The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (16 page)

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the intention of doing this, when I saw a patch of colour flutter out from her bridge and climb slowly to the jumper-stay. With the naked eye 1 could make out the flags to be B.S.L , and rushing into the chart-house, I dragged out the code list and read the signal—' Is anything the matter ?' My mind was still too hazy to be able to think of any definite answer, for I found myself hunting about among the geographical signals. However, while idly turning over the leaves my eye lit on the ' Urgent' signal column, and the flags P.B.— ' Want immediate assistance,' and feverishly pulling the flags from their pigeon-holes, I bent them on and ran them up to the stay.

" Then, as I saw the steamer's propeller churning astern and a boat being lowered, ship and horizon commenced reeling round and heaving, a red mist swam before my eyes, and with the halyards still in my hands, I lurched heavily forwards, and everything became a blank."

The consul's constable stopped and sat gazing moodily at his glass. The second leaned forward and refilled it.

" And what became of the ship ? "

" Sold."

" Why did they sell her ? "

The second officer's curiosity was not yet satisfied.

" Well, what happened afterward I will have
td
tell you in the words of the second officer of the
Gascoigne.
He was a very decent sort for a

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The "Leonid.

"
It was myself—my features line for line, even to the deep scar you see on my cheek—and it was inviting me to peace and rest in the translucent depths below there. I must go. I felt I must; for there were the grisly corpses of my former shipmates urging me on from behind.

" At last, as with a supreme effort I tore my eyes away and cast one last imploring look at the relentless skies, my heart commenced to beat again for joy. There, not two miles away, was the French mail steamer standing down toward me, black wreaths of smoke pouring from her funnels. I think it was that throbbing pain of joy that came with the knowledge that I was near living human beings that saved me from stark insanity at that critical moment.

" The intensity of my relief so overpowered me at first that I cared not whether they saw me. I was not alone on the boundless sea with this charnel - ship. That was the only thought that tingled its way through my brain. There were living beings near me—beings who could speak, beings who would not glare at me so wherever I went, beings whose flesh was firm and sweet, not like these that hung in putrid tatters.

"Then came the horrible fear that they would

'pass on and leave me alone again, and with the

thought came action. If I was to receive help, 1

must hoist some signal. I was turning away with

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sickening thud to the deck. Then, as I leaned a little forward, I caught again the stare of those horrible, filmy eyes, and, with a shudder, I pushed the corpse far out from me and stood watching it as it slowly sank alongside.

" The eyes were still wide open, and after circling slowly down a little way it turned on its back and stared mockingly up at me through the clear seas as the arms, relaxed by the water, floated upwards as though inviting me to join it. Little bits of clothing and flesh floated round it, some still held to the corpse by strings and tendons.

" It sank out of sight at last, and I stood, I knew not how long, gazing horrified into the water, when I seemed to see the thing reappear again a few fathoms from the surface floating slowly upwards.

" I looked helplessly at it with its arms held toward me waving gently to and fro as it swung, then gradually the face was turned full toward me, and I staggered back with screams of mad terror.

" The face that looked up at me from below there was my own face. A terrible fascination drew me back irresistibly to the rails, and I stood looking down at my other self as it floated beneath the water smiling that sardonic smile.

"Twice, as my brain reeled with horror of the thing, I started to clamber over the rail toward it, and twice drew back shivering.

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This I dragged out, and with averted head made fast to the second officer's feet. The skin and flesh fell away from the softened bones as I touched hi m, and clung in shreds to my fingers, but I was calm with the stillness of despair, and hardly heeded the reeking stench of putrid flesh that arose when I disturbed him.

"With infinite pains I succeeded, weak as I was, in getting the body poised on the rail, and held it there, staring stupidly at the knotted muscles on the hands and arms, some of them showing blue and white, where the flesh had fallen away and left them exposed.

"What had I to do now? I tried to think. He had once been a shipmate of mine, this ghastly mass of rotting flesh, and a good sort in his way, though a little wild and given to aimless frolic. Perhaps he was sorry for it now. Ah, yes, the burial service. What was it? I had seen several poor fellows buried at sea, but now my bewildered brain would recall no word of the service but the ominous ' Commit the body to the deep.' Something came before that. What was it ? I asked myself wildly. I tried to pray, I who had uttered no word of prayer for long years, and never a prayer would come.

" All this time I was keeping the corpse balanced across the rail, and every now and then a great mass of the flesh would detach itself from the rest, torn away by its own weight, and fall with a

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hands clenched so tightly that I could see where the nails had cut into the flesh. He was lying on his back, inclined a little toward the left, but his head was twisted round until, glaring over his right shoulder, the glassy orbs were turned full on me.

"As I looked at him again I felt the hair rising erect on my head and the blood freezing in my veins. The eyes seemed fixed on mine with a leer of understanding that it seemed impossible could creep into the eyes of a man two days dead and well on the way to putrefaction.

"Then, while I stared in fascination at the dreadful sight, the snarl on his lips seemed to broaden into a horrible smile of savage triumph.

" I sprang up with a shriek that rang through the silent ship, and stumbled in terror farther from the grisly thing. But when I dared look again, the eyes had followed my movements, and were staring at me with the same grim, frightful malice. I whimpered like a little child in my anguish and horror; then I laughed long and loudly. I knew then, that if I was to preserve my tottering reason, I must get rid of those frightful corpses, that seemed to be luring me on to join them in that set smile of death.

" The prospect of action of some sort served to steady my shattered nerves. There lay in the wheel-house a few feet away a detached cog-wheel that had been used with the hand steering gear.

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engine-room, and thence into the stokehold. We had been about eighty or ninety miles off Cape Varella when the deadly meteorite fell, and perhaps if I could succeed in getting steam up alone I might make the coast or get into the track of vessels. At least the motion would blow that vile dust away.

"The boilers were still hot, and a thin jet of steam, singing through a leak in the stop-valve above, seemed to promise success; but when I opened the furnace doors and tried to rake out the burnt fuel, I found to my dismay that the pink dust, drawn by the draught into the fires, had melted, and, cooling again, had formed a thin metallic coating over the whole mass, binding it firmly together and making it impossible to break off the smallest lump.

" Back I went to the deck, with the vision of a livid, twisted fireman grinning at me in ghastly derision. I felt I was going mad, for I was babbling and laughing aloud. Why had I been reserved for this? Would to God, I whimpered, that I had not fallen down the ventilator! How long would it take to die ? Should I have to wander about among the grim dead until, my stock of waters being exhausted, I laid myself down beside them to die of the slow agony of thirst ? I sat down again and looked around. The second officer was lying on the deck a few feet away, his limbs extended to their fullest stretch, and the

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about the deck again, and it was beginning to choke me. I sat down with my back against the fiddley and tried to think. My nerves were thoroughly unstrung. I remember thinking with amusement of the numerous rats that had pestered us, and wondering how they had fared.

" Then I suddenly burst into tears and cried for half an hour like a little child. That seemed to relieve me, and after awhile hunger and thirst drove me down to the pantry in search of food. The steward had dropped in his tracks, and was lying athwart the pantry door, glaring at me with glassy eyes. I cowered back shuddering, until, hunger-impelled, I darted forward, and snatching a piece of meat that lay on the dresser just within the door, retreated; but the first ravenous bite I took caused me to spit it out and cough. It was impregnated with the terrible gas that had wrought such havoc among my shipmates.

" The water was the same, but I remembered the aerated waters that were kept in the ice-chest; being corked, they were undefiled by the gas, and with these and a tin of lobster which I found and opened I refreshed myself.

" Then I returned to the deck and tried to realise my position.

" I was alone on the wide sea with nothing but the rotting corpses of my former shipmates, staring at me with filmy eyes, for company.

" I rose in despair and wandered down into the

covering him over like a light veil. With an indescribable thrill of fear, I ran up on the lower bridge and looked around.

" The captain was lying, or rather crouching, at the foot of the upper bridge ladder, his eyes wide open and his face contorted and livid. A piece of his coat was stuffed into his mouth, and the teeth had closed on it, holding it as in a vice. He too was covered with the dust, and when I went up to him and tried to sweep it from his face the skin came away in my hand.

" I turned away dizzy and sick, and hunted through the ship. Nothing but the ghastly dead ! Dead but two days, and already rotting and putrid!

" I stood still and shouted, or rather I tried to shout, but my voice rose in a scream and quavered away to a groan. Nothing answered me but the swish of the water alongside.

" I found the second officer lying a few feet from the chart-house, his eyes fixed in a glassy stare, and the teeth drawn back from the livid lips in what seemed to my distorted fancy a savage snarl. Two of the engineers I found on the lower bridge with the same twisted limbs and contorted features, and covered with that horrible dust, but nowhere did I find a living being.

" The chief officer I never saw; perhaps he had leapt overboard in his frenzy.

" My movements were sending the dust whirling

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always been a thorn in our sides, and if the angels took careful note of what we said about it, all of us must long since have lost our chance of heaven. The builders had put it in her for convenience of Chinese 'tween-deck passengers, and whenever there was a bit of sea on that skylight used to get stove in.

" Now I blessed the skylight and blessed the builder who put it there. With a piece of dunnage wood I smashed the glass, and, climbing through the hole, found myself on deck.

"There I stood stock still, wondering if the sudden glare of light had affected my sight. Sea, deck, hatches, everything around appeared to my dazed eyes pale pink. To prove myself that my eyes were somehow wrong, I passed my hand across the skylight from which I had just emerged. It was covered by a light, impalpable powder, which the current of air raised by my hand sent circling up in clouds. The sea was glassy, and I could see the powder floating on and under the surface to the depth of three or four feet."

The consul's constable stopped and shivered a little, and the second officer silently passed him the bottle. After he had gulped down a few mouthfuls of raw whisky, he went on.

" I saw one of the Chinamen lying on deck, apparently asleep, but when 1 went up to him I uttered a cry of horror. The man was dead as a door-nail, dead and rigid, with the pink dust