Ghost ship

“ Well, ghost-ship, devil-ship, or whatever she may be, my lads, we’re going to board her and rescue a young lady, a child in age, the daughter of my friend, Colonel Vereker here, and a lot of white men like yourselves, who are now at the mercy of a gang of black demons who have murdered the rest of the passengers and crew and taken possession of the vessel. ”

“ The clamour of our excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for never losing steerage way as long as there was air enough to float a feather, stole, without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost, towards her mutilated and wounded sister, come upon at the point of death in the sunlit haze of a calm day at sea. ”

“ It’s her, sure enuff. No mortal ship could sail on like that continually since Friday, right afore the wind, and still allers be a-crossin’ our hawser, though her canvas be tore to ribbings and never a man aboard, as we’ve seed. It ain’t nat’ral, nohow. Aye, she be the ‘ghost-ship’ and no mistake,—and God help us all!”
I noticed at the moment a telescope lying on the top of the saloon skylight, which Mr Fosset must have left behind him in his haste, when he came from the bridge to hail the skipper and then hurried back to his post ”

“ I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our hawser as then. ”

“ A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The masts fell just before daybreak, and for a moment there was a burst and turmoil of sparks that seemed to fill with flying fire the night patient and watchful, the vast night lying silent upon the sea. At daylight she was only a charred shell, floating still under a cloud of smoke and bearing a glowing mass of coal within. ”

“ On that ghost-filled barque, they met in the dark,
And halted, face to face.
‘Now whither away’ - called one of the ghosts,
‘This ship sets sail for Earth.
On the astral plane you must remain,
Where the newly dead have birth.’ ”

“ I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your Flying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded ‘ghost-ship’ together! ”

“ The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.
“Ghost-ship, man! What do you mean?”
“I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which have passed us afore, sir. She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and as a Christian man, Cap’en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!”
The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.
“I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo’sun,” he said. “I believe in a divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence ”

“ So with a ghost, says he; it’s a houtline with nothen inside it if you like, but it’s as real in its emptiness as the inside of a bottle with nothen in it.’
At any other time I should have hugely enjoyed an argument with this acrid old sailor on such a subject as ghosts. There is no company to my taste to equal that of a sour, prejudiced, ignorant salt of matured years, whose knowledge of life has been gained by looking at the world through a ship’s hawse pipe, and who is full to the throat with the sayings and the superstitions of the forecastle. Jacob Crimp was such a man. ”

“ There were eight miles of ships: barges, colliers, liners, clippers, cargo steamers, ghost after ghost took form ahead, and then went astern. More than once the fog thickened again, but the skipper never took way off her while he could make out a ship ahead of us. We drifted stern first on the flood, with half-turns of the propeller for steering purchase, till a boatman, whom we hailed, cried that we were off Gravesend. ”

“ That there be no mortal vessel that ever sailed the seas. Mark my words, Cap’en Applegarth, that there craft be either The Flying Dutchman, as I’ve often heard tell on, but never seen meself, or a ghost-ship ”

“ We Sight the Strange Craft again.
“That’s number one!” said old Masters, the boatswain, meeting me at the door of the saloon as I came out on deck, Weston having already told him the sad news. “Master Stokes’ll foller next, and then you or hi, Master Haldane, for we be all doomed men, I know, arter seein’ that there ghost-ship!” ”

“ This dreadful life!" she clasped her hands with a sudden passionate raising of her eyes, "these roaring seas, the constant screaming of the wind that bates its tones only to make a desolate moaning, the [10] company of ghost-like men, the fearful sense of being in a ship upon which has fallen the wrath of the majesty of God! Oh, indeed, indeed it must end!" and burying her face in her hands she wept most grievously, sobbing aloud.
"What will end, mynheer? And what is it that causes thee, Imogene, to weep?" exclaimed the deep, vibratory voice of Vanderdecken. ”

“ Yes, there, in the distance, sailing at an angle to our course, right before the wind, was a large full-rigged ship. Everything, though, was not right with her, as I noted the moment I made her out, with her white canvas all crimson from a last expiring gleam of the afterglow ”

“ While in a sailor’s boarding house in Antwerp, some of the crew of an American ship which had arrived from San Francisco with grain, declared that the ship was haunted. Every man had a story to tell of his encountering a ghost on that voyage. It was said that while the men were asleep this creature of another world would enter the forecastle and rub its cold hands over the faces of the men. It was rumored in the grog shops that the [74] apparition in the form of a man would walk aft on a stormy night just as the bell was struck at the close of a watch, and relieve the wheel. ”

“ Imagination cannot conceive the horror of such a sound in a night tempest at sea.
“Stop that ghost!” roared Mad Jack; “away, one of you, and wrench off the clapper!”
But no sooner was this ghost gagged than a still more appalling sound was heard, the rolling to and fro of the heavy shot, which, on the gun-deck, had broken loose from the gun-racks, and converted that part of the ship into an immense bowling-alley. Some hands were sent down to secure them; but it was as much as their lives were worth. Several were maimed ”

“ I was surprised at that until he explained that it was only a ghost-ship, and would do no hurt to the turnips. We argued that it had been blown up from the sea at Portsmouth, and then we talked of something else. There were two slates down at the parsonage and a big tree in Lumley's meadow. It was a rare storm.
I reckon the wind had blown our ghosts all over England. They were coming back for days afterward with foundered horses, and as footsore as possible, and they were so glad to get back to Fairfield that some of them walked up the street crying [190] like little children. ”

“ As for old Masters, his face became the picture of woe when I informed him I was leaving the ship and the company’s service.
“You mark my words, Master Haldane,” said he in his most sepulchral manner, “many a one afore you has throwed up the sea, and what good has it done ’em? No good! Them that goes to sea oughter stick to the sea, that’s what I says; and if they throws it up, though I hopes you won’t, they allus live to repent it. I be truly sorry you be goin’, and ah, Master Haldane, I sed as how summet ’ud come of our seein’ that there blessed ghost-ship!” ”

“ Many Americans there are to-day who would court being haunted by the captain and crew of Richard Middleton's Ghost Ship that landed in a turnip field and dispensed drink till they demoralized the denizens of village and graveyard alike. ”

“ Nearly every afternoon a ghost-wagon used to jolt down to the ship with a lading of rum, and though the older ghosts seemed inclined to give the Captain's hospitality the go-by, the youngsters were neither to hold nor to bind.
So one afternoon when I was taking my nap I heard a knock at the door, and there was parson looking very serious, like a man with a job before him that he didn't altogether relish. "I'm going down to talk to the Captain about all this drunkenness in the village, and I want you to come with me," he said straight out. ”

“ In answer to the skipper’s signal a sudden blast of steam rushed up the funnel abaft the wheel-house, and I could feel the ship tremble as the shaft began to revolve and the propeller blades splashed the water astern with the familiar “thump-thump, thump-thump.”
All hands joined in a hearty cheer, to which Masters and I in the top lent what aid our lungs could give.
“Steady amidship, there,” sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged ahead once more. “Steady, my man.” ”

“ Prichard as she sat before Mrs. Masham's fire at the Towers; and she forgave him the lawlessness of his impulse for its warmth, bred in the narrow limits of a ship on the seas for three long months!—how could he help it? Such a common story on shipboard, and ... such an uncommon ending! Ask the captains of passenger ships what they think, even now that ships steam twenty knots an hour. One's fellow-creatures are so human, you see. ”

“ Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way ”

“ A MISFIT GHOST.
Every boy with a knowledge of adventurous literature, otherwise “novels of action,” knows of the “phantom ship,” the spook of the high seas.
But it has not been known that ships themselves are haunted, and that in the service of the United States Coast Survey there is a vessel now in commission that is by her own officers supposed to be haunted.
Yet the Eagre, a 140-foot schooner of the coast survey, is looked upon in the service as a very undesirable vessel to be aboard of. About her there is an atmosphere of gloom that wardroom jest cannot dispel. ”

“ Now compare the two places; "the streets were more than a mere assemblage of houses;" . . . "his light moments . . . passed into the crucible to come forth unchanged. He lacked the magic wand." I think these two passages indicate the answer to the "why" that I am forced to resolve; show something of the secret of the strange charm which "The Ghost-Ship" possesses.
It delights because it is significant, because it is no mere assemblage of words and facts and observations and incidents, it delights because its matter has not passed through the crucible unchanged. ”

“ I can not only see the ship distinctly, but also right down on to her deck!”
“Nonsense, boy; you’d better go below!” said the first mate brusquely, while Spokeshave sniggered and whispered something to the lamp-trimmer and man at the wheel that made them both laugh out right. “There’s something wrong with you to-night, Haldane, for you seem quite off your chump, so you’d better go below and sleep it off. There’s no ship near us, I tell you! What you imagined to be a sailing vessel is that dark cloud there, coming up from the leeward, which is fast shutting out the horizon from view. ”

“ I can swear there is naught living in this ship, and am I to suppose, assuming she is haunted, that a ghost, which I have always read and heard of as an essence, has in its shadowy being such quality of muscle as would enable it to turn that heavy man over from his side on to his back? ”

“ But I want to say right here that most sailors believe in ghosts and can tell of good things that they've done as well as bad ones. There was a ghost seen by Captain Rogers, of the Royal Navy, in 1664. He commanded the ship Society that was on a voyage from England to Virginia; he was headed in for the Capes, and reckoned that he was about three hundred miles from them. A ghost came to him in the night and told him to turn out and look about. He turned out, looked around, found everything quiet, and all the watch alert, and so he turned in again. ”

“ It was, however, but a vain task for these mad myrmidons of Neptune to attempt, strive as recklessly as they might in their wrath, for the good ship spurned them with her forefoot and the star-crowned maiden bowed mockingly to them from her perch above the bobstay, laughing in her glee as she rode over them triumphantly and sailed along onward ”

“ I don't have any ghosts about the ship I command; they're no friends of mine, and I want 'em to stay away. Now, remember, men—twenty lashes to anybody who sees a ghost on the Washington."
With that the crew were dismissed, those who had the watch on deck went to their duty, and the rest below, or anywhere else they pleased.
You may be sure that there wasn't another ghost seen on the Washington during the rest of the voyage, or, if any man saw one, he kept the knowledge of the sight to himself. Twenty lashes of a rope's end is not an agreeable offset to a vision of something unearthly. ”

“ I know I am sometimes,” retorted old Masters, evidently aggrieved by the skipper speaking to him like this before the men. “But, sir, seein’ is believin’. There’s this ship an’ there’s that there craft a-sailin’ alongside in the teeth o’ the gale. Hass or no hass, I sees that, captain!”
“Hang it all, man, can’t you see that it is only the mirage or reflection of our own vessel, produced by the light of the meteor throwing her shadow on to the mass of cloud leeward? Look, there are our two old sticks and the funnels between, with the smoke rushing out of them! ”