A Bottomless Grave Read online

  Thoroughly exhausted by the prolonged physical and mental strain I had endured, I speedily sank into a deep though troubled slumber as soon as I got into bed. I was unusually late in rising the next day. I found that I had no appetite for breakfast. Indeed, I felt ill and out of sorts; and, though I busied myself with my professional duties, I was haunted by the strange incidents of the preceding night. Never before in the whole course of my career had I been so impressed, so unnerved, and so dispirited. I wanted to believe that I was still as sceptical as ever, but it was no use. What I had seen might have been unearthly; but I had seen it, and it was no use trying to argue myself out of the fact. The result was, in the course of the afternoon I called on my old friend, Mr Goodyear, who was chief of the county constabulary. He was a strong-minded man, and, like myself, a hardened sceptic about all things that smacked of the supernatural.

  ‘Goodyear,’ I said, ‘I’m out of sorts, and I want you to humour a strange fancy I have. Bring one of your best men, and come with me to the haunted mill. But first let me exact from you a pledge of honour that, if our journey should result in nothing, you will keep the matter secret, as I am very sensitive to ridicule.’

  He looked at me in amazement, and then, as he burst into a hearty laugh, exclaimed:

  ‘I say, my friend, you are over-working yourself. It’s time you got a locum tenens, and took a holiday.’

  I told him that I agreed with him; nevertheless, I begged him to humour me, and accompany me to the mill. At last he reluctantly consented to do so, and an hour later we drove out of the town in my dog-cart. There were four of us, as I took Peter, my groom, with me. We had provided ourselves with lanterns, but Goodyear’s man and Peter knew nothing of the object of our journey.

  When we got abreast of the mill I drew up, and giving the reins to Peter, I alighted, and Goodyear did the same. Taking him on one side, I said, ‘I have had a vision, and unless I am the victim of incipient madness we shall find a dead body in the mill.’

  The light of the dog-cart was shining full on his face, and I saw the expression of alarm that my words brought.

  ‘Look here, old chap,’ he said in a cheery, kindly way, as he put his arm through mine, ‘you are not going into that mill, but straight home again. Come, now, get into the cart, and don’t let’s have any more of this nonsense.’

  I felt disposed to yield to him, and had actually placed my foot on the step to mount, when I staggered back and exclaimed:

  ‘My God! am I going mad, or is this a reality?’

  Once again I had been struck in the face by the cold clammy something ; and I saw Goodyear suddenly clap his hand to his face as he cried out—‘Hullo, what the deuce is that?’

  ‘Aha,’ I exclaimed exultantly, for I no longer thought my brain was giving way, ‘you have felt it too?’

  ‘Well, something cold and nasty-like struck me in the face. A bat, I expect. Confound ’em.’

  ‘Bats don’t fly at this time of the year,’ I replied.

  ‘By Jove, no more they do.’

  I approached him, and said in a low tone:

  ‘Goodyear, this is a mystery beyond our solving. I am resolved to go into that mill.’

  He was a brave man, though for a moment or two he hesitated; but on my insisting he consented to humour me, and so we lit the lantern, and leaving the groom in charge of the horse and trap, I, Goodyear, and his man made our way with difficulty up the rotting steps, which were slimy and sodden with wet. As we entered the mill an extraordinary scene of desolation and ruin met our gaze as we flashed the light of the lantern about. In places the floor had broken away, leaving yawning chasms of blackness. From the mouldering rafters hung huge festoons of cobwebs. The accumulated dust and dampness of years had given them the appearance of cords. And oh, how the wind moaned eerily through the rifts and crannies and broken windows! We advanced gingerly, for the floor was so rotten we were afraid it would crumble beneath our feet.

  My companions were a little bewildered, I think, and were evidently at a loss to know what we had come there for. But some strange feeling impelled me to seek for something; though if I had been asked to define that something, for the life of me I could not have done it. Forward I went, however, taking the lead, and holding the lantern above my head so that its rays might fall afar. But they revealed nothing save the rotting floor and slimy walls. A ladder led to the upper storey, and I expressed my intention of mounting it. Goodyear tried to dissuade me, but I was resolute, and led the way. The ladder was so creaky and fragile that it was not safe for more than one to be on it at a time. When I reached the second floor and drew myself up through the trap, I am absolutely certain I heard a sigh. As I turned the lantern round so that its light might sweep every hole and corner of the place, I noticed what seemed to be a sack lying in a corner. I approached and touched it with my foot, and drew back in alarm, for touch and sound told me it contained neither corn nor chaff. I waited until my companions had joined me. Then I said to Goodyear, ‘Unless I am mistaken there is something dreadful in that sack.’

  He stooped and, whipping out his knife, cut the string which fastened up the mouth of the sack, and revealed a human skull with the hair and shrivelled mummified flesh still adhering to it.

  ‘Great heavens!’ he exclaimed, ‘here is a human body.’

  We held a hurried conversation, and decided to leave the ghastly thing undisturbed until the morrow. So we scuttled down as fast as we could, and went home. I did not return to the mill again myself. My part had been played. Investigation made it absolutely certain that the mouldering remains were those of poor Charley Royce, and it was no less absolutely certain that he had been foully murdered. For not only was there a bullet-hole in the skull but his throat had been cut. It was murder horrible and damnable. The verdict of the coroner’s jury pronounced it murder, but there was no evidence to prove who had done the deed. Circumstances, however, pointed to Charley’s rival, Silas Hartrop. Was it a guilty conscience that drove him to drink? And did the Furies who avenge such deeds impel him on that dark and stormy night in the North Sea to end the torture of his accursed earthly life? Who can tell?

  The Ship that saw a Ghost

  by FRANK NORRIS

  The sea, Matthew Arnold’s ‘unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea’, held a fascination for many authors in the Victorian era, both sailors and landsmen. This is hardly surprising, for it symbolised the growth of the Empire, as the British Navy sailed the world and British trade prospered through the sea lanes. One nautical legend beloved by writers was that of the Flying Dutchman, whose blasphemous captain caused the ship to spend eternity trying to round Cape Horn. At least two notable novels were written about the Flying Dutchman, the famous The Phantom Ship (1839) by Frederick Marryat, and the lesser known but masterly The Death Ship (1888) by William Clark Russell.

  Phantom ships formed an enduring fund of sea yarns on both sides of the Atlantic, and I have managed to locate one which seems to have escaped reprinting since its original appearance. It comes from the American author Frank Norris (1870—1902), acclaimed as the great exponent of ‘naturalism’ in American literature.

  Norris was born in Chicago, studied art in Paris and took up journalism as a career. He was a correspondent in South Africa for some time, then covered the American—Spanish war in Cuba in 1898. His first novel, McTeague, appeared in 1899, and two years later he published what was probably his most famous work, The Octopus (1901). This was the first of a projected trilogy, The Epic of the Wheat, dealing with the growth of the Californian wheat industry and the resulting struggle between ranchers and railwaymen. Norris managed to complete only two volumes of his trilogy before he died; the second, The Pit (1903), appeared posthumously. Another posthumous novel, Vandover and the Brute (1914), is acclaimed as a leading work in the macabre vein.

  Frank Norris, from time to time, wrote short stories for American journals, some of which were collected into a forgotten volume, A Deal in Wheat (1903), from which I have taken �
��The Ship that saw a Ghost’. It is a fine seafaring tale of the supernatural which has been unobtainable for many years, and ranks among the best of its kind.

  Very much of this story must remain untold, for the reason that if it were definitely known what business I had aboard the tramp steam-freighter Glarus, three hundred miles off the South American coast on a certain summer’s day, some few years ago, I would very likely be obliged to answer a great many personal and direct questions put by fussy and impertinent experts in maritime law—who are paid to be inquisitive. Also, I would get ‘Ally Bazan’, Strokher and Hardenberg into trouble.

  Suppose on that certain summer’s day, you had asked of Lloyds’ agency where the Glarus was, and what was her destination and cargo. You would have been told that she was twenty days out from Callao, bound north to San Francisco in ballast; that she had been spoken by the bark Medea and the steamer Benevento; that she was reported to have blown out a cylinder head, but being manageable was proceeding on her way under sail.

  That is what Lloyds would have answered.

  If you know something of the ways of ships and what is expected of them, you will understand that the Glarus, to be some half a dozen hundred miles south of where Lloyds’ would have her, and to be still going south, under full steam, was a scandal that would have made her brothers and sisters ostracise her finally and forever.

  And that is curious, too. Humans may indulge in vagaries innumerable, and may go far afield in the way of lying; but a ship may not so much as quibble without suspicion. The least lapse of ‘regularity’, the least difficulty in squaring performance with intuition, and behold she is on the black list, and her captain, owners, officers, agents and consignors, and even supercargoes, are asked to explain.

  And the Glarus was already on the black list. From the beginning her stars had been malign. As the Breda, she had first lost her reputation, seduced into a filibustering escapade down the South American coast, where in the end a plain-clothes United States detective—that is to say, a revenue cutter—arrested her off Buenos Aires and brought her home, a prodigal daughter, besmirched and disgraced.

  After that she was in some dreadful blackbirding business in a far quarter of the South Pacific; and after that—her name changed finally to the Glarus—poached seals for a syndicate of Dutchmen who lived in Tacoma, and who afterwards built a club-house out of what she earned.

  And after that we got her.

  We got her, I say, through Ryder’s South Pacific Exploitation Company. The ‘President’ had picked out a lovely little deal for Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan (the Three Black Crows), which he swore would make them ‘independent rich’ the rest of their respective lives. It is a promising deal (B. 300 it is on Ryder’s map), and if you want to know more about it you may write to ask Ryder what B. 300 is. If he chooses to tell you, that is his affair.

  For B. 300—let us confess it—is, as Hardenberg puts it, as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. It is as risky as barratry. If you pull it off you may—after paying Ryder his share—divide sixty-five, or possibly sixty-seven, thousand dollars between you and your associates. If you fail, and you are perilously like to fail, you will be sure to have a man or two of your companions shot, maybe yourself obliged to pistol certain people, and in the end fetch up at Tahiti, prisoner in a French patrolboat.

  Observe that B. 300 is spoken of as still open. It is so, for the reason that the Three Black Crows did not pull it off. It still stands marked up in red ink on the map that hangs over Ryder’s desk in the San Francisco office; and anyone can have a chance at it who will meet Cyrus Ryder’s terms. Only he can’t get the Glarus for the attempt.

  For the trip to the island after B. 300 was the last occasion on which the Glarus will smell blue water or taste the trades. She will never clear again. She is lumber.

  And yet the Glarus on this very blessed day of 1902 is riding to her buoys off Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, complete in every detail (bar a broken propeller shaft), not a rope missing, not a screw loose, not a plank started—a perfectly equipped steam-freighter.

  But you may go along the ‘Front’ in San Francisco from Fisherman’s Wharf to the China steamships’ docks and shake your dollars under the seamen’s noses, and if you so much as whisper Glarus they will edge suddenly off and look at you with scared suspicion, and then, as like as not, walk away without another word. No pilot will take the Glarus out; no captain will navigate her; no stoker will feed her fires; no sailor will walk her decks. The Glarus is suspect. She has seen a ghost.

  It happened on our voyage to the island after this same B. 300. We had stood well off from shore for day after day, and Hardenberg had shaped our course so far from the track of navigation that since the Benevento had hulled down and vanished over the horizon no stitch of canvas nor smudge of smoke had we seen. We had passed the equator long since, and would fetch a long circuit to the southard, and bear up against the island by a circuitous route. This to avoid being spoken. It was tremendously essential that the Glarus should not be spoken.

  I suppose, no doubt, that it was the knowledge of our isolation that impressed me with the dreadful remoteness of our position. Certainly the sea in itself looks no different at a thousand than at a hundred miles from shore. But as day after day I came out on deck at noon, after ascertaining our position on the chart (a mere pin-point in a reach of empty paper), the sight of the ocean weighed down upon me with an infinitely great awesomeness—and I was no new hand to the high seas even then.

  But at such times the Glarus seemed to me to be threading a loneliness beyond all worlds and beyond all conception desolate. Even in more populous waters, when no sail notches the line of the horizon, the propinquity of one’s kind is nevertheless a thing understood, and to an unappreciated degree comforting. Here, however, I knew we were out, far out in the desert. Never a keel for years upon years before us had parted these waters; never a sail had bellied to these winds. Perfunctorily, day in and day out we turned our eyes through long habit towards the horizon. But we knew, before the look, that the searching would be bootless. Forever and forever, under the pitiless sun and cold blue sky stretched the indigo of the ocean floor. The ether between the planets can be no less empty, no less void.

  I never, till that moment, could have so much as conceived the imagination of such loneliness, such utter stagnant abomination of desolation. In an open boat, bereft of comrades, I should have gone mad in thirty minutes.

  I remember to have approximated the impression of such empty immensity only once before, in my younger days, when I lay on my back on a treeless, bushless mountainside and stared up into the sky for the better part of an hour.

  You probably know the trick. If you do not, you must understand that if you look up at the blue long enough, the flatness of the thing begins little by little to expand, to give here and there; and the eye travels on and on and up and up, till at length (well for you that it lasts but the fraction of a second), you all at once see space. You generally stop there and cry out, and—your hands over your eyes—are only too glad to grovel close to the good old solid earth again. Just as I, so often on short voyage, was glad to wrench my eyes away from that horrid vacancy, to fasten them upon our sailless masts and stack, or to lay my grip upon the sooty smudged taffrail of the only thing that stood between me and the Outer Dark.

  For we had come at last to that region of the Great Seas where no ship goes, the silent sea of Coleridge and the Ancient One, the unplumbed, untracked, uncharted Dreadfulness, primordial, hushed, and we were as much alone as a grain of star-dust whirling in the empty space beyond Uranus and the ken of the greater telescopes.

  So the Glarus plodded and churned her way onwards. Every day and all day the same pale-blue sky and the unwinking sun bent over that moving speck. Every day and all day the same black-blue water-world, untouched by any known wind, smooth as a slab of syenite, colourful as an opal, stretched out and around and beyond and before and behind us, forever, illimitable, empty. Every da
y the smoke of our fires veiled the streaked whiteness of our wake. Every day Hardenberg (our skipper) at noon pricked a pin-hole in the chart that hung in the wheel-house, and that showed we were so much farther into the wilderness. Every day the world of men, of civilisation, of newspapers, policemen and street-railways receded, and we steamed on alone, lost and forgotten in that silent sea.

  ‘Jolly lot o’ room to turn raound in,’ observed Ally Bazan, the colonial, ‘withaout steppin’ on y’r neighbour’s toes.’

  ‘We’re clean, clean out o’ the track o’ navigation,’ Hardenberg told him. ‘An’ a blessed good thing for us, too. Nobody ever comes down into these waters. Ye couldn’t pick no course here. Everything leads to nowhere.’

  ‘Might as well be in a bally balloon,’ said Strokher.

  I shall not tell of the nature of the venture on which the Glarus was bound, further than to say it was not legitimate. It had to do with an ill thing done more than two centuries ago. There was money in the venture, but it was not to be gained by a violation of metes and bounds which are better left intact.

  The island towards which we were heading is associated in the minds of men with a Horror. A ship had called there once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-powered caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water’s edge, the unspeakable had happened. The Death that was not Death had arisen from out the sea and stood before the ship, and over it, and the blight of the thing lay along the decks like mould, and the ship sweated in the terror of that which is yet without a name.