A HAUNTED SHIP.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2567, 22 December 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

A HAUNTED SHIP.

A BLACKBIRDER'S CHRISTMAS. [By F. J. Keane.] The Christmas before last I had oharge of tho sketch Emblem, running in the labour trade out of Port Curtis, Queensland. I had been a couple of years at the work, always making good runs and landing good labour, seldom less than a hundred head at four pounds por head. I got into the way of picking up Kanakas off unknown reefs, the more unknown the better. Only let a conk blackbird step on my deck and he was captured meat. The last cruise I took was round the eastern Rroup of the Fijis, not so far from the Friendlies. Coming home I ran a canoe down among the Santa Cruz Islands and picked up ten. Out of one double boat off the Solomons I picked up three and lost eleven that would not be saved, bringing my cargo up to 86 head of as good labour as a, man could wish to briog , to marked

I had a long passage before me yet, and had to bo a little careful with provisions at first. You can keep your cargo in pretty good condition on rice and water, but must give them a feed towards the end of the passage, if you want to land them fat. I need to give them one hour's exercise on deck in gangs of ten every day. I dare not allow more up at a time, for we were only eight of a crew all told, and had to keep a tight hand over the crowd of savages in the hold. At sunset every night we battened down fore and aft, and not a Kanaka came above a hatch until after the deck was washed next morniug. We were among the Capricorn group, the weather too fine, when one night we lost a man off the look-out. There wae no way it could be explained ; I had heard him singing only a few minutes before he was missed at four bells, (10 p.m.) It seemed strange ; but a man has often taken a fiisherman's walk in quite as unaccountable a way. He wasn's a good man, or a great loss to u?. His lay in the venture would go to make more for those that wero loft. About four bells on tho next night the mate called me out of my bunk and told me that another man was missing. I went on deck, it was a beautiful night, smooth water and bright moon ; I hove the ketch to, threw the dingy overboard and three of us pulled about for an hour in tho wake, but not/ as much as his hat did we tall across. Tho mate said he had heard a sort of snap forward like a blow on the deck, so unusual that he had gone from aft to ask the man on the look-out if ho hart heard anything fall from aloft. He had not been able to see the man in i his place, had searched and called and finally roused me up. It looked mysterious; if the man had taken to doing away with themselves at the rate of one a night we should be abandoned in six days. I had all of them aft at mid-nigbt, and went into the matter. Not a soul could throw any .light on the question.

I myself thought, this is another of .hose experiences that a man will never ike to tell about. I turned it in and out

all kinds of ways. That there was any trick in it I had no reason whatever to suspect. I could only accept the fact that the men were gone, and make the best of it. Next night it blew pretty fresh and squally. I put the cook on watch and watch with me, so that there were yet three men in the watch. The boy I let sleep in all night to look after the galley and messes in the day time. We were talking in the outer jib just before eight bells. The cook was on the downhaul at my back. As I was belaying the downhaul, when the jib was down, I heard a snap behind mo as if the loose end of a rope flying about had struck the mast or deck. That was what I thought it was, and did not as much as look round. As I was stepping out to make the jib fast I looked round for the cook, to tell him to ooine with me. He was nowhere to be seen. I called out; no answer. Not half a minute before ho had been hauling on a rope with me, almost touching my back, and now he had vanished from beside me' without a word or movement making the slightest sound, except that strange snap. It gave me a bad attack of nerves right away. A live white man just vanishing right wore he stood, snap ! I holloaed to the watoh below to tumble out. Fivo of m now. One or two hard old shells pretended to laugh, but I suspect a more Mjiirud lot of men never went round a ship's deck ; "we kept ono another company all night; I would as soon hive jumped overboard as turned in ; I have rend about haunted ships, and the like, but I had never heard or read of anything like this. The next day we set watches, two of us below and four on the deck, so the Kanakas should not know how shorthanded we were. At night the men refused to go forward on the look-out. So tho mate volunteered to take a cutlass and stand four hours. We were among reefs and a look-out had to be kept. I set a man amidships to keep his eye on the

mate, and see if anything came near him.

About six bells, I was at the wheel wheu I heard the man watching tho mate givo a shout, "He's gone! He's gone!" I spun the helm down and looked eagerly over the sea to leeward—ho had not

fiillen overboard. The vessel came up to the wind, came round, and lay in irons with sheets to windward, almost motionless. I went up to the man who had seen the mate go. He seemed to have lost his reason and could make no coherent or reasonable answers to my questions. In about half a hour I found tlio man had lost his reason. He pointed again and again to the place he said the mate had been standing on last, and then up aloft or down through the deck planks'. There were only four of us left: I felt I would soon be a lunatic like the one who had gone mad. The other two teemed quite careless what became of them. The life was half crone from them through sheer fright. We let no Kanakas on deck that day. I put thn madmin in irons to prevent him goinjj below into the hold among the carffo. I tried to sleep about midday. If I dazed for a few minutes it was to wake up with a start to a sense of numbing, paralyzing dread, which would wear off somewhat when I went to att6nd tho cooking. The fear with which we saw the sun set and another night of horror fall on us made a form of suffering euflh as I never can agnin endure and live. We know not. whoae turn it might bo. That one of us was doomed we felt was inevitable ; that none of us would be left four nights from then it could not have entered our minds to doubt. We did not know what was to take us, how the blow would fall, or even exactly when. How the time flew until four bells, the fatal hour. Six bells and all present. Midnight we all lay cowering under the bulwarks, neglecting the sales, no one at the helm. All the middle watch we crouched huddled togother aft. The madman slept soundly most of the night; just before dawn I fell asleep. When I awoke the sun had been long up. Only one man was sleeping near me. The madman was hangiug with his head between the spokes of the wheel; when I went up to him I found him dead. He had cast the twiddling lines off, put his head between the spikea, and a kick of the wheel had broken hia neck. Another man had disappeared in silence. This day (which by-the-bye happened to bo Christmas Day) I felt much more calm, perhaps resigned ; I squared up the ship's papers, wrote up the log, ran up the ensign union down, and ate a good meal. The weather kept very light, we could not have fetched port under another week with a strong fair wind. As it was I felt it was a matter of indifference how the wind blew. I took the only remaining man down into the oabin for some time in the afternoon to put his signature aa witness to what I feared would be my last written words in this life. Then I told him, " Wβ will go on deck andbury the dead man." As soon as we reached the deck we saw no dead body. I had left the body on the quarter-deck half-an-hour before. It had vanished without a sound while we wore below. This visitation, or whatever it was, had come on. us in the full blaze of day. It had an even more awful influence on my mind thau the spiriting away of a living man. A living man might willingly or unwillingly do an act which won Id lead to his own destruction, however inexplicable circumstances might appear. Here was an apparent annihilation of an inert human body possessing of itself no volition. It was terrifying. For the first time since these gruesome events had come to pass on board the vessel I took drink ; I broke open a case of wine, and telling my remaining companion to drink, I poured the wine down my throat until I became unconscious. When I recovered my reason I found a number of my own countrymen standing around me, all strange faces, though I was lying on my own quarter-deck. I recollected all the horrors of the lest few days, and soon learnt what had come to pass. It was seen from my last ontry in the log, on the day I took the drink, that a whaler had fallen in with us the next day, and made out my signal of distress. On attempting to board with one boat they had found my decks in charge of my cargo, who offered resistance. The whaler then lowored nil his boats, and boarded with

his lances, after a short fight he drove the Kanakas below. Inspecting the ship I was found senseless in the cabin, the only white man on board. Tha captain placed a boat's crew and officer on board, with

me to navigate mo in. It was believed Ihut some of the Kanakas had been wounded, if not killed, wheu

the whaler boarded me, but none nvor presented themselves to be attended to, nor were auy dead bodies brought on deck. . The natives were not permitted to coiuo on deck again. The two barrels of finely broken bottles that always stood handy for an emergency, were emptied out, and the contents spread over the deck. An attempt was made by the savages to break ont, but a very short trial of their bare feet on the new pave-

ment sent them below howling to pick out the spliuters. I found myself very much enfeebled, and my nervous system entirely shattered by the trial I had undergone. I was hardly able to get about. But on the last night before we arrived in port, I took the officer in charge of the party on board, forward U> show him where most of the men had disappeared from. Eiand-

ing on the spot the look-out man generally occupied, the back of. my

thighs touched the sliding of the booby hatch in such a convenient way that it prompted me to sit down. Only for nn instant. I stood up again at onco. In rising I felt the support of tho seat elide from under me ; but that my weight had just come on my lesrs I must have fallen headlong back into twenty pairs of savage nrins waiting below to catch me. I le.ipt away with a cry as tho long dusky arms were flung up to reach mo. Out of tho darkness below there camo a vision of fifty sots of shining teeth, and fifty blazing eyes glared up at mo. They were foiled, but by an infinitesimal part of a second. The slide was flung back from bolow, closing with a loud snap. All was oxplninod.

Tho famishing cannibals in tho hold had found a trick by which they could push buck the bolt and staple fastening- of che hatch with a pieco of stick from below, and so gain access on deck at any time, but they had preferred to work with tho cunning and caution I have shown ; waiting until their prey was well within their grasp, and could neither help himself or call for help. On sending her cargo on shore thr-y counted out sixteen short, and the hold was strewn with cleanly-picked human bones. 1 will nevor return to the blackbird catching ; it gives mo a, turn to think of that voyage.