lights, Sir?”

  “Yes,” said the Old Man. “I will have lamps in the rigging every night, after dark.”

  “Very good, Sir,” assented the Second. Then he turned to us.

  “It’s getting daylight, Jessop,” he remarked, with a glance at the sky. “You’d better take Tammy with you, and shove those lamps back again into the locker.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” I said, and went down off the poop with Tammy.

  XIII

  THE SHADOW IN THE SEA

  When eight bells went, at four o’clock, and the other watch came on deck to relieve us, it had been broad daylight for some time. Before we went below, the Second Mate had the three t’gallants set; and now that it was light, we were pretty curious to have a look aloft, especially up the fore; and Tom, who had been up to overhaul the gear, was questioned a lot, when he came down, as to whether there were any signs of anything queer up there. But he told us there was nothing unusual to be seen.

  At eight o’clock, when we came on deck for the eight to twelve watch, I saw the Sailmaker coming forrard along the deck, from the Second Mate’s old berth. He had his rule in his hand, and I knew he had been measuring the poor beggars in there, for their burial outfit. From breakfast time until near noon, he worked, shaping out three canvas wrappers from some old sailcloth. Then, with the aid of the Second Mate and one of the hands, he brought out the three dead chaps on to the after hatch, and there sewed them up, with a few lumps of holy stone at their feet. He was just finishing when eight bells went, and I heard the Old Man tell the Second Mate to call all hands aft for the burial. This was done, and one of the gangways unshipped.

  We had no decent grating big enough, so they had to get off one of the hatches, and use it instead. The wind had died away during the morning, and the sea was almost a calm—the ship lifting ever so slightly to an occasional glassy heave. The only sounds that struck on the ear were the soft, slow rustle and occasional shiver of the sails, and the continuous and monotonous creak, creak of the spars and gear at the gentle movements of the vessel. And it was in this solemn half-quietness that the Skipper read the burial service.

  They had put the Dutchman first upon the hatch (I could tell him by his stumpiness), and when at last the Old Man gave the signal, the Second Mate tilted his end, and he slid off, and down into the dark.

  “Poor old Dutchie,” I heard one of the men say, and I fancy we all felt a bit like that.

  Then they lifted Jacobs on to the hatch, and when he had gone, Jock. When Jock was lifted, a sort of sudden shiver ran through the crowd. He had been a favourite in a quiet way, and I know I felt, all at once, just a bit queer. I was standing by the rail, upon the after bollard, and Tammy was next to me; while Plummer stood a little behind. As the Second Mate tilted the hatch for the last time, a little, hoarse chorus broke from the men:

  “S’long, Jock! So long, Jock!”

  And then, at the sudden plunge, they rushed to the side to see the last of him as he went downwards. Even the Second Mate was not able to resist this universal feeling, and he, too, peered over. From where I had been standing, I had been able to see the body take the water, and now, for a brief couple of seconds, I saw the white of the canvas, blurred by the blue of the water, dwindle and dwindle in the extreme depth. Abruptly, as I stared, it disappeared—too abruptly, it seemed to me.

  “Gone!” I heard several voices say, and then our watch began to go slowly forrard, while one or two of the other, started to replace the hatch.

  Tammy pointed, and nudged me.

  “See, Jessop,” he said. “What is it?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “That queer shadow,” he replied. “Look!”

  And then I saw what he meant. It was something big and shadowy, that appeared to be growing clearer. It occupied the exact place—so it seemed to me—in which Jock had disappeared.

  “Look at it!” said Tammy, again. “It’s getting bigger!”

  He was pretty excited, and so was I.

  I was peering down. The thing seemed to be rising out of the depths. It was taking shape. As I realised what the shape was, a queer, cold funk took me.

  “See,” said Tammy. “It’s just like the shadow of a ship!”

  And it was. The shadow of a ship rising out of the unexplored immensity beneath our keel. Plummer, who had not yet gone forrard, caught Tammy’s last remark, and glanced over.

  “What’s ’e mean?” he asked.

  “That!” replied Tammy, and pointed.

  I jabbed my elbow into his ribs; but it was too late. Plummer had seen. Curiously enough, though, he seemed to think nothing of it.

  “That ain’t nothin’, ’cept ther shadder er ther ship,” he said.

  Tammy, after my hint, let it go at that. But when Plummer had gone forrard with the others, I told him not to go telling everything round the decks, like that.

  “We’ve got to be thundering careful!” I remarked. “You know what the Old Man said, last watch!”

  “Yes,” said Tammy. “I wasn’t thinking; I’ll be careful next time.”

  A little way from me the Second Mate was still staring down into the water. I turned, and spoke to him.

  “What do you make it out to be, Sir?” I asked.

  “God knows!” he said, with a quick glance round to see whether any of the men were about.

  He got down from the rail, and turned to go up on to the poop. At the top of the ladder, he leant over the break.

  “You may as well ship that gangway, you two,” he told us. “And mind, Jessop, keep your mouth shut about this.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” I answered.

  “And you too, youngster!” he added and went aft along the poop.

  Tammy and I were busy with the gangway when the Second came back. He had brought the Skipper.

  “Right under the gangway, Sir” I heard the Second say, and he pointed down into the water.

  For a little while, the Old Man stared. Then I heard him speak.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  At that, the Second Mate bent more forward and peered down. So did I; but the thing, whatever it was, had gone completely.

  “It’s gone, Sir,” said the Second. “It was there right enough when I came for you.”

  About a minute later, having finished shipping the gangway, I was going forrard, when the Second’s voice called me back.

  “Tell the Captain what it was you saw just now,” he said, in a low voice.

  “I can’t say exactly, Sir,” I replied. “But it seemed to me like the shadow of a ship, rising up through the water.”

  “There, Sir,” remarked the Second Mate to the Old Man. “Just what I told you.”

  The Skipper stared at me.

  “You’re quite sure?” he asked.

  “Yes, Sir,” I answered. “Tammy saw it, too.”

  I waited a minute. Then they turned to go aft. The Second was saying something.

  “Can I go, Sir?” I asked.

  “Yes, that will do, Jessop,” he
said, over his shoulder. But the Old Man came back to the break, and spoke to me.

  “Remember, not a word of this forrard!” he said.

  “No Sir,” I replied, and he went back to the Second Mate; while I walked forrard to the fo’cas’le to get something to eat.

  “Your whack’s in the kettle, Jessop,” said Tom, as I stepped in over the washboard. “An’ I got your limejuice in a pannikin.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and sat down.

  As I stowed away my grub, I took no notice of the chatter of the others. I was too stuffed with my own thoughts. That shadow of a vessel rising, you know, out of the profound deeps, had impressed me tremendously. It had not been imagination. Three of us had seen it—really four; for Plummer distinctly saw it; though he failed to recognise it as anything extraordinary.

  As you can understand, I thought a lot about this shadow of a vessel. But, I am sure, for a time, my ideas must just have gone in an everlasting, blind circle. And then I got another thought; for I got thinking of the figures I had seen aloft in the early morning; and I began to imagine fresh things. You see, that first thing that had come up over the side, had come out of the sea. And it had gone back. And now there was this shadow vessel-thing—ghost-ship I called it. It was a damned good name, too. And the dark, noiseless men… I thought a lot on these lines. Unconsciously, I put a question to myself, aloud:

  “Were they the crew?”

  “Eh?” said Jaskett, who was on the next chest.

  I took hold of myself, as it were, and glanced at him, in an apparently careless manner.

  “Did I speak?” I asked.

  “Yes, mate,” he replied, eyeing me, curiously. “Yer said sumthin’ about a crew.”

  “I must have been dreaming,” I said; and rose up to put away my plate.

  XIV

  THE GHOST SHIPS

  At four o’clock, when again we went on deck, the Second Mate told me to go on with a paunch mat I was making; while Tammy, he sent to get out his sinnet. I had the mat slug on the fore side of the mainmast, between it and the after end of the house; and, in a few minutes, Tammy brought his sinnet and yarns to the mast, and made fast to one of the pins.

  “What do you think it was, Jessop?” he asked, abruptly, after a short silence.

  I looked at him.

  “What do you think?” I replied.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “But I’ve a feeling that it’s something to do with all the rest,” and he indicated aloft, with his head.

  “I’ve been thinking, too,” I remarked.

  “That it is?” he inquired.

  “Yes,” I answered, and told him how the idea had come to me at my dinner, that the strange men-shadows which came aboard, might come from that indistinct vessel we had seen down in the sea.

  “Good Lord!” he exclaimed, as he got my meaning.

  And then for a little, he stood and thought.

  “That’s where they live, you mean?” he said, at last, and paused again.

  “Well,” I replied. “It can’t be the sort of existence we should call life.”

  He nodded, doubtfully.

  “No,” he said, and was silent again.

  Presently, he put out an idea that had come to him.

  “You think, then, that that—vessel has been with us for some time, if we’d only known?” he asked.

  “All along,” I replied. “I mean ever since these things started.”

  “Supposing there are others,” he said, suddenly.

  I looked at him.

  “If there are,” I said. “You can pray to God that they won’t stumble across us. It strikes me that whether they’re ghosts, or not ghosts, they’re blood-gutted pirates.”

  “It seems horrible,” he said solemnly, “to be talking seriously like this, about—you know, about such things.”

  “I’ve tried to stop thinking that way,” I told him. “I’ve felt I should go cracked, if I didn’t. There’s damned queer things happen at sea, I know; but this isn’t one of them.”

  “It seems so strange and unreal, one moment, doesn’t it?” he said. “And the next, you know it’s really true, and you can’t understand why you didn’t always know. And yet they’d never believe, if you told them ashore about it.”

  “They’d believe, if they’d been in this packet in the middle watch this morning,” I said.

  “Besides,” I went on. “They don’t understand. We didn’t.… I shall always feel different now, when I read that some packet hasn’t been heard of.”

  Tammy stared at me.

  “I’ve heard some of the old shellbacks talking about things,” he said. “But I never took them really seriously.”

  “Well,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to take this seriously. I wish to God we were home!”

  “My God! so do I,” he said.

  For a good while after that, we both worked on in silence; but, presently, he went off on another tack.

  “Do you think we’ll really shorten her down every night before it gets dark?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” I replied. “They’ll never get the men to go aloft at night, after what’s happened.”

  “But, but—supposing they ordered us aloft—” he began.

  “Would you go?” I interrupted.

  “No!” he said, emphatically. “I’d jolly well be put in irons first!”

  “That settles it, then,” I replied. “You wouldn’t go, nor would any one else.”

  At this moment the Second Mate came along.

  “Shove that mat and that sinnet away, you two,” he said. “Then get your brooms and clear up.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” we said, and he went on forrard.

  “Jump on the house, Tammy,” I said. “And let go the other end of this rope, will you?”

  “Right” he said, and did as I had asked him. When he came back, I got him to give me a hand to roll up the mat, which was a very large one.

  “I’ll finish stopping it,” I said. “You go and put your sinnet away.”

  “Wait a minute,” he replied, and gathered up a double handful of shakins from the deck, under where I had been working. Then he ran to the side.

  “Here!” I said. “Don’t go dumping those. They’ll only float, and the Second Mate or the Skipper will be sure to spot them.”

  “Come here, Jessop!” he interrupted, in a low voice, and taking no notice of what I had been saying.

  I got up off the hatch, where I was kneeling. He was staring over the side.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “For God’s sake, hurry!” he said, and I ran, and jumped on to the spar, alongside of him.

  “Look!” he said, and pointed with a handful of shakins, right down, directly beneath us.

  Some of the shakins dropped from his hand, and blurred the water, momentarily, so that I could not see. Then, as the ripples cleared away, I saw what he meant.

  “Two of them!” he said, in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper. “And there’s another out there,” and he pointed again with the handful of shakins.

  “There’s another a little further aft,” I muttered.

  “Where?—where?” he asked.

  “There,” I said, and pointed.

  “That’s four,” he whispered. “Four of them!”

  I said nothing; but continued to stare. They appeared to me to be a great way down in the sea, and quite motionless. Yet, though their outlines were somewhat blurred and indistinct, there was no mistaking that they were very like exact, though shadowy, representations of vessels. For some minutes we watched them, without speaking. At last Tammy spoke.

  “They’re real, right enough,” he said, in a low voice.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “I mean we weren’t mistaken this morning,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “I never thought we were.”

  Away forrard, I heard the Second Mate, returning aft. He came nearer, and saw us.

 
“What’s up now, you two?” he called, sharply. “This isn’t clearing up!”

  I put out my hand to warn him not to shout, and draw the attention of the rest of the men.

  He took several steps towards me.

  “What is it? what is it?” he said, with a certain irritability; but in a lower voice.

  “You’d better take a look over the side, Sir,” I replied.

  My tone must have given him an inkling that we had discovered something fresh; for, at my words, he made one spring, and stood on the spar, alongside of me.

  “Look, Sir,” said Tammy. “There’s four of them.”

  The Second Mate glanced down, saw something and bent sharply forward.

  “My God!” I heard him mutter, under his breath.

  After that, for some half-minute, he stared, without a word.

  “There are two more out there, Sir,” I told him, and indicated the place with my finger.

  It was a little time before he managed to locate these and when he did, he gave them only a short glance. Then he got down off the spar, and spoke to us.

  “Come down off there,” he said, quickly. “Get your brooms and clear up. Don’t say a word!—It may be nothing.”

  He appeared to add that last bit, as an afterthought, and we both knew it meant nothing. Then he turned and went swiftly aft.

  “I expect he’s gone to tell the Old Man,” Tammy remarked, as we went forrard, carrying the mat and his sinnet.

  “H’m,” I said, scarcely noticing what he was saying; for I was full of the thought of those four shadowy craft, waiting quietly down there.

  We got our brooms, and went aft. On the way, the Second Mate and the Skipper passed us. They went forrard too by the fore brace, and got up on the spar. I saw the Second point up at the brace and he appeared to be saying something about the gear. I guessed that this was done purposely, to act as a blind, should any of the other men be looking. Then the Old Man glanced down over the side, in a casual sort of manner; so did the Second Mate. A minute or two later, they came aft, and went back, up on to the poop. I caught a glimpse of the Skipper’s face as he passed me, on his return. He struck me as looking worried—bewildered, perhaps, would be a better word.

  Both Tammy and I were tremendously keen to have another look; but when at last we got a chance, the sky reflected so much on the water, we could see nothing below.