The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea

by William Hope Hodgson

  The old Doctor sighed and nodded.

  “If I could have had her bill of lading,” he said, his eyes full of regret. “If— It might have told me something to help. But, anyway…. He began to fill his pipe again…. “I suppose,” he ended, looking round at us gravely, “I s’pose we humans are an ungrateful lot of beggars, at the best!… But… but what a chance! What a chance—eh?”

  The Island of the Crossbones

  I

  Between the Horn and the Cape,” said Captain Gaskelt solemnly, “there’s an island as you and me’d give our toes to find, Mister. Did you ever hear tell of Crossbone Island?”

  Maulk, the Mate of the little wooden brig, said nothing but his eyes had a queer look in them, and the Skipper continued:

  “Well, there’s no sayin’,” he said. “You’ll find a man here an’ a man there as ’as heard of it; but you’ll find a hundred as ’ll think you’re lyin’ if you was to say you’d set eyes on it. An’ that’s what I done, Mister; just once in all the years I been fishin’. When I was a bit of a lad in the old Marty, one of them old brigantines, away back…. Lord! how one does get old! I seen it once in the middle of a three weeks’ snowstorm, and the Master himself had no more notion of where we was than—than, well, than I had. We was fifty days out from Melbourne. Lord! it wasn’t like you’d see it today! An’ I saw the great peak of the island in a mighty sort of rift through the snow flurry; and there was the great crossbones, cut in the side of the mountain; and then the snow closed in round again, and it was gone.

  “I’d heard them talk about there bein’ supposed to be this here island somewhere to the south’ard an’ I sings out that I’d seen it; and they near clouted my head off. I might as well have talked of ghosts! I’d a lot to learn then about sailormen! I found they never took it as real, you see, Mister, but only as a sort of yarn of a spook island; an’ when I got yellin’ as I’d seen it, they near came to think of me as the Jonah as was gettin’ the ship all her dirty weather. Lord! There’s some damn ignorant fools as goes to sea! But I seen it, Mister; mind you that. I seen it with my two eyes, as plain as I see you this minute. An’ I’ve told the yarn up and down, through forty-five years of sea-faring; but I’ve never had a man believe me, not right down in his heart; only mouth-belief, ’cause he thought maybe I was good for a drink, or maybe as I should turn nasty if I heard what he really thought. An’ all these years, Mister, I’ve never met a man as ’as seen it. But I seen it, Mister. Don’t you make no bloomin’ error!”

  Old Captain Gaskelt terminated a speech that was becoming almost vehement, and viewed the Mate with an aggressive eye, his big, hairy fist instinctively clenched.

  But the broad, black-browed, white-haired, grey-bearded Maulk said not a word in reply; only he looked steadily from under his half-closed lids at the Skipper, his eyes shining with an extraordinary gleam in them. It was almost as if some long-forgotten memory had stirred behind them, and waked to life a desire in the back of his grimly silent brain.

  “I seen it!” repeated the Captain once more. But the big Mate appeared not even to be listening to him. He was not looking at the Skipper now, but away over the vast grey sea to wind’ard, where nothing showed to the horizon except the lonesome wheel of a ponderous circling albatross. As he looked, that waking gleam of memory still showed in his eyes, and presently he turned abruptly from his place beside the Captain, and walked forward to the break of the poop, evidently in a black study. Yet to old Captain Gaskelt there was nothing peculiar in this; he was already getting used to the morose, unsociable ways of his new Mate. All he would have said, had he been asked, would have been: “The Mate! No, Mister, he don’t talk much, but he’s a good sailorman.” And as the Old Man was both owner and Master of the little wooden brig, Lady Alice, in which they were sailing, there was nothing more to be said, if he were satisfied.

  II

  Dan’l Templet, who acted as Bo’sun of the Lady Alice, was waked about five bells in the middle watch a few nights later, by the shaking of a heavy hand, and Maulk’s gruff voice.

  “Get out, Dan’l!” he was saying. “You’ll have to stan’ the rest of the Old Man’s watch; he’s gone a-missing.”

  It was quite true. Dan’l Templet rolled himself in an upright position in his bunk, and questioned, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Maulk explained, with customary moroseness of voice, that he had come on deck a little after four bells, as he couldn’t sleep, and found no one on the half-poop except the man who had just relieved the wheel. He asked the man at the wheel where the Captain was, for the Old Man always took his own watch faithfully.

  The man explained that he had only just relieved the wheel; and Maulk had come forward then to question the one who had been relieved. But the relieved man had nothing to tell. He hadn’t seen the Skipper since before three bells, when he was standing smoking to wind’ard, near the break of the half-poop. The man had walked round the poop and the main-deck, looking for him, to give him the course, but when he could not find him anywhere had simply ceased to bother and gone forward for his smoke-on.

  This appeared to be all there was to it. Maulk had since searched the brig pretty thoroughly, but had soon made quite sure that the Skipper was not aboard; and he had then called the Bo’sun to take his watch, while he went below to try and get some sleep, which he did with the inevitable callousness that seemed his nature, for the boy who called him at four a.m. found him hard and fast in slumber.

  Now the men, several of whom had sailed years with old Captain Gaskelt, were enormously puzzled at the Skipper’s disappearance. They spoke to Dan’l when he came forward that morning at four o’clock; for he was always one of the “crowd” though he kept a slight aloofness, to help him maintain his position of half authority among them.

  “What would the Old Man want to go and dump himself for?” they asked. They summed up all their doubts, and, maybe, indefinable fears in one blunt question; which, of course, had to remain unanswered.

  Three nights later an extraordinary thing happened. One of the men who was having a quiet smoke out on the lee side of the dark main-deck suddenly shouted out in a tone of horror, and immediately began to scream something. His voice ceased abruptly, just as the watch dropped their cards round the fo’cas’le table, and came running out on deck. They shouted to the man by name, but there was no answer, and then someone thought to bring out the slush lamp.

  As they carried the lamp down to leeward, they heard the Bo’sun singing out away on the poop; and then he came running forward, calling to know what was happening. They began to search the main-deck, and while they were doing this, and calling the man’s name, they wakened Maulk, who came up on to the poop, growling angrily and sleepily to know what they were about. Yet among them all, though they searched fore and aft, they found not a sign of any living thing along the decks. The man had vanished as completely as had old Captain Gaskelt, three nights before.

  There were a number of circumstances which made the thing more extraordinary. The night was very calm, and the sea as smooth as an enormous pond, with only a long, almost invisible heave, moving periodically under the glass-like surface. Thus the idea of the man’s having fallen overboard was incredible, as will be plain in a few words. He had not even been smoking near the rail, as was shown by the position of his pipe, which they found on the deck, near to the caboose, where he must have dropped it when he gave out that shout of horror. There was nothing to make him fall overboard; and if he had, the splash would have been easily heard in the stillness of the quiet night; also, he would have shouted afresh when he came to the surface. And, moreover, he would have been seen, for though the moon was hidden, the sea gave back the subdued cloud-light in a sort of grey sheen, so common on calm nights at sea, when anything that breaks the surface of the water may be easily seen a considerable distance away.

  This second disappearance had a frightening effect on the men. They spent the rest of that night, both watches, sitting in the fo’cas’le and talking
about what had happened; their talk wandering off into a dozen ghastly sea superstitions, until at last they jumped every time there came the creak of a bulkhead, as the little brig rolled to some scarcely known swell.

  The next day they got a fair wind, which blew away some of their mental cobwebs of ghostliness; but the feeling returned with the darkness, so much so that when, in the middle watch, Tompkins, the man whose wheel it was, stepped in over the starboard washboard, one of the men fairly yelled out with fright, until he saw who it was.

  “What you doin’ away from the wheel?” they asked Tompkins, as soon as they had their bearings again.

  “The Mate said ’e’d give me a spell-oh,” said Tompkins, joining the card-party and drawing out his pipe. “ ’E’ve took the wheel hisself an’ said I might come forrard till four bells ’E’s a all right old cove, if ’e ’as got a tongue on ’im like a bollard!”

  And, indeed, big Maulk proved himself in many ways to justify the man’s opinion; for he took many a wheel during the next few nights, and let the man go forward for a smoke. At the same time, he was so grim and self-sufficient that he never weakened his authority over them in the slightest way; so that he was as well-liked by the rough sea-dogs forward as is possible under shipboard conditions.

  III

  “The boy ain’t in his bunk, sir,” reported one of the men to Maulk, three mornings later.

  It was one bell (4:30 a.m.) in the morning watch, and very dark, with a raw, cold feeling coming off the sea that set a shiver through the A.B. as he spoke. He had been sent down to call the cabin-boy to get the galley-fire lit for the morning coffee; and the boy was not in his bunk or anywhere around the pantry.

  The Mate stared a moment through the darkness at the man; then, with a grim mutter of oaths, he went below to have a look for himself. Yet, when he returned to the half-poop, he had nothing fresh to report. The boy was certainly gone; and Maulk ordered the man to go forward and light the fire in the caboose and tell the men to have a look around the decks for him. Meanwhile, he would go down to the pantry and get out enough coffee for the morning.

  The man went forward along the dark main-deck at a run. He had certainly no stomach for coffee just then, or anything else, except the companionship of the men forward. In his undeveloped brain, he was vaguely impressed by the Mate’s callous indifference. If the Mate were hardy enough to be alone about the decks, he wasn’t. He gasped as he thought something moved in the greyness around the pumps; then he was past the caboose, and a moment later burst into the fo’cas’le with this fresh news.

  Both watches turned out to listen, and they went aft with him in a bunch to the galley, whilst he made the fire; and all the time they talked and kept together, glancing about them, over the rails at the grey sea and about the decks. It was not until the Mate had twice sung out for the man to go aft for the coffee that he went, and then he got the crowd to go with him. Maulk cursed the man and the whole lot of them, paying particular attention to their livers and ancestry in his remarks. He was interrupted by the man at the wheel darting down off the half-poop into the crowd; for the helmsman had suddenly discovered what had happened, and had simply bolted from the wheel.

  Maulk jumped down in among the men, hauled the shaking helmsman out bodily, and dragged him bodily to the wheel, where he lashed him by the ankles to the grating, and clouted him into a dazed and silent admission of a more practical and painful kind of fear than his imaginary ones.

  Meanwhile, the crowd had gone forward again to the galley and kept the temporary cook company whilst he made the coffee.

  “I ain’t going to the wheel tonight!” said one man; “not so wot the Mate says.” And on this point they all agreed; though none of them had dared to interfere in the case of the unfortunate who was even then steering, lashed by his ankles to the wheel-grating, and unable to see the compass-card, because his gaze was fixed in terror over his shoulder. He feared unutterably what might come up over the taffrail at his back, out of the greyness that lay yet upon all the sea.

  But Maulk, the big Mate, walked the half-poop morosely, and presently was singing out along the main-deck to know when his coffee was coming.

  IV

  That night the men in both watches refused absolutely to go back to the wheel and lookout. Dan’l Templet, the Bo’sun, met the difficulty with his watch by allowing two men to go to the wheel together; but Maulk was different. At first, he seemed to be half-minded to use force, but after a minute of grim silence in which his watch stood tense, he turned on them jeeringly and told them to go forward to their nursemaids, whilst he took the wheel himself And take the wheel he did for the next six nights.

  The sixth night was very dark, and the wind fell away into a blank calm a little before midnight, the brig rolling slightly on the slow swells, with her sails slatting and gear and timbers creaking a little mournfully in the quietness that lay black and immense all about her.

  At midnight Maulk came up and relieved the Bo’sun. At the same time he cursed morosely a couple of his own watch who came aft to take the wheel, and sent them forward with a jeer, as he had done every night since their first refusal to go alone to the wheel. In any case, there was no actual need for anyone at the wheel; so that he merely tautened up the kicking-tackles, and began to pace the half-poop alone, as usual.

  When the Bo’sun came up, four hours later to relieve him, he was not there, nor was he anywhere in the ship. He had vanished as completely as had the three others.

  “The Cap’n’s punt’s gone,” said one of the men suddenly to the Bo’sun, who was leading the search. “Look, Bo’sun!”

  The man was right. The boat, which hung always inboard from the starboard quarter davits, had disappeared.

  “Now, that’s almighty rum!” said the Bo’sun, and jumped to the rail. He stared down into the darkness, then turned and whipped out the lamp from the binnacle, and shone the light over the side. It showed the falls dangling loose, with the blocks just dipping into the calm sea as the brig rolled slightly from time to time; but of the punt there was no sign.

  “Almighty rum!” muttered the Bo’sun again, to himself. Then he handed the lamp to one of the men and hollowed his hands around his mouth. “Boat ahoy!” But there came no answer; nor any sound of oars out of the distance.

  “Now,” said Dan’l Templet in a slow voice, speaking to the men who crowded round, peering over the rail into nothingness—“now what should any man make of that? What hell an’ devilment have this packet got aboard! The Mate’s gone, an’ I can’t navigate; though I give best to no man on God’s earth when it comes to plain seamanship. The Mate’s gone, but he never went natcheral, you may stake on that! An’ we’re lost out here maybe a thousand miles from any land as ever I’ve heard on. Come down with me, lads, an’ I’ll take a look at the chart; maybe it’ll show where we are. I don’t fancy to go below alone.”

  The Bo’sun led the way down the scuttle, carrying the binnacle-lamp, though the lamp was still burning in the large cabin, as they could tell by the light through the glass of the skylight. In the big cabin they picked up the hanging lamp, and took a look round for the chart, but could find nothing. Then one of the men suggested looking in the cabins that opened off fore and aft. They pushed open the door of the Mate’s room, and the Bo’sun shone the binnacle-lamp in.

  “Theer’s summat on th’ boonk-board!” shouted one of the men, who was peering over his shoulder. “Sitha?”

  The Bo’sun stepped inside the smaller cabin and held the lamp close, and so, with infinite difficulty he spelled out what was written on a leaf torn out of the log-book, and fixed on to the front of the Mate’s bunk, by means of a couple of sail-needles used as nails. The writing on it was beautiful copperplate, and exceedingly brief. It ran:

  “Look in the lazarette. See key.”

  The key in question dangled by its loop of ropeyarn from one of the sail-needles, and fitted the lock in the trap door under the cabin table, which led to the lazarette below, wh
ere the ship’s stores were kept.

  “Now,” said Dan’l Templet simply, as he took the key, “I don’t fancy to go down there; it may be some new sort of devil’s work. We’ll get a-plenty of lamps from the lamp-locker, and we’ll all go below together. Get some belayin’-pins, some of you!”

  They did as the Bo’sun said and came back with him to the big cabin. There Dan’l Templet got under the table and unlocked the trapdoor; then, with all his courage, he pulled it wide open and threw the hatch on to the deck of the cabin. The men were kneeling all around, holding their lamps in one hand and a belaying-pin or marlin-spike in the other; some of them had their sheath-knives drawn. Yet not one of them made any motion to descend; instead, there was rather a tendency to draw back from the black gape of the hatchway. It was the Bo’sun who finally led the way. He hauled a length of punt-yarn out of his pocket and bent it to the handle of his lamp; then lowered the lamp to the foot of the ladder which went down into the lazarette.

  For maybe a full minute he and the men stared down, but could see nothing unusual. At last Dan’l Templet decided to venture it, and putting his feet down into the hole, began to go crabwise down the ladder, with a muttered word to the men to follow him closely.

  Near the bottom of the ladder he thought he heard a vague sound to his left, which made him pause; but the man above apparently had heard nothing, for he continued to go down, and trod heavily on the Bo’sun’s head. Dan’l Templet grabbed wildly at the man’s foot, swearing automatically, and the two of them slipped and went down in a heap at the foot of the ladder, falling on the lamp and crushing it to pieces.