Chapter X: The Weather Helps My Scheme

I will say now that the alternate scheme I had all along had in my mind was escaping by means of one of the boats. But I had held this project back from Imogene; nay, had kept it in hiding almost away from my own consideration for fear that I should be unable to secure a boat. Perhaps, indeed, I had counted upon Vanderdecken practising the custom of his day, which was to get the boats over on coming to an anchor; yet it was but a hope, and not daring to think too heartily in this direction I had talked wholly to Imogene of delivering ourselves by floating and swimming ashore.

But now the boats were to be lifted over the side, and my next proceeding must therefore be to watch an opportunity to enter one of them with Imogene and silently sneak away.

To see what they were about, the men hung several lanterns about the waist and gangways. The canvas had been furled, and the yards lay in thick black strokes against the stars. The coast looked like peaked heights of pitch, and the sea, with a sort of dead gleaming floating in it with the motion of the folds, spread out brimful to the dim flashing of the surf. You could hear nothing for the noise of the pumping, yet it seemed to me but for that, God knows what mysterious whisperings, what faint noise of howling cries, what strange airy creeping of hisses and the seething of swept and disturbed foliage and burrowed bush I might catch the mingled echo of, hovering in a kind of cloud of sound, and coming, some of it, from as far away as the deeper blackness that you saw in the land where the cerulean giants of the afternoon steadied their burdened postures by pressing their brows against the sky. There was a red spot upon that part of the coast over which you would be looking for the crimson forehead of the moon presently. 'Twas a league off, and expressed a big area of incandescence, and was the fire whence the smoke I had noticed arose.

One after the other they swung the boats clear of the rail to the water, and secured the ends of their painters, or the lines by which they were fastened, to a pin, on either quarter, thus leaving both boats floating under the counter. Vanderdecken then gave orders for the second anchor to be let go, the ship having some time since slided imperceptibly back to the fair tension of the cable already down.

I now thought I had been long enough on deck, that further lingering must suggest too much persistency of observation; so I went to the cabin. It was empty. I coughed, and in a minute or two Imogene came from her berth. The lamp swung over the table and the white light that fell through the open bottom of it streamed on my face.

She instantly exclaimed: "You are flushed and look glad! What is it, Geoffrey?"

"We are as good as free!" I cried. She stared at me. Then I explained how Vanderdecken had ordered the boats over as though in sober truth he had as great a mind as I that we should escape; how our deliverance by one of the boats had been my second but concealed scheme; how both boats were under the counter, to our hands almost; and how nothing more remained to be done but wait a chance of entering one of them and dropping hiddenly out of sight.

"Then we need not land!" she cried.

I said, "No." She clasped her hands and looked at me with a rapture that made me see how heavy though secret had lain the horror of escape by the shore upon her.

I said to her: "Slip into your quarter-gallery and look over and tell me which boat lies under it, whether the little or the large one. Also if the rope that holds her is within reach. Also distinguish what furniture of oars and sails are in the boats--if any there be. I dare not go to your cabin lest Vanderdecken should arrive as I come out."

She went, and was gone about five minutes. During this interval I took notice of a sobering down of the movements of the men about the deck, as though they were coming to an end with their various jobs of coiling away and clearing up. But the pump gushed incessantly. I grew extremely eager to know if they meant to handle the cargo and guns, towards careening the vessel, that night. But whether or no, I was determined to leave the Death Ship, and before the moon rose--if possible.

'Twas now a little after seven o'clock. Imogene returned. She glanced about her to make sure I was alone, and seating herself close to me, said: "It is the bigger boat that is under my quarter-gallery."

"Good!" I cried. "She will be the safer for our purpose."

"Where the other boat lies the gloom is so thick 'tis impossible to see what is in her. But I can distinctly perceive the outline of a sail in the big boat."

"There will be a mast as well," said I. "Since the sail is there she will have been lowered fully equipped. And the rope that holds her?"

"It tightens and droops with the lifting of the boat and the heaving of the ship," she replied. "But I think it may be grasped by standing upon the rail of the galley."

This I had expected, for the boat rode to a very short scope of line.

"Now, dearest," said I, "this is my plan: the line you dragged in, when middled and doubled, will serve me to lower you down with. When in the boat, you must throw the line off you, so that I may use it to send down the pitcher of water and the bags of provisions. I will then come down by it myself. Retire as early as you may under pretence of being weary, then clothe yourself in your warmest attire and select such apparel as fits most closely, for flowing drapery cannot but prove troublesome. Leave your cabin door unlatched, but seemingly shut, that I may enter by pushing only. Meanwhile, stay here. I shall return in a few minutes."

I walked to my cabin below. The gang of pumpers clove to the brake like a little company of spectres clothed as seamen, and their manner of toiling suggested a horrid mockery of the labour of earthly beings. I shot a swift glance along the deck ere descending the hatch, but, saving the men who pumped, could see no more than a shadow or two moving in the distance forward. I took the bags of provisions from under the bed; the smallest of the three fitted my hat, which I put on my head; the other two I crammed into my coat pockets, which were extremely capacious. A goodly portion of the bag in the larboard pocket stood up, and the head of the other was very visible; but I covered them by keeping my arms up and down; and so conveyed them to the cabin, which I surveyed through the door before entering.

Imogene instantly took them to her berth, and then returned. She had scarce resumed her seat when Vanderdecken entered. He came to the table and looked on a moment, and said: "Imogene, where is Prins?"

"I have not seen him," she answered.

He stepped to the door and called, and then came to his chair and seated himself, not offering to speak till Prins arrived.

"Get the supper," said he. "Mix a bowl of brandy punch. My limbs ache. I have stood too long."

Encouraged to address him by his breaking the silence, I said, "Mynheer Vanderdecken, may I ask if it is your intention to careen to-night?"

He looked at me sullenly and with a frown, and said: "Why do you inquire?"

"That I may crave a favour, sir. My cabin is close to the pump; the clattering of that engine is extremely disturbing, and therefore I would ask your permission to use this bench for a bed to-night if you do not intend to careen to the leak, and so render further pumping unnecessary."

He considered awhile, eyeing me sternly; but it was not conceivable that he should find any other than the surface-meaning in this request.

He answered: "I do not intend to careen; the weather hath every promise of continued fairness; the men shall have their night's rest; they will work the more briskly for it to-morrow. As the pump must be kept going, your request is reasonable. You can use this cabin, and Prins shall give you one of my cloaks to soften your couch."

I made him a low grateful bow, secretly accepting his civility, however, as does a man condemned to death the attentions of a gaoler or the tenderness of the hangman.

Prins prepared the table for supper, and then set a bowl of steaming punch before the captain. Shortly afterwards arrived Van Vogelaar and Arents. Our party was now complete, and we fell to. I said: "Gentlemen, you will forgive the curiosity of an English mariner who is unused to the discipline of the Batavian ships. How, Mynheer Vanderdecken, are the watches among you arranged when in harbour, as in a sense we may take ourselves now to be?"

Imogene observing my drift came to my help and said in Dutch: "The practice is as with our countrymen, Herr Fenton."

"Then the commandant stands the watch till midnight, and the mates together till sunrise," said I, speaking inaccurately that I might draw them into speech.

"No," exclaimed Arents. "With us the commander keeps no watch. The mates take the deck as at sea, I till midnight, Van Vogelaar till four, then I again."

"That is as it should be," said I, smiling into Arents' large, fat, white face.

"And it is very proper," said Van Vogelaar, in his coarse sarcastic voice, "that English sailors should apply to the Dutch for correct ideas on true marine discipline."

"Gentlemen," said I, suavely, "I have learnt much since I have been with you."

The mate darted one of his ugliest looks at me. And it was made infernal by the twist of leering triumph in his heavy lips, though he could not suppose I exactly understood what it meant.

We fell silent. Vanderdecken served out the punch with a small silver goblet. I drank but a mouthful or two, dreading the fumes. The others quaffed great draughts, making nothing of the potency of the liquor, nor of the steaming heat of it. Had they been as I was or Imogene--human and real--I should have rejoiced in their intemperance; but 'twas impossible to suppose that the fumes of spirits could affect the brains of men immortal in misery.

When they had done eating they called for pipes, and Vanderdecken told Prins to bring him such and such a cloak, naming and describing it. The fashion of it was about eighty years old; 'twas of very dark velvet, with a silver chain at the throat and silk under-sleeves. He motioned to Prins to put it down, giving me to know by the same gesture that it was at my service. I thanked him with a slight inclination of the head, grateful that he did not speak, as I knew not what effect the news of my desire to sleep in the cabin might have upon the malignant mate's suspicious mind.

Imogene observed a strict silence. Sometimes I caught her looking at Vanderdecken, sometimes round upon the cabin. At such moments there came a softened light of wistfulness into her eyes; nay, rather let me call it pensiveness, for there was nothing of yearning in it--merely the emotion that would attend the thought that, under God, this was the last night she would ever pass in the Death Ship; the last hours she would ever spend in the company of Vanderdecken. The old fabric had for nearly five years been her ocean home--the only refuge in the wide world for her. 'Twas associated with the desolation of her orphaned state--with the anguish of her loneliness in the open boat. Her very being had merged into the ancient timbers--to the spirit of her life a voice and an expression had been given by each hollow straining sound, by the roar of wind in the rigging, by the musical stirrings of air in the quiet night, by the sob of gently-passing waters, by the thunder of the storm-created surge. And he at whom she gazed--cruel, fierce, scowling, imperious as he was--lifting God-defying eyes to the heavens, his giant frame volcanic with the desperate perturbations of a soul of fire--yet had that man ever been gentle to her--he had tended her with something of a father's love; he had held her to his breast as an ocean-stray for whom, Heaven help him! he believed that there was an asylum, that there was affection, that there was motherly and sisterly sympathy in his distant home at Amsterdam. She could not have been the Imogene of my adoration, the fresh, true-hearted virginal being of this Death Ship, mingling something of the mystery of the doomed structure and something of the mighty deep, with the pure, chaste, exquisite vitality of a living and a loving woman, had not her violet eyes saddened to the thought of parting for ever from her floating home and from that stately, bearded figure whose affection for her was even fuller of pathos than his dream of those whom he deemed yet slumbered at night in far-off Amsterdam.

But no sentiment of this kind coloured my view of him. To me, that was to be put ashore by his command and left miserably to perish there, he was a cruel and a murderous rascal; of which qualities in him I had so keen a sense that I never for a moment questioned that if my scheme miscarried and he found out what I intended, he would have me swung at the yard-arm right away out of hand, though it should be pitch dark and they should have to hang me by lantern-light.

Presently Arents put down his pipe and went on deck. Van Vogelaar, leaning on his elbow midway across the table, muttered with the long shank of his pipe between his teeth to Vanderdecken about the routine and rotation of the pumping-gangs. The captain let fall a few instructions touching the morning's work. Imogene rose.

"I am like you, Captain Vanderdecken--weary," she said, smiling, whilst her pale face fully warranted her assurance. "I shall go to bed."

"'Tis early," said he, sending a look at the clock; "you seem dispirited, my dear. It will not be this brief halt here, I trust? We shall be under weigh again in a couple of days, homeward-bound--one great ocean already traversed. Think of that!" She put her fingers to her mouth simulating a yawn. "But if you are weary," he continued, "go to rest, my dear."

She smiled at him again, curtsied to me, and with a half-bow to Van Vogelaar went to her cabin.

Vanderdecken, dipping the silver goblet into the punch-bowl, bade me extend my cup. I thanked him, said my head ached, and that with his leave I would take the air above for a spell. On gaining the poop I walked right aft and looked over the taffrail. The boats there rose and fell in two lumps of blackness under the quarters. They strained very quietly at the lines which held them, and this enabled me to observe, by noting the trend of the land, that such surface-motion as the water had was westerly. I was fretted to observe the sea unusually phosphorescent. Every time the rise and fall of the ship's stern flipped at one or the other of the boat's lines the sudden drag raised a little foam about her, and the bubbling flashed like the reflection of sheet lightning in a mirror. This, I say, vexed me; for the dip of an oar must occasion a fire as signalling in its way as a flare or a lantern, though the boat itself should be buried in the darkness.

I came away from the taffrail after a very brief look over. Arents at the head of the poop-ladder stood apparently gazing at the men pumping on the main-deck, but I knew the motionless postures into which he and the others fell too well to guess that any speculation would be found in his eyes could they be peered into. The bush fire burnt like a great red spark on the black outline to starboard. Out of the western ocean the stars looked to be floating as though they were a smoke of silver sparkles, meeting in a mass of diamond-light over our swaying mastheads, with scatterings of brilliant dust among them, suggesting the wakes of winged star-ships; but past the starboard yard-arms all this quick, glorious scintillation of planet and meteor, of fixed stars and the Magellanic clouds, with the beautiful Cross sweetly dominant, went wan and dying into mere faintness. This however I did not particularly heed, though the habits of a sailor would cause me to fasten my eye upon the appearance; but presently looking for the crimson scar of bush-fire, I found it was gone with many of the stars which had been glittering above and against it.

A few minutes put an end to conjecture; 'twas a true South African fog coming along, white as gunpowder smoke, and eating out the prospect with long feelers and winding limbs till the whole body was fluffing thick and soft as feathers about the ship, eclipsing everything save a golden spike or two of the lighted lantern that hung against the main-mast for the comfort or convenience of the pumpers.