The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea

by William Hope Hodgson

For maybe a full two minutes, the two stood there in silence; the man clasping and unclasping his hands around the hot pannakin, and the boy just quiet under the spell of sympathy and a vague, dumb understanding. Presently the big man spoke again:

  “Have ye ever thought, Jeb, what a mysterious place the sea is?” he asked.

  “No, Sir,” replied Jeb, and left it at that.

  “Well,” said the big man, “I want ye to think about it, lad. I want you to grow up to realise that your life is to be lived in the most wonderful and mysterious place in the world. It will be full of compensations in such lots of ways for the sordidness of the sea-life, as it is to the sailorman.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said Jeb again, only partly understanding. As a matter of fact, as compared with his previous gutter-life, it had never struck him as being sordid; and as for the mystery and wonderfulness of the sea, why, he had possibly been ever so vaguely conscious of them right down somewhere in the deep of his undeveloped mind and personality; but consciously, his thoughts had run chiefly to keeping dry; to pleasing the men, his masters; to becoming an A.B.—a dream of splendour to him—and for the rest, to having a good time ashore in ’Frisco up at the saloons, drinking with the men, like a man! Poor sailor laddie! And now he had met a real man who was quietly and deliberately shifting his point of view.

  “Never make a pattern of the men you sail with, Jeb,” said the big man. “Live your own life, and let the sea be your companion. I’ll make a man of ye, lad. It’s a place where you could meet God Himself walking at night, boy. Never pattern yourself on sailorman, Jeb. Poor devils!”

  “No, Sir,” repeated Jeb earnestly. “They ain’t sailormen, them lot!” He jerked his thumb downward to indicate the rest of the A.B.s in the fo’cas’le beneath them. “But I’ll try to be like you, Sir; only I couldn’t be, so how I tried,” he ended wistfully.

  “Don’t try to be like me, Jeb,” said Jesson in a low voice. He paused a moment, then lifting the pannakin, he sipped a little of the hot tea and spoke again.

  “Take the sea, lad, to be your companion. You’ll never lack. A sailor lives very near to God if he would only open his eyes. Aye! Aye! If only they would realise it. And all the time they’re lookin’ for the shore and the devil of degeneration. My God! My God!”

  He put the pannakin down and took a stride or two away as if in strange agitation; then he came back, drank a gulp of tea and turned to the lad.

  “Get along down, Jeb, and stand by. I want to be alone. And remember, lad, what I have told ye. You’re living in the most wonderful place in the world. Lad, lad, look out on the waters and ye may see God Himself walking in the greyness. Get close to the glory that is round ye, lad; get close to the glory…. Run along now, run along.”

  “Ay, ay, Sir,” replied Jeb obediently, and he went down noiselessly off the fo’cas’le head, confused, yet elated because his hero had condescended to talk with him, and also vaguely sanctified in some strange fashion as if, somehow—as he would have put it—he “was jest coined out o’ church.”

  And because of this feeling, he spent quite a while staring away into the greyness to leeward, not knowing what he wanted or expected to see. Presently the wail of the violin stole to him through the darkness, and quietly mounting the lee steps to the head till his ear was on a level with the deck of the head he stayed listening until the big man ceased his playing, and began to walk round and round the head in his curious fashion, muttering to himself in a low voice.

  Jeb listened, attracted as he always was by these moods of the big sailorman. And on this night, in particular, Jesson walked round and round for a long time just muttering to himself; once or twice stopping at the lee rail for some silent moments during which he appeared to be staring eagerly into the grey gloom of the night. At such times Jeb stared also to leeward with a feeling that he might see something.

  Then Jesson would resume his walk round and round the head with long, swift, springy noiseless strides, muttering, muttering as he went. And suddenly he broke out into a kind of hushed ecstatic chaunt, yet so subdued that Jeb missed portions here and there, strive as he might to hear all.

  Then the man’s voice trailed off into silence. The sudden hush was broken by a muttered remark from the starboard side of the main-deck.

  “ ’e’s proper barmy!”

  Jeb glanced quickly to windward and saw dimly against the greyness of the weather night the forms of two of the men crouching upon the starboard steps leading up to the rail.

  “A b—y Jonah!” said another voice.

  Some of the men had been listening to Jesson, and certainly without appreciation. Down stole Jeb from the port ladder, and took up his accustomed seat on the fore hatch. He had a kind of savage anger because the men were secretly jeering his sailor-demigod; but he was far too much afraid of them to risk making himself evident, and so he crouched there, listening and wondering. And even as he waited to hear what more they had to say there came the Mate’s voice, sharp and sudden along the decks:

  “Stand by the t’gallant ha’lyards! Smart now!”

  A heavy squall was coming down upon them, and Jeb, having called out the men in the fo’cas’le, raced away aft with the rest to stand by the gear in case they had to lower away. He stood staring to windward as he waited, seeing dimly the heavy black arch of the squall against the lighter grey murk of the night sky; and then, even as he stared, he heard in the utter quietness the curious whine-whine of the distant rain upon the sea, breaking out into a queer hiss as it drove nearer at tremendous speed. Behind the swiftly coming hiss of the rain-front there sounded immediately a low, dull sound that grew into an uncomfortable nearing roar; and then, just as the first sheet of that tremendous rain smote down upon them, there was the Mate’s voice again:

  “Sheets and ha’lyards! Lower away! Clewlines and buntlines! Lower away! Lower away! Lower awa—”

  His voice was lost in a volume of sound as the weight of the wind behind the rain took them; and the vessel lay over to the squall, over, over, over, whilst the whole world seemed lost in the down-thundering rain and the mad roar of the storm.

  Jeb caught the Mate’s voice, faintly, and knew that he was singing out to lower away the top-sails. He fumbled his way aft, groped and found the pin; then cast off the turns and tried to lower; but the heavy yard would not come down for the pressure of the wind was so huge that the parral had jammed against the top-mast, and the friction of this, combined with the horrible list of the ship, prevented the yard coming down.

  A man came dashing through the reek; hurled the boy to one side, and threw off the final turns of the hal’yards, roaring out in a voice of frightened anger:

  “It’s that b—y Jonah we’ve got on board!”

  There came the vague shouting in the Mate’s powerful voice, of “Downhauls! Downhauls!” coming thin and lost through the infernal darkness, and the dazing yell of the squall and the boil of the rain. The vessel went over to a more dreadful angle so that it seemed she must capsize. There was an indistinct crashing sound up in the night, and then another seemingly further aft, and fainter. Immediately after, the cant of the decks eased, and slowly the vessel righted.

  “Carried away!… Yes, Sir… The main-top-mast… Carried away! Look out there!… Mizzen!… Look out there!”

  A maze of shouting fore and aft, for the squall was easing now and it was possible to hear the shouts that before had been scarcely audible, even at hand. The other watch was out on deck and Captain Gallington was singing out something from the break of the poop…. “Stand from under!” There was a fierce loud crash almost in the same moment, and a man screaming, with the horrible screaming of a man mortally hurt. Everywhere in the darkness there was lumber, smashed timber, swinging blocks, wet canvas, and from somewhere amid the wreckage on the dark decks the infernal screaming of the man, growing fainter and fainter, but never less horrible.

  The squall passed away to leeward, and a few stars broke through the greyness. On the deck all hands wer
e turned-to with ships’ lamps investigating the damage. They found that the main-top-mast had carried away just below the cross-trees, also the mizzen t’gallant. On the main-deck, under the broken arm of the main t’gallant yard one of the men, named Pemell, was found crushed and dead. One other man was badly hurt, and three had somewhat painful injuries, though superficial in character. Most of the rest had not escaped bad bruises and cuts from the falling gear.

  The vessel herself had suffered considerably, for much of the heavy timber had fallen inboard, and the decks were stove in two places and badly shaken in others. Also the steel bulwarks were cut down almost to the scuppers where the falling mast had struck.

  Through all that night and the next day into the dog-watches, both watches were kept at it with only brief spell-ons for food and a smoke. By the end of the second dog-watch Chips had managed to repair and re-caulk the decks, whilst the wreckage had all been cleared away, and the masts secured with preventer stays pending Chips getting ready the spare main top-mast and mizzen t’gallant-mast.

  All that day while they worked, there had lain in the Bo’sun’s locker, covered with some old sail-cloth, the man who had been killed by the falling spars; and when finally the men had cleared up for the night, Captain Gallington held a brief but grimly piteous service to the dead which ended in a splash overside, and a lot of superstitious sailormen going foward in a very depressed and rather dangerous mood.

  Here, over their biscuits and tea, one of them ventured openly to accuse Jesson of being a Jonah and the cause of all that had happened that night before, also of the calms and the head gales that had made the voyage already so interminable.

  Jesson heard the man out without saying a word. He merely went on eating his tea as though the man had not spoken; but when the stupid sea yokel, mistaking Jesson’s silence for something different, ventured on further indiscretions, Jesson walked across to him, pulled him off his sea-chest, and promptly knocked him down on to the deck of the fo’cas’le.

  Immediately there was a growl from several of the others, and three of them started up to a simultaneous attack. But Jesson did not wait for them. He jumped towards the first man and landed heavily and, as the man staggered, he caught him by the shoulders and ran him backwards into the other two, bringing the three of them down with a crash. Then as they rose, he used his fists liberally, causing two of them to run out on deck in their efforts to escape him. After which, Jesson went back to his unfinished tea.

  Presently, the night being fine, he took his fiddle and went on the fo’cas’le head, where as usual he relieved the lookout man who hurried below for a smoke.

  Meanwhile, there was a low mutter of talk going on in the fo’cas’le—ignorant and insanely dangerous—dangerous because of the very ignorance that bred it and made it brutal. And listening silent and fierce to it all sat Jeb, registering unconscious and heroic determination as the vague wail of the violin on the dark fo’cas’le head drifted down to him, making a strange kin-like music with the slight night airs that puffed moodily across the grey seas.

  “ ’Ark to ’im!” said one of the men. “ ’Ark to ’im! Ain’t it enough to bloomin’ well bring a ’urricane! My Gord!”

  “I was once with a Jonah,” said the Cockney. “ ’e near sunk us. We ’eld a meetin’, both watches, an’ ’e got washed overboard one night with a ’eavy sea, ’e did! That’s ’ow they logged it, though the Mate knowed ’ow it was reely; but ’e never blamed us, or let on ’e knowed. We couldn’t do nothin’ else. And we’d a fair wind with us all the way out, after.”

  With heads close together, amid the clouds of thick tobacco smoke, the low talk continued till one of the men remembered Jeb was near, and the lad was ordered out on deck; after which the doors were closed, and ignorance with its consequent and appalling brutality made heavy and morbid the atmosphere as the poor undeveloped creatures talked among themselves without any knowledge of their own insanity.

  Up on the fo’cas’le head the violin had hushed finally into silence, and Jesson was walking round and round in that curious noiseless fashion, muttering to himself and at times breaking out into one of his low-voiced chaunts. On the lee ladder crouched Jeb listening, full of his need to explain to the big man something of the vague fear that had taken him after hearing the men talk.

  Then suddenly, his attention was distracted from the man’s strange ecstacy by a murmur from the direction of the weather ladder.

  “ ’ark to ’im. My Gord, if it ain’t enough to sink us. Just ’ark to that blimy Jonah… ’ark to ’im!”

  Whether Jesson heard or felt the nearness of the men who had come sullenly out on deck, it is impossible to say; but his low-voiced, half-chaunting utterance ceased, and he seemed to Jeb, out there in the darkness, to be suddenly alert.

  One by one the men of both watches came silently out on deck, and Jeb had nearly screwed up his courage to the point of calling out a vague warning to the unconscious Jesson when there came the sound of footsteps along the main-deck, and the flash of the Mate’s lantern shone on the lanyards of the preventer gear. He was making a final uneasy round of the temporary jury-stays with which the masts had been made secure; and as the men realised this, they slipped quietly away, one by one, back into the fo’cas’le.

  The Mate came forrard and went up on to the fo’cas’le head, felt the tension of the fore-stay and went out on to the jibboom, testing each stay in turn to make sure that nothing had “given” or “surged” when the main upper-spars went. He returned and, with a friendly word to Jesson, came down the lee ladder and told Jeb he might turn in “all standing,” and get a sleep.

  But Jeb did not mean to turn in until he had spoken to Jesson. He looked about him, and then stole quietly up the lee ladder, and so across to where the big sailor was standing, leaning against the fore side of the capstan.

  “Mister Jesson, Sir!” he said, hesitating somewhat awkwardly abaft the capstan.

  But the big man had not heard him, and the lad stole round to his elbow and spoke again.

  “That you, Jeb?” said the A.B., looking down at him through the darkness.

  “Yes, Sir,” replied Jeb. And then after hesitating a few moments, all his fear came out in a torrent of uncouth words….

  “An’ they’re goin’ to dump you as soon as she’s takin’ any heavy water, Sir,” he ended. “An’ they’ll tell the Mate as you was washed overboard.”

  “The grey rats destroy the white rat!” muttered the big sailorman as if to himself… “Kind to kind, and death to the un-kin—the stranger that is not understanded!” Then almost in a whisper: “There would be peace of course…. Out here forever among the mysteries…. I’ve wanted it to come out here…. But the white rat must do justice to itself! By— Yes!”

  And he stood up suddenly, swinging his arms as if in a strange exhilaration of expectancy. Abruptly, he turned to the deck-boy.

  “Thank ye, Jeb,” he said. “I’ll be on my guard. Go and get some sleep now.”

  He turned about to the capstan head and picked up his fiddle. And as Jeb slipped away silently, barefooted, down the lee ladder there came to him the low wailing of the violin, infinitely mournful, yet with the faint sob of a strange triumph coming with a growing frequence, changing slowly into a curious grim undertone of subtle notes that spoke as plainly as Jesson’s voice.

  A fortnight went by and nothing happened, so that the lad was beginning to settle down again to a feeling of comfort that nothing horrible would happen while he was asleep. By the end of the fortnight, they had hove both the new main top-mast and new mizzen t’gallant mast into place, and had got up the main royal and t’gallant mast, and the rigging on both main and mizzen set up. Then, in slinging the yards there were two bad accidents. The first occurred just as they got the upper top-sail yard into place. One of the men named Bellard, fell in the act of shackling on the tie, and died at once. That night in the fo’cas’le there was an absolute silence during tea. Not a man spoke to Jesson. He was lite
rally, in their dull minds, a condemned person; and his death merely a matter of the speediest arrangement possible.

  Jesson was surely aware of their state of mind; but he showed no outward signs of his awareness; and as soon as tea was over, he took his violin and went away up on to the fo’cas’le head, while down in the fo’cas’le the men sent Jeb out on deck, and talked hideous things together.

  Three days later when all the yards and gear were finally in place again, Dicky—the deck-boy in the other watch—was lighting up the gear of the main-royal when he slipped in some stupid fashion, and came down; but, luckily for him, brought up on the cross-trees with nothing worse than a broken forearm which Captain Gallington and the Mate tortured into position again, in the usual barbarous way that occurs at sea in those ships that do not carry a doctor.

  On deck, every man was glancing covertly at Jesson, accusing him secretly and remorselessly with the one deadly thought—“Jonah!”

  And, as if the very elements were determined to give some foolish colour to the men’s gloomy ignorance, the royal had not been set an hour before an innocent-looking squall developed unexpected viciousness, blowing the royal and the three t’gallants out of the bolt-ropes. The yards were lowered, and all made secure.

  This was followed, in the afternoon watch, by a general shortening of sail, for the glass was falling in an uncomfortably hasty fashion. And surely enough, just at nightfall, they got the wind out of the north in a squall of actual hurricane pressure which lasted an hour before it finally veered a little and settled down into a gale of grim intention.

  When Jeb was called that night for the middle watch, he found the ship thundering along under foresail and main lower top-sail, driving heavily before the gale, Captain Gallington having decided to run her, and take full advantage of the fair wind. He struggled aft to a perfunctory roll-call…. the Mate shouting the names into the windy darkness, and only occasionally able to hear any of the men’s answering calls. Then the wheel and the lookout were relieved, and the watch below struggled forrard through the night and the heavy water upon the decks on their way to the fo’cas’le.