Chapter XI: The Dead Helmsman

I proved right in the estimate I had formed from the fore-top of the size of the wreck. Her burthen was within four hundred tons. We gradually drove down to her, and when we were within musket-shot Vanderdecken ordered the topsail to be laid aback. The breeze had freshened, the little surges ran in a pouring of silver-gushing heads, the broad-backed swell rose in brimming violet to our channels, and our ship rolled upon it helpless as an egg-shell. The wallowing of the wreck, too, was like the plashing and struggling of some sentient thing heavily labouring, with such fins or limbs as God had given it, to keep itself afloat.

That there was no lack of water in her was certain; yet, having the appearance of a ship that had been for some days abandoned, at which time it might be supposed that her people would imagine her to be in a sinking condition, it was clear that in a strange accidental way the leak had been healed, possibly by some substance entering and choking it. All three masts were gone within a foot or two of the deck. Her hull was a dark brown, that looked black in the distance against the blue, with the mirror-like flashing from the wet upon it; she had a handsome stern, the quarter-galleries supported by gilt figures, wherefrom ran a broad band of gilt along her sides to the bows. Under her counter there stole out in large, white characters, with every heave of her stern, the words "Prince of Wales," and 'twas startling to see the glare of the letters coming out in a ghastly, staring sort of way from the bald brow of the swell, as it sloped from the gilded stern. Her name proved her English. You could see the masts had been cut away, by the hacked ends of the shrouds snaking out into the hollows and swellings over the side. Her decks were heavily encumbered with what sailors call "raffle"--that is, the muddle of ropes, torn canvas, staves of boats and casks, fragments of deck fittings and so forth, with which the ocean illustrates her violence, and which she will sometimes for weeks, ay, and for months, continue to rock and nurse, and hold intact for very affection of the picture as a symbol of her wrath when vexed by the gale, and of her triumphs over those who daringly penetrate her fortresses to fight her. The confusion to the eye was so great, and rendered so lively and bewildering by the hulk's rolling that, scan her as you would, it was impossible to master details with any sort of rapidity.

Suddenly Imogene, grasping my wrist in her excitement, exclaimed, "See! there is a man there--he seems to steady himself by holding the wheel--look now, Geoffrey, as she rolls her decks at us!"

I instantly saw him. The wheel was in front of the break of the poop, where the cuddy or round-house windows were; and erect at it stood a man, on the starboard side, one hand down clutching a spoke at his waist, and his left arm straight out to a spoke to larboard, which he gripped. Methought he wrestled with the helm, for he swerved as a steersman will who struggles to keep a ship's head steady in a seaway.

"Is he mad?" cried I. "Ay, it must be so! Famine, thirst, mental anguish, may have driven him distracted. Yet, even then, why does not he look towards us? Why, were he actually raving, surely his sight would be courted by our presence."

"Pray God he be not mad," whispered Imogene; "he is certain to be a sailor and an Englishman; and if he be mad, and brought here, how will these men deal with him?"

"Yes; and I say, too, pray God he be not mad!" I cried; "for back me with a hearty English sailor and I believe--yes, I believe I could so match these fellows as to carry the ship, without their having the power to resist me, to any port I chose to steer for to the eastward;" for with her cry of, "He is sure to be a sailor and an Englishman," there swept into my brain the fancy of securing the crew under hatches, and imprisoning Vanderdecken and his mates in their cabins--the least idle, in sober truth, of all the schemes that had presented themselves to me.

"Hush!" she exclaimed, breathlessly, and as she closed her lips to the whisper, Vanderdecken came to us. But not to speak. He stood for some minutes looking at the wreck, with the posture and air of one deeply considering. The seamen forward gazed with a heavy steadfastness, too, some under the sharp of their hands, some with folded arms. I heard no speech among them. Yet though their stillness was that of a swoon, their eyes shone with an eager light, and expectation shaped their pallid, death-like faces into a high and straining look.

There were no signs of life aboard the wreck, saving the figure of the man that swayed at the wheel. I was amazed that he should never glance towards us. Indeed, I am not sure that the whole embodied ghastliness of our Death Ship matched in terror what you found in the sight of that lone creature grasping the wheel, first bringing it a little to right, then heaving it over a little to left, fixedly staring ahead, as though such another Curse as had fallen upon this Dutch ship had come like a blast of lightning upon him, compelling him to go on standing at yonder helm, and vainly striving to steer the wreck--as terribly corpse-like as any man among us, and as shockingly vital too!

It struck my English love of briskness as strange that Vanderdecken should not promptly order the boat over, or give orders that should have reference to the abandoned hull; yet I could not help thinking that his Holland blood spoke in this pause, and that there intermingled with the trance-like condition that was habitual in him, the phlegmatic instincts of his nation--that gradual walking to a decision, which in Scotland is termed "takin' a thocht."

After a while he said to me: "Mynheer, the wreck hath an English name; she will be of your country therefore. May I beg of you to take my trumpet and hail that person standing at the wheel?"

"I shall not need your trumpet, sir," said I, at once climbing upon the rail and thinking to myself that 'twas odd if there was not wanted a trumpet with a voice as thunderous as the crack o' doom to bring that silent, forward-staring man's face round to his shoulder.

"Wreck ahoy!" I bawled, with my hand to my cheek, and the wind took the echo of my voice clear as a bell to the hulk.

There was not a stir in the helmsman beyond that dreary monotonous waving of his figure in his struggle to steady the wheel. I watched the foamless leaning of the wreck into the hollow, bringing her decks aslant to us, and the trailing and corkscrewing of the black gear that was washing over the side, and the sparkling of the broken glass of a skylight contrasting with the dead black of an half-dozen of carronades, and the squattering of the dead-eyes of her channels upon the blue volume of sea like the ebony heads of a row of negroes drowning; and then, wash! over she rolled to larboard, bringing a streak of greenish copper sheathing out of the white water which the fierce drainings from her side churned up, with a mighty flashing of sunlight off her streaming side, and a sharp lifting of the dark shrouds and stays and running ropes out of the seething welter, making her appear as though scores of sea-snakes had their fangs in her timbers, and that 'twas the very agony of their teeth, and the poison, which caused her to roll from them.

I shouted again, and yet again; then dismounted.

"He is deaf!" said Vanderdecken.

"He is dead!" said I, for this was forced upon me, spite of the erect and life-like posture of the figure, and what resembled the straining of his arms to steady the wheel.