Eight Bells

Captain Jones stood upon the forecastle of the Narcissus, his iron-grey eyes scanning the wall of mist approaching from the ship’s bow. Lackluster winds gently pushed his greatcoat fitfully about before dying away with almost a whimper. The turgid green water ceased to churn, but still rippled sullenly.

“What’s ‘e going to do now?” muttered Harrow to Jeremiah.

“Not much ‘e can do,” Jeremiah replied, pulling his tri-corner from his head and letting the lasts sighs of the wind ruffle his hair. “Wind’s gone. We’re becalmed ‘till the wind comes back.” He gestured with his eyes at the stained and dirty sails hanging limply from their spars.

“’E’ll know what to do. The Cap’n always know.” Harrow nodded almost to himself, as if trying to reaffirm his faith in his commander.

The captain turned to his grizzled first mate and said something Jeremiah couldn’t hear. The mate turned and bellowed “Sweeps!”

Immediately the crew of the Narcissus ran back and forth across her scarred oaken decks and ran out the immense oars, intended to make way for a becalmed ship.

“You don’t think the Cap’n’ll keep us at this all night, do you?” asked Harrow as he and Jeremiah ran out their sweep. “This ‘ere mist could be miles deep!”

“He wants to get through it and leave it behind. Nothin’ but evil lurks in these mists.”

The voice came from behind. Jeremiah turned around and was face to face with old Clive.

“It’s just a mist, Clive,” Jeremiah said. “The sails will be soaked through, but nothin’ more.”

“Aye, that what ye think,” Clive replied, his rheumy eyes wandering toward the approaching gray wall of fog. “I’ve seen mists like these before, when I was but a lad like ye’self. ‘Twas before Napoleon took to the sea agin ‘is Majesty, King George.”

Jeremiah’s eyes went wide. Everyone knew that Clive, the ship’s steward, was ancient. But no one knew just how ancient. Just when they had it figured out, he recounted an experience from still further back in history which he had presumably witnessed firsthand. Jeremiah was not sure how true these stories were, but they made for good tales across a mug of grog in the evenings below decks, after Clive had finished cooking the Captain’s meal.

“T’was in oh-one,” Clive went on as the sweeps began to move the ship sluggishly forward. “On the Empire of Olympia I was, just a lad working the rigging. A regular monkey up there, I was!”

The mists closed in on the Narcissus, gently enfolding the rigging in swirling tendrils of gray as Clive continued.

“We was making our run to Port Royale, India rubber in our ‘old. The Cap’n was in a hurry, and wanted to be back to Gibraltar wi’ a load o’ rum. About two days out o’ the strait, right on the Line. The wind died, and the mists rose up like the very spirits of the dead during the Witching Hour.”

Despite his skepticism, Jeremiah felt something crawl within his guts in response to Clive’s visceral storytelling. He pushed harder at his sweep, hoping the exertion would drive it away.

“It was then that we saw her.”

“Saw what, Clive?” panted Harrow from behind his sweep as he struggled to stay in rhythm.

“The Flying Dutchman. I was in the crow’s nest at the Cap’n's orders, trying to see over the mists when I caught a glimpse.”

Jeremiah snorted. “The Flying Dutchman’s just an old fairy tale, Clive. Everyone know that.”

“I saw wi’ me own eyes,” Clive’s voice retorted. Then it lowered. “The mists came up to just ‘low the topgallants. And I saw her spars, with just a few ragged scraps of sailcloth.”

Jeremiah felt his guts crawl again.

“There wa’nt a breath o’ wind to be had, but she was underway, moving like . . . “ Clive paused, looking for the words. “Like hot tar down the side of a barrel. She ‘ad no dance to her, no rocking or pitching. Like she was . . . flying.”

“What happened next?” Harrow was breathless, his eyes wide. The rest of the crew was nearly entranced behind their sweeps at the story, causing the ship to lose way. The mate bellowed at them to pick up the pace.

Clive’s eyes seemed to turn inward. A dark look crossed his brow as memories surfaced like bloated bodies.

“It were under the moonlight, I saw her lookout. ‘Twas a man in the crow’s nest. As the Dutchman flew by, ‘e looked right at me.”

Clive shook his head.

“No man could describe what was in ‘is eyes. It was death that looked out of ‘em. It was eternity.”

Clive slowly turned and began walking away, his arthritic feet padding gingerly across the wooden deck.

“What happened next?” asked Jeremiah, despite himself.

Clive stopped and slowly turned, like a ship coming about.

“They passed by,” he said quietly. “The mists swallowed her and she was gone. Soon, the mist blew away, like a fading dream, and the wind came back.”

Clive examined the deck for a moment.

“They say that at eight bells, the Flying Dutchman takes a few souls from another ship. Must do so to keep up her crew, souls condemned to sail for eternity wi’out e’er seeing port.”

The mist had become so thick, that Clive’s eyes were no longer visible.

“We lost two men that night over the side. Heavy fog makes for treacherous work, I warrant. We should take care in this mist,” he concluded.

Clive walked away toward the quarterdeck, already hidden from view by the milky haze of mist.

“Do you believe any of that?” Jeremiah asked Harrow with a bravado he didn’t entirely feel.

Harrow was casting his eyes about, trying to see something in the mists and failing.

“I dunno. God put so many things on this ‘ere Earth, how can we know ‘em all?”

Jeremiah said nothing to this, but continued pushing at his sweep throughout the night.

The ship rang six bells – eleven o’clock – and nothing had changed, but the burning fatigue in Jeremiah’s arms. They pulled away, not feeling the least bit sleepy. A faint glow from above suggested the presence of a full moon, struggling mightily to shine through the mist.

The mist itself had become so thick, that Jeremiah could barely see the men at the sweep in front of him. He couldn’t see the next sweep at all. The gunwales and rigging vanished into the fog.

Then the smell drifted in.

At first, it was a mere suggestion of a stench which pricked the crew’s nostrils. Jeremiah made a face.

“What’s this? Do you smell that?”

Harrow nodded.

“Like rotting timbers, it is. I smelled somethin’ like this below deck of a whaler. Worms got into the wood.”

“A right disagreeable smell, this is.”

The smell got worse as they pulled, and something else joined it, something just beneath the smell of rotting wood. It was the smell of something ancient,once alive, but now musty with corruption. It wafted in just below the smell of decaying timbers.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Harrow. “What could ‘at be out there?”

Jeremiah shuddered.

“Nothing good, mate.”

The smell increased in intensity and seemed to thicken in the muggy atmosphere. The men coughed at their sweeps, gagging on the stench that tried to infect them through their lungs. Something else appeared. A sound, barely audible beneath the swishing of the Narcissus’s sweeps, began to intrude. It was a liquid rushing sound, getting closer.

“Jerry?” said Harrow timidly.

“Aye?”

“That sound like a ship underway?”

“Ain’t no wind to make way. You’re ‘earing things, mate!”

But Jeremiah heard it too: the unmistakable gentle rushing sound of a hull cutting through the water. It came closer, and as it reached their larboard bow, he could no longer ignore it.

How could they be underway without wind? Jeremiah wondered.

Harrow had the same thought.

“It’s the Devil,” he whispered. “’E’s sailing the Flying Dutchman!”

“Shut it! You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”

Harrow bowed his head and began to pray, even as he pulled at his sweep, and Jeremiah could feel his guts turning to water.

What if the legends are true? What if something unholy is passing us in the night?

The sound of the other ship’s hull, invisible through the mist, came even with their larboard beam. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away. It may as well have been a hundred miles, for all the terrified crew of the Narcissus could see. But it was there, in its suffocating presence, and the smell was overwhelming. Jeremiah could hear some of the men retching.

Below decks, he heard something clatter and fall with a thump which was swallowed up in the mist.

“God save us!” someone moaned a few stations back. Jeremiah wanted more than anything to cry out and give in to the terror, to run below decks and hide in the hold from the horrible thing which was passing by. Instead he gritted his teeth and pulled even harder. The Narcissus continued to creep forward under the weakening power of the men at the sweeps.

Very soon, the ominous sound of the other ship began to fade into the ship’s quarter. Jeremiah thought he imagined the horrible smell lessening, but soon it faded as well. His breath came easier, as if liberated from the choking wetness around him. The light of the moon seemed to rise a bit as the sound of the other ship faded away.

“Oi, I think the smell’s goin’,” Jeremiah said. He sniffed the air to confirm.

Around them, the Narcissus slowly became visible as the mist evaporated. Jeremiah could see the Captain standing on the forecastle, his head tilted upward to gauge the visibility of the rigging above.

As the last of the mist and stench faded into the quiet moonlit night, the wind began caressing the sails once again, and the canvas tautened.

“Sweeps in!” called the First Mate.

The crew eagerly rushed to comply.

As Jeremiah rubbed his sore hands, he turned to Harrow, and was met with a grin.

“Nothin’ like a bit o’ excitement in the night, eh, Jerry?” said Harrow, the relief in his voice as palpable as the wind filling the sails. “I’m not sure there was e’en anything out there, except maybe a rotting whale carcass!”

Jeremiah responded with a wan smile. The smell still lingered in his nostrils, the only evidence of any sort of encounter in the mist. Right now, the only thing he wanted was his second daily ration of grog, still unused. As he walked toward the hatch, a deck hand burst forth.

“Captain, sir! Captain, sir!”

Captain Jones came running, his boots thudding on deck like cannon shots.

He dashed below, followed closely by the First Mate. Jeremiah and Harrow joined the gaggle of sailors crowding the hatch and saw the Captain and the ship’s surgeon standing over the prone body of Clive. Clive’s eyes were open and wide, staring lifelessly at the hatch, an expression of horror transfixed upon his pale, wrinkled face. In his left hand he clutched a rosary, gleaming faintly in the moonlight.

“How ‘bout that, then?” said Harrow in wonder. “His heart gave out!”

“Did you know he was a Catholic?” asked Jeremiah.

Harrow shook his head.

“Poor heathen! Wonder what God will do wi’ ‘is soul. Take ‘im up to heaven, He will. Clive was one o’ God’s creatures too, I warrant.”

Jeremiah didn’t answer. As the last of the mist faded away, the moonlight now shone fully on the still form on deck, giving it the appearance of a ghost. Jeremiah stepped back from the hatch and looked aft, in the direction from which they had come. He saw nothing, but for a moment, he thought he heard in the distance, the faint sound of eight bells being struck.