Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

“And her hull wants copper-plating,” Decurrs stated. An able seaman, he heard what Swift did not say. “We must move quickly. Pass him the oakum, boy.”

There were three of them in the jollyboat: Decurrs to manage the oars, Swift to patch, and the watch-boy to assist and learn. But, like her mistress, the Minerva ’s jollyboat was ill-provided for the sea, and the boy had been bailing since they’d launched her. Swift reached for the oakum himself.

“Mind how the patch goes,” Decurrs said to the boy, as Swift stuffed the sticky fibers between the boards and laid over the tarred canvas. “When the waves surge high, the oakum will swell. The leak will suck the canvas inwards, stopping her mouth.” Decurrs raised the oar to fend off the hull. The jollyboat knocked against the ship anyway, a jolt that shuddered into their bones.

“Aye,” the boy said. He’d left off bailing and was staring intently at the horizon. “Look,” he said suddenly. “To starboard. ‘ A something in the sky! ’

Swift wiped algae scum onto his trousers. “Hand me the sheet-lead,” he said.

“ A haunt! ” The boy said. “It follows us!”

“The sheet-lead,” Swift snapped, “and quick about it.”

But it was Decurrs who handed Swift the gray sheet of metal and who helped him nail it to the Minerva ’s hull. Like Swift, Decurrs did not scan the horizon for phantoms. He kept his eyes trained on his hands, on the work that could save or kill them.

“The Nightmare Life-in-Death,” the boy breathed. “Just as the ballad said.”

“The Devil take your ghosts.”

Swift ran his hand over the edge of the sheet-lead, making sure the patch lay flush. There was something in the corner of his eye. A flicker of white.

Back aboard ship, Swift was taken aside by Captain Maxwell. “How’s she fare?”

Swift rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His hands were still gummy with the oakum pine-tar that gave sailors their name. It smelled like a distant forest, like a place he’d never see.

“The patch will hold,” Swift said. “But if the seas run high again…”

Maxwell stroked his beard. Swift could see the man considering his charge. The Minerva was a three-masted ship with eleven passengers aboard, forty-eight crew, and a cargo of teak bound for Madras. To turn back to Rangoon would delay the shipment by weeks, and the Company must have its profits.

I should not have shipped on the Minerva, Swift thought. I should have waited for a better berth.

“The coast is a lee shore,” the Captain said, “and her waters are shallow. We will make for Madras.” He coughed, wetly, against his arm. Then he said, awkwardly: “The serang says one of the Lascars saw… something in the swells. Did you happen to spy anything? In the waves?”

Near the windlass, Decurrs was scolding the boy. The boy protested vigorously, pointing toward the horizon.

“No, sir,” Swift said. “We saw nothing. Nothing at all.”

The gale blew into their teeth on the first of June, a choking whirl of greenish mist. “She’s taking on water,” came the cry from below. Swift clung close to the windward rigging of the mainmast as he climbed, flattening his body against the damp ropes. Far below him, the deck heaved with the rising swells.

On the yard he pressed his belly against the hard beam and stepped sideways onto the shivering footrope. It was his stomach, now, that bore his weight as his hands clawed in the heavy canvas of the mainsail. Beside him, two other able seamen did the same, rushing to tie up the ship’s largest sail before the winds rose.

A cry rang down the yard. One of the Chinese sailors had straightened up, pointing at something behind the curtain of rain. Swift hastily turned back to his reef knot, even as the Chinese sailor straightened further, pressing his weight back on the footrope at the very moment the ship rolled. A flurry of motion, and the man fell out of Swift’s vision.

A crash below told Swift the sailor had slammed into the deck. “ A kinder death than drowning ,” the old salts said. In the rising wind the Chinese sailor’s loose canvas flapped like the wing of an angry bird.

“Belay that sail!”

A Lascar slid sideways on the yard to take his shipmate’s place. The Indian sailor worked quickly, his eyes intent on the task. His own reef knots tied, Swift pulled himself back to the standing rigging and slid back to the frenzy of the deck. The Chinese sailor’s body rested amidships. His fellow seamen stepped around him, their eyes on their assigned lines.

Swift leaned over the man—a young fellow, his eyes wide, staring at the sky. A red stain spread beneath his body, mingling with the wash on the deck.

“He saw a ghost,” said the second belay, eyes on his line. “That’s what he screamed. A sei-gweilo in the waves.”

“Belay that nonsense.” Swift ran his palm over the Chinese sailor’s eyes, doing what he could to close them. When he raised his hand a half-moon of white showed through, as though the man’s spirit studied Swift from the other side. Swift felt a chill that had nothing to do with his sodden clothing, or the rising gale.

“Pumps in full labor,” said a voice. It was Manbacchus, one of the Lascars. “She takes water.”

Swift felt the heaviness in his gut, what the old dogs called the “sinking feeling.” He hoped it would not come to that.

Crouched in the forecastle, the starboard watch discussed the rumors. The sails were close-reefed and the leak patched, but still the Minerva took on water. They said the bilge smelled almost sweet. A bad sign.

“The Lascars say there is a haunt that follows our wake,” Holdfast Muhammad said. Though he hailed from London, Holdfast had the tongue, and often he passed the whisper from the other Mussulmen aboard. “They say it pressed A-kou.”

“There is a haunt,” their mess-boy said proudly. “I saw it, when we were in the jollyboat.”

“You saw a cloud,” Swift said sourly. “For I too was in that jollyboat and I saw no such thing.”

But the tide of conversation was already moving past him.

“I saw a haunt off Ireland once,” said Glosse, the third mate. “I’m no Frenchman to turn tail and run, but I tell you boys, I was damnably scarified.”

“You saw a haunt and lived to speak of it? You’re a lucky man, Glosse,” Decurrs said.

“That I am, boys.” Glosse laughed. “A jack tar with the devil’s own luck.”

“It could be the Dutchman that follows us,” mused the fresh-faced sailor they called Pretty Pol. “Him that cursed the name of God. He cannot put into port now, but must sail the seas endlessly, eating only red iron and gall. He seeks out all the old sinners of the sea, to press them for his crew.”

“It could be the Mystery ,” the boy said. “The slave ship where the Negroes bound the captain to the mast, and forced him to sail ’til the end of time.”

“That’s the Wake ,” said Pol. “The Mystery was the slave ship turned into a rock, to stand to this day as a warning. One of its crew was a magician. He killed the Negroes first, and then the sailors, and last he bound the captain to the foremast, and forced him to stand watch ’til the Devil came to claim him.”

The forecastle had grown quieter at the mention of slave ships. Decurrs watched the boards, Holdfast Muhammad, and Glosse. Swift knew then that they’d all worked the Trade.