The Stone Ship - William Hope Hodgson (best non fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

night, a slow lifting of the sea-bottom, owing to some action of the Internal Pressures. The rocks had risen so gently that they had made never a sound; and the stone ship had risen with them out of the deep sea. She had evidently lain on one of the submerged reefs, and so had seemed to us to be just afloat in the sea. And she accounted for the water we heard running. She was naturally bung full, as you might say, and took longer to shed the water than she did to rise. She had probably some biggish holes in her bottom. I began to get my “soundings” a bit, as I might call it in sailor talk. The natural wonders of the sea beat all made-up yarns that ever were!

The Mate sung out to us to man the boat again, and told the Third Mate to take her out to where we lost the Skipper, and have a final look round, in case there might be any chance to find the Old Man’s body anywhere about.

“Keep a man in the bows to look out for sunk rocks, Mister,” the Mate told the Third, as we pulled off. “Go slow. There’ll be no wind yet awhile. See if you can fix up what made those noises, while you’re looking round.”

We pulled right across about thirty fathoms of clear water, and in a minute we were between two great arches of rock. It was then I realized that the reduplicating of our oar-roll was the echo from these on each side of us. Even in the sunlight, it was queer to hear again that same strange cathedral echoey sound that we had heard in the dark.

We passed under the huge arches, all hung with deep-sea slime. And presently we were heading straight for a gap, where two low reefs swept in to the apex of a huge horseshoe. We pulled for about three minutes, and then the Third gave the word to vast pulling.

“Take the boat-hook, Duprey,” he said, “and go forrard, and see we don’t hit anything.”

“‘I, ‘i, Sir,” I said, and drew in my oar.

“Give way again gently!” said the Third; and the boat moved forward for another thirty or forty yards.

“We’re right on to a reef, Sir,” I said, presently, as I stared down over the bows. I sounded with the boat-hook. “There’s about three feet of water, Sir,” I told him.

“Vast pulling,” ordered the Third. “I reckon we are right over the rock, where we found that rum packet last night.” He leant over the side, and stared down.

“There’s a stone cannon on the rock, right under the bows of the boat,” I said. Immediately afterwards I shouted—

“There’s the hair, Sir! There’s the hair! It’s on the reef. There’s two! There’s three! There’s one on the cannon!”

“All right! All right, Duprey! Keep cool,” said the Third Mate. “I can see them. You’re enough intelligence not to be superstitious now the whole thing’s explained. They’re some kind of big hairy sea-caterpillar. Prod one with your boat-hook.”

I did so; a little ashamed of my sudden bewilderment. The thing whipped round like a tiger, at the boat-hook. It lapped itself round and round the boat-hook, while the hind portions of it kept gripped to the rock, and I could no more pull the boat-hook from its grip, than fly; though I pulled till I sweated.

“Take the point of your cutlass to it, Varley,” said the Third Mate. “Jab it through.”

The bow-oar did so, and the brute loosed the boat-hook, and curled up round a chunk of rock, looking like a great ball of red hair.

I drew the boat-hook up, and examined it.

“Goodness!” I said. “That’s what killed the Old Man—one of those things! Look at all those marks in the wood, where it’s gripped it with about a hundred legs.”

I passed the boat-hook aft to the Third Mate to look at.

“They’re about as dangerous as they can be, Sir, I reckon,” I told him.

“Makes you think of African centipedes, only these are big and strong enough to kill an elephant, I should think.”

“Don’t lean all on one side of the boat!” shouted the Third Mate, as the men stared over. “Get back to your places. Give way, there! … Keep a good look-out for any signs of the ship or the Captain, Duprey.”

For nearly an hour, we pulled to and fro over the reef; but we never saw either the stone ship or the Old Man again. The queer craft must have rolled off into the profound depths that lay on each side of the reef.

As I leant over the bows, staring down all that long while at the submerged rocks, I was able to understand almost everything, except the various extraordinary noises.

The cannon made it unmistakably clear that the ship which had been hove up from the sea-bottom, with the rising of the reef, had been originally a normal enough wooden vessel of a time far removed from our own. At the sea-bottom, she had evidently undergone some natural mineralizing process, and this explained her stony appearance. The stone men had been evidently humans who had been drowned in her cabin, and their swollen tissues had been subjected to the same natural process, which, however, had also deposited heavy encrustations upon them, so that their size, when compared with the normal, was prodigious.

The mystery of the hair, I had already discovered; but there remained, among other things, the tremendous bangs we had heard. These were, possibly, explained later, while we were making a final examination of the rocks to the westward, prior to returning to our ship. Here we discovered the burst and swollen bodies of several extraordinary deep-sea creatures, of the eel variety. They must have had a girth, in life, of many feet, and one that we measured roughly with an oar, must have been quite forty feet long. They had, apparently, burst on being lifted from the tremendous pressure of the deep sea, into the light air pressure above water, and hence might account for the loud reports we had heard; though, personally, I incline to think these loud bangs were more probably caused by the splitting of the rocks under new stresses.

As for the roaring sounds, I can only conclude that they were caused by a peculiar species of grampus-like fish, of enormous size, which we found dead and hugely distended on one of the rocky masses. This fish must have weighed at least four or five tons, and when prodded with a heavy oar, there came from its peculiar snout-shaped mouth, a low, hoarse sound, like a weak imitation of the tremendous sounds we had heard during the past night.

Regarding the apparently carved handrail, like a rope up the side of the cabin stairs, I realize that this had undoubtedly been actual rope at one time.

Recalling the heavy, trundling sounds aboard, just after I climbed down into the boat, I can only suppose that these were made by some stone object, possibly a fossilized gun-carriage, rolling down the decks, as the ship began to slip off the rocks, and bows sank lower in the water.

The varying lights must have been the strongly phosphorescent bodies of some of the deep-sea creatures, moving about on the upheaved reefs. As for the giant splash that occurred in the darkness ahead of the boat, this must have been due to some large portion of heaved-up rock, over-balancing and rolling back into the sea.

No one aboard ever learnt about the jewels. I took care of that! I sold the ruby badly, so I’ve heard since; but I do not grumble even now. Twenty-three thousand pounds I had for it alone, from a merchant in London. I learned afterwards he made double that on it; but I don’t spoil my pleasure by grumbling. I wonder often how the stones and things came where I found them; but she carried guns, as I’ve told, I think; and there’s rum doings happen at sea; yes, by George!

The smell—oh that I guess was due to heaving all that deep-sea slime up for human noses to smell at.

This yarn is, of course, known in nautical circles, and was briefly mentioned in the old Nautical Mercury of 1879. The series of volcanic reefs (which disappeared in 1883) were charted under the name of the “Alfred Jessop Shoals and Reefs”; being named after our Captain who discovered them and lost his life on them.