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

“Warning of what?” The boy was deaf to the silence swelling around him. “And why would a tar kill all aboard?”

“Perhaps it was a Negro that was meant,” Cobb said, thinking aloud. “For plantation men sometimes call Negroes blacke , on account of their complexion.”

Pol, whose own deep tan had been put down as blacke in the ship’s log, scoffed. “’Twas one of us, a tar, who told me that tale,” he said. “And ’twas one of us, a tar, that sunk that ship. But he was a Yorkshireman.”

“Ah,” Cobb said. Everyone knew it was unlucky to sail with Yorkshiremen.

The boy’s brow remained furrowed. “But why would a tar kill all aboard? On a slave ship? If—”

“You’ve not sailed under many captains,” Glosse said. The crew laughed the way men do when they’re eager to change the subject.

“What do you think, Swift?” said Holdfast Muhammad. “Does your patch still hold?” It was telling, Swift thought, that the man would now rather talk of leaks than haunt-ships.

“She holds,” Swift said. “The Minerva has life in her yet.”

The men settled under the forecastle, listening to the drum of rain above. Swift rubbed his scarred hands together for warmth. He did not think about the Zong .

For three days, they labored constantly at pumping. Even the Gunner, who’d normally be excused from such work, turned his blackened hands to the pump. Sailors like Swift, who could handle carpenters’ tools, did their best to repair the pumps as they choked with the sand-ballast drifting free in the water-logged hold.

“Is there else you can do to stop the water?” Captain Maxwell was regretting his decision to sail without a carpenter, Swift could tell, but it was too late now.

“Not in this sea,” Swift said. “We must get to port, if we’re to save her.”

The captain nodded, and looked over the rain-misted deck to where passengers huddled—a small group of women, merchants, and servants, European, Indian, and Malay, seeking relief from cramped quarters.

“So be it,” he said. “We’ll set what sail we can and make for the coast.” Suddenly the captain’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”

Alarmed, Swift squinted his eyes against the rain. At the rear of the ship a small light wandered erratically up the mizzen mast. For a moment Swift thought it was a man carrying a candle, and he was filled with anger at whatever fool would bring an open flame into the rigging. Then he saw how the flame moved. Lithely. As though it were alive.

“St. Elme’s fire,” one of the tars murmured. “Quick, mark where she lands.”

“Best get below decks now,” Captain Maxwell advised his passengers, his voice betraying a hint of strain. “The wind is picking up.”

The flame flew suddenly to the middle of the ship, and soared to the top of the main mast. It hovered there, about a foot above the spar.

“The Supero Santo . It guides the haunt to us!”

“It predicts how many will drown,” a tar corrected.

“If atop, and only one, it means a storm will soon be over. We should all bid it goodspeed.”

The flame broke into three pieces and sank toward the deck. Sailors recoiled, scrambling to get out of the way of the spirit-fire. The corpusants hovered over the Minerva ’s dark boards, still and silent.

“Three a-deck,” the captain muttered, almost under his breath. “That’s no good omen.”

Swift’s mess-boy edged forward, studying the triangle of flames with a cat’s intensity. Decurrs yanked the boy back and cuffed him on the ear.

“Oh look,” one of the European passengers said. “There’s more.”

Horrified, Swift followed the passengers’ gaze over the side of the vessel, to where a hundred or so of the tiny flames reeled and spun. Beneath the corpusants, the ocean burned like witch’s oil, green and blue.

“ Allahumma rahmataka arju ,” prayed one of the Mussulmen, “ fala takilni ila nafsi tarfata ’ain… ”

“Wish them goodspeed,” the captain ordered, his voice thick. “And see to your lines.”

“Have you ever seen that?” The boy asked as his messmates hurried to their stations. “Saint Elme’s fire? And so many of them? What does it mean?”

Swift had no answer. Around him, he could feel the wind rising.

“I’ve drowned no cat and killed no albatross,” Glosse said in the mess. Above the starboard watch’s heads the second day of the gale howled and roared. “I have whistled down no wind. Yet death-fires reel about our rigging, and the damned follow our wake, sending good tars to their deaths.”

“It’s not the haunt-ship that made A-kou lose his footing,” said Holdfast. “The Lascars say he had hungry eyes.”

“It was the haunt-ship that killed him,” Glosse said firmly. “And it’ll kill us all until we give it what it wants.”

Swift’s throat was dry. He wanted no part in this.

“And what does it want?” Decurrs said sharply. “Have you hailed that vessel, Glosse? Have you taken a message from the dead?”

“I am no fool, Decurrs, to hail a haunt. No,” Glosse said. “In dreams I heard it so. My lost brother came to me last night, his mouth full of seaweed and his shoes full of sand. In his hands he held a copy of our crew’s list, burning and smoldering. As I looked closer I saw one of those names afire, and knew then it was the Jonah who’d cursed us.”

“Whose name was it?” The boy sounded a bit too eager.

“If I had my letters I could tell you,” Glosse said. “But I’m no reading man. We have a Jonah aboard, and the haunt-ship wants him. That’s all I need to know.”

The rain drummed above their heads. The mess-table, suspended from the ceiling, creaked on its chains.

“And what do you wish us to do, Glosse?” Decurrs’s words jabbed the air. “Hunt down a Lascar to hang? For so they did on your last berth, or so I’m told.” There was a glitter in Decurrs’s eye. He was one of those who thought the captain had made a poor choice in Glosse, that the position of third mate should have gone to a more senior seaman.

The old fear thrilled through Swift. He shook his head warningly at Decurrs. Glosse was a mate now, after all, and had the power of the lash.

Holdfast Muhammad looked up from the swinging mess-table, his face grave. “Is that true, Glosse? I’ll pass no whisper for you if it’s so.”

Glosse waved his hand. “That was a different matter,” he said. “A theft.”

“The captain would not look kindly on you if you stir mutiny among the Lascars,” Decurrs said. His eyes met Swift’s, and Swift knew Decurrs expected him to speak up, to draw on his authority as the other old hand in the mess. Swift dropped his gaze.

Glosse forced a smile on his face. “Now, now, fellows,” he said. “What’s this talk of mutiny? I ask only that you keep your ears and eyes open, that’s all. “’Tis no more than good tars should do.”

Tension loomed around them, and then the boy spoke up. “Perhaps the haunt is a mutiny ship,” he said helpfully. “Like the Eagle .”

“Perhaps it’s your arse,” Cobb said. The men laughed. But Glosse gave Decurrs a sidelong glance and Swift knew it was not over between them.

Three days later, the gale winds still blew, and the ship pitched low and heavy. The waves ran mountains high. Swift, his arms numb with fatigue, slipped across the wet deck to his station. They would keep the Minerva before the wind, with bare poles.