Chapter V: The Death Ship's Forecastle

Next morning was clear and sunny. I was up betimes, being always glad to get away from my cabin, in the which I needed all my long training at sea to qualify me to sleep, not only because of the rats and the noises in the hold, and those mystic fires in the timbers that never failed to send a shudder through me if I opened my eyes upon them in the darkness, but because of my bed, which was miserably hard and wretched in all ways, and in which I would lie down dressed, saving my boots and jacket, never knowing when I might not be obliged to spring on deck in a hurry, though I took care to refresh myself o' morn by going into the head, pulling off my shirt and sousing myself with a bucketfull of salt water--'twas an old canvas bucket, I remember--no man of the crew speaking to or noticing me.

This morning being very fine, the first bright day that had broken since I had been in the ship, I thought, since it was early, an hour to breakfast, Vanderdecken in his cabin and Arents alone on the poop-deck with the man who steered, that I would look a little closely into the vessel, and ascertain if possible where and how the men slept, where they dressed their food and the like. But first I snatched a glance around to see if any sail was in sight. No! 'Twas all dark-blue water meeting the clear sky in an unbroken girdle, that by holding its sapphire hue against the light azure of the heavens there, stood out with surprising sharpness. The swell left by the gale was not gone, but it came with a steady rhythmic flowing of folds from the north-west that seemed to soothe rather than to vex the ancient ship, and the heavings made the eastern sea-board a rich and dazzling spectacle, by catching the brilliant white sunshine on the polish of their rounded backs, and so carrying their burden of blinding radiance to the verge of the visible deep.

The ship was under all the canvas she had. That studding-sails have been for ages in use we know on the authority of Sir Walter Raleigh, in his writings on the improvements in ships since Henry the Eighth's days; yet I can answer that this Death Ship had no irons on her yards, nor could I anywhere see any spars that answered to the booms used for the spreading of those sails. However, even if she had been furnished with such canvas, this morning it would have been no use to her; for the breeze still hung, westerly and she was going close-hauled, steering something to the west of north and moving through the water at about three knots.

I spied the corpulent figure of Jans, the boatswain, forward of the fore-mast. He was standing with his arms folded, staring ahead. His posture somehow suggested a vacancy of mind, and you thought of him as looking into God knows what distance, with the unmeaningness you observe in the fixed gaze of a babe sucking.

I could not say whether the decks had been washed down; they seemed damp, as if newly swabbed. One whom I supposed to be the ship's carpenter was sawing wood near the house in which were the live stock. Two others, hard by him, sat upon a sail, stitching at it. There was a seaman in the fore-top, but what doing I could not see; little more than his head showed above the barricade. I walked forward to where the boatswain stood, and, on observing that he took no notice of me, I touched him lightly on the shoulder.

He turned his round face, ghastly as death yet as fleshy and plump as life, and gazed at me. I felt nervous--it was dreadful to accost these conformations, which were neither men nor devils--but I was resolved to go through with the business I had on hand, impelled by the thought that if I was suffered to come off with my life from this experience there would be that to relate to the world beyond anything which seamen have told of the ocean life.

I said to him, "Good morning, Herr Jans. Here, to be sure, is a fine sky with noble promise."

"True, sir," he answered, seeming to step out of the mystery of his stillness and vacancy without effort. "She looks fairly up: but so tedious a nor'-wester should be followed by a southerly gale!"

"Heaven grant it!" cried I, gathering courage from his civility. "You will be glad to see old Amsterdam again, no doubt!"

"Ay," said he, "I warrant you; and my wife, Amana, too, and my daughter, Tobina. Ha! ha!"

His laugh was like that of the parrot, mirthless; and not a wrinkle stirred upon his countenance to give reality to his shocking merriment.

To come at what I wanted--for I did not wish Vanderdecken to arrive and see me forward--I said "Yes, meetings are made sweeter by a little delay. Pardon me, Heer: I am an Englishman not well acquainted with the shipboard usages of the Dutch. In the ship of which I was second mate, we had what is called a topgallant forecastle in which the crew slept----"

He interrupted with a shake of the head. "I do not understand," said he.

This was not strange, for as I did not know the Dutch words, I called it topgallant forecastle in English.

"They slept under a deck resembling the poop," said I.

"Ha!" he exclaimed.

"Where do your crew sleep?"

"Down there," he responded, pointing to a hatch answering to the forescuttle of these times.

"Is it a comfortable cabin?" said I.

He made a face and spat behind his hand, which caused me to see that sailors in all times have been alike in the capacity of grumbling, and that even in this man, who by virtue of the age he had attained had long ceased to be human and was kept alive only by the Curse it was his lot to share with the skipper, the instincts of the seaman still lived, a few sparks among blackened embers.

"Judge for yourself if you will," said he. "My last ship was the Maagt van Eukhuysen, and though her forecastle raised a mutiny among us for its badness, I tell you, mynheer, 'twas as punch is to stale cold water compared to this."

He motioned me to descend, but I asked him to go first, for how was I to guess what would be my reception if the men saw me entering their abode unaccompanied? "Very good," said he, and catching hold of the coaming he dropped his great figure through the hatch, and I followed.

We descended by a ladder in perfect correspondence with the rest of the fittings of this ship--the hand-rails carved, and the steps a sort of grating--different, indeed, from the pieces of coarse, rough wood nailed to the bulkhead, which in these days form the road down through the forescuttle. The light of the heavens fell fair through the hatch, but seemed powerless to penetrate the gloom that lay around. I was blinded at first, and stood a moment under the hatch idly blinking and beholding nothing. Then stepping out of the sphere of the daylight, there stole upon my sight the details of the place one by one, helped by the wan, sputtering and smoking flame of a lamp shaped like a coffee-pot, the waste or mesh coming out of the spout fed by what the nose readily determined to be slush.

Jans stood beside me. "Can you see, mynheer?" said he.

"Ay, 'tis growing upon me by degrees," I replied.

"Master," exclaimed a hollow voice, proceeding from the darkest part of this forecastle, "if you could help me fill the bowl of a tobacco-pipe I should be grateful."

Very luckily I had the remains of what sailors term a prick of tobacco in my pocket, which Prins when he dried my jacket had very honestly suffered to remain there. The piece had been so hard pressed in the making, and rendered so water-proof by the rum in it, that my falling overboard had left it perfectly sweet and fit for smoking. By a stingy and cautious use of the knife there was enough of it to give all hands a smoke. I pulled it out and handed it to Jans to deliver to the man who had addressed me. Jans smelt it and said "Yes, it was tobacco, but how was it to be smoked?"

I pulled out my knife, and stepping into the light under the hatch, put the tobacco upon one of the ladder-steps and fell to slicing or rather shaving it, and when I had cut enough to fill a pipe bowl I rolled up the shreds in my hands, and taking a sooty clay pipe from Jans, charged it, and bade him light it at the lamp. He did so, speedily returning, smoking heartily, puffing out great clouds, and crying out, "Oh, but 'tis good! 'tis good!"

It is tiring work cutting up this kind of tobacco, and Jans now understanding how it was done, took the knife and the tobacco and shred about an inch of it, there being in all between three and four inches. Whilst this was doing I had leisure to gaze about me.

No sooner had Jans lighted his pipe, so that all could see he was smoking, than from several parts of that gloomy interior there slided a number of figures who quickly clustered around the ladder, over one of whose steps or treads the boatswain leaned, pipe in mouth, whilst he sliced and shaved. The daylight fell upon some of them, others were faintly to be seen in the dim illumination which the lustre, passing through the hatch, feebly spread. From rows of old hammocks, that died out in the gloom, these men had dropped, and mariners half-perished with hunger could not have exhibited more delirious eagerness for food than did these unhappy creatures for a pipeful of the tobacco Jans was at work upon. A dismaller and wilder, nay, a more affrighting picture I defy the imagination to body forth. It was not only that many of these unhappy people were half-naked--most of them still swinging in their hammocks, when I descended--it was their corpse-like appearance, as though a grave-yard had disgorged its dead, who had come together in a group, quickened and urged by some hunger, lust or need common to the whole, and expressing in many varieties of countenance the same desire. All about Jans they crowded, fifteen or twenty men; some thin, with their ribs showing, others with sturdy legs of the Dutch kind, some nearly bald, some so hairy that their locks and beards flowed down their backs and chests, some dark with black eyes, others round-faced and blue-eyed; but every man of them looking as if he was newly risen, Lazarus-like, from the tomb, as though he had burst the bondage of the coffin, and come into this forecastle dead yet living, his body formed of the earth of the grave, and his soul of the Curse that kept him alive.

I had particularly hoped to see some of them sleeping, wondering what appearance they presented in slumber; also whether such as they ever dreamed, and what sort of expressions their faces wore. But the place was too dark to have yielded this sight even had I been at liberty to peer into their hammocks. When my eyes grew used to the twilight of the slush-lamp and I could see plain, I found there was not much to whet curiosity. Here and there stood a box or sea-chest. Against the aged sides, hanging by nails or hooks, were coats, trowsers, oilskins, and the like, most of them differing in fashion, swaying with the heaving of the ship. Some odds and ends of shoes and boots, a canvas bucket or two, a tall basket, in which were stowed the dishes and mugs the men eat and drank with, completed, with the hammocks overhead, all the furniture that I could distinguish of this melancholy, rat-gnawed, yea, and noisome forecastle.

By this time Jans was wearied of slicing the tobacco, and the fellow called Meindert Kryns was at work upon what remained of it. All who had pipes filled them, and I was surprised to find how well off they were in this respect, though my wonder ceased when I afterwards heard that amongst other articles of freight Vanderdecken had met with in a derelict were cases of long clay pipes. It was both moving and diverting to watch these half-clad creatures smoking, their manner of holding the smoke in their mouths for the better tasting of it, the solemn joy with which they expelled the clouds; some in their hammocks with their naked legs over the edge; others on the chests, manifestly insensible to the chilly wind that blew down through the hatch. No man spoke. If aught of mind there was among them, it seemed to be devoted to keeping their pipe-bowls burning. Jans stood leaning against the fore-mast, puffing at his pipe, his eyes directed into the gloom in the bows. That he had forgotten the errand that brought him below, that I had no more existence for him than would have been the case had I never fallen from the rail of the Saracen, was clearly to be gathered from his strange rapt posture and air. I touched him again on the shoulder, and he turned his eyes upon me, but without starting. 'Twas the easiest, nimblest way of slipping out of a condition of trance into intelligence and life that can be conceived.

I wished to see all I dared ask to look at, and said, "Where do you cook your food?"

"I will show you," he answered, and walked to some distance abaft the forescuttle.

I followed him painfully, for I could scarce see; indeed, here would have been total blackness to one fresh from the sunlight. There was a bulkhead with an opening on the larboard hand; we passed through it, and I found myself on a deck pretty well filled up at the after-end with coils of cable, casks, and so forth; a windward port was open, and through it came light enough to see by. In the middle of this deck was a sort of caboose, situated clear of the ropes and casks. 'Twas, in short, a structure of stout scantling, open on either side, and fitted with brick-work contrived for a furnace and coppers for boiling. A man--the cook, or the cook's mate--his feet naked, his shanks clothed in breeches of a faded blue stuff, and his trunk in a woollen shirt--was at work boiling a kind of soup for the crew's breakfast. Another man stood at a dresser, rolling paste. This fellow was a very short, corpulent person, with a neck so fat that a pillow of flesh lay under the back of his head. Never in my time had I viewed a completer figure of a Dutchman than this cook. You would have supposed that into this homely picture of boiling and pie-making there would have entered such an element of life and reality as was nowhere else to be found in that accurst ship. Yet so little was this so, that I do not know that in all the time I had been in the Braave I had beheld a more ghastly picture. It was the two men who made it so; the unreality of their realness, to comprehend which, if this phrase should sound foolishly, think upon the vision of an insane man, or upon some wondrous picture painted upon the eyes of the dying or opening upon the gaze of some enthusiast.

The flames of the furnace shot a crimson glare upon the first of the two men I have described; he never turned his head to look at me, but went on stirring what was in the copper. The place had much of the furniture of one of our present cabooses or galleys. There was a kind of dresser and there were racks for holding dishes, an old brass timepiece that was as great a curiosity in its way as the clock in the cabin, a chair of the last century, a couple of wooden bellows, and such matters.

I was moving, when the little, fat cook suddenly fell a-sniffing, and turning to Jans, said, "Is there tobacco at last?"

"No," answered Jans; "this Heer had a piece which he has distributed. 'Tis all gone. But there is a smoke left in this pipe; take it."

He dried the sooty stem upon his sleeve, and handed it to the cook, who instantly began to puff, uttering one or two exclamations of pleasure, but with an unmoved countenance.

"Is there no tobacco on board?" said I, following Jans into the forecastle.

"The skipper has a small quantity, but there is none for the crew," he answered. "Had your ship supplied us with a little stock 'twould have been a godsend; welcomer, sir, than the powder and shot you wantonly bestowed upon our boat."

We were now in the forecastle, and this reference to the action of the terrified crew of the Saracen, in the hearing of the seamen who overhung their hammocks, or squatted on their chests, smoking, alarmed me; so with a quickly uttered "Good-morning" addressed to them all, I sprang up the ladder and gained the deck.