The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (44 page)

“Now, yon Turrill man says he knows it was a devil; and he up with the whale-lance and hove it at the thing; an’ then round the back of the tree, with his sheath-knife out in his fist; but there was nothing there, only his big whale-lance stuck fast into a bush, an’ the side of the tree all blazed where the lance had skinned off the bark.

“Now that’s all queer telling, laddie. But I do believe yon man when he says he got the trembles, and just caught up the whale-lance out of the bush, and away anyhow through the trees, shoutin’ an’ yellin’ for his two mates. An’ then he outs into a bit of glade among the trees, and tumbles and falls bang over something that makes him squeal worse than ever; for ’twas the Mate’s body, all torn, like as never a wild beast tore a human body yet, laddie; though how yon man knows so much neither you nor me knows.

“An’ then there was shoutin’ from the other end of the bit glade, and in comes his two mates, and stopped and stiffened up, to see the Mate dead and all tore like that, laddie; as well I should think.”

Captain Dang paused a moment or two and drew hard at his pipe, staring away to wind’ard. “Wonderful purty night, laddie,” he said, apropos of nothing at all. “I do think the big, big sea’s God’s own bath-tub, these sorts o’ nights, laddie. Are ye too young to feel the mystery o’t—aye, it’s weel said, laddie—the mystery o’t—the mystery o’t. There’s ought might happen out in all that; any-thin’; anythin’! It’s juist an unknown world, laddie . . . a place where God goes playin’, maybe o’ nights, laddie, like some bit wonderfu’ lonesome Chiel o’ Wonder . . . aye, aye . . . an’ the devils an’ monsters of the sea crowdin’ out on to the lonesome islands, that neither you nor me nor any other man ever sees in all our wanderings. Aye, the mystery o’t. . . !”

And then suddenly, and in an entirely different tone and speech:

“Mr. Morgan, what does it mean! Is the man mad! Or did he see something of all this! Or is there Pearls or Piracy at the bottom of it—aye, Pearls and Piracy! Pearls and Piracy! Or is he just telling the perfect, simple truth, and the truth is too great for our unbelieving little souls to grasp!”

The whole thing was so evidently an unconscious outburst, requiring no attempt at answering, that I said nothing, but just waited, full of newly stirred thoughts and newly-born beliefs. . . . What if there were truth in all this half-told, extraordinary story! You get something of the feelings that crowded in on me, standing there in the quiet night by that strange man who, for once, was so unaccountably stirred out of himself. Do you—eh? Do you get it at all?

“An’ there’s more to it, laddie,” said Captain Dang, reverting suddenly to pilot-cloth talk and manners, as I might phrase it. “Yon Turrill an’ the two others got the Mate down to the beach someways; and good pluck to them that they did it, with the terror and the shakes that was on ’em. They buried him there in the sand, usin’ the oars for spades and the boat’s dipper; and afterwards made a bit cross along the top of it, laddie, with white stones and shells. And so away aboard again in a hurry, with some nuts and plantains that they had got.

“When they came alongside, yon Turrill swears he felt there was something wrong aboard. He jumps away up the ladder before ever the boat was made fast and sings out: ‘Jensen!,’ that being the name, laddie, of the man they’d left aboard, a Dutchman by the sound of it. Turrill got a sick feelin’ when there was no answer, an’ sung out to the others to hurry. They went away after to the poop-cabin, which was entered from the after end, laddie, with a narrow runway of deck on each side, as maybe you’ve seen. When they got aft, they found a litter of stuff on the deck outside of the companionway—a beef-bucket still headed up, sailcloth, an’ a small keg of spirits, laddie, an suchlike.

“They puts their heads down the companionway an’ sings out the man’s name again; but there was no answer and somehow, none of them wanted to be the first down. Yon Turrill says it was terrible quiet seeming down there. They sings out Jensen’s name again an’ got the echo of it back at them, so that yon man says they near run, an’ small blame to them, laddie, feelin’ as they would ha’ felt—eh?

“Then Turrill jumps down the three-step way and goes in through the cabin doorway with his sheath-knife out in his hand, ready. ‘Je—’ he shouts as he steps into the cabin and finishes short. For there was no Jensen there, only a terrible mess o’ blood on the floor, laddie.

“Yon Turrill says he just turned his head over his shoulder, quiet like, and bid the two others come down an’ look. I guess, laddie, if that’s so, he’d about come to the tail end of the rope. When his mates saw the cabin, they just did a run for the deck, an’ yon man had the devil’s job to stop ’em goin’ right off with the boat, all unprovisioned, laddie. He held ’em to sense, though, an’ made ’em help him search the ship which they did, as the saying goes, from truck to keelson; though there weren’t any trucks with her having lost her upper spars. Nor was there any sign of Jensen except what was in the cabin.

“Afterwards, Turrill made them put in the galley fire, using bulksheadin’ for fire-fodder, and he broaches the old beef bucket an’, when the worst of the stink had gone, he shoves all the beef in one of the coppers so as to have it cooked for the boat voyage that they was in for, laddie.

“Meanwhile, he goes down an’ gets the cabin clean an’ straight, an’ looks under all the bottom bunks: for it was gettin’ on towards evening, and he didn’t expect to get away til the morning. Then he sets the men stowing the canvas an’ oddments in the boat, an’ meanwhile, he cleans out the water bar’l in the galley, meaning to fill it for the trip.

“By the time this was done, the beef was cooked, an’ he gets it into the boat, copper an’ all, saving a piece that he keeps back for their supper. Then he sees the boat good and fast, and gets his mates down into the cabin, it being just on the dusk, an’ they fixes up the door good an’ solid, and lights up the boat’s lamp which Turrill had brought up out of the boat for that one night.”

Captain Dang stopped and looked up, for away up in the night the royals were slatting back against the masts.

“Keep her full, my lad, keep her full!” he sang out to Turrill at the wheel, and stepped over to the binnacle to see how she was heading. “Full an’ bye! Keep her full an’ bye!” he said.

“Aye, aye, Sir,” replied the man at the wheel, and Captain Dang rejoined me in our walk fore and aft, just as one bell went, and we heard the familiar bellow forrard, of: “Show a leg; show a leg there! Rise and shine, My Bullies! Rise and shine! Rise and see the broad daylight! Show a leg; show a leg there!” The other watch was being called.

“Who wouldn’t buy a farm!” muttered Captain Dang whimsically at my elbow, and therewith concluded his retelling of Turrill’s history:

“Yon Turrill’s two mates had taken the brandy-keg down into the cabin, an’ they started whackin’ at it as soon as they’d done their supper. Yon man says he tried to get ’em off it, for he felt there might anything happen that night. But they only turned nasty an’ told him to come and drink with them or leave it alone, which he did.

“Presently the two fools turned into their bunks, pretty fuddled, I’m thinking, laddie, an’ yon man sits down on a locker with his whale-lance across his knees. You see, it’d been shortened, an’ it’s a pretty handy kind of weapon, laddie, as I will know, an’ I may tell you why some day, my son.

“Turrill, you see, laddie, meant to sit up all the night to keep watch, for he knew there was some dreadful kind of monstrous thing knockin’ around. He says . . .”

Captain Dang broke off suddenly and stepped aft to the helmsman, returning to me after a moment’s talk.

“Yes, laddie,” he said, “I’ve thought yon Turrill said as much. He says there was never a living bird that flew over that lagoon, nor yet a fish in the waters underneath. And if that’s so, then I that knows what life there is round an’ above a coral reef, am just fair flummoxed, laddie. I am that.

“I am that,” he continued, after a moment’s pause. “Why, laddie, as you sure know, a reef s just a fair hot-bed of life, top an’ bottom an’ all ways. I tell you laddie, this yarn o’ yon man’s just hits me everyway. It’s just as queer as the divvil’s hind leg!

“An’ we’re not done yet. Yon Turrill turns the lamp well up an’ sits there, eyes forrard an’ eyes astern, every other moment, an’ ready to shove the whale-lance through his own shadow when it moved. He sat a mighty long time like that, listening to the others snorin’. An’ then, you know, laddie, like we’ve all done in our time, he wakes up . . . Which shows he must have gone over asleep! The lamp had burnt low, an’ there was the queerest kind of silence in the cabin, which he didn’t account for at first. The whale-lance had rolled down on to the deck of the cabin, an’ he stoops for it an’ gets it safe back into his hands. Then he steps over to the lamp and gives it a turn up so that he can get a good look round.

“Everythin’ looked right enough, laddie—at first. And then, sudden, he saw that something was at the windows over the men’s bunks. Two of those wonderful lovely faces was there, starin’ in at him an’ the men in the bunks. He stood there, solid; and then there was nothing, and he was fit to swear he had dreamed it. An’ then, in a moment, there come at the nearer window that same mighty, great Hag-face that he knew of. He ups with his great whale-lance, an’ heaves it at the thing; and the weapon smashes clean through the window, out into the sea. But there was nothin’ there. An’ there was he standin’ there with no weapon except his knife, though one of the men had the iron of a new whale harpoon, which is a good enough weapon, laddie, at a pinch.

“And so yon Turrill man stood lookin’ at the smashed window, an’ wonderin’ what the devil was goin’ to happen in a moment. An’ then he found himself harking to the silence of the cabin; and suddenly he knew why it was so damned quiet—the two men in the bunks had stopped breathin’. He knew then they’d stopped a good while since. He knew there was devilment about then, you bet, laddie. Just you try to figure out his feelins, my son, in that moment.

“He was stiffened a moment, an’ no wonder—by the Lord, laddie, if he’s tellin’ the truth it beats all Creation!—and then he takes one step to the table an’ catches hold of the lamp. He turns up the burnt wick till it’s all aflame, an’ goes over careful an’ cautious to the near bunk, holding his knife ready. For yon man says he didn’t know but it might be some monster he’d find there in the bunk in place of his mate. That’s a queer thing to say, laddie, ain’t it, but I had the very same feelin’ it might be somethin’ bad when he was tellin’ it to me.

“But there was nothin’ extaordinair.” Captain Dang smothered a half-chuckle that I feel sure was his overdoing the Scots. “In the bunk was only the stiffened corpse of the man, an’ a queer, awful set look in the open eyes of him, as yon Turrill tells. An’ then he away to the other bunk; and the other man set out stiff there also, as if, yon man, he’d looked at some almighty horrid kind o’ thing, laddie. And never a mark of vi’lence was there on ’em, laddie, so far as he could see, though he was that in fear that maybe he missed as much as he saw. I reck’n, laddie, yon Turrill man must have had a bad hour, waitin’ for the dawn to come along an’ let some healthy light into all that nasty quiet, eh, laddie?”

Just then eight bells went, and Captain Dang knocked out his pipe finally, and concluded what he had to tell:

“That’s about the lot, laddie,” he said. “Yon man cleared out of the cabin so soon as the daylight was come proper; an’ away down into the boat, never waiting’ for nothin’; cuts her adrift and pulls like mad to get away from the old ship.

“There was a nice bit of a mornin’ breeze, an’ presently he steps the mast, and up with the lug, an’ away he goes, laddie, out through one of the openings in the Reef, away into the everlastin’ blue av the sea. Aye, aye, an’ well I know the feelin’ of eternity that it gives to put a boat like that away an’ away out into the almighty mystery av the waters, laddie . . . the almighty, lonesome mystery of the waters . . . aye . . . aye . . .”

He had plainly lost himself in soliloquy so that I ventured to prompt him:

“Yes, Sir,” I said. “And Turrill . . . ?”

He took off his cap and polished his face with his big red handkerchief.

“Oh, aye,” he said. “Yon Turrill, he was picked up, laddie, a matter of some twenty-three days later by one of the Castle boats—the Birkley Castle. His water, yon man says, had been done five days, an’ he was in a bit of a fever that near finished him. That’s all, laddie. That’s all.”

He yawned and spoke suddenly in an entirely different fashion:

“Mr. Morgan,” he said, “that’s a very curious little bit of history or romance that I’ve just given to you. Either the man is mad or else there is something quite peculiar at the back of it all; quite peculiar, Mr. Morgan.

“Supposing,” he said slowly, apparently to himself, “supposing that there is something more than the obviously possible in it—supposing it is the one odd case where the existence of the Unknown Octaves of LIFE justify our reasoning that they exist by manifesting . . . ”

He broke off, seemingly carrying the theme forward in thought regions not easily translatable into words. Here was the other man in Captain Dang speaking—the man of culture, with a vengeance. I stood waiting for him to break out again into speech. Abruptly, I heard Turrill speaking to me. He had just been relieved at the wheel, and was giving me the course:

“Full an’ bye, Sir,” he said.

“Full and bye,” I repeated, glancing at him through the darkness, with more than a touch of interest, bred of his peculiar adventure. He passed on, and I heard his footsteps echoing away forard, crossing those of the “relieved” lookout, coming aft to report: