F. Cottam - Dark Echo

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Captain?’

He had his back to me still. I saw him stiffen almost imperceptibly and then I heard him chuckle thickly. ‘I knew that question was coming. And yet I let it surprise me.’ He turned. Straub, too, could have been an artefact from the nineteenth century; a human artefact, with his hewn features and his powerful shoulders and the iron-grey bristle of his beard. He raised his arm and the tip glowed in the gloom of the cabin as he drew heavily on his cigarette. He nodded towards the warming pot. ‘We shall wait for our coffee, Mr Stannard. And then I shall tell you a story about a ghost.’

We settled into our chairs with the coffee and the brandy bottle on the table between us. Against the portholes, the fog now pressed in a pale and solid blanket. The boat rested at anchor, entirely still. There was no wind and the sea outside was motionless and silent. He had been captain of the Andromeda , he told me, for twelve years. He had been her master for a year when he first saw her phantom.

‘We were in the Atlantic Ocean, Mr Stannard. The Americans are, some of them, great and fastidious sailors of yachts. I had a party of five aboard, all of them skilled and hardy.’ He chuckled again. ‘None of them birdwatchers, I fancy.’

I smiled to encourage him to continue and sipped his strong, good coffee.

‘We were about four hundred miles east of Nantucket Island and steering an easterly course, though the location hardly signifies. It was September and darkness had descended an hour since. I was over there,’ he gestured towards his chart table, ‘calculating our average speed because one of the fellows on board had made a query about it. And I looked up and he was sitting where you are now.’

I had gone cold. The coffee was hot in my cup and the fire still warm in the captain’s grate. But I had gone cold under my heavy sweater, with my belly full in that cosy refuge. ‘Who was?’

‘A man in a brown uniform and a steel helmet with a bandage covering the lower half of his face. I say a man. A boy, really. Fright in his young, tormented eyes. A soldier of eighteen or so with mud on his puttees and a rifle that looked too big for him resting across his lap.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He didn’t do anything. He just looked at me.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he was gone.’

I felt only relief that Straub’s spectre had not been Harry Spalding. There was no reason, of course, why it should have been. But ghosts and logic were not easy companions in my mind and what I felt was relief, pure and unadulterated. Spalding had been a soldier. But Straub’s visitor had been innocent. And Spalding had never been that. Straub had seen someone else.

He did all the usual things, he told me, made all the usual excuses for himself. He was tired. He was sleep-deprived. He was suffering from stress and probably slightly drunk. He was too imaginative for his own good.

‘The truth was, of course, that I was none of those things.’

‘Did you see the ghost again?’

He nodded. ‘Very occasionally. And very sporadically. I’d say no more than once a year and sometimes the interval has been as long as eighteen months.’

‘And the manner of the sightings?’

‘They never differed.’

‘So you don’t know who he is.’

‘About five years ago I did some research into the history of the Andromeda . This had nothing to do with the question of my ghost. People come aboard the vessel and ask questions and my knowledge of her history was not as complete as it could and should have been. She’s a venerable old lady of the sea, Mr Stannard.’ He picked up his brandy glass and took a swallow and then refilled both our glasses and took out his tobacco pouch again. ‘She has a colourful past.’

I’ve met some garrulous storytellers in my time, compulsive raconteurs. My father is chief among the men I’ve known enthralled by the sound of their own voices holding an audience. But Captain Straub was not one of them. Sitting at his table in his cabin on that fogbound sea, I felt he was telling me this story not because he wanted to, but because he felt compelled.

‘I learned that she was commandeered after one of the enormous, catastrophic Allied offences launched during the latter stages of the Great War. Her home port at that time was Whitstable, on the eastern coast of Kent in England.’

‘I know Whitstable.’

‘She sailed to Calais. She raced to Calais. But the effort was to prove in vain. The battle casualties she picked up had been gassed. None of them could breathe properly. All of them suffered in agony.’ He lit his cigarette and gestured to the portholes. ‘On the return voyage a fog descended. It was a thick fog, impenetrable, much like this. I suppose the fog impeded the breathing of those poor wounded boys even further. Not one of the young soldiers survived the trip.’

I nodded. ‘How did you know I would ask you about your ghost?’

Captain Straub drained his glass of brandy. It was late, now. Between the two of us, we had almost finished the bottle. I don’t think I had ever felt more sober in my life.

‘I saw him last night. It was the first time in almost two years. And I think he tried to speak to me.’

I did not know what to say. There was nothing I could say.

‘Are you familiar with the cruel and wonderful poem about a gas attack, Mr Stannard? I mean the one by the greatest of all war poets, the Englishman?’

‘We all read Wilfred Owen at school.’

‘Then you will know it. You will know the line about the froth-corrupted lungs. Last night, as I lay in darkness in my bunk, my ghost tried to use his froth-corrupted lungs to speak to me. As long as God permits me to live, it is not a sound I would wish to hear again.’

‘Why the change?’

Straub exhaled smoke and smiled and extended a finger. ‘You, Mr Stannard. I have racked my brains and can only think you the reason. It cannot be one of the Baltrum twitchers.’

‘I take your point, Captain.’

‘My ghost is trying to warn me of something, I think. And I think I am intended to pass the warning on to you.’

I did not say anything. I could quite see why he had drunk with such ponderous deliberation throughout and after our meal. The Dutch coined that kind of courage after all, and he evidently thought he might require it if summoned from his slumbers by a visitor in the night. But when we took a turn around the deck before retiring, his footing seemed as sure as it could have been and he seemed fully alert to every detail and aspect of the anchored boat he commanded.

If his ghost came back, the captain did not mention it to me. But I don’t think it did. The fog cleared the following morning and we were rejoined by our maligned but oblivious band of Baltrum twitchers. I hope they got to see lots of rare breeds of birds up very close. I hope they were able to take wonderful photographs. Because the weather worsened on the return leg and with it returned the seasickness. I was sympathetic at seeing their suffering, but it was advantageous for me. A schooner in storm conditions is a real task for two men and though her master was a consummate sailor, there was plenty of opportunity for me to improve on my basic seamanship with the rest of the crew laid up and puking.

I did not disembark at Rotterdam. I’d grown fond of the Andromeda by the end of the voyage and wanted to see her into Antwerp and the promise of her refit. I was glad I did.

‘Take the wheel, Mr Stannard,’ Captain Straub said as we approached the harbour. And I did. And I berthed her very competently in the busy port, in the choppy water.

We shook hands on the quay. I had grown fond of the Andromeda ’s master, too. ‘I think you have seen the last of your ghost,’ I said to him. He nodded, slowly. He glanced back at the boat I knew now he loved. She looked tired and anachronistic and tiny amid the tanker and freighter traffic of the bustling harbour. But she would be alright. There was life left in her yet.