The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (42 page)

And this I have set down under the seal of my faith in God, knowing that I have not wittingly writ aught but that which my soul knoweth to be of verity.

Unto God I give thanks for His Graciousness to my brother and to me; in that He stayed my spirit in that moment to fight for the soul of my brother. Unto God I give praise, out of an humble and contrite heart.

Set out this day of grace, in the year of our Lord 1733, being the thirteenth day of February.

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Captain Dang

(An account of certain peculiar

and somewhat memorable adventures.)

No. 1

“The Ship in the Lagoon”

S
t. Marzaire was the name upon the bows of the splendid, great steel, four-masted barque lying alongside in the East India dock.

I stared at her longingly, and wandered slowly aft along the quayside, as far as her gangway, noting the perfectness of her equipment of deck furniture and the number of “patents” in evidence.

“Guess they’ll run her short-handed, with all that lot of fake-ments!” I thought, looking at the topsail-haulyard winches.

Then I saw something that made me start, with a great waft of hopeless longing; for at the inner end of the gangway was a notice:

“WANTED—A SECOND MATE”

I had just passed for Second Mate, and I was only twenty-one. My virgin “Ticket” (i.e., Certificate) was even then in my inner breast pocket, and I had already boarded over twenty vessels in my truly hopeless search. For who wanted a young, untried Second Mate when old and experienced men could be had for the asking at the same figure? You perceive my position?

This clipper of steel and shining paint-work wanted a Second Mate, and would surely get the pick of “sailing-ship-men” at the shipping office. Mind you, if I had been a fo’cas’le shellback, I should have steered clear of this vessel; for she was too clean, too spick and span. She shouted suji-muji fore and aft, with a constant minor key of swabbing paint-work and brass-cleaning. But as Second Mate, I viewed things from an extraordinarily different standpoint. It would be my pride to see that she was kept even more spick and span than she looked at that shining moment. Thus human nature!

Not, as I have endeavoured to impress upon you, that there was ever much expectation that I, young and callow and but new “Ticketed,” should ever pace that shimmering poop. . . . Yet I went aboard to offer myself. I don’t know whether it was sheer desperation at the foolish hopelessness of my desire, or something that I saw in the face of a short, stern, powerfully-built man, immaculately dressed in frock-coat and top-hat, who was pacing the far side of the poop in company with one whom I took to be the First Mate.

I crossed the gangway, almost at a run; down onto the main deck, and away up what I might term the “lee” ladder to the poop; the presence of the Captain and Mate giving to the one upon their side the temporary honour of being the “weather” steps—sacred to authority.

Now, it is a curious thing that I knew the short, broad, stern-faced man, in the immaculate morning suit, to be the Captain; for never a note of the sailor was there in him, from knight-heads to half-round, as one might say nautically; though not, perhaps, with perfect modesty. In short, so far removed was he from the “odour of salt” that, but for his stern face, I should have named him as a frequenter of Bond Street and other haunts, in Piccadilly and elsewhere, of the Smart and Fashionable.

As I came near to him, he turned and faced me, and somehow I knew—suddenly—that he had been watching me all the time. I looked at him, and his face seemed none the less stern for being nearer; but he had an understanding look in his eyes that heartened me wonderfully.

“So,” he said, in a curious, terse way, “you want to be my Second Officer, do you?”

“I never said so, Sir; but I do, for all that, with all my heart.”

There came the faintest easing of the sternness out of what I supposed then to be his habitual expression, and I thought the shadow of a smile touched the corners of his mouth; but his eyes looked at me, emotionless, though full of a peculiar sense of understanding me far more thoroughly that I did myself.

“Your papers,” he said suddenly, holding out an extraordinarily muscular, but most beautifully kept hand, quite white and free from sunburn, and like no sailor’s hand I have ever seen before or since.

I pulled out my little japanned case, containing my discharges, characters, and my precious Ticket. I was about to open it; but he made a quick gesture, signifying that he wanted it in his own fist. He took it, opened it, and emptied all the papers into his other hand; then, putting the case in his pocket, went quietly and methodically through all my discharges, folding each one up as he finished with it; and so until he came to my brand-new Certificate. This he opened slowly and with a quite curious carefulness; read it through, apparently word for word; then refolded it, and began to replace it and my discharges back in my little case, which he drew from his pocket.

He handed me back the case, looking intently for a moment at my eyes, nose, mouth, jaw, chin. . . . I could feel his glance wander from feature to feature. It shifted down to my chest, my hands, my thighs, knees, feet.

“You’re something of an athlete as well as a sailor-man, Mister Morgan,” he said. “What can you lift with your right?”

“Three fifty-sixes, when I’m feeling fit, Sir,” I answered, surprised and a little bewildered.

He nodded.

“Active too, I fancy,” he said, as if to himself. “Done much boat work?”

“Yes, Sir,” I answered. “I was senior ’prentice the two last trips, and since then I’ve been a trip to ’Frisco as acting Third. Had a good deal of boat-work all three trips.”

He nodded again and turned to the First Mate—a big, gaunt-looking man. “I shall be down again tonight, Mister,” he said. “Tell the steward not to turn in till I come.” He turned to me.

“Come up to the shipping office, Mr. Morgan.”

I saw the First Mate frown angrily. I guessed that he did not relish having a mere lad of twenty-one as a brother officer, who would literally have to be taught his job. I did not blame him; but I thought to myself that he might find I had less to learn than he feared. Anyway, I did not dislike the look of him and felt we would be likely to grow friendly enough in a day or two.

All this, in a flash through my brain, as I turned and followed my future Captain, my heart thumping a merry tune with the joy of this unexpected success, and a fierce determination to show myself fully capable of filling the post I was so tersely and unexpectedly offered.

The business at the shipping office was soon completed, and Captain Dang (as I learned was my new master’s name) told me to get my gear aboard that night, as we sailed in the morning.

When I got down aboard, Mr. Darley, the First Mate, was still pacing the poop. He watched me moodily as I was helping the cabby to get my chest aboard; then, seeming to have made up his mind to make the best of things, he came across and shook hands with me, and bellowed an order to a couple of the hands to come and get my stuff aboard and down to my cabin.

I gave the men a couple of bob, and then joined the Mate on the poop where he gave me a half-whimsical, half-rueful look up and down.

“I know how it seems to you, Mister Darley,” I said, laughing. “You feel I’m a kid, and you expect you’ll have two men’s work to do. I don’t blame you. Only, you know, somehow I think you’ll not find me as bad as you think. You see, I’ve done one ’Frisco trip as acting Third; and all the way home the Second was laid up, and I had to take his watch.”

“Oh!” said the gaunt Mate, evidently greatly relieved. “I guess you’re all right, Mister. We’ll do fine; an’ th’ Old Man’s a good sort, right down to th’ keelson, an’ no mistake. Shake!”

And therewith we shook and became very sound friends indeed.

The next morning, a little after six o’clock, the tug took us in charge, and we began our trip down the river. There’s one thing I do like about sailing from London; the river trip gives one time to get settled a bit before getting out into broken water. But if you sail from Liverpool or any of those sea-board ports, you’re right out in the smother before you know where you are, and everything adrift, and a regular bunch o’ buffers if there’s any sea on.

The Mate took her out; and I never so much as saw the Captain until evening, after the tug had cast us off, and we were bowling down Channel under all sail, with a splendid fair wind. The Mate had just sung out for all hands to muster aft to pick the watches, and I was leaning over the rail, across the break of the poop, looking up at the drawing canvas.

“There’s poetry in canvas, laddie, when the wind gets into it,” said a half-familiar voice in my ear.

I turned my head quickly and looked at the speaker. I saw a short, stout-seeming, enormously broad, unshaven man, dressed in heavy, blue pilot-cloth, with a peak-hat pushed well back on his head. I give you my word, I never recognized who it was for quite half a minute; but just stared stupidly, with a feeling that was only part uncanny oppressing me. Then, suddenly, I knew—

“Captain Dang!” I said with something that approached a gasp. “Captain Dang!”

“The same, laddie. The very same,” he replied, his face widening grotesquely in a smile of enormous good humour.

I never saw such a change in a man. His very voice was different. It had lost it’s note of culture and its crispness. It sounded deeper, more mellow, slacker—if I might so describe it. His shoulders were rounded; his face had broadened, and might never have looked stern. His walk had lost its swift precision and had given place to a careless roll that yet had a cat-like note of quickness in it.

I had stepped back a little from him, and was staring, like the bewildered lad that I was. Then I saw his eyes, and felt I recognized him fully once more—they were the same steadfast, grey, understanding eyes that had looked at me so inscrutably the previous day.

“It is Captain Dang!” I said aloud, involuntarily.

The burly, rounded shoulders heaved, and the face hid itself once more in a vast smile; the mouth opened and bellowed laughter.

“The very same, laddie; the very same,” it succeeded in explaining in a husky whisper, as the laughter died away. He fumbled for and produced an enormous red handkerchief, with which he mopped his somewhat red face. I saw then that his hands were encased in the very smartest, lavender kid gloves. Picture the man—broad, roughly clothed, unshaved, full of gorgeous laughter, wearing long gum-boots up to his thighs, a great chew of plug tobacco in his mouth; homely, almost to roughness of speech, and wearing smart kid gloves.

Do you wonder that I stared afresh.

And Captain Dang, for his part, just leaned back against the harness-cask and roared afresh. Then, suddenly, he bent towards me.

“You’ll be pickin’ your watch, laddie, in a moment; be sure to pick Turrill, that lanky, daft lookin’ devil for our side. I want him in our watch.”

“Very good, Sir,” I replied. “I know the man you mean. He’s a good sailorman, I fancy, too.”

“Maybe, laddie. Maybe,” said Captain Dang, and he turned and walked aft, chaunting in a deep voice, not a song of a Chauntey; but what I recognized later to be Mendelssohn’s “But the Lord is Mindful”—a thing which I found he was always bumming and humming, as he paced the poop.

I stepped back again to the break of the poop, and looked down to where the Mate was sitting on the hatch, waiting whilst the men mustered aft. He saw me and glanced up and grinned, as if something tickled his fancy; then took his pipe slowly from his mouth:

“Come along down, Mister,” he said, beckoning with the pipe to the assembling men. “We’ll get this job done, an’ then settle the watches for the night.” As I reached him, he stood up from the hatch, and leaned towards me:

“You’ve met th’ Old Man at sea now,” he said. “Almighty strange card, ain’t he? A downright good sort, Mister; but don’t you make any bloomin’ error; he’s a devil when he wants to be.”

“I believe you,” I said frankly. “He makes me feel as if he were my own father; and yet I’m hanged if I know whether he’s good or bad. I don’t know whether I like him or funk him. But I think I do like him.”

“I know,” agreed the Mate. “But you’ll find he’s all right; only he’s up to any damned devilment that hits him. I’ll give you one tip, though, Mister; never say a word again’ wimmin where he can hear you, or he’ll plug you sure as fate. No good your argying; you’re a strong lad, I can see; but he’s as strong again as you. You be told in time. Now then, Mister, we pick our watches an’ be damned to ’em!”

Which we did, I securing the lanky, leathery-looking, daft-faced seaman Turrill as my first choice, with the result that his somewhat expressionless eyes lit up for a moment with surprised pleasure.

For a few days at this, I saw very little of Captain Dang, that is to say, intimately. He kept to his cabin a good deal in the day time, and from a glance or two I had through the open doorway, I saw that he was busy with some chart-work. At night, however, he would come up on deck about four bells (ten o’clock), and pace noiselessly but swiftly up and down for maybe an hour, bumming away eternally at his favourite selection from Mendelssohn. Then, quite suddenly, as though an idea had come to him, he would make a bolt for the companionway, and down out of sight, without a word, and I would, like as not, never see him again that watch.