Mysterious Sea Stories

Richard Sale THE BENEVOLENT GHOST AND CAPTAIN LOWRIE

The Flying Dutchman, a ghostly ship which is doomed to sail the oceans of the world as punishment for its captain’s blasphemy, has been a subject of interest for generations. It provided the great composer Richard Wagner with the idea for one of his most famous operas, Die Fliegende Hollander, written in 1843. The captain of the ship, generally called Vanderdecken, was said to have been a Dutchman who defied God and the elements while trying to sail through a storm around the Cape of Good Hope, and was thereafter condemned to roam the oceans until he could find another vessel willing to take letters begging forgiveness back to his home in Holland. According to legend any other ship which came into contact with the Dutchman similarly became doomed, and so sailors everywhere steered clear of the ancient sailing craft.

Although there have, of course, been lots of stories of ghostly vessels seen on the world’s oceans, none has so captured the imagination of writers and readers as The Flying Dutchman. As I mentioned earlier, both Captain Marryatt and Clark Russell took up the idea, as did the German poet Heinrich Heine, who created a very successful fictitious account in 1834. None, though, has come as near to solving the mystery as the well-known American writer and film director, Richard Sale (1911- ) in ‘The Benevolent Ghost and Captain Lowrie’ (published in 1940).

Richard Sale’s love affair with the sea has produced fine books such as Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep (1936) which was filmed four years later under the title Strange Cargo starring Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Peter Lorre. Sale also wrote the powerful screenplay for the movie Abandon Ship made in 1957. In the following tale he offers what I think may well be the best key to the riddle of the phantom ship - that is, until it finally comes in to harbour.

North of them, across the miles of black wet, howling night, Cape Town reposed upon the sturdy rocks of Africa, feeling the storm, too, but not the shock of the ocean.

The S.S. Mary Watson, Baltimore, Maryland, was an old ship. That did not mean she was senile. She had been with the sea a long time and she knew its foibles and handled herself with uncanny dexterity. But she had not been built originally to stand such buffeting, and her age made her joints creak when the heavy seas pounded her.

It was Bruno’s watch and he listened to the high crying of the wind as it searched with harsh fingers through every crack and cranny of his clothing. Its pressure lay against his chest and cheeks alike, binding both arms against his chest and making a relentless skirt about his legs. Pushing into the weight of the gale, he fought its thrust as he balanced like a tight-rope walker above the rise and pitch of the restless deck. His heart boomed roughly as the ship smashed forward, expert but weary and old.

It was Bruno’s watch, and he did not like it. Only once before, east in the Caribbean Sea, after a sore and foggy dawn, had he seen a wind with such velocity. They would soon be in trouble, and he knew it, and so called up the old man and put the responsibility where it belonged.

The night was black, yet they could see some of it because the bridge was even blacker. Where the combers burst upon the

forepiece and swept the Mary Watson’s deck to the beam, there to be spit back into the sea through the scuppers, the water exploded alternately white and green against the tapestry of darkness.

Outside, as Captain John Lowrie soon found, the night was filled with the wind and the ocean, the rain had slackened perceptibly, but the wind hauled southwest the port side, and it nearly blew his teeth into his throat.

He gripped the rail and went up the stairs toward the bridge, catching a glimpse of the Mary Watson’s lonely funnels staggering overhead in the dark. Forward, he was barely able to discern the bridge wingtips with their glass weather-breaks. The high howls of the wind on the boat deck smothered the deep thunder of the raging seas alongside as they swept by, white, mad, hungry.

He stepped off the bridge and slammed the door shut behind him, shaking his shoulders, soaking with rain. He stared across the darkness of the bridge at Bruno, and said, ‘It’s a fine night to call a man out.’

Bruno said nothing. There was nothing to say. The weather conditions spoke for themselves, and even a seasick landlubber could tell by the way the Mary Watson pitched and rolled that all was not well.

Captain Lowrie walked over to the helmsman, who clung to the wheel nervously, his eyes wide as he peered through the rain-studded window. The helmsman’s name was Murphy, and he was young. He was nervous because he was having his first taste of a whole gale.

‘How does she go, Mister?’ asked Captain Lowrie.

‘She goes hard and heavy, sir,’ replied Murphy, his voice flat.

Bruno said, ‘I’ve been in communication with Mr McNulty, sir, in the engine room, and he reports excessive vibration in the shaft. I changed speed to dead slow, but that seemed to make little difference. To my way of thinking we should heave to for the night, until this blows out.’

‘To my way of thinking, there’s little sense in that,’ said Captain Lowrie. ‘Change your course, mister. Due southwest, nothing off. Look alive now.’

There was thunder in the seas as the helmsman brought her over. Her blunt prow dug in hard and firm, the blows running through her body. The starboard bow vanished under the weighted seas, but in another moment it was clear and she was dead in the wind, pitching and tossing, the sickening rolls now gone.

They could all feel the difference at once. The strain went out of her rusty plates. Her fore and aft motion was short and sharp, as a good pitch should be. Mr Murphy at the helm relaxed.

‘Well, now,’ said Captain Lowrie, ‘that was a small thing to get a man out in this kind of night for. How did you expect her to go easy with the waves on her beam?’

Bruno did not mind the jibe. Indeed, Captain Lowrie did not mean for it to be taken seriously. They both knew that the course could be changed only with the captain’s permission. And for all the heartiness in Captain Lowrie’s voice, there was still a troubled look around his eyes. Bruno noticed it and knew what it meant. For dead in the wind, her blunt bow rebuffing the staggering blows of the giant waves, the Mary Watson was safe enough. But there were many things that could happen: a broken screw, a burned-out bearing, or another ship out there in the darkness, unseen. Power was the thing. Without it, they were lost.

Captain Lowrie said, ‘What does Sparks report?’

‘Sparks was in touch with Cape Town half an hour ago, and he reports there ain’t a ship within seventy miles of us. The nearest one is the Nichyo Maru. She’s due west of us, so we’ve nothing to worry about in the way of a collision.’

‘It’s nice to know,’ said Captain Lowrie. ‘A lookout couldn’t sight the devil’s own seven masters on a night like this. ’

Bruno shivered. ‘Aye, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen a night like this only once in fourteen years at sea. And I never want to see another. It’s the son of black dark night when seamen’s yams come true. Mr Franklin was telling me a while back that he saw St Elmo’s fire on the mast.’

Franklin was second officer of the Mary Watson.

‘St Elmo's fire!’ Captain Lowrie exclaimed. ‘And what’s so mythical about St Elmo’s fire? I’ve seen it many a time at sea, and not a stormy night needed for it, either. When I was mate of the schooner Chaffy fishing the Grand Banks out of Gloucester, a long time ago, I seen St Elmo’s fire time and again. Little crackling flames, sharp and clear, dancing across the yardarms. St Elmo’s fire is no myth.’

Murphy at the helm stirred uneasily and opened his mouth. But he shut it again without saying anything.

Captain Lowrie stared at him. 'Was you goin’ to say something, mister?’

Murphy wet his lips, swallowed hard. 'You were talking of seamen’s yams, Captain, and it was just that I was remembering some others I’ve heard. Tales of the Sargasso, the mystery of the Marie CelesUy and of the Flying Dutchman.’

'Ah,’ said Captain Lowrie. 'The Dutchman!’ He rubbed his hand through his shaggy mustache, and the bristly sound of it filled the bridge. 'The Dutchman indeed.’

He said it with such fervour that Bruno turned and stared at him. ‘Surely, sir,’ he said, ‘you don’t believe them old wives’ tales?’

Captain Lowrie did not reply at once. He stared out through the storm window above the faint miserly glow which illumined the compass card, and he locked his hands behind his back and swayed easily with the motion of the freighter.

‘Old wives’ tales, eh?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You’re young, Mr Bruno, and maybe that’s the reason; but me - I’ve been a seaman nigh on twenty-five years, and there’s strange things happen in the seas. Strange indeed.’

Mr Murphy swallowed again, so hard this time that he made a clucking sound. There wasn’t much light on the bridge, but the little there was showed his face pale and white. The sound of his gulp drew the old man’s eyes.

'Feeling seasick, mister?’ the captain said.

‘No, sir,’ replied Mr Murphy. ‘I was just rememberin’.’

'Rememberin’ what?’

‘I was rememberin’, Captain, that we’re off the Cape of Good Hope in a blow. And that’s just about what happened to the Flying Dutchman, isn’t it?’

‘Mind the helm!’ Mr Bruno said sharply. He glanced at the quartermaster with some contempt. ‘You’re nervous enough, mister, without getting scared about a ghost. ’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mr Murphy said.

‘Aye,’ Captain Lowrie ruminated soberly. ‘There’s strange things in the sea. You, Mr Bruno, you don’t believe in sea serpents, I take it. There’s more things in heaven and earth and ocean than a man could ever dream about.

‘I believe in sea serpents. I believe there is things in the ocean no man has ever seen. Why, bless St Christopher, it was near this very spot that a trawler hauled a fish out of the sea that was supposed to have been dead for fifty million years. Them scientific fellows have been reconstructing it from fossils they found some place in Europe.

‘And right here, near Cape Town, a smelly trawler hauls it topside. Extinct for fifty million years, and yet not dead at all! I tell you, Mr Bruno, no man knows what’s under the sea. And for that matter, no man knows what’s above the sea, either. So who’s to say the legend of the Flying Dutchman ain’t true?’

Bruno sniffed. ‘Personally, sir, I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said.

Captain Lowrie snorted gruffly. ‘And I suppose you don’t think it’s bad luck to kill an albatross or a gull? I suppose you don’t think a ship is a “she”. I suppose you don’t think a shark following in the wake is bad luck. Silly superstitions for old fools like me, eh?’

‘I didn’t say that, sir.*

‘What’s the difference, man, if you think it?’

Bruno shrugged. Captain Lowrie continued:

‘When I was mate aboard the S.S. Gulf City - she was a Standard Oil tanker in the coastwise trade - we had two seamen die of ptomaine poisoning. We buried them at sea, somewhere off Hatteras. I’d always heard that yarn about a dead man following the ship he loved, just as easily as a rat deserted a ship that was doomed.

‘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.

Eastbound, the sea was on their comers, and the Af ary Watson rolled alarmingly in the swell. But her speed steadied her somewhat, even though the going was very wet forward. And

Bruno knew that by dawn the Cape of Good Hope would be astern.

Franklin, the second officer, presently joined Bruno on the bridge. It was not his stint, but it had been a rotten night to sleep, and Franklin was just as glad to be out of his bunk.

At three-thirty a.m., a strange intensity pervaded the entire ship. Overhead, the moon suddenly hid itself behind a bulky cloud. There was only the faintest indication of moonlight left upon the turbulent crest.

In his cabin Captain John Lowrie, who had been snoring lustily, suddenly awoke out of a sound sleep for no reason at all and sat up in his bunk, disturbed and apprehensive.

In the engine rooms, McNulty, who had all but surrendered his duties to his assistant, McAdoo, content that the ship was well out of trouble, returned suddenly to his post, vaguely worried and not knowing why.

In the galley, where the ship’s cook had bedded himself down for the night, Toby, the ship’s cat, who had been sleeping serenely upon the breadbox, suddenly awoke, backed to a comer and began to growl, the long hairs down his back standing straight up on end.

On the bridge they felt it, too. Bruno looked up from his place at the chart table and shivered. He was not cold, and he did not know why he had done it. Franklin, who had been sitting in the chair that Captain Lowrie had vacated, suddenly stirred uneasily and rubbed the backs of his hands briskly.

‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had the strangest feeling - ’

Bruno met his eyes. They stared at each other.

The starboard door of the bridge opened, and Captain Lowrie walked in. He did not say anything, just walked to the chart table and sat down beside Bruno. There was a frown on his face and he looked worried.

‘It was as if,’ Captain Lowrie would tell his wife some months later, in Boston, ‘we had all gone to a concert. It was that moment of great sense of silence, as the baton goes up just before the music begins.’

It was like that, that charged moment before the baton drops, when you can almost imagine you hear the music even before it has begun. The sea, there, pounding on her starboard quarter, might have been a kettle-drum. The dying wind, still whining high, might have been the first violin.

And under their feet, the freighter dropped into a deep and darkened valley. The boat wallowed there a moment, panting, and then with sovereign dignity forced her blunt bow up the wall of water which came rushing on. And when she reached the peak of that watery mountain she paused, as if to survey the studded voyage before her.

Young Murphy at the helm suddenly gaped into the faintly luminescent night before his eyes.

‘In the name of Heaven!’ Murphy said hollowly.

The other three - Captain Lowrie, Bruno, and Franklin -moved as one man. They sprang to their feet, instantly aware of Murphy’s contorted face.

It was fear, Captain Lowrie knew. He had seen it often enough. The eyes, all white and glazed, the blanched skin, the dropped jaw which hung on Murphy’s chest, the quivering mouth. They, too, faced the sea and watched expectantly beyond the waves.

Out of the night, like a great white ghost, they saw the ship. She was about a hundred feet long, her sails all set and filled. Captain Lowrie had never seen such a colour in sails before. Blood red they were, like a dying sunset; the strangest colour his eyes had ever seen: for the moonlight was faint, and in the back of his mind he wondered how sails of any colour could be that bright.

She was on the starboard tack, heeled well over, and she had a white bone in her teeth. There were moving shadows of men on her decks. The Mary Watson was bound east, but this strange schooner with her blood-red sails was bound due north and she seemed to come right at them.

Her speed was amazing. She seemed to plunge ahead much faster than the wind which filled her sails.

Through binoculars, Captain Lowrie could see a name upon her bow; but it was hazy and indistinct through the glass, and he could not make it out.

But he could make out her figurehead. At the base of the bowsprit, wet and glistening as the heavy bow plunged into the waves, he made out the grinning death’s head.

Three masts, sticking up into the sky nakedly like inverted streaks of lightning, a death’s head at the bow, blood-red sails; a schooner in a storm at the Cape of Good Hope, and an oath with the Devil.

‘The Dutchman!’ Captain Lowrie roared. ‘The Flying Dutchman!’

Bruno wrenched the binoculars away from the captain's gra o and peered out into the night himself. The glasses trembled m his hand. They were seven-power glasses and hard to hold upon the scene, but he managed it a moment and then dropped them from his eyes; and he was white and shaking.

‘It’s not The Dutchman,’ he said savagely. ‘It’s a ship, a sailing ship, and she’s running without lights. Sheer off, helmsman, sheer off to port. She'll strike us!’

But Franklin had already wrested the wheel from the quartermaster and he was bringing it hard over. The freighter’s bow swung northward from east, and in the cross-sea the Mary Watson rolled dangerously.

‘She’s a phantom,’ Captain Lowrie said hoarsely. ‘She’s the Dutchman out of Holland, trying to round the Cape.’

‘You’re mad!⁹ Bruno snapped. ‘She’s just a ship, an old sea trader, perhaps.’

Captain Lowrie had the binoculars again. He held them on her bow as she came closer to them. ‘Fliegende Hollander,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘It’s there on the bow, under the bowsprit, as plain as day. Look for yourself, man! Her name is there, right there - the Fliegende Hollander, and her hailing port is Amsterdam.’

‘It’s your imagination; you are all filled up with the Dutchman’s lore,’ Bruno replied.

And then he said nothing more. There was no time to say anything more. Silently and tensely, they watched her come. She was a savage ship, and she laid the water white around her bow, her bowsprit stabbing the sea like a guard sword.

She was very close now; so close that they could see the sailors on her deck. They seemed to be Norwegian. And back on the poop deck, by the great helm, there stood a tall, broad man with a great black cape around his shoulders.

His nose was large, and he had a heavy beard; and as the schooner bore upon them, Captain Lowrie could see this man wave a burly hand.

For a moment, it looked as if she would strike them near the stem, as if to slash the combing and the screw clean off, and leave the rest of the Mary Watson floating in the ocean, a powerless hulk. In that breathless moment, Captain Lowrie saw her flag, curling out to leeward above the blood-red sails. It was the flag of Holland.

Bruno saw it too. ‘It could be a Dutch ship, and nothing more,’ he whispered. ‘A Dutch ship, an ordinary ship, and nothing more.’ He was talking to reassure himself, but they all heard him.

‘She’s the Dutchman,’ Captain Lowrie said, quietly now. ‘Stand by for a crash.’

But there was no crash. The black ship, when she had forced the Mary Watson to turn due north, suddenly sheered off. They could see her captain, that big bearded man at the helm, swinging the wheel hard, and her bow, with a death’s head for a figurehead, swung off the freighter’s stem and turned northwest.

Swiftly she was abaft. They saw her dip into the deep trough between two towering crests. Only her curling flag and the tops of the three masts were left visible. And suddenly they sank down, too, and seemed to vanish.

When the next wave away reached that spot to lift her to its top, she did not rise. Indeed, she was no longer there.

‘She’s gone!’ Franklin gasped.

‘Gene, indeed,’ Captain Lowrie said.

Bruno, his brow lined with multiple wrinkles, peered intently at the spot where he had last seen her. ‘Has she sunk?’ he said.

'Did she go down?’

Nobody answered his questions. Captain Lowrie murmured, ‘He sheered off. Did you see him sheer off? He didn’t mean to strike us in the first place. He was satisfied to push us off our course. That was all he wanted. It was as plain as day; and having done that he’s gone and vanished like any good ghost should.’ The blood was flowing back into Bruno’s cheeks. He straightened, and felt more assured.

‘Ghost, my eye!’ he snapped. ‘He would have cut us in half if he hadn’t seen us at the last moment. The captain of that ship is a fool. I wish we could have got her name, and reported her. He picked a fine stormy night to be running without lights. ’

He scanned the turbulent seas for some sign of her. But there was none. ‘But where did she go?’

Captain Lowrie did not attempt to answer him. He addressed himself to Franklin.

‘Bring her back, mister,’ he said. ‘Bring her back on the eastbound route. I don’t know the meaning of it, but it’s over and done. So let’s be on our way again, with the sea on the quarter. This old lady is panting - she never did like a following sea. ’ Franklin brought back the helm, and the Mary Watson soon turned slowly eastward, where a faint leaden glow was beginning to touch the sky, off in eternity where the sea met the heavens.

The telephone rang. Captain Lowrie answered it. It was McNulty, calling from the black hole of Calcutta, annoyed and bothered. ‘Captain, sir,’ he said, ‘must we be staying in a following sea? When my screws are near the surface, they all but shake my shaft out of its bearings.’

‘I’ve other things to worry about beside your shaft,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘The course is my concern, and the shaft is yours, Mr McNulty. So mind your P’s and Q’s. There’ll be no more following seas if we can help it. But then again, I ain’t in a position to make any promises.’

He hung up abruptly.

About ten minutes had passed since they had last seen the three-masted will-o’-the-wisp bury itself in that trough.

The wind had all but died. The rain had definitely vanished.

The seas were beginning to drop. But only slightly. The cloud which hid the moon passed on, and the night was once again filled with a silver glow.

The four men stood up at the weatherbreak now, watching the night sharply. Only Captain Lowrie’s face seemed relaxed. Murphy’s was afraid. Bruno’s was taut. Franklin’s was harried.

And while they stood there, they felt it again, that strange fluttering feeling upon their heartstrings. Like violins in tremolo. Bruno shivered; his hands felt icy cold.

‘Mind the helm,’ Captain Lowrie said sharply.

Franklin had raised his left hand. He pointed it out past the weatherbreak. In awed, sepulchral tone he said, ‘Look!’

They looked. But Captain Lowrie had already seen it. ‘Aye,’ he said coolly. ‘She’s back again.’

Mr Murphy, the quartermaster, tried to keep his teeth from chattering. But he could not manage it. The cracking sound of them filled the bridge.

It was true enough. She was back again. But this time she came from the north. All of her sails were set, and her lee scuppers were awash. She was running close-hauled, and her bow was under a wall of water most of the time.

Bruno stared at the flag upon his own mast. It curled to the south. That meant the wind had shifted.

‘But how,’ Bruno asked in a choked voice, ‘can she run close-hauled against the wind which is directly astern of her?’

‘She ain’t no ordinary ship,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘And not a ship to be afraid of, either, mister,’ he remarked to the trembling quartermaster. ‘Only three hours back, I offered the Dutchman a tow around Good Hope, if need be. It ain’t like one good seaman to return ill to another good seaman, when only good has been offered. He means well, no doubt. But what he means, I can’t yet fathom.’

Bruno said, ‘But the wind has all but died. How can a ship point down with such speed when there isn’t any wind to push her?’

‘I told you, mister,’ answered Captain Lowrie, ‘she ain’t no ordinary ship.’

No more was said. They all stood stock still, tense, and watched her come. She had seemed far ahead of them to port when they first sighted her again. But already she was much closer. There was white water all around her. She seemed to slash at the ocean. The Mary Watson's own speed had carried her far ahead, so that now the schooner with the red sails was sharply off the port bow.

‘A mirage,’ Bruno said thickly. ‘A mirage.’ He spoke with hope, not with conviction. He, too, like the quartermaster, was trembling.

The schooner seemed so close now that they could have thrown a belaying pin upon her deck. And suddenly her intentions were plain. She held her way, adamantly, and every man on the fated bridge knew what she would do.

She was going to cut across their bow. Cut across them, sharp and close, impailing herself upon their forepiece if necessary. She would not give way this time, she would not sheer off. The bearded man at her helm, firm and resolute, had frozen there.

Captain Lowrie sprang to the engine-room telegraph and swung it to full speed astern. In the engine room, McNulty went crazy, wondering what was happening topside.

The Mary Watson groaned and paused in the seaway as her single engine went into reverse. The lone screw churned the water white behind her, imparting a terrific vibration through her hull, which threatened to split the rusty plates asunder.

The freighter almost made it, but not quite. Despite her revolving screw pulling her full speed astern, her impetus carried her forward. Under her bow, where her anchors clung to their niches, the schooner with the blood-red sails passed. She looked big and real now, although the men on her deck still seemed to be shadows.

Captain Lowrie and the others braced themselves for the crash. Surely it would be her beam, directly in their path. In a moment, there would be the splintering wood of her hull flying up, smacked by the steel bow of the Mary Watson. But she moved faster than even they had reckoned.

Her beam flashed by. Her foam-drenched combing went next, so close to the sharp prow of the freighter that the wash, compressed between the two, catapulted straight up high into the air and crashed upon the freighter’s forepiece.

Captain Lowrie said, in a quiet low voice, ‘We’ll hit her stern, sure.’ Automatically, he braced himself.

The other men seemed to be caught in a sort of paralysis.

It came. It was dull, not sharp. For all they knew, it might have been the blow of a chance sea. But they felt it distinctly.

A tremor ran through the Mary Watson's spine. Captain Lowrie found himself on the exposed port wingtip of the bridge, shouting wildly. Bruno, inside, telegraphed the engine room to stand by.

There was no sound of broken wood. No sound, in fact, except the great roaring silence which swelled in their ears. The freighter paused, her screws stilled, and lolled there in the glassy interim which divided the crests.

Bruno stuck out his head from within the bridge. ‘Where did she go?’

But Captain Lowrie could not answer that question, for he did not know himself. Where had she gone indeed? Captain Lowrie had seen her gaunt black stem go off the starboard, the windows high in the transom all soundlessly shattered. He had seen the gaping gash in her combing and bowline, where the Mary Watson had eaten into the plunking.

But when the three-master was definitely a-starboard, she seemed to bum with a pale, mysterious moonlight; and in a few moments she was gone again, completely, gracefully, the seas slowly merging into every part of her, until there was nothing left but sea, all around where she had been.

From the wingtip where he stood, Captain Lowrie could fancy that he had seen that great Dutchman at the helm give one last lusty wave before the night swallowed him alive.

‘We sank her!’ Bruno cried.

‘We sank nothing,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘Is Mr McNulty standing by?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Keep him standing by. Prepare to heave to for the night. I’ll not let another inch of ocean fly past my barnacles until I can see by the light of day just where Pm going.’

‘We’ve got to stand by anyway, sir,’ Bruno said. ‘She’s gone down. There’ll be survivors, perhaps.’

‘There’ll be no survivors.’

‘If we could only have gotten her name,’ Bruno faltered. ‘We could have radioed Cape Town.’

‘Radio no one, mind you. Radio no one, Mr Bruno. No word of this to get about until we see what’s what.’

Dawn was long delayed; but it had a sun when it did come up. In that first cold light of dawn - and there is no colder light than the first sunless break of day upon a sea - Bruno went forward with some of the crew to inspect the damage to the bow. When he returned, his face was a picture of complete stupefaction.

‘What was the damage?’ Captain Lowrie asked.

Bruno’s mouth worked. ‘Not a sign of damage, sir. Not a scratch on her paint. Nothing, sir.’

Captain Lowrie stared. Ahead of him, the sun broke from the rim of the horizon, yellow and glaring. ‘Aye;’ he muttered, as if to himself. ‘First he drove us to the north, off our eastern course. Then he cut across our bow to make us stop our way.

‘He had a purpose, the Dutchman did. One good turn deserves another. Me, speaking offhand on a dark and stormy night, offering him a tow, wherever he might be. And him to reciprocate, out of a black dark sea, and maybe save my command.’

Bruno looked perplexed. ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ he said. ‘There are some things beyond understanding,’ Captain Lowrie said. ‘Send a look out aloft and tell him to keep a weather eye peeled, and signal Mr McNulty to proceed at dead slow until he gets further orders.’

The lookout went aloft, squatting in the crow’s nest high above the bridge. Slowly and stubbornly, the Mary Watson ploughed along.

They did not have to wait long. By the time the sun had detached itself from the rim of the sea, painting their faces, the lookout reported. From the crow’s nest, in the windless quiet of the morning, his excited cry dropped down on Bruno, who stood beneath him on the boat-deck.

‘Whale, ho!’ the lookout bellowed.

‘Where away?’ Mr Bruno replied.

‘Dead ahead,’ said the lookout. ‘Just rolling there. I can hardly see him. It’s the rim of his spine above water, and nothing more!’

Bruno instantly relayed this news to the bridge. The Mary Watson paused in her stride and then stopped. Captain Lowrie, peering through his binoculars, found the hump in the ocean. He stared at it for a long time. ‘Whale, my eye!’ he grunted. ‘Have a look, Mr Bruno. ’

Bruno accepted the glasses eagerly. He peered through them for a long time, too. Finally he said, in a hollow voice. ‘You’re right, sir. That’s no whale. It’s a hulk, a floating derelict, and from what I see of her upturned keel she’s a big one.’

Captain Lowrie nodded. ‘Two hundred feet of her, at least,* he said reflectively. ‘And all her wood probably water-logged. Nice to have struck upon her. You might just as well have put dynamite in our bow, for the hole she would have torn there. ’

‘An old clipper ship, sir,’ Franklin hazarded.

‘Maybe so, mister,’ Captain Lowrie said. ‘I ain’t seen a keel like that in a long, long time.’

Bruno’s face held an odd expression. He ruminated slowly, ‘The storm must have driven her northward. That would have put her more to the south a few hours back. If we had continued in our eastbound track, we might have struck her.

‘Then we turned north. But the wind and waves were blowing her north, too. Good Lord, sir, it gives me the creeps to think of what might have happened if we had not hove to until daybreak. ’

‘Thanks to the Dutchman, and a ready tow for him,' said Captain Lowrie soberly. ‘Whether he be in the seas of Heaven, or in the oceans of Hell.’

‘It’s a strange thing,’ Bruno said, his eyes smoky with thought. ‘A very strange thing. And not the sort of thing a man can tell his wife in Boston when he sees home again.’

Captain Lowrie nodded. ‘Right, mister. And you only to be ridiculed and laughed at for the telling of such a tale. And if your hair were a mite gray, the younger blades might be calling you an old fool, too.’

'It could have been a mirage,’ Bruno said, as if he didn’t believe it himself.

‘It could have been,’ Captain Lowrie agreed. ‘But mirage or no, it did its work, and all of us should be grateful for it. Helmsman, point her head off that wreck. Mr Bruno, you may telegraph Mr McNulty to proceed at half speed.

‘Mr Franklin, will you kindly stop by at the radio shack and tell Sparks to wireless Cape Town, a warning to all shipping in the vicinity of Good Hope. Give the location of the wreck and our present position. That will do. As for myself, I’m going below. If I’m needed, you’ve only to call me up again.’

Bruno stared through the weatherbreak as the freighter gained way again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘look off there! Porpoises. A whole island of them!’

At the door, Captain Lowrie paused. There was a faint smile on his face. ‘And what does that mean, mister?’

‘It means, sir,’ replied Bruno quietly, ‘that we shall have a good passage from here to Zanzibar.’

‘Aye,’ Captain Lowrie nodded, and he went out. But as he went, you could see by the expression on his face that he was very well pleased with his first officer.