The Castaways Read Online Free Page B

As though beaten and herded, the ship fell away and gathered speed again. At each turn it sailed away from us, but always tacked again, and drew steadily nearer.
    There was no sound of a crew. No orders were shouted. There was no stamping of feet, no hauling of rope. The ship appeared deserted.
    I described all this to Midgely, who listened with growing dread.
    “She sounds like the
Flying Dutchman,”
said he.
    I knew the story of that ship; I’d probably heard it straight from Midgely. But he told it again as he stared with his gray eyes.
    “She’s been out here for centuries,” he said. “Sailing through the Southern Ocean, collecting sailors on her way. She plucks ’em from their boats, or hauls ’em dead from the sea. If you see her you’re doomed, if you ain’t already gone.”
    “An old wife’s tale,” said Weedle, with a nervous laugh.
    “She’ll be an East Indiaman,” said Midgely.
    I wouldn’t have known an East Indiaman from a duck. But Midgely described it as though he could see it himself, clear as crystal. “A long bowsprit. Three masts and a high stern. Big topsails and gallants.”
    That he could see with his dead eyes the very thing infront of us was more eerie than I could say. All the time it bore on, ever closer, as I tried to tell myself that there was too much solidness about it for a phantom.
    Boggis looked toward me with a frown. Weedle turned to Penny. All five of us were standing now, in the wallowing shell of our boat.
    When the ship was very close it turned once more. The sails slithered over rigging and spars. They filled with a volley of hollow rumbles, or flapped uselessly aback. The ship rolled with the change of the wind, and a ladder of rope spilled over the side, as though thrown by ghostly hands.
    The huge bowsprit passed above us, and the shadows of the sails slid over the boat, each hiding the sun for a moment. The hull was spotted with rust from iron nails, and the seams were gaping open. As the ship rocked back, and a passing swell sent us falling beside it, I saw seaweed and worms covering the planks. I fancied there was a smell of death in the air that wafted from the deck.
    Weedle and Penny were pushing each other in their hurry to reach out for the ship. Though I had welcomed the sight of it, I was not eager to get aboard.
    Neither was Midgely. “It’s the
Dutchman
, all right,” he said. “Tom, let’s take our chances in the boat. Stay with me, please.”
    But the sea surged down the dark hull of the
Dutchman
, and sent our boat soaring beside it. We rolled on the crest, then slammed hard against the planks. I heard a crack from our timbers, and a groan from the ship. Our boat fell away, only to rise again more quickly.
    “Push us off!” I said. But it was too late. We crashed sideways into the ship with a shock that stove us in. Our planks snapped; the ribs bent and broke. The sea came boiling through the bottom.
    I held Midgely by the collar as water filled the boat. It spluttered and burbled into the empty firebox; it covered the pistons and the hood for the paddle wheel. It rose up the side of the boiler as the huge ship went gliding past.
    Weedle and Penny jumped for the ladder, forcing the boat even deeper. Boggis managed to grab the rope with one hand, and with the other he reached out to help me. I lunged forward and clutched his wrist, still holding on to Midgely, who was shouting at me, for he had no understanding of what had happened. Then our faithful little steamboat vanished into the ocean, and the five of us clung to the ladder like my childhood beetles to their stick.
    Thirty yards away, the great shark that had followed us now slowly turned. Its fin came through the water with a spray feathering up on each side.
    We found a strength I wouldn’t have thought we still possessed. Benjamin Penny scrambled up the ladder with Weedle at his heels. Boggis tried to haul both me and Midgely, but the weight was too much even for him. “Go up!” I