Читать книгу The Death Ship (Musaicum Adventure Classics) - William Clark Russell - Страница 8

Table of Contents

We talked occasionally of the Phantom Ship after this for a few days, the captain on one occasion, to my surprise, producing an old volume on magic and sorcery which it seems he had, along with an odd collection of books, in his cabin, and arguing and reasoning out of it. But he never spoke of this thing in the presence of the mate who, to be sure, was a simple, downright man, without the least imaginable flavour of imagination to render sapid the lean austerity of his thoughts, and who, therefore, as you may suppose, as little credited the stories told of the Dutchman's ship as the Ebrew Jew believes in our Lord.

Hence, as there were but the captain and me to keep this shuttlecock of a fancy flying, it fluttered before long to the ground; perhaps the quicker, because on the Sunday following our speaking with the Plymouth snow, there happened a piece of work, sharp and real enough to drive all ideas of visions and phantasms out of our heads.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when a sail was descried broad on the larboard beam. We gave her no heed at first. It being the Sabbath, and a warm sweet morning, the men having nothing to do, hung about the decks, smoking, telling stories and the like; and being cleanly attired in jackets and white trousers, they contributed a choice detail to the general structure of well-kept decks, shining brass work, massive shrouds soaring from the black dead-eyes to the great round tops, with further rigging of a similar kind ruling the topmasts to the cross-trees, and on yet to the topgallant heights, ropes crossing ropes and ratline following ratline, till the tracery, both in its substance aloft and its shadows below and in the inclined hollows of the sails, puzzled the eye with the complexity of a spider's web; whilst from the water-ways to the lower yard-arms and thence to the ends of the yards above, mounted the vast sheets of canvas, each central surface arching in snow to the raining light of the sun, like the fair full breasts of a virgin, passed the taut bolt-ropes, narrowing as they rose till, the royal-yards being reached, the sails there swelled yearning skywards as though they were portions of the prismatic ribbed and pearly beds of cloud directly over the ship, rent from them by the sweep of our trucks and knitted by our seamen to those lofty spars.

It was not long, however, before we made out that the vessel down in the eastern quarter was steering large, and at the time the appearance of her canvas assured us of this, she slackened away her larboard braces to head up for us, hauling upon a bowline with a suddenness that left her intention to parley with us questionless.

We hoisted the English ensign and held on a bit, viewing her with an intentness that brought many of our eyes to a squint; then the captain, observing that she showed no colours and was a big ship, put his helm up for a run.

No sooner had we braced in our yards, when the fellow behind us squared away too, and threw out lower and topmast studding-sails with a rapidity that satisfied us she was a man-of-war, apparently a liner. This notion, joined to the belief that she was a Dutchman, was start enough for us all. Our small company were not likely to hold their own against the disciplined masses of a two or three decker, even though she should prove a Spaniard. Our guns were too few to do anything with tiers of batteries heavy enough to blow us out of water. So as there was nothing for it but a fair trial of speed, we sprung to our work like hounds newly unleashed, got her dead before it, ran out studding-sail booms on both sides and sent the sails aloft soaking wet for the serviceableness of the weight the wetness would give, and stationing men in the tops and cross-trees we whipped up buckets of water to them, with which they drenched the canvas, till our cloths must have looked as dark as a collier's to the ship astern of us.

It was very slow work at first, and we were thankful for that; for every hour carried us nearer to the night into which the moon now entered so late and glowed with such little power, even when she had floated high, that we could count, after sundown, upon several hours of darkness; but it was not long before it became evident to us all that, spite of the ceaseless wetting of our sails, the ship in our wake was growing. Then, satisfied of her superiority, and convinced of our nationality, she let fly a forecastle gun at us, of the ball of which we saw nothing, and hoisted the Dutch colours at her fore-royal masthead, where, at all events, we could not fail to distinguish the flag.

"Confound such luck!" cries Skevington at this. "How can our apple-bows contend with those pyramids of sails there? What's to be done?" he says, as if thinking aloud. "It's clear she's our master in running, and I fear she'll be more than our match on a bowline—with the weather gage too! And yet, by the thunder of Heaven, Mr. Hall, it does go against the current of any sort of English blood to haul down that piece of bunting there," says he, casting his eyes at the peak where our flag was blowing, "to the command of a Dutchman's cannon!"

"The wind's coming away more easterly," said the mate, with a slow turning of his gaze into the quarter he mentioned, "and it'll be breezing up presently, if there's any signification in the darker blue of the sea that way."

It happened as he said; but the Dutchman got the first slant of it, and you saw the harder pulling of his canvas in the rounded rigidity of light upon the cloths, whilst the dusky line of the wind, followed by the flashings of the small seas, whose leaping heads it showered into spray, was yet approaching our languid ship, whose lower and heavy canvas often flapped in the weak air.

A couple of shot came flying after us from the man-of-war's bowchasers ere the breeze swept to our spars; and now the silvery line of the white water that her stem was hewing up and sending in a brilliant whirl past her was easy to be seen; aye, 'twas even possible to make out the very lines of her reef-points upon the fore-course and topsail, whilst through the glass you could discern groups of men stationed upon her forecastle, and mark some quarter-deck figure now and again impatiently bound on to the rail and overhang it like a davit, with an arm round a backstay, in his eagerness to see how fast they were coming up with us.

With all element of terror in it extinguished by time, it is a sight to recall with a sailor's fondness; for indeed the Dutchman was a fine ship, very tall, with port-lids painted red inside, so that with the guns projecting from them, in two tiers, the aspect was that of rows of crimson, wolfish jaws, every beast with his tongue out; her yards were immensely square, and her studding-sail booms extending great spaces of canvas far over the side, she showed upon the dark blue frothing ocean like some Heaven-seeking hill, fleecily clad with snow to twenty feet above the water-line, where it was black rock down to the wash of the froth. In the freshening wind, as it came up to us, I seemed to catch an echo of the drum-like roll of the briskening gale in those airy heights, and to hear the seething of the boiling stuff at her forefoot. But, thanks be to Heaven, there was now a swift racing of foam from under our counter, whence it streamed away with a noise delicious to hearken to, as though it was the singing of the rain of a thunder-cloud upon hard land; for whenever the breeze gathered its weight in our canvas the Saracen sprang from it meteor-fashion, and away we sped with helm right amidships, and the wind flashing fair over the taffrail.

The excitement of this chase was deep in us when the captain gave orders to train a couple of guns aft and to continue firing at the pursuing craft; which was done, the powder-smoke blowing like prodigious glistening cobwebs into our canvas forward. Meanwhile, the English colours flew hardily at our peak, whilst preventer guys were clapped on the swinging-booms and other gear added to give strength aloft; for the wind was increasing as if by magic, the ribbed clouds had broken up and large bodies of vapour were sailing overhead with many ivory-white shoulders crowding upon the horizon, and the strain upon the studding-sail tacks was extremely heavy. But you saw that it was Captain Skevington's intention to make the Saracen drag what she could not carry, and to let what chose blow away before he started a rope-yarn, whilst we had that monster astern there sticking to our skirts; and by this time it was manifest that with real weight in the wind our heels were pretty nearly as keen as hers, which made us hope that should the breeze freshen yet we might eventually get away.

Well, at three o'clock it was blowing downright hard, though the weather was fine, the heavens mottled, the clouds being compacted and sailing higher, stormy in complexion and moving slowly; the sea had grown hollow and was most gloriously violet in colour, with plumes of snow, which curled to the gale on the head of each liquid courser; the sun was over our fore-topgallant yard-arm and showered down his glory so as to form a golden weltering road for us to steer beside. The ship behind catched his light and looked to be chasing us on wings of yellow silk. But never since her keel had been laid had the Saracen been so driven. The waters boiled up to the blackfaced turbaned figure under the bowsprit, and from aft I could sometimes observe the glassy curve of the bow sea, arching away for fathoms forward, showing plain through the headrails. A couple of hands hung grinding upon the wheel with set teeth, and the sinews in their naked arms stood out like cords; others were at the relieving-tackles; and through it we pelted, raising about us a bubbled, spuming and hissing surface that might have answered to the passage of a whirlwind, repeatedly firing at the Dutch man-of-war when the heave of the surge gave us the chance, and noticing the constant flash in his bows and the white smother that blew along with him, though the balls of neither appeared to touch the other of us.

Yet, that we should have been ultimately overhauled and brought to a stand I fully believe but for a providential disaster. For no matter how dark the dusk may have drawn around at sundown, the Dutchman was too close to us to miss the loom of the great press of canvas we should be forced to carry: at least, so I hold; and then, again, there was the consideration of the wind failing us with the coming of the stars, for we were still in the gentle parallels. But let all have been as it might, I had just noted the lightning-like wink of one of the enemy's fore-chasers, when to my exceeding amazement, ere the ball of smoke could be shredded into lengths by the gale, I observed the whole fabric of the Dutchman's towering foremast, with the great course, swelling topsail, topgallant-sail and royal, and the fore-topmast staysail and jibs melt away as an icicle approached by flame; and in a breath, it seemed, the huge ship swung round, pitching and foaming after the manner of a harpooned whale, with her broadside to us, exhibiting the whole fore-part of her most grievously and astonishingly wrecked.

A mighty cheer went up from our decks at the sight, and there was a deal of clapping of hands and laughter. Captain Skevington seized the telescope, and talked as he worked away with it.

"A rotten foremast, by the thunder of Heaven!" he cried, using his favourite adjuration; "it could be nothing else. No shot our guns throw could work such havoc. By the height that's left standing the spar has fetched away close under the top. And the mess! the mess!"

With the naked eye one could see that. The foremast had broken in twain; its fall had snapped off the jibbooms to the bowsprit cap, and I do not doubt a nearer view would have shown us the bowsprit itself severely wrenched. I could not imagine the like of that picture of confusion—her studding-sails, having been set on both sides, drowned all her forward part in canvas, a goodly portion of which had been torn into rags by the fall; immense stretches of sail lay in the water, sinking and rising with the rolling of the ship, and dragging her head to the wind; her main topmast studding-sails, and all the canvas on that mast and the mizzen—the yards lying square—were shaking furiously, owing to the posture in which she had fallen; every moment this terrible slatting threatened her other spars; and it needed not a sailor's imagination to conceive how fearfully all that thunderous commotion aloft must heighten the distracting tumult on deck, the passionate volleys of commands, the hollow shocks of seas smiting the inert hull, the shouting of the seamen, and, as we might be sure, the cries and groans of the many upon whom that soaring fabric of yards, sails, and rigging had fallen with the suddenness of an electric bolt from the clouds.

For a whole hour after this we touched not a rope, leaving our ship to rush from the Dutchman straight as an arrow from a bow. But, Lord!—the storming aloft!—the fierce straining of our canvas till tacks and guys, sheets and braces rang out upon the wind like the clanking of bells, to a strain upon them tauter than that of harp-strings; the boiling noises of the seas all about our bow and under our counter, where the great bodies of foam roared away into our wake, as the white torrent raves along its bed from the foot of a high cataract! There was an excitement in this speed and triumph of escape from what must have proved a heavy and inglorious disaster to us all which put fire into the blood, and never could I have imagined how sentient a ship is, how participant of what stirs the minds of those she carries, until I marked the magnificent eagerness of our vessel's flight—her headlong domination of the large billows which underran her, and the marble-hard distention of her sails, reminding you of the tense cheeks of one who holds his breath in a run for his life.

Distance and the sinking of the sun, and the shadows which throng sharply upon his heels in these climes, left the horizon in course bare to our most searching gaze. We then shortened sail, and under easy canvas, we put our helm a-lee, and stood northwards on a bowline until midnight, when we rounded in upon our weather-braces and steered easterly, Captain Skevington suspecting that the Dutchman would make all haste to refit and head south under some jury contrivance, in the expectation that as we were bound that way when he fell in with us so we should haul to our course afresh when we lost sight of him. Yet in the end we saw him no more, and what ship he was I never contrived to learn; but certainly it was an extraordinary escape, though whether due to our shot, or to his foremast being rotten, or to its having been sprung and badly fished, or to some earlier wound during an engagement, must be left to conjecture.