The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea

by William Hope Hodgson

  For some time the Mate watched her silently, and as he watched the conviction grew upon me that, in spite of the mist, I could detect some sort of movement on board of her. After some time had passed, the doubt became a certainty, and I could also see a sort of splashing in the water alongside of her. Suddenly the Mate put his glasses on top of the wheel box and told me to bring him the speaking trumpet. Running to the companion-way, I secured the trumpet and was back at his side.

  The Mate raised it to his lips, and taking a deep breath, sent a hail across the water that should have awakened the dead. We waited tensely for a reply. A moment later a deep, hollow mutter came from the barque; higher and louder it swelled, until we realized that we were listening to the same sounds which we had heard the night before. The Mate stood aghast at this answer to his hail; in a voice barely more than a hushed whisper, he bade me call the Old Man. Attracted by the Mate’s hail and its unearthly reply, the watch had all come aft, and were clustered in the mizzen rigging, in order to see better.

  After calling the Captain, I returned to the poop, where I found the Second and Third Mates talking with the Chief. All were engaged in trying to pierce the clouds of mist which half hid our strange consort, and arrive at some explanation of the strange phenomena of the past few hours. A moment later the Captain appeared carrying his telescope. The Mate gave him a brief account of the state of affairs, and handed him the trumpet. Giving me the telescope to hold, the Captain hailed the shadowy barque. Breathlessly we all listened, when again, in answer to the Old Man’s hail, the frightful sounds rose on the still morning air. The Skipper lowered the trumpet and stood with an expression of astonished horror on his face.

  “Lord!” he exclaimed. “What an ungodly row!”

  At this, the Third, who had been gazing through his binoculars, broke the silence.

  “Look,” he ejaculated. “There’s a breeze coming up astern.” At his words the Captain looked up quickly, and we all watched the ruffling water.

  “That packet yonder is bringing the breeze with her,” said the Skipper. “She’ll be alongside in half an hour!”

  Some moments passed, and the bank of fog had come to within a hundred yards of our taffrail. The strange vessel could be distinctly seen just inside the fringe of the driving mist wreaths. After a short puff, the wind died completely, but we stared with hypnotic fascination, the water astern of the stranger ruffled again with a fresh catspaw. Seemingly with the flapping of her sails, she drew slowly up to us. As the leaden seconds passed, the big four-master approached us steadily. The light air had now reached us and, with a lazy lift of our sails, we too began to forge slowly through that weird sea. The barque was now within fifty yards of our stern, and she was steadily drawing nearer, seeming to be able to outfoot us with ease. As she came on she luffed sharply and came into the wind with her weather leeches shaking.

  I looked toward her poop, thinking to discern the figure of the man at the wheel, but the mist coiled around her quarter, and objects on the after end of her became indistinguishable. With a rattle of chain-sheets on her iron yards, she filled away again. We meanwhile had gone ahead, but it was soon evident that she was the better sailor, for she came up to us hand-over-fist. The wind rapidly freshened, and the mist began to drift away before it, so that each moment her spars and cordage became more plainly visible. The Skipper and the Mates were watching her intently, when an almost simultaneous exclamation of fear broke from them.

  “My God!”

  And well they might show signs of fear, for crawling about the barque’s deck were the most horrible creatures I had ever seen. In spite of their unearthly strangeness there was something vaguely familiar about them. Then it came to me that the face which Stevenson and I had seen during the night belonged to one of them. Their bodies had something of the shape of a seal’s, but of a dead, unhealthy white. The lower part of the body ended in a sort of double-curved tail on which they appeared to be able to shuffle about. In place of arms they had two long, snaky feelers, at the ends of which were two very humanlike hands equipped with talons instead of nails. Fearsome indeed were these parodies of human beings!

  Their faces which, like their tentacles, were black, were the most grotesquely human things about them, and the upper jaw closed into the lower, after the manner of the jaws of an octopus. I have seen men among certain tribes of natives who had faces uncommonly like theirs, but yet no native I had ever seen could have given me the extraordinary feeling of horror and revulsion which I experienced toward these brutal-looking creatures.

  “What devilish beasts!” burst out the Captain in disgust.

  With this remark he turned to the Mate and, as he did so, the expressions on their faces told me that they had all realised what the presence of these bestial-looking brutes meant. If, as was doubtless the case, these creatures had boarded the barque and destroyed her crew, what would prevent them from doing the same with us? We were a smaller ship and had a smaller crew, and the more I thought of it the less I liked it.

  We could now see the name on the barque’s bow with the naked eye. It read: Scottish Heath, while on her boats we could see the name bracketted with Glasgow, showing that she hailed from that port. It was a remarkable coincidence that she should have a slant from just the quarter in which yards were trimmed, as before we saw her she must have been drifting around with everything “aback.” But now, in this light air, she was able to run along beside us with no one at her helm. But steering herself she was, and although at times she yawed wildly, she never got herself aback. As we gazed at her we noticed a sudden movement on board of her, and several of the creatures slid into the water.

  “See! See! They’ve spotted us. They’re coming for us!” cried the Mate wildly.

  It was only too true; scores of them were sliding into the sea, letting themselves down by means of their long tentacles. On they came, slipping by scores and hundreds into the water, and swimming toward us in droves. The ship was making about three knots, otherwise they would have caught us in a very few minutes. But they persevered, gaining slowly but surely, and drawing nearer and nearer. The long tentacle-like arms rose out of the sea in hundreds, and the foremost ones were already within a score of yards of the ship, before the Old Man bethought himself to shout to the Mates to fetch up the half-dozen cutlasses which comprised the ship’s armoury. Then, turning to me, he ordered me to go down to his cabin and bring up the two revolvers out of the top drawer of the chart table, also a box of cartridges which was there.

  When I returned with the weapons, he loaded there and handed one to the Mate. Meanwhile the pursuing creatures were coming steadily nearer, and soon half a dozen of the leaders were directly under our counter. Immediately the Captain leaned over the rail and emptied his pistol into them, but without any apparent effect. He must have realised how puny and ineffectual his efforts were, for he did not reload his weapon.

  Some dozens of the brutes had reached us, and as they did so, their tentacles rose into the air and caught our rail. I heard the Third Mate scream suddenly, and turning, I saw him dragged quickly to the rail, with a tentacle wrapped completely around him. Snatching a cutlass, the Second Mate hacked off the tentacle where it joined the body. A gout of blood splashed into the Third Mate’s face, and he fell to the deck. A dozen more of those arms rose and wavered in the air, but they now seemed some yards astern of us. A rapidly widening patch of clear water appeared between us and the foremost of our pursuers, and we raised a wild shout of joy. The cause was soon apparent; for a fine, fair wind had sprung up, and with the increase in its force, the Scottish Heath had got herself aback, while we were rapidly leaving the monsters behind us. The Third Mate rose to his feet with a dazed look, and as he did so something fell to the deck. I picked it up and found that it was the severed portion of the tentacle of the Third’s late adversary. With a grimace of disgust I tossed it into the sea, as I needed no reminder of that awful experience.

  Three weeks later we anchored in San Francisco
. There the Captain made a full report of the affair to the authorities, with the result that a gunboat was dispatched to investigate. Six weeks later she returned to report that she had been unable to find any signs, either of the ship herself or of the fearful creatures which had attacked her. And since then nothing, as far as I know, has ever been heard of the four-masted barque Scottish Heath, last seen by us in the possession of creatures which may rightly be called demons of the sea.

  Whether she still floats, occupied by her hellish crew, or whether some storm has sent her to her last resting place beneath the waves, is purely a matter of conjecture. Perchance on some dark, fog-bound night, a ship in that wilderness of waters may hear cries and sounds beyond those of the wailing of the winds. Then let them look to it; for it may be that the demons of the sea are near them.

  The Wild Man of the Sea

  The “Wild Man of the Sea,” the First Mate called him as soon as he came aboard.

  “Who’s yon wild-looking chap you’ve signed on, Sir?” he asked the Captain.

  “Best sailorman that ever stepped, Mister,” replied the Master. “I had him with me four trips running out to ’Frisco. Then I lost him. He went spreeing and got shipped away. I dropped on him today up at the shipping office and was glad to get him. You’d best pick him for your watch if you want a smart man.”

  The Mate nodded. The man must be something more than average smart at sailoring to win such praise from old Captain Gallington. And indeed he soon had proof that his choice of the lean, wild-looking straggle-bearded A.B. was fully justified for the man became almost at once by general consent the leading seaman of the port watch.

  He was soaked in all the lore of the sea life and all its practical arts. Nineteen different ways of splicing wire he demonstrated during one dog-watch argument; and from such practical matters went on to nautical “fancy-work,” showing Jeb, the much-abused and half-witted deck boy belonging to his watch, a queerly simple method of starting a four-stranded Turk’s-head; and after that he demonstrated a manner of alternating square and half moon sinnet without the usual unsightliness that is so generally inevitable at the alternations.

  By the end of the watch, he had the whole crowd round him, staring with silent respect at the deft handiwork of this master-sailorman, as he illustrated a score of lost and forgotten knots, fancy-whippings, grace-finishings and pointings, and many another phase of rope work that hardly a man aboard the Pareek, sailing ship, had even so much as heard the name of. For they were mostly of the inefficient “spade and shovel,” suji-muji, half-trained class of seamen, with most of the faults of the old shellback, and too few of his virtues, the kind of sailorman who lays rash and unblushing claim to the title of A.B. with an effrontery so amazing that he will stand unabashed at the wheel which he cannot handle, and stare stupidly at the compass-card the very points of which he was unable to name. No wonder that Captain Gallington was emphatic in his satisfaction at getting one genuine, finished sailorman signed on among the usual crowd of nautical ploughboys.

  And yet Jesson was not popular in the fo’cas’le. He was respected, it is true, not only for his sailorman’s skill, but because his six-feet-odd-inches of wire-and-leather body very early made it clear to the others that its owner was the strongest man aboard, with a knowledge of the art of taking care of himself that silenced all possible doubts in a manner at once sufficiently painful to be obvious.

  As a result the whole fo’cas’le was silent and deferent when he spoke, which was seldom; and had not his seamanship and his fighting powers been so remarkable he would have been stamped by his insensate fellow A.B.’s as hopelessly “barmy.” His good nature was often manifest; for instance, he kept most of the other men’s look-outs in his watch, when of course he was not at the wheel. He would go up and relieve the lookout man, much to that individual’s delight and half contempt; and there with his fiddle he would sit on the crown of the anchor playing almost inaudible airs of tremendous import to himself.

  Sometimes he would pace round and round the “head,” chaunting breathlessly to himself in a kind of wind-drunken delight, walking with swift, noiseless strides in his endless circling.

  Behind all his taciturnity, Jesson was fiercely kind-hearted in a queer impulsive way. Once, when Jeb, the deck-boy in his watch, was receiving a licking from one of the men, Jesson, who was eating his dinner, put down his plate, rose from his sea-chest and, walking across to the man, lugged him out on deck by his two elbows.

  His treatment of the man was sufficiently emphatic to ensure that Jeb was not in future kicked into submission; and as a result the much-hazed lad grew to a curious sort of dumb worship of the big, wild-looking sailorman. And so grew a queer and rather beautiful friendship—a wordless intimacy between these two—the wild, silent, strange-mooded seaman and the callow youth.

  Often at night, in their watch on deck, Jeb would steal up silently on to the fo’cas’le head with a pannakin of hot and much-stewed tea; for the Doctor—i.e., the Cook—had an arrangement with the deck-boy in each watch by which the lads would have his fire ready lighted for him in the morning, and in return were allowed to slip into the galley at night for a hook-pot of tea out of the unemptied boilers.

  Jesson would take the tea without a word of thanks, and put it on the top of the capstan, and Jeb would then vanish to the main-deck where he would sit on the fore-hatch listening in a part-understanding dumbness to the scarcely audible wail of the violin on the fo’cas’le head. At the end of the watch, when Jesson returned Jeb his pannakin, there would often be inside of it some half-worked-out fancy-knot for the boy to study, but never a word of thanks or comment on either side.

  And then one night Jesson spoke to the lad as he took from him the accustomed pannakin of hot tea.

  “Hark to the wind, Jeb,” he said, as he put down the pannakin on the head of the capstan. “Go down, lad, an’ sit on the hatch an’ let the wind talk to ye.”

  He handed something across to the boy.

  “Here’s the starting of some double-moon sinnet for ye to have a go at,” he said.

  Jeb took the sinnet and went down to his usual place on the fore-hatch. Here, in the clear moonlight, he puzzled awhile over the fancy-sinnet, and speedily had it hopelessly muddled. After that, he just sat still with the sinnet in a muddle on his knees, and began half-consciously to listen to the wind as Jesson had bid him—And presently, for the first time in his life, he heard consciously the living note of the wind, booming in its eternal melody of the Sailing-ship-Wind, out of the foot of the foresail.

  With the sound of five bells, deep and sonorous in the moonlight, the spell of the uncertain enchantment was broken; but from that night it might be said that Jeb’s development had its tangible beginning.

  Now the days went slowly, with the peculiar monotonous unheeding of ailing-ship days of wandering on and on and on across the everlasting waters. Yet, even for a sailing-ship voyage, the outward passage became so abnormally prolonged that no one of the lesser shellbacks had ever been so long in crossing the line; for it was not until their eighty-fourth day out that the equator was floated across, in something that approximated an unending calm, broken from hour to hour by a catspaw of wind that would shunt the Pareek along a few miles, and then drop her with a rustle of sails once more into calm.

  “Us’ll never reach ’Frisco this trip!” remarked Stensen, an English-bred “Dutchman” one night as he came into the fo’cas’le, after having been relieved at the wheel by Jesson.

  At this there broke out a subdued murmur of talk against Jesson which showed plainly that the big sailorman had grown steadily more and more unpopular, being less and less understood by those smaller natures and intellects.

  “It’s his b—y fiddlin’!” said a small Cockney named George. No one remembered his other name, or indeed troubled to inquire it.

  It was the inevitable, half-believed imputation of a “Jonah,” and as will be understood, they omitted none of their simple and strictly limited
adjectives in accentuating the epithet.

  The talk passed to a discussion of the quality of beer sold at two of the saloons down on the waterfront, and so on, through the very brief catalogue of their remembered and deferred pleasures, till it finally fizzled out into sleepy silence, broken at last by Jeb putting his head through the port doorway and calling them out to man the braces. Whereat they rose and slouched out, grumbling dully.

  And so the Pareek proceeded on her seemingly interminable voyage; the calm being succeeded and interleaved by a succession of heavy head gales that delayed them considerably. In the daytime, Jesson was merely a smart, vigourous wild-haired seaman; but at night, mounting his eternal lookout on the fo’cas’le head, he became once more the elemental man and poet, pacing and watching and dreaming; and anon giving out his spiritual emotion in scarcely audible wild melodies on his fiddle, or in a sort of sonorous chaunting spoken in undertones, and more and more boldly listened to by Jeb who, day by day, was being admitted to a closer, though unobtrusive, intimacy with the big seaman.

  One night when Jeb brought him the usual pannakin of tea, Jesson spoke to him.

  “Did you listen, Jeb, to the wind as I told you?”

  “Yes, Sir,” replied the boy. He always gave him “Sir;” and indeed, the title had more than once slipped out from the lips of some of the A.B.s; as if, despite themselves, something about him won the significant term from them.

  “It’s a wonderful night tonight, Jeb,” said the big seaman, holding the hot pannakin between his two hands on the capstain-top, and staring away into the greyness to leeward.

  “Yes, Sir,” replied Jeb, staring out in the same direction with a kind of faithful sympathy.