‘Next day, the watch spied one of the corpses floating in our wake, right after us. He thought maybe his eyes were tricking him, so he ran to get a camera to take a picture. But when he came back, the corpse was gone. We all joshed him about it.
‘Two days later, off the Virginia Cape - now mind you, we buried them off Hatteras - the watch spied both them men floating in our wake! This time he had a camera with him, and he took a picture. He wanted to make sure that he would have something to prove his word, this time.
‘But he needn’t have been in such a hurry, because this time they didn’t disappear. They hung on our wake all day long, and every member of the ship got an eyeful of them. They were there as plain as day; you could even see their faces. From Hatteras to the Virginia Cape, mind you, and no explanation for that, eh, Mr Bruno?
‘Finally, off Cape May, they disappeared and we didn’t see them again. Every word of that story is true, Mr Bruno, and there are the pictures to back it up. So clear and good were they, that a big New York magazine published them, and lots of people tried to explain it away. But you couldn’t explain away two dead men following a ship over six hundred miles, lying there in the wake as plain as day.’
Bruno’s brow was furrowed. ‘Wasn’t there some explanation offered, to the effect that the suction of the ship’s wake might have held the corpses behind her?’
Captain Lowrie chuckled sardonically. ‘There may have been some such explanation, Mr Bruno. But you yourself at this very moment take little stock in it. ’
‘Oh, well,’ Bruno muttered. ‘I’ll admit that strange things happen on land or sea and that sometimes there isn’t much explanation for them. But the legend of the Flying Dutchman is something else again, unless I’ve got it all wrong.’
Captain Lowrie seated himself in a chair and tipped it back against the wall, balancing there precariously as the freighter pitched in the ponderous sea. He seemed quite at ease. He rubbed at his mustache with his left hand, and then proceeded to address himself to Mr Bruno.
‘The Flying Dutchman is the Wandering Jew of the ocean. Nobody knows what his name is now; it’s forgotten over the years. But a long time ago, and on such a night as this, the Dutchman was rounding the Cape of Good Hope in a three-masted schooner. She was called the Fliegende Hollander.
‘He was a turbulent and headstrong sailor, this Dutchman. The storm was against him. The winds were against him. The men on his decks begged him to turn back, but he refused. “I’ll round the Cape of Good Hope tonight,” he said, “in spite of wind or storm or Heaven or Hell.”
‘For thus defying the elements and the Devil, he was cursed, condemned to roam the oceans of the world until the crack of Doomsday. And there was only one thing could save him; the love of a woman who would be faithful to him after death.’ Captain Lowrie chuckled. ‘You can see where the poor man never had a chance. Ain’t a woman alive could redeem him. It would take a lot of faith in these streamlined days.’
Bruno grunted. ‘And do you actually believe, sir, that the Flying Dutchman exists today?’
‘I don’t say I do,’ replied Captain Lowrie, ‘and I don’t say I don’t.’
A sliver of lightning cut across the night sky, followed by a reverberating crash of thunder. Murphy, at the helm, jerked, startled by its sound, and nearly loosed his grip upon the spoke. ‘He could be here,’ the helmsman faltered. ‘He could be right here, where he made his oath that stormy night some hundred years ago.’
Bruno sprang to the wheel and grasped it. ‘Mind the course, you fool! You’ve dropped five points.’
He turned and stared accusingly at Captain Lowrie who still perched on the chair, little bothered by the fact that the Mary Watson's bow had swung off the wind.
‘There you see, sir, what good these tales of phantom ships can do. If it were only that they lent some colour or adventure or glamour to the sea, I wouldn’t mind them. But they make for terror and incompetency. They make men afraid and inefficient. That’s why I don’t believe in ghosts, Captain. And I’m a better seaman for it.’
Captain Lowrie’s bushy white eyebrows came far down over his eyes. He glowered at Bruno. ‘If it were only that such tales made men afraid,’ he said, ‘I would agree with you, Mr Bruno. But why in the name of Davy Jones this lubber is afraid of the Dutchman is more than I can see. He’s shaking like a leaf. I’ll wager he cannot tell you why.’
Murphy, his mouth grim and taut, clung to the helm and said nothing.
‘Look here, man,’ said Captain Lowrie, ‘you expect the Dutchman will be out on a night like this looking for you to take you along to Hell with himself. Were he here, the Dutchman, poor soul, would only be trying to make the same passage we are, around the Cape against the storm.
‘By the beard of St Christopher, if he has one, I’d just as leave give him a tow if we met up with him. It would be the common courtesy of one seaman to another. And like as not he’d do the same for me. But the Dutchman, God save him, is busy on another sea in this world tonight, I’ll wager.’
He stirred in the chair and rose unsteadily to his feet as the freighter wallowed in the trough. ‘It’s that late that I’m sleepy. So I’ll catch forty winks. The wind is holding steadily now, and should be dropping soon, and we’ll be on our way. Tell Mr McNulty to stand by in case we need him. Keep a weather eye peeled for a shift in the wind. And if things don’t get better, call me up again.’
‘Aye, sir,’ said Bruno.
Near three o’clock in the morning, some time after the ship’s chronometer had rung out five bells, the wind began to slacken. The heavy dangerous sea did not abate in force, but the rain vanished and the wind dropped off so sharply that the spume on the breaking crest was no longer visible.
Down in the black hole of Calcutta, where the gleaming polished propeller-shaft faithfully ground out its r.p.m.’s,
McNulty, the chief engineer, felt the Mary Watson gaining headway. The wind which had held them back now dissipated, allowing her, even at dead slow, to forge ahead.
Where before the freighter had expended only enough energy to equalize her position in the wind, now she was under way once more. And McNulty, a Scotchman who liked scones, Scotch and Beethoven, was glad of it. A few minutes later, and the engine room, telegraphed from the bridge, clanged its way to half speed.
NcNulty marked the telegraph gyrations, and then turned up the turbine engine. It was a pleasure to feel ih&Mary Watsonbite steadily and head due east once more.
On the bridge, where the remnants of the wind still howled past the corners, Bruno noted his course on the chart. He felt very good. But he was enough of a realist to know that they were not out of the woods yet. He no longer doubted they would make the passage safely; but he was afraid that in making it the Mary Watson would reach Zanzibar with a stove-in hatch.
Still there was no choice. The gale had blown them far west of their course, and they had lost both precious time and fuel. Bruno telephoned the captain, and the old man agreed with him that the steady old tub should be pushed with as much speed as she could safely handle in the seaway.
At three-fifteen, the ragged clouds vanished, and the darkness of the bridge was suddenly illumined with pale moonlight. It was very faint, for streaky will-o’-the-wisps still scurried across its slender face. But there was, at least, some visibility and Bruno was heartened.
The wave crest ran high, but no longer broke. The glassy hollows, where salt bubbles split rapidly, were long and deep. One moment, as the Mary Watson topped a grayback, Mr Bruno could see miles of ridged, pocked-marked sea. Then would follow the awesome drop into the trough, where the horizon would merely be at the top of the next wave away.