* * *
It seemed the coast guard was mistaken.
The following day, Saturday the 7th, was according to many one of the most beautiful in memory, sultry (not uncommon for August) but otherwise unusually fine. Balmy enough that residents and tourists alike took advantage. Holiday makers, in their best, on sight-seeing day trips to Rig Mill, Runswick, Mulgrave Woods, and Robin Hood's Bay, while all the day, in and out of the harbor, the Emma and the Scarborough were under full steam tripping tourists up and down the coast.
In late afternoon, when a breeze arose from the southwest, some of the gossips on the east cliff called attention to a show of mares tails high in the sky to the northwest. These early storm clouds did not startle, but rather added to the overall beauty. The approach of sunset was grand. Masses of splendidly colored clouds, flame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold, separated by masses of black in all sorts of shapes, delighted the assemblage in the old churchyard.
Out of sight and out of mind, was the befuddled Russian ship that had appeared on the far horizon, and so alarmed the coast guard, the previous evening. The vessel must have found her bearings (when, headed where, was anyone's guess) and passed by Whitby, for the schooner was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
But she wasn't gone at all. Demeter was there, drifted from sight back into the North Sea, less than ten miles east of the village. There she bobbed on the swells, windlocked, as the sun sank below the horizon.
Evening settled in the rigging and a blue dark fell on the deck. Captain Nikilov's corpse stood, tied at the wheel, while the ship's new master watched it loll to and fro with the roll of the waves. Each time the body flexed to port, Count Dracula was forced to turn away from the glint of the crucifix clutched in its hands. Dead… and still the seaman vexed him. Dracula would not be able to steer the ship from her helm. He would need another way.
He turned, his black cloak billowing like wings, and strode forward on the port side, Demeter's phantom, the only creature aboard save the rats, walking the deck alone.
The Count stopped just aft of the foremast shrouds. With one hand on the mast rigging and the other on the port rail, he stared out over the sea. Whitby lay beyond sight to the west. The current was wrong, the wind was wrong, the sails were wrong, and he had no governable rudder. None of it mattered. He was the voivode, the war leader, and he was taking this vessel to England.
Dracula lowered his head as the clouds in the east began to roll in and darken. He concentrated on the winds as they passed over the port side and dropped to skate on the surface of the sea a quarter of a mile west of Demeter, and on the elements in the water therein. In his mind's eye, he saw, slowly but coming on, the genesis of a massive rotation. The winds rose up and bore down. At Dracula's command, the sea began to churn.
* * *
In the time it took the old whaler to climb the steps to the cemetery on the east cliff, the breeze had strengthened to gusts. Swales had been watching storms roll in from that vantage point for fifty years. He did so again now, at the elbow of the young coast guard. “She's comin',” the old man said. The coast guard eyed the blackening sky and nodded.
Both thought it, but neither added, `Looks like one hell of a blow'.
The steamers had ceased their trips along the coast and come in for the night. Captains planning departures, up and down the quay, reconsidered, choosing to keep their mules and cobbles in. All were waiting with no intention of taking to sea until the storm passed. As evening turned to night, the only lights on the water belonged to fishing boats racing for shelter. Like diamonds against blue velvet, they rose and dipped in the swell, rolling to their scuppers, as each swept into the harbor ahead of the blow.
Shortly before ten o'clock the air grew oppressively still. Sheep could be heard bleating inland and the barking of dogs throughout the town sounded frighteningly like a concert of wolves. The band, courageously playing on the pier, had lost its lively French air and now seemed less an entertainment than an intrusion. While many of the cavorting storm-watchers missed it altogether, to the more sensitive among the crowd something supernatural (silence preceding it like a rushing spectre) seemed on the verge of overwhelming them.
* * *
Dracula stared over the ship's port rail, concentrating.
Black clouds rolled in, gale force winds billowed Demeter's sails and bent her masts, yet the water's natural swell fell away and the waves stood up in short, quick, angry cross-dashes. It seemed the sea was an orchestra, each foamless wave a musician rising to tune his instrument then retaking his seat. Soon the ocean lay down as smooth as glass. The concert looked about to begin.
Lightning flashed as Dracula stretched out his hand. The sea groaned as if some living monster were awakening in its lair. Then, to match the sound, came a spectacle right out of hell.
A quarter of a mile away, the vast bed of water suddenly convulsed. The wind's short, sharp gusts turned to a steady and fierce blow. The water began to chop, standing up. Prodigious streaks of foam rose and spread, at a great distance, into one massive counter-clockwise swirl. The gyration grew to a huge vortex; circling northward and westward. Moving with the wind, heaving and hissing, whirling and plunging, on a course directed by the devil, building with a mind-boggling velocity. Each moment added to its speed, its headlong frenzy. The whole sea was surging around in ungovernable fury, north and west, north and west, a train of violence on a circular track.
From this motion came the thunderous backlash of a gigantic wave. It struck Demeter on her port bow, rolled under the ship, and lifted her up to touch the electrically charged sky. The swell continued its massive outward roll, beyond Demeter into the sea, while the schooner bobbed on the top then slid down her inner face as if plunging off a mountain. She hit the bottom of the wave in bubbling foam. A man on deck would have been sick and dizzy, but Dracula stood without moving.
As wide in diameter now as it was distant from the ship, the massive whirl had come fully into existence. Now, at its center, as if a drain had been opened in the sea floor, the water fell out and the vortex became a whirlpool, increasing in speed and drawing the surrounding waters into its rotation. The edge of the whirl was a belt of gleaming spray. The mouth of the incredible funnel glistened jet-black, speeding dizzily around, roaring to the winds, a cylindrical wall of water descending to hell.
Demeter groaned and rolled on its keel. The bowsprit and carved torch of her ornate figurehead yawed to port, to the northwest, picking up speed, as it too was drawn to the maelstrom.
* * *
Just at sunset the coast guard and his technicians, on the east cliff, got the new searchlight working. They'd lit it for the first time when Mr. Swales had come up to view the weather and continued their experiments as darkness fell and the old whaler abandoned them.
Sir Oracle descended the stairs, heading home to his grand-daughter, when the shore light was turned. With no desire to blind those on the docks, they swept the beam across the misty ocean startling nothing more than a few storm-tossed seabirds whose wings flashed white then disappeared. Little did they realize as they played how quickly the searchlight would prove useful.
Outside the harbor, the storm had the sea running high. Each wave broke skyward, throwing white foam that was whirled into space by the tempest. The men chased these wet explosions until their light crossed the path of a lone fishing boat still a-sea and in jeopardy. She'd lost her way and, with the angry waves washing over her gunwales, was nearly swamped.
The coast guard took the light over from his technicians and trained the new beam on the troubled vessel. This man-made miracle did the trick. Guided by the light, and steady hand of the coast guard, the boat found her way, rushed into the harbor, and made the pier; the fishermen aboard sodden but otherwise none the worse for wear.
* * *
Swales saw the rescue as he reached the drawbridge. Confident the fishermen were safe, and aware there was little he could do if they were not
, he hurried home (his son's home actually), where both kept after, and were kept by, their little Carrie. A daft way to think of things, really. His grand-daughter was nearly fifty years old. Still she would always be their little Carrie.
Mina's Sir Oracle quietly cracked the door to her room and stared in at his sleeping grand-daughter. She hadn't felt well after supper, had excused herself to lie down, and was there now. His rheumy eyes were not what they once were. Swales could not discern her face in the gloom, but he recognized her form and could hear her peaceful breathing. He closed the door quietly.
He returned to their small sitting room and his worn rocking chair. He lit the lamp creating a soft glow, then lit his clay pipe (a gift from Oliver; the only thin' worth a damn to e'er come from Ireland). A robust cloud of smoke filled the room. He stared at the empty rocker on the other side of the table, Oliver's chair, and relit his memory.
Soon, Swales was trembling.
Something was wrong. For days he'd felt it, feared it. It was unshakable, the sadness that drove him to the cemetery, to make himself foolish before young Miss Mina. Here it was again… the feeling that Oliver was gone. Not merely away on a long sea voyage but truly gone; dead. He felt it, believed it absolutely in his heart. Oliver was dead and gone and he would never see his son again.
More than that, far worse, something inexplicable, something evil was headed their way. Lightning flashed turning the room, for an instant, to daylight. Thunder rumbled. Spittles of rain, a deceptively weak opening salvo of the storm yet to come, marred the room's two small windows.
Sir Oracle's tears fell too.
* * *
Mina sat up again. Not in bed, for she'd abandoned her bed, but on the settee in Lucy's room from which she'd watched her restless roommate all through the evening and into the night. The storm, it seemed, would be fearful and Lucy too was making Mina afraid.
Twice already, she'd risen from her bed – quite asleep both times – dressed herself and tried to get out of the room. Good fortune had awakened Mina in the nick of time and, on both occasions, she'd undressed Lucy without waking her and gotten her back to bed. Not that there was a struggle, there never was. Each time Mina stopped her, led her back to safety, she yielded without a struggle.
But the evening had taken its toll. Mina could no longer sleep, worried as she was for Lucy. The storm, rattling the windows, drumming the roof, booming among the chimney pots only made it worse. Now again came the thunder like the sharp puff of a distant gun. Mina shuddered.
* * *
Call it fate, call it coincidence, but it was storming in Purfleet every bit as hard as it was in Whitby, coming down in sheets with the lightning only starting but promising much. It had come out of the blue. Equally unexpected was the storm inside the lunatic asylum.
“He's mine!” Renfield screamed.
Dr. Seward, making notes at his desk, was frightened out of a year's growth; caught off guard when the patient burst through his study door shouting. True to the recent form his mania had taken, Renfield went for Tabby, their calico cat, with bloodlust in his mad eyes. The doctor tried to intervene and tumult followed.
The cat escaped as the lunatic grabbed and missed, the doctor was knocked over his desk, and Renfield too went down. The orderlies, an exasperated Martin brandishing a straight-waistcoat, and his right-hand man William (heavy on muscles, light on brains), charged in, as the calico charged out, and overwhelmed the patient.
“Blow me down dead, doctor,” Martin said, riding the man on the floor. “'ow 'e got out of 'is room, I don't know.”
“It doesn't matter now. Just get him under control!”
Renfield fought them with his considerable strength. Despite resistance, his protests, and his nonsensical ravings, the lunatic was eventually bound into the canvas and leather straight jacket, his arms crossed over his torso, and the elongated sleeves belted behind his back.
“No! No! I've got to prepare! You don't understand! He's coming! The master is coming! I've got to prepare!”
Trussed like a felon, Renfield was dragged (he refused to walk and screamed all the way) back to his room. He was deposited on the floor, howling like the madman he was. “Set me free! You've got to set me free! He's coming! I've got to prepare!”
“Come away,” the panting Seward said, ushering his orderlies out and locking the door. “Leave him alone.”
Renfield lay, lit by sporadic bursts of lightning, muttering and alone.
“Set me free. He's coming! The master is coming!”
* * *
Midnight arrived, Sunday, 8 August, the witching hour, and round and round Demeter careered, barely displacing water as it made the circuit, flying rather than floating. With the black wall of ocean on her starboard blocking out the storm to the east, and her port side riding the inner edge of the whirlpool, the schooner's tormented sails emptied and fell flat for lack of wind. It seemed Demeter would any second plunge into the abyss. She lay almost upon her beam-ends as she raced round in dizzying swings and Dracula stared to the bottom of the profound gulf where the walls of the vast funnel met and clashed in a roaring mist lit by lightning flashes.
More than Demeter was caught in the whirl. All around the ship raced barrels, broken yards, water-logged tree trunks, a splintered mast and, there suddenly ahead, the bow section of a wrecked vessel, churned up from the bottom. Each item in turn missed or struck the ship as the fates would have it, ran the massive circular course, took the plunge, and disappeared into the abyss.
The maelstrom drew the schooner, faster, on around. The ship creaked, the masts groaned, Demeter cleared the wall of water and the wind gusts billowed the sails in the opposite direction. The vampire, still conducting in the bow with lightning flashes all around, clenched his fists. Demeter groaned, climbed the lip of the funnel's edge to starboard and, as if shot from a catapult, left the whirl.
Behind, the mist in the depths of the funnel were swallowed up, replaced by churning sea, as the bottom of the gulf filled. The whirl slowed; the maelstrom closed and disappeared. But the deed was done! By the force of the vortex, Demeter had been driven in a westerly direction. The storm raged on and the jettisoned schooner was on course for Whitby.
Chapter Thirty-eight
A supernatural silence muted the voices of those out and about in the rain and stifled the band on the quay. Then, at midnight, came a hollow booming from over the sea. Flashes of lightning lit the distant ocean, revealed breaks in the heavy mist. The sky trembled with thunder. The crowd on the shore, still cheering the rescue of the fishing boat, was drowned out by the gale.
On the cliff, the coast guard stretched his aching back. So intent had he been on following the boat with his beam, he hadn't realized how near he was to giving out. He leaned against the light, almost falling when it rotated to sea under his weight. He looked seaward following the beam then paused, certain he'd seen… something.
He maneuvered the light with purpose and saw it again; something on the swell. The object veered in its course, battering the waves and, drawing near, took shape. It was a sailing ship! She was square-rigged on the fore, ridiculous in this blast, and full gaffe rigged, main and mizzen, with no reefing whatsoever. Surely, she was piloted by a lunatic! Then a realization struck. This was not just any ship. It was the foreign schooner he'd seen the evening before. She'd vanished from sight all the long day and he'd assumed she'd gone on her way. Now here she was again. All her sails were set (dangerously!) and idly flapping in the wind. She was heading west, straight for Whitby harbor.
The coast guard began frantically to signal her. He warned the ship, over and over again, of the storm. He'd begged her with the light to reduce her sail. All of his effort was to no avail.
The wind had backed to the east and up and down the harbor, on the piers, on the eastern cliff, the cemetery walk, and the grounds of the old Abbey, a shudder passed among those who saw the schooner. Shouts of alarm rose, gossip spread, about the ignorant and foolish officer at her he
lm.
* * *
Demeter's captain, Mikhail Nikilov, dead and lashed to the ship's wheel, lolled back and forth with every roll and yaw of the ship. His waxen eyes stared sightlessly from the full, in some spots torn, sails to the sodden deck, from the starboard sea to the port sky. He had grown cold and white, stiffened with rigor mortis, then flaccid as the rigor passed. The corpse stood at the helm – ignored.
The ship's new commander, Count Dracula, white with age, pale from lack of blood, stood in the bow of the forlorn schooner. The deck pitched beneath his feet, the winds blasted the sails. The boiling sky of emerald and black exploded with a CRACK of lightning.
Demeter ran on.
* * *
In her bedroom in the Crescent, Lucy's lovely but still sleeping eyes came open. Like an automaton, she threw back the covers and quietly, so as not to disturb Mina, climbed from her bed. Asleep but aware, she stole to the rain-spotted window and stared at the town and harbor.
The tempest broke over land and the whole aspect of nature at once convulsed. The waves rose in growing fury, overtopping each other, until the sea outside of the breakwater was a roaring monster. Whitecrested waves beat madly on the sands and rushed up the cliffs. Others broke over the piers, battering the lighthouses that guarded the mouth of the harbor. The wind roared and blew with such force even strong men had difficulty keeping their feet.
Lucy watched through the rain as the authorities chased away the brave onlookers and cleared the pier, no doubt saving at least some of their lives. To add to their difficulties, and the danger, wet masses of fog were drifting inland like the ghosts of the North Sea dead. She shuddered at the thought.
Then came the voice from the sea; the voice of the master. Lucy left the window and quietly, with one eye on the sleeping Mina, found her night coat.
Dracula's Demeter: The Vampire King's Stunning Sea Voyage Page 32