Brian Jacques - [Flying Dutchman 01] - Castaways of the Flying Dutchman

Neb could not help but shudder at the tone of Vanderdecken’s voice. He hugged his dog close, seeking reassurance in the friendly warmth of Denmark’s glossy fur. The captain glanced across at him, setting down his quill pen.

“Bring food and drink, boy, and don’t waste time dawdling with the hands. I need you back here. Jump to it!”

There were lines strung across the deck. Without these ropes to hold on to, a body would be swept over the side and lost forever in seconds. Neb came staggering into the galley with his dog in tow, both of them drenched in icy spray. Petros had wedged himself in a corner by the stove. His stomach wobbled as he strove to stand normally on the bucking, swaying craft. The Greek cook glared hate-fully at the boy, upon whom he seemed to blame all his misfortunes.

“You creep in here like a wet ghost. What you want, dumb one?”

Neb picked up a tray from the galley table and conveyed by a series of gestures that he had come for food and drink. With bad grace Petros slopped out three bowls of some unnamed stew he had concocted and three thick ship’s biscuits that clacked down on the tray like pieces of wood. He waved his knife menacingly in Neb’s direction.

“You an’ that mangy dog get food for nothing. Get out of Petros’s galley before I kick you out!”

He raised a foot, but dropped it quickly. The black Labrador was standing between him and the boy, its hackles up, showing tooth and fang, growling dangerously. Petros shrank back.

“Take that wild beast away from me, get your own coffee an’ water from the crew’s mess. Go on, get the dog out!”

Neb delivered the food to Vanderdecken, then went off to the crew’s mess bearing his tray.

Jamil and Sindh had just arrived in the fo’c’sle cabin after checking the rigging. As Neb came through the door, they cast surly glances at him, another case of malcontents blaming him for their bad luck, though with some justification in their case. Vogel, the German mate, was also suspicious of Neb and his dog. Talk among the crew was that the captain used them both to spy on the crew. Not wanting to lose his position as mate, Vogel elbowed Jamil and Sindh aside, allowing the boy to fill two bowls with coffee and one with water for the dog. “When you two have had coffee, I’ll chain you back in the anchor locker,” he said to the seamen. “Kapitan’s orders. Hurry up, boy. There be cold, thirsty men waiting to get a drink!”

The tone of the mate’s voice caused Denmark to turn and snarl. Vogel sat quite still, as if he was ignoring the dog, though it was obvious he was scared to move. “Get that hound out of here, back to the kapitan’s cabin!”

Neb nodded meekly, not wanting to upset the big German. Sindh took his turn at the coffee urn, commenting, “Bad luck to have dog aboard ship, eh, Jamil?”

The Arab grinned wickedly. “Aye, bad luck. This ship be all bad luck, poor fortune for poor sailors. Wrong time, bad season to be going ’round Cape Horn. You know that, Mister Vogel?”

The mate stared at the hawkfaced Arab. “Never a good time for going ’round Horn, no time. I know of ships that never get ’round. Many try once, twice. For long time. Ugh! They run out of food, starve. You see that bad ocean out there, dumb boy? That is like a smooth lake to the seas ’round Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn!” Neb placed his drinks on the tray and maneuvered carefully out of the cabin, with Jamil’s parting remarks in his ears.

“Ship won’t run out of food if it gets caught in the seas—we got fresh meat on board. Dog! You ever eat dog before, Mister Vogel?”

“No, but I hear from those who have, in Cathay China—they say dog make good meat, taste fine. Hahahaha!”

Neb crossed the spray-washed deck with a set jaw and a grim face, Denmark at his heels.

Winter came howling out of the Antarctic wastes like a pack of ravening wolves. Once the Flying Dutchman had passed the Islands of Malvinas the ocean changed totally. It was as if all the waters of the world were met in one place, boiling, foaming, hurling ice and spume high into the air, with no pattern of tide or current, a maelstrom of maddened waves. Beneath a sky hued like lead and basalt, gales shrieked through the ship’s rigging, straining every stitch of canvas sail, wailing eerily through the taut rope-lines until the vessel thrummed and shuddered to its very keel. Every hatch and doorway was battened tight, every movable piece of gear aboard lashed hard down. Only those needed to sail the ship stayed out on deck, the rest crouched fearfully in the fo’c’sle head cabin, fear stunning them into silence.

Petros tried to make it from the galley to the fo’c’sle cabin. As he opened the galley door, the ship was struck by a giant wave, a great, milky-white comber. It slammed the galley door wide, dragging the cook out like a cork from a bottle, flooding inside and snuffing out the fire in the stove with one vicious hiss. When it was gone, so was the cook, the huge wave carrying his unconscious body with it, out into the fathomless ocean.

Neb and Denmark were in the captain’s cabin, viewing the scene through the thick glass port in the cabin door. He had once heard a Reformer in Copenhagen, standing on a platform in the square, warning sinners about a thunderous-sounding thing called Armageddon. Both the boy and the dog leapt backward as a mighty wave struck the door, causing it to shake and judder. Neb clasped the Labrador close to him. Had the Flying Dutchman sailed into Armageddon?

Vanderdecken was in his element out on the stern deck. None but he had a real steersman’s skill in elements such as these—he seemed to revel in it. A line wound and tied about his waist and the wheel held him safe. He fought the wheel like a man possessed, keeping his ship on course, straight west along the rim that bordered the base of the world. Only when the vessel rounded Cape Horn would the course change north, up the backbone of the Americas to Valparaiso. With the fastenings of his cloak ripped apart and the hat ripped from his head by the wind’s fury, the captain bared his teeth at the storm, hair streaming out behind him like a tattered pennant, salt water mingling with icy tears the elements squeezed from his eyes. Bow-on into the savage, wind-torn ocean, he drove his craft, roaring aloud. “ ’Round the Horn! Lord take us safe to Valparaisooooooo!” He was a skilled shipmaster and had learned all of his lessons of the seas the hard way.

But the maddened seas off Tierra del Fuego washed over the bones of captains far more experienced than Vanderdecken, master of the Flying Dutchman.

6

TWO WEEKS LATER AND HALFWAY BACK to the Malvinas Islands, the Flying Dutchman languished in the swelling roughs with sheet anchors dragging for’ard and stern, beaten backward from the Horn. The captain paced the decks like a prowling beast, flogging with a rope’s end and berating the hands, angered at this defeat by the sea. Men were aloft, chopping at rigging and cutting loose torn sail canvas. A ship’s carpenter was up there also, binding cracked and broken spars with tar-coated whipping line.

Neb was back as cook, swabbing out the galley and salvaging what he could from the food lockers. There was precious little, as some of the vegetables in sacks and a cask of salted meat had been swept away when Petros was lost. One of the clean water barrels had its contents tainted by seawater. The dog dragged saturated empty sacks from beneath the table, his old hiding place. Soon Neb had a fire going in the stove and warmth began returning to the galley. He chopped vegetables and salt cod to make a stew and put coffee on the brew in a big pan.