The Phantom Ship ... Illustrated by H. R. Millar. With an introduction by D. Hannay

Introduction

BY DAVID HANNAY -LonUon MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 1896 All rights reserved Printed by R. & R. Clakic, Limited, Edinburgh

INTRODUCTION.

Leigh Hunt has said that the legend of the Flying Dutch man is the only legend of the sea. If so, the sea is singularly ill provided with legends, for Captain Vander decken cannot claim a higher dignity or a greater originality than he can derive from this — that he is a variation on the much older story of The Wandering Jew. If there is any discredit in the ignorance, I must undergo ' the shame and the odd hits ' of not knowing who first developed Vander decken out oi Johannes a Temporibus Christi. The story has many parallels, and would naturally arise. No more appropriate place could be found for the doomed skipper than the Cape of Storms. The ingenuity with which all races adapt a common legend to their own name will account sufficiently for this transformation of the carpenter of Jerusalem who jeered at Christ, into the Dutch skipper who swore that he would never turn back until the Day of Judgment.

As the Flying Dutchman has been seen in our own time, it is easy enough to account for his existence, now that we understand the cause of the mirage. It was natural, and in fact almost inevitable, that a name and a history should be provided for him by the Dutch. Their predeces sors in the use of the Cape route, the Portuguese, were not the people to invent a story of that kind, and we, who were the Dutchmen's rivals, were not in the early years of the seventeenth century much in the way of making legends. THE PHANTOM SHIP Besides, there was something in the stiff-necked obstinacy of Captain Vanderdecken which was peculiarly Dutch. It was by an unconquerable stiffness of neck and an unwearied pertinacity that they made their place in the world, and it was most appropriate that a misuse of these fine qualities should doom a too pertinacious Hollander to cruise for ever off the Cape.

The Phantom Ship was written in 1839 while Marryat was in the United States. It belongs to the middle period of his work, when he had ceased, at least for a time, to write sea stories drawn from his own experience, and had not yet begun to write for children. His previous work had been Snarley-yow, for Rattlin the Reefer, which appeared in 1838, between the two, though still occasionally attributed to Marryat, was written by his secretary and sub-editor, Mr. Howard, and was only edited and in part inspired by him. Let Marryat's share in Rattlin the Reefer be what it may, The Phantom Ship is as much his own as Snarley-yow. Like its predecessor, but in a higher degree, it is an historical novel. When he wrote this book, Marryat did not merely take a few names from history, and then draw his characters either from his experience or his fantasy.

He did really try to write an historical novel. He freed himself from the temptation to be too contemporary by placing the scene of his story among the Dutch navigators of the seventeenth century. Not that this was his probable motive. The legend of Vanderdecken had attractive power enough in itself; and if he left the life of his own time entirely aside, it was not because he felt he had made too much use of it so much as because he felt that the language and the character of the English quarter-deck and forecastle were out of place in the ships of the seventeenth-century Dutch East India Company.

INTRODUCTION.

It is not to be denied that the change of scene was to some extent unfavourable to Marryat. The Phantom Ship wants the life and reality of his earlier stories. He seems to have felt that the gravity of the subject and the remote ness of the time called for a different style, and his efforts to supply the want were not successful. The language of The Phantom Ship, particularly in the earlier parts, is decidedly stilted, and even occasionally a little wooden. Style was at no time Marryat's chief merit. He could make his personages talk with excellent vivacity and with truth. He could narrate an adventure in rapid straightforward simple fashion. But when his personages were not talking, or when no adventure was going on, when he had to fill up the spaces between, more especially when the packing con sisted of love scenes, he was not always safe from falling into the bald, and even platitudinous.

This weakness was sure to be most conspicuous when he had to reconstruct the persons and the talk of a past time. When a writer who is at once anxious to be archaic, and is not widely read in the literature of the period of his story, sets about making conversation for those who have been dead for centuries, he is almost sure to fall back upon one or two mechanical devices, to have recourse to 'methinks,' 'meseems,' 'by our lady,' and 'grammercy,' and such-like useful terms. Marryat's resource was to use the second person singular. It must, however, be allowed on his behalf that he soon got tired of this, and that when he once was well warmed to his story he entirely forgot to endeavour to make his personages speak in the seventeenth century. But it is not only the style which is somewhat forced and laborious in The Phantom Ship ; the story itself lags, more especially in the earlier parts.

Marryat seems to have found some difficulty in getting his hero well started. The plot of his X THE PHANTOM SHIP story is not very happy, and is not well worked out in detail. If Philip Vanderdecken had been so anxious to give the relic to his father, he might surely have made an attempt to board the phantom ship when she steered through his own. Of course there remains the difficulty of boarding a vessel so unsubstantial that she can pass through another. But that only brings us back to another awkwardness of Marryat's plot. We never clearly make out whether the phantom ship is a real ship doomed to sail for ever, and subject to a curse of Kehama, or the ghost of a ship. Sometimes she is one and sometimes she is the other — a ghost when she sails through the son's vessel, but a real structure of timber when Philip Vanderdecken does at last get on board.

No power can establish such a contradiction as a thing which at once is, and is not. If the legend had been strictly followed, Philip Vanderdecken ought to have found no difficulty in reaching his father's vessel. Marryat knew the orthodox version well, and used it at the end of his book. The crew of the doomed ship could board other vessels and could try to send letters home. Nobody would take them because they carried a curse, but if one of the crew of the ship visited had jumped into Vanderdecken's boat, it is to be presumed that nobody could have prevented him from reaching the Flying Dutchman. The problem which Marryat had to solve was first how to give his hero a sufficient motive for wishing to reach the Flying Dutchman, and then how to prevent him from reach ing his father too soon.

Filial piety supplied the motive in a sufficiently acceptable way, but it cannot be said that the obstacle was provided with equal success, or that it works intelligibly. The pilot Schriften is not one of the good things in the book. Marryat made a very old mistake in dealing with it. He puzzles the reader. It is no doubt a good

INTRODUCTION.

rule that the reader should not know what is going to happen. The element of surprise is universally recognised as useful, and needs no justification. One knows stories, and very good ones of their kind, which depend upon nothing else. But if the reader enjoys being kept in a delightful flutter of uncertainty as to what is going to happen, he rather resents being left in ignorance of why the personages play the part assigned to them. Now, until the very last we are not told what Schriften is doing in the story. The malignant little one-eyed man is a good melodramatic figure, but he is none the less a puzzle, until the last chapter. One wonders why he is perpetually endeavouring to thwart Philip Vanderdecken. And then he is annoying in another way — he never does thwart him. If Philip fails to reach his father's ship it is not for anything done by Schriften, so that the spiteful pilot is little more than a buzzing and confusing intruder.

Indeed, Marryat has failed to work in the supernatural elements of the book with any sufficient plausibility. Why, for instance, was it necessary to make a white witch of Amine ? Her witchcraft serves no visible purpose, except to get her into the clutches of the Inquisition at Goa — a purpose which it would surely have been easy enough to effect without having recourse to sorcery. If Schriften was to be introduced at all, it would have been better to give us a prologue in The Phantom Ship to explain the part he was to play, and then to have shown him at work more effectively. If Amine was to be even an innocent sorceress, we were entitled to see her sorcery influencing her husband's fortunes. As it is, her occult arts do nothing which might not equally well have been done by a little ordinary heresy.

The supernatural machinery is, in short, too manifestly mechanical. The Phantom Ship cannot be managed with- THE PHANTOM SHIP out the supernatural ; but one wants another kind, and not so much of it. Even ghosts are governed by laws. They must not haunt off their own beat ; and Vanderdecken is certainly guilty of trespass when he turns up in the Straits of Magellan for no other purpose than to lead his son's ship on the rocks. Less of all this, and more adventure, such as Marryat could well have supplied, is what the reader finds himself asking for. The opportunity was superb. No writer could have chosen a more delightful field for all kinds of combats, wrecks, surprises, storms, escapes, and hidden treasures, than the vast lawless world west of the line and east of the Cape, as it was in the seventeenth century.

There were Dutch seamen, Portuguese and Spanish governors, English adventurers, and savage native princes, all fighting from China to Peru, going east, and from China to the Cape, going west. In so far as Marryat was content to keep to all this merely human adventure, heroism, or wickedness, he was eminently successful. In none of his books is there a finer variety of battle and shipwreck. The loss of the Ter Schelling is as good a wreck as a reasonable man need ask for, and her skipper, Mynheer Klootz, a very solid Dutch seaman. The supercargo, Mynheer Jacob Janz Von Stroom, is a fine example of that most pestilent person, the landsman who is aboard ship in a position of authority, and who with his obtrusive incompetence does assist the storm. Then the burning of the Vrow Katerina is worthy to follow the loss of the Ter Schelling.

Marryat is all himself in his portrait of the infatuated Mynheer Barentz. Why, indeed, he took that name to apply to a man who was no seaman it is difficult to say. But, however inappropriately christened, poor Mynheer Barentz is one of the best of Marryat's pathetically humorous figures. His besotted passion for the old, ill-built, lumbering Vrow

INTRODUCTION.

Katerina is just mad enough to be decidedly absurd, and it is just human enough to be decidedly touching. The loss of the raft has the merit which we constantly meet in Marryat's narratives. It reminds us of stories of the same kind told in innumerable books of voyages. It is not the work of a literary gentleman who has laboriously realised the scene by dint of reading, and who is for ever tempted to interpret it to his reader by a superfluity of explanations, but the downright report of the man who was there. When Marryat fairly sets himself to adapt one of the great seafaring adventures of the seventeenth century, he is so good that we become all the more impatient with the mechanical diablerie of Schriften and the unnecessary witch craft of Amine. The cruise of Admiral Rymelandt's squadron into the Pacific is the kind of thing of which one would gladly have had about three or four times as much.

Marryat would have had no kind of difficulty in supplying any quantity the reader could ask for. He had his Admiral Burney to draw on. He had only to put together the voyage of Oliver Van Noort and the voyage of Joris Spilbergen and other voyages innumerable, and to work out the hints they gave him to frame an endless variety of sea adventure. Still less need he have been in want of starting points when once he got his heroes among the Moluccas. The story of the gradual expulsion of the Portuguese by the intruding Hollanders is a boundless mine. Marryat, as it is, has worked his field with success. He took, for instance, one hint from the voyage of Oliver Van Noort when he constructed the incident of the marooning of Avenhorn. The story of the capture of the Spanish treasure was skilfully conveyed and adapted from the voyage of Shelvocke.

The action with the two Spanish ships has its original in the voyage of Joris Spilbergen, and it would be possible to THE PHANTOM SHIP find the model of the Portuguese commandant, the Malay attack on the fort, the hunt for the treasure, and the murder of the little governor by his own soldiers. Seeing how vast the field was, how varied were the incidents, and (an immense advantage) how free the story-teller is in dealing with lawless and remote times to let his fancy run to the extent of its tether, the wonder is that Marryat turned aside. Goa itself must surely have had almost irresistible attrac tions. Even now, when it is ruined and deserted, mystery and romance haunt its remains. When it was flourishing in all its baseless unwholesome splendour it was the very scene for a tale of adventure.

Only think what Dumas could have made of it. Marryat, it must, I am afraid, be allowed, has here somewhat missed his chance. The Inquisition was no doubt entitled to dominate Goa, but there was more in the capital of the Portuguese East Indies than the Holy Office. The Inquisition scenes are the best passages of pure melodrama in Marryat's work. The effect is largely obtained, as is not unusual with him, by the simple and also perfectly legitimate process of convey ance pure and simple. He took Dellon's Relation de f Lnquisition de Goa and transferred the Frenchman's gruesome picture of the Santa Casa to his own pages. Whether he did this because he thought there was nothing better to be done, or because he thought this the easiest and quickest way of securing a telling background, the effect is equally good.

Only the most besotted of plagiary hunters will complain of the historical novelist who draws on a valuable document. The historical novelist ought perhaps to pause before transferring large lumps from the Colloquies of Erasmus to the pages of his own story. That is a raid on another literary gentleman, but even it has the

INTRODUCTION.

dignity of buccaneering beyond the line. It is not mere pocket-picking at the street corner. Whatever limitation there may be on the novelist's right to take from old work which is in itself imaginative, he is free to annex as he pleases from the witness to matter of fact, and when the evidence contains all that is necessary, it is only spoilt by additions ; but while the Inquisition scenes are adequate, one feels that a chance has been missed with Goa. I am afraid that these remarks are open to the criticism, that they are no more than a rendering into too many words of the useful formula that the book would have been better if the author had taken more trouble. Yet that remark, though it can hardly be original at this time of day, is extremely sound. The book would have been better if the author had taken more trouble.

It was written in haste amid many distractions, and in order to make a sum of money. It has not escaped the defects natural to work done under such conditions. Marryat has obviously made his mind up too easily, that this or the other 'would do.' As, however, he was a born story-writer, and by 1839 was a well-practised one into the bargain, as he was labouring in a familiar field, he has not failed to make a great part of his volume worthy of himself. The romantic and melodramatic vein in his imagination is nowhere better shown than in the stronger scenes of The Phantom Ship, and the story has one undoubted artistic merit, — its end is as it ought to be, unhappy. That the catastrophe is reached in quite the best way is more than an admirer need maintain, but that Amine and Philip Vanderdecken were doomed to end unhappily is undeniable ; and it is to Marryat's credit as an artist that he saw this, and would not flatter the sentimental reader by flying in the face of necessity.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ' Philip Vanderdecken — that's the Flying Dutchman ! ' Frontispiece ' You'll come now, you wretched old miser ' . . .6 With the sudden lurch of the vessel, he fell overboard, and sank 12 Calmly he broke the seal, which bore the initials of his father's name, and read ...... 32 She stood with the candle in her right hand . . .38 ' Mercy on me ! ' exclaimed Mynheer Poots ; ' and is all that silver?' ...... 54 ' I am Schriften, one of the pilots of the Ter Schilling, and I am come — he ! he ! — to take you away from love ' . 63 The supercargo 76 To his astonishment perceived a small bear upon the deck, who was amusing himself with the supercargo's flowing wig 80 When the relic was clear, attempted to pass the whole over his head ....... U A tall Hottentot, with an assaygay in his hand, stood by his side 103 Stretched on the sofa, she discovered her father apparently fast asleep ....••• US The other pump was rigged, and double the quantity of water poured into the hold ..... 170 ' It is supposed that they had come to contention, and had both fallen over the precipice together ' 199 ' Summary justice ' 205 ' There may be natural charms more powerful than those you call supernatural '.....

THE PHANTOM SHIP PACK 214 Father Mathias found himself everywhere coldly received Philip and Amine recognised their old acquaintance, the one-eyed pilot Schriften . . . . ■ 219 The stranger appeared to cleave through them 232 The boats were captured one by one, and not one man was spared 242 Philip rose from the body of the now breathless Schriften, caught it in his arms, and hurled it into the sea . 250 Amine on the raft 252 They each sat watching their money 257 The gambling crew recover their weapons 26l Krantz shoots the last gambler 263 The savage attempts to cut off Amine's singer 271 The attack on Tidore 2SS He was lolling on a small sofa, and two young native women were fanning him ..... 291 ' Tell me what thou seest, Pedro, — tell me true ? ' 3i6 They let down her soft silky hair, and cut it close oft" . 323 The murder of the Portuguese captain 335 Krantz's father slays his wife and the baron 340 Little Marcella and the stepmother 347 She bandaged it up, and remained before the fire until the break of day ....... 352 He levelled his piece and fired 357 Perceived the naked form of Krantz carried off with the speed of an arrow by an enormous tiger 362 As the greatest criminal, Amine walked the last 369 Philip sank down helpless on the pavement 373 ' Let her not suffer long ' 375 Again he raised the relic to his lips, the crew of the vessel crumbled into skeletons, and there were none left on board in the semblance of life but the father and son

Chapter I About

the middle of the seventeenth century, in the outskirts of the small but fortified town of Terneuse, situated on the right bank of the Scheldt, and nearly opposite to the island of Walcheren, there was to be seen in advance of a few other even more humble tenements, a small but neat cottage, built accord ing to the prevailing taste of the time. The outside front had, some years back, been painted of a deep orange, the windows and shutters of a vivid green. To about three feet above the surface of the earth, it was faced alternately with blue and white tiles. A small garden, of about two rods of our measure of land, surrounded the edifice ; and this little plot was flanked by a low hedge of privet, and encircled by a moat full of water, too wide to be leaped with ease. Over that part of the moat which was in front of the cottage-door was a small and narrow bridge, with ornamented iron hand-rails, for the security of the passenger.

But the colours, originally so bright, with which the cottage had been decorated, had now faded ; symptoms of rapid decay were evident in the window-sills, the door-jambs, and other wooden parts of the tenement, and many of the white and blue tiles had fallen down, and had not been replaced. That much care had once been bestowed upon this little tenement was as evident as that latterly it had been equally neglected. The inside of the cottage, both on the basement and the floor above, was divided into two larger rooms in front, and two smaller behind ; the rooms in front could only be called large in comparison with the other two, as they were little more than twelve feet square, with but one window to each. The upper floor was, as usual, appropriated to the bedrooms ; on the lower, the two smaller rooms were now used only as a B I !E washhouse and a lumber-room ; while one of the larger was fitted up as a kitchen, and furnished with dressers, on which the metal utensils for cookery shone clean and polished as silver.

The room itself was scrupulously neat ; but the furniture, as well as the utensils, were scanty. The boards of the floor were of a pure white, and so clean that you might have laid anything down without fear of soiling it. A strong deal table, two wooden-seated chairs, and a small easy couch, which had been removed from one of the bedrooms upstairs, were all the movables which this room contained. The other front room had been fitted up as a parlour ; but what might be the style of its furniture was now unknown, for no eye had beheld the contents of that room for nearly seventeen years, during which it had been hermetically sealed, even to the inmates of the cottage. The kitchen, which we have described, was occupied by two persons. One was a woman, apparently about forty years of age, but worn down by pain and suffering.

She had evidently once possessed much beauty : there were still the regular out lines, the noble forehead, and the large dark eye ; but there was a tenuity in her features, a wasted appearance, such as to render the flesh transparent ; her brow, when she mused, would sink into deep wrinkles, premature though they were ; and the occasional flashing of her eyes strongly impressed you with the idea of insanity. There appeared to be some deep-seated, irremovable, hopeless cause of anguish, never for one moment permitted to be absent from her memory : a chronic oppression, fixed and graven there, only to be removed by death. She was dressed in the widow's coif of the time ; but although clean and neat, her garments were faded from long wear. She was seated upon the small couch which we have mentioned, evidently brought down as a relief to her, in her declining state.

On the deal table in the centre of the room sat the other person, a stout, fair-headed, florid youth of nineteen or twenty years old. His features were handsome and bold, and his frame powerful to excess ; his eye denoted courage and deter mination, and as he carelessly swung his legs, and whistled an air in an emphatic manner, it was impossible not to form the idea that he was a daring, adventurous, and reckless character. ' Do not go to sea, Philip ; oh, promise me that, my dear, dear child,' said the female, clasping her hands. 'And why not go to sea, mother?' replied Philip ; 'what's the use of my staying here to starve ? — for, by Heaven ! it's little better. I must do something for myself and for you. And what else can I do ? My uncle Van Brennen has offered to take me with him, and will give me good wages.

Then I shall live happily on board, and my earnings will be sufficient for your support at home.' ' Philip — Philip, hear me. I shall die if you leave me. Whom have I in the world but you ? O my child, as you love me, and I know you do love me, Philip, don't leave me ; but if you will, at all events do not go to sea.' Philip gave no immediate reply ; he whistled for a few seconds, while his mother wept. ' Is it,' said he at last, 'because my father was drowned at sea, that you beg so hard, mother ? ' ' Oh, no — no ! ' exclaimed the sobbing woman. ' Would to God ' ' Would to God what, mother ? ' ' Nothing — nothing. Be merciful — be merciful, O God ! ' replied the mother, sliding from her seat on the couch, and kneeling by the side of it, in which attitude she remained for some time in fervent prayer.

At last she resumed her seat, and her face wore an aspect of more composure. Philip, who, during this, had remained silent and thoughtful, again addressed his mother. ' Look ye, mother. You ask me to stay on shore with you, and starve, — rather hard conditions : — now hear what I have to say. That room opposite has been shut up ever since I can remember — why, you will never tell me ; but once I heard you say, when we were without bread, and with no prospect of my uncle's return — you were then half frantic, mother, as you know you sometimes are — — ' ' Well, Philip, what did you hear me say ? ' inquired his mother, with tremulous anxiety. ' You said, mother, that there was money in that room which would save us ; and then you screamed and raved, and said that you preferred death. Now, mother, what is there in that chamber, and why has it been so long shut up ?

Either I know that, or I go to sea.' At the commencement of this address of Philip, his mother appeared to be transfixed, and motionless as a statue ; gradually her lips separated, and her eyes glared ; she seemed to have lost the power of reply ; she put her hand to her right side, as if to compress it, then both her hands, as if to relieve herself from excruciating torture : at last she sank, with her head forward, and the blood poured out of her mouth. Philip sprang from the table to her assistance, and pre vented her from falling on the floor. He laid her on the couch, watching with alarm the continued effusion. ' Oh ! mother — mother, what is this ? ' cried he, at last, in great distress. For some time his mother could make him no reply ; she turned further on her side, that she might not be suffocated by the discharge from the ruptured vessel, and the snow-white planks of the floor were soon crimsoned with her blood. ' Speak, dearest mother, if you can,' repeated Philip, in agony ; ' what shall I do ? — what shall I give you ? — God Almighty ! what is this ? ' ' Death, my child, death ! ' at length replied the poor woman, sinking into a state of unconsciousness.

Philip, now much alarmed, flew out of the cottage, and called the neighbours to his mother's assistance. Two or three hastened to the call ; and as soon as Philip saw them occupied in restoring his mother, he ran as fast as he could to the house of a medical man, who lived about a mile off — one Mynheer Poots, a little, miserable, avaricious wretch, but known to be very skilful in his profession. Philip found Poots at home, and insisted upon his immediate attendance. ' I will come — yes, most certainly,' replied Poots, who spoke the language but imperfectly ; ' but Mynheer Vanderdecken, who will pay me ? ' ' Pay you ! my uncle will, directly that he comes home.' ' Your uncle, de Skipper Vanbrennen : no, he owes me four guilders, and he has owed me for a long time. Besides, his ship may sink.' ' He shall pay you the four guilders, and for this attendance also,' replied Philip, in a rage ; ' come directly, while you are disputing my mother may be dead.' ' But, Mr. Philip, I cannot come, now I recollect ; I have to see the child of the Burgomaster at Terneuse,' replied Mynheer Poots. ' Look you, Mynheer Poots,' exclaimed Philip, red with passion ; ' you have but to choose, — will you go quietly, or must I take you there ?