Chapter IV: My Life Is Again Attempted

Vanderdecken and the mate came below soon after this, and Prins set a bowl of punch before them. The captain seated himself in his solemn way, and the mate took Imogene's place--that is, over against my seat--she being at my side. They filled their pipes and smoked in a silence that, saving Vanderdecken's asking me to drink, would, I believe, have remained unbroken but for Imogene.

She said: "Captain, there is no fear, I hope, of those pirates attempting to board us again in the darkness?"

"Did Herr Fenton tell you they were pirates?" he replied, with the unsmiling softness of expression he was used to look upon her with.

"Surely they were pirates?" she cried.

"Be it so, my child," said he, "what doth it signify? They are gone; I do not fear they will return."

Being extremely curious to know what sense he had of this strange adventure, I exclaimed, "It is very surprising, mynheer, that a score of ruffians, armed to the teeth, should fling themselves into this ship for no other purpose, seemingly, than to leap out of her again."

"They imagined us English, Herr Fenton," said Van Vogelaar, with a snarl in his voice and a sneer on his lip.

I did not instantly catch the drift of his sarcasm.

"Doth any man suppose," said Vanderdecken, rearing his great figure and proudly surveying me, "that the guns of our admirals have thundered in vain? You seek an interpretation of the Frenchman's behaviour? Surely by this time all Englishmen should understand the greatness of the terror our flag everywhere strikes! Twice you have witnessed this--in the hasty retreat of your man-of-war, and this night in the conduct of the French schooner. Tell me," he cried, with new fires leaping into his eyes, "how I am to resolve the panic-terror of the boarding party, if I am not to believe that until they were on our decks, had looked round them and beheld our men, they knew not for certain the nation to which the Braave belonged?"

I bowed very gravely as I acquiesced.

"Skipper," cried Van Vogelaar, "is it not likely that they imagined us English? They showed no fear till our country spoke in the faces of our sailors."

A faint smile of scorn curled the lips of Imogene, but the contempt of her English heart quickly faded into an expression of compassion and sadness when she let her eyes travel from the sinister and ugly mate to the majestic countenance of the commander. But no more was said. The two men puffed at their pipes and sipped at their silver mugs in silence, and at long intervals only did Imogene and I exchange a word.

That they should so easily have been able to satisfy the surprise which the behaviour of the schooner must have excited in them was astonishing. Yet a little reflection made me see that, since they did not know they were accurst and were ignorant of the horror and terror with which mariners of all countries viewed them, it was almost inevitable they should attribute the flight of ships from them either to a selfishness and indifference to their needs or to the dread which they inspired as a vessel that flew the Dutch flag. Yet may I, without irreverence, suggest that much of the venom of the Curse must be neutralised by their ignorance of their condition and their inability to drive conjecture to the truth of whatever befel them? The shaping of their doom is beyond the power of reason to grasp, and I feel, therefore, the impiety of criticism. Nevertheless, I must say that, since it is Heaven's will these wretches should be afflicted with earthly immortality, it is inexplicable that the torments which perception of the truth would create, should be balsamed into painlessness by ignorance. For hath not the Curse the idleness of that kind of human revenge which strikes and mutilates an enemy already dead?

Imogene withdrew to her cabin at about half-an-hour after nine; Vanderdecken went on deck and I sat alone smoking, thinking of the surprising events of the evening, scheming how to escape and making my heart very heavy with a passionate hopeless yearning for the time to come when, secure upon the soil of our beloved land, I should be calling the delicate, lovely, lonely girl--the amber-haired fairy of this Death Ship--my own! The slow, rusty, saw-like ticking of the ancient clock was an extremely melancholy noise, and I abhorred its chimes too, not because of the sound, that was very sonorously melodious, but because it startled the parrot into its ugly, hobgoblin croak. It was a detestable exclamation to salute the ears of a man whose thoughts ran in the very strain of that coarse, comminatory confirmation of them.

The ancient salt and weedy smell of the ship--a distinguishable thing in the after part--if it was somewhat mitigated forward by the greasy smoke and steam of the cook-house--lent a peculiar accentuation to the various shinings of the lamp, in whose many-coloured radiance some of the dusky oval-framed paintings loomed out red, others green, the ponderous beams of the upper deck blue, the captain's tall, velvet-backed chair yellow, and so on; all these tints blending into a faint unearthly atmosphere as they stole dying to the bulkhead of the state-room, behind whose larboard door my love lay sleeping.

I was glad to quit the place, and went on deck. There was nothing to be seen saving the foam that flashed near and crawled afar, the glitter of the low-lying stars like the sparkle of torches on ships dipping upon the horizon, a sullen movement of dark clouds on high, and the moon red as an angry scar up-curled over the western horizon. 'Twas on a sudden I noticed that we were making a fair wind of the breeze. Yes, on looking aloft I perceived that the yards were braced in, lying so as to show the wind to be blowing about one point abaft the beam. It was strange that in the cabin I had not heard any noise to denote that the men were trimming sail, no sound of rope flung down in coils, no rusty cheeping cry from the aged blocks, no squeak of truss or parrel, or tread of foot. That was, maybe, because the men had fallen dumbly, as usual, to the job of hauling and pulling, so that my attention had not been drawn to such noises as were raised. Be this as it may, for the first time since I had been in the ship the wind had come fair. By the situation of the Cross, I guessed she was being headed about west-north-west, which would carry us to Agulhas, and also into the Ethiopic Sea.

For a little bit I was sensible of a degree of excitement; there had come a break; it was no longer a hopeless ratching to the north, then a bleak, slanting drift into the mighty solitude of the south; the ship was going home! But with that thought my spirits sank. Home? What home had she but these wild, wide waters? What other lot than the gentle cradling or tempestuous smiting of these surges, the crying of the winds of the southern ocean in her rigging, the desolate scream of the lonely sea-bird in her wake, the white sunshine of the blue heavens, the levin-brand of the electric storm, the midnight veil of the black hurricane, the wide, snow-like light of the northern moon, over and over again! No! I was mortal, at least, with the plain understanding of a healthy man, and was not to be cheated by a flowing sheet as though mine, too, was the unholy immortality with its human yearnings and earthly labours of the men who manned this Death Ship. The change was but one of the deceits of their heavy sentence, and with an inward prayer that for me and for my precious one it might work out some profitable issue, I went to my cabin.

The door hung on a hook that held it open by the length of a finger; outside swung the lamp that sent light sufficient to me through the interstice. At midnight, this lamp was borne away by Prins, whose final duty before going to his sleeping-place lay in this. It was a regular custom, and whenever it happened that I stayed on deck beyond midnight, then I had to "turn in," as best I could, in the dark. Yet, dark I could not term my cabin at night, 'twas rather "darkness visible," as Milton hath it; for though the glowing crawlings yielded no radiance, no, no more than a mirrored star shining out of the wet blackness of a well, yet such objects as intercepted it, it revealed, as a suspended coat, for instance, that, hanging against the bulkhead, had its figure limned against the phosphor, as though 'twas blotted there in ink, very faithful in outline.

There was enough in the events of the evening to keep my brain occupied and my eyes open, and I lay thus for some half-hour, thinking and watching the unnatural lights, and wondering why they should be there, since I had never beheld the like glowing in the most ancient marine structure I had ever visited, when, on a sudden, I was sensible of someone standing outside the cabin door and listening, as it appeared. It was a peculiar, regular breathing sound, that gave me to know this--a respiration as rhythmic as that of a sleeping man whose slumber is peaceful. An instant after I heard the _click_ of the hook of the door lightly lifted out of the staple, but all so quietly that the noise would have been inaudible amid the straining of the rocking vessel if my attention had not been rendered piercing by that solemn and strong breathing, rising very plainly above the sounds in the hold.

I sprang on to the deck; being in my socks I fell on my feet noiselessly. Against the greenish glitterings about the cabin I easily made out the figure of a man, standing within the door, holding it in a posture of eager listening. My breath grew thick and short; the horror of this situation is not to be conceived. It was not as though I were in an earthly ship, for in that case, no matter who the midnight intruder, he would have had a mortal throat for my fingers to close upon. But whoever this shape might be he belonged to the Death Ship, and 'twas frightful to see his outline, black as the atmosphere of a churchyard grave, thrown out, in its posture of watching and listening, by the fiery, writhing fibrines of the phosphor, to know that the deep and hollow breathing came from a figure in whom life was a monstrous simulation, to feel that his confrontment by an Hercules or a Goliath would as little quail his endevilled spirit as the dead are to be terrified by the menaces of the living.

I watched with half-suffocated respiration. Since his outline was plain it was sure mine was so likewise; but I could not distinguish that he was looking towards the place where I stood, that is, in the middle of the after bulkhead, a couple of paces from the foot of the bed, whither I had backed on his entering.

He very softly closed the door, on which I drew myself up waiting for the onslaught I was certain he designed, though when I considered what thing it was I should be dealing with, the sense of my helplessness came very near to breaking me down. Having closed the door he approached the bed, and bent his head down as though listening; then, with amazing swiftness, stabbed at the bed four times, each blow, with the vehemence of it, making a distinct sound; after which he hung over the bed with his arm uplifted and his head bent as though he would make sure by listening that he had dispatched me. His figure was so plain that it was as if you should cut out the shape of a man in black paper and paste it upon a dull yellow ground. From the upraised hand I could distinguish the projection of a knife or small sword not less than a foot long. He was not apparently easily satisfied that I lay dead; for he kept his menacing, hearkening posture while I could have counted sixty; he then went lightly to the door, opened it and passed out.

Whether he walked in his sleep--and certainly his motions were those of a somnambulist--or whether he was influenced by some condition of his doom, of a character as unconjecturable as the manner in which vitality was preserved among the crew, who were years and years ago dead in time, I could not conceive; but, resolved to discover him if I could, I followed on his heels, catching the door as it swung from his grasp; but there was no need to close it nor slip a foot beyond the coaming; for, the glimmer all about serving my sight, I saw him enter the cabin opposite--that in which Van Vogelaar slept, whereby I knew who it was that would have assassinated me that night had I slept when I lay down.

You will easily credit that this man had murdered sleep so far as I was concerned. I would not go on deck, and I would not lie down either, for what I had beheld had so wrought in my imagination that the mere idea of resting upon the holes which the villain's blade had made in the aged mattress filled me with horror. So for the rest of the night I walked about the cabin or rested on the edge of the bed, praying for daylight, and repeatedly commending myself to God; for, this being the second time my life had been attempted by the same hand, I could not question, if it was the will of Heaven this hideous cruise should be prolonged, the third venture would be successful, and in the dreadful loneliness and luminous blackness of that cabin I viewed myself as a dead man, and could have wept with rage and grief when thinking of my helplessness and of Imogene's fate.

However, I clearly saw that no good could attend my telling Vanderdecken of his mate's hunger for my life. If Van Vogelaar had walked in his sleep he would not know what he had done; he would call me a liar for charging him with it, and I might count upon Vanderdecken siding with him in any case. The Dutch are a less savage people than they were, but in the age to which this ship's company belonged they were the most inhuman people in Europe, perhaps in the world, and such were the barbarities they were guilty of, that the passage of two centuries--and it would be the same if it were the passage of two hundred centuries--leaves their crimes as fresh and smoking to God as the blood of their victims at the time of their being done to death. Consider their treatment of sailors: how for a petty theft they would proclaim a man infamous at the fore-mast; torture him into confession by attaching heavy weights to his feet, running him aloft, and then letting him fall; keel-haul him, that is, draw him several times under the ship's keel; affix him to the mast by nailing him to it by a knife passed through his hand; flog him to the extent of three hundred to five hundred strokes, then pickle his bleeding mangled back; fling him ironed into the hold: there half-starve him till they met with a bare, barren, lonely rock upon which they would set and leave him. Read how they treated the English at Amboyna! No! I had the Dutch of the seventeenth century to deal with in these men, not the Hollanders of my day, borrowing fine airs from the Germans and sweetening their throats with French _à la mode_ phrases. But how to escape them? There were moments when I paced my cabin like a madman and with a madman's thoughts in me too.

I brought a haggard face with me to the breakfast table, and Imogene surveyed me with an eye full of inquiry and anxiety. My thoughts, acting with my wakefulness, had told, and I fancied that even Vanderdecken suffered his gaze to rest upon me as though he marked a change. Van Vogelaar's manner satisfied me that he had acted in his sleep or under some spell that stupefied the understanding whilst it gave the spirit full play, for he discovered nothing of that wonder and terror which had been visible in him when I entered the cabin after his former attempt to destroy me, which certainly had not been the case had he quitted my bedside in the belief that I was dead of my wounds.

Vanderdecken talked of the fair wind; a sort of satisfaction illuminated his sombre austerity; though his dignity was prodigious and his commanding manner full of an haughty and forbidding sternness, he was nevertheless politer to me than he had ever yet been, going to the length of talking about the food on the table, the excellent quality of the African Guinea fowl and bustard, recommending me to taste of a dish of marmalade, and relating a story of a privateer having left behind him, in a ship he had clapt aboard of, a number of boxes which seemed to be full of marmalade, but which in reality were loaded with virgin silver. But it was the fair wind that produced this civility, though after last night's business 'twas welcome enough let the cause be what it would.

No sooner had Imogene and I a chance of speaking alone than she asked me what was the matter. I told her how Van Vogelaar had entered my cabin and stabbed at my bed. She turned white; her beautiful eyes grew large and bright with terror; she clasped her hands and for some moments could not speak. Her agitation diminished, however, when she understood that Van Vogelaar walked in his sleep, though she was still very white when she cried: "If you had been sleeping when he entered you would now be dead!"

I answered: "What he does in his sleep he may do awake. This action is like the whispers of a dreamer, babbling out his conscience. It is in his soul to kill me, and long thinking upon it has moved him to the deed in his sleep."

"Oh, Geoffrey, did I not beg you to secure your door?"

"Ay--that shall be looked to in future, I warrant you. But why should this man, of all the others, especially thirst for my life? How have I wronged him?"

She replied by pointing out that the crew of my ship had fired upon him; also that in the days of his natural life he was no doubt a villain at heart and that all the features of his devilish nature attended him through his doom; that being more jealous, rapacious and avaricious than the others, he might regard my presence as a menace to his share of the treasure, and hunger after my destruction; so that, come what might, I should never be able to report the wealth that lay in the ship's hold.

There was no doubt my darling was right, impossible as I found it to reconcile these earthly and human passions and motives with his supernatural being; and particularly the indifference he exhibited on the previous evening when the Frenchman came running us aboard, with his concern for his share in the gold, jewels and plate below. But I had long abandoned all speculation concerning what I must term the intellectual aspect of these miserable creatures. You will suppose that we found a fruitful text in this mate's somnambulistic attack upon me, and that we talked at great length about our chances of escape and the necessity Van Vogelaar's malignant hate put me under of inventing some method to deliver ourselves by, be the risks of it what they might. Yet it was but talk.

Indeed, never did prisoners' outlook appear more hopeless. Compared to this floating jail, compassed about by the mighty sea, the walls of a citadel were as paper, the bars of a dungeon's window as packthread. But the most bitter and invincible barrier of all was Captain Vanderdecken's resolution to carry Imogene with him in this ship to Amsterdam.