Various - Stories of Mystery

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"What is the matter?" I asked the men.

"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."

"Not the man belonging to that box?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not the man I know?"

"You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who spoke
for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head and raising an end
of the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."

"O, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from
one to another as the hut closed in again.

"He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work
better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just
at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.
As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and
she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened.
Show the gentleman, Tom."

The man, who wore a rough, dark dress, stepped back to his former place
at the mouth of the tunnel.

"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at
the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no
time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn't
seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running
down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call."

"What did you say?"

"I said, Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear the
way!"

I started.

"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I
put this arm before my eyes, not to see, and I waved this arm to the
last; but it was no use."

* * * * *

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious
circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out
the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not
only the words which the unfortunate signal-man had repeated to me as
haunting him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had attached,
and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE HAUNTED SHIPS.

BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

Along the sea of Solway, romantic on the Scottish side, with its
woodlands, its bays, its cliffs, and headlands,--and interesting on
the English side, with its many beautiful towns with their shadows on
the water, rich pastures, safe harbors, and numerous ships,--there still
linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most of them
connected with superstitions singularly wild and unusual. To the curious
these tales afford a rich fund of entertainment, from the many
diversities of the same story; some dry and barren, and stripped of all
the embellishments of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of a
superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they resemble
the inland traditions of the peasants; but many of the oral treasures
of the Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast have the stamp of the Dane and
the Norseman upon them, and claim but a remote or faint affinity with
the legitimate legends of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic
outline of several of the most noted of the Northern ballads, the
adventures and depredations of the old ocean kings, still lends life
to the evening tale; and among others, the story of the Haunted Ships
is still popular among the maritime peasantry.

One fine harvest evening I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder,
of Allanbay; and, committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a
gentle wind from the east to waft us at its pleasure toward the Scottish
coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick; and skirting the land
within a stone-cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight
of the ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell
ascended beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit,
together with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came
softened into something like music over land and sea. We pushed our
shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the
serene beauty of the place. The moon glimmered in her rising through
the tall shafts of the pines of Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce
a cloud, showered down on wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling
beams of a thousand stars, rendering every object visible. The tide,
too, was coming with that swift and silent swell observable when the
wind is gentle; the woody curves along the land were filling with the
flood, till it touched the green branches of the drooping trees; while
in the centre current the roll and the plunge of a thousand pellocks
told to the experienced fisherman that salmon were abundant.

As we looked, we saw an old man emerging from a path that winded to
the shore through a grove of doddered hazel; he carried a halve-net
on his back, while behind him came a girl, bearing a small harpoon with
which the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey. The
senior seated himself on a large gray stone, which overlooked the bay,
laid aside his bonnet, and submitted his bosom and neck to the
refreshing sea-breeze; and taking his harpoon from his attendant, sat
with the gravity and composure of a spirit of the flood, with his
ministering nymph behind him. We pushed our shallop to the shore, and
soon stood at their side.

"This is old Mark Macmoran, the mariner, with his grand-daughter
Barbara," said Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear
in it; "he knows every creek and cavern and quicksand in Solway,--has
seen the Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man; has heard him bark,
and at every bark has seen a ship sink; and he has seen, too, the Haunted
Ships in full sail; and, if all tales be true, he has sailed in them
himself: he's an awful person."

Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something of the
superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that common rumor
had made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to maintain her
intercourse with the invisible world. His hair, which seemed to have
refused all intercourse with the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders; a
kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round his
neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments as far as
a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all conceivable colors, and a pair
of shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original structure
remained, and clasped on his feet with two massy silver buckles. If
the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his grand-daughter
was gay, and even rich. She wore a bodice of fine wool, wrought round
the bosom with alternate leaf and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric,
which, almost touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy
feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely seemed to touch the
grass where she stood. Her hair, a natural ornament which woman seeks
much to improve, was of bright glossy brown, and encumbered rather than
adorned with a snood, set thick with marine productions, among which
the small clear pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had
not trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young
Barbara's influence over the heart of man; but had bestowed a pair of
large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and
gentleness and joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint
Bees acknowledged their power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass
of Mark Macmoran. She stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel
in her hand, and seemed not dissatisfied with the glances I bestowed
on her from time to time, and which I held more than requited by a single
glance of those eyes which retained so many capricious hearts in
subjection.

The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our
feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines,
and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops
and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent
of white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the
Mariner, who, seated motionless on his gray stone, kept his eye fixed
on the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow in which
I saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he
looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on
the black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in
the quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and
desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them; and creeping inch
by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and
a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element
received.

The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped
his hands together, and said, "Blessed be the tide that will break over
and bury ye forever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers,
has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil
were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from
you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its
shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye!
Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the hands that joined
ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted
ye here! Seven times have ye put my life in peril, three fair sons have
you swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and now, even now,
your waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm
limbs in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and
that foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye
yearn for another victim; but it shall not be me nor mine."

Even as the old mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young
man appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his
halve-net in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark rose, and
shouted, and waved him back from a place which, to a person unacquainted
with the dangers of the bay, real and superstitious, seemed
sufficiently perilous: his grand-daughter, too, added her voice to his,
and waved her white hands; but the more they strove, the faster advanced
the peasant, till he stood to his middle in the water, while the tide
increased every moment in depth and strength. "Andrew, Andrew," cried
the young woman, in a voice quavering with emotion, "turn, turn, I tell
you: O the ships, the Haunted Ships!" But the appearance of a fine run
of fish had more influence with the peasant than the voice of bonnie
Barbara, and forward he dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne
off his feet, and mingled like foam with the water, and hurried toward
the fatal eddies which whirled and roared round the sunken ships. But he
was a powerful young man, and an expert swimmer: he seized on one of the
projecting ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp
of despair, uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the
prodigious rush of the current.

From a shealing of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the
spot where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning
on a crutch. "I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the
chield be drowning, that he skirls sae uncannilie?" said the old woman,
seating herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water. "Ou
aye," she continued, "he's doomed, he's doomed; heart and hand can
never save him; boats, ropes, and man's strength, and wit, all vain!
vain! he's doomed, he's doomed!"

By this time I had thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly
by Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart
superstition had great power; and with one push from the shore, and
some exertion in sculling, we came within a quoitcast of the
unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our aid; for when
he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing shriek of joy, and bounded
toward us through the agitated element the full length of an oar. I saw
him for a second on the surface of the water; but the eddying current
sucked him down; and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand held
above the flood, and clutching in agony at some imaginary aid. I sat
gazing in horror on the vacant sea before us: but a breathing time
before, a human being, full of youth and strength and hope, was there:
his cries were still ringing in my ears and echoing in the woods; and
now nothing was seen or heard save the turbulent expanse of water, and
the sound of its chafing on the shores. We pushed back our shallop,
and resumed our station on the cliff beside the old mariner and his
descendant.

"Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly," said Mark,
"in attempting to save the doomed? Whoso touches those infernal ships,
never survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them
at midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former
beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud!
Then is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin
windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamor of tongues,
and the infernal whoop and halloo, and song, ringing far and wide. Woe
to the man who comes nigh them!"

To all this my Allanbay companion listened with a breathless attention.
I felt something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed
I had seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner,
"How and when came these haunted ships there? To me they seem but the
melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to
warn people to shun destruction, than entice and delude them to it."

"And so," said the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in
it than of mirth,--"and so, young man, these black and shattered hulks
seem to the eye of the multitude. But things are not what they seem:
that water, a kind and convenient servant to the wants of man, which
seems so smooth, and so dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a
human soul even now; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level,
is a faithless quicksand, out of which none escape. Things are
otherwise than they seem. Had you lived as long as I have had the sorrow
to live; had you seen the storms, and braved the perils, and endured
the distresses which have befallen me; had you sat gazing out on the
dreary ocean at midnight on a haunted coast; had you seen comrade after
comrade, brother after brother, and son after son, swept away by the
merciless ocean from your very side; had you seen the shapes of friends,
doomed to the wave and the quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams
and visions of the night,--then would your mind have been prepared for
crediting the maritime legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish
ships would have had their terrors for you, as they have for all who
sojourn on this coast.

"Of the time and the cause of their destruction," continued the old
man, "I know nothing certain: they have stood as you have seen them
for uncounted time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy
coast have gone to pieces, and rotted, and sunk away in a few years,
these two haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has
a single spar or board been displaced. Maritime legend says, that two
ships of Denmark having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of
darkness and dolor on the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool
and the sunken rock, and were wrecked in this bonnie bay, as a sign
to seamen to be gentle and devout. The night when they were lost was
a harvest evening of uncommon mildness and beauty: the sun had newly
set; the moon came brighter and brighter out; and the reapers, laying
their sickles at the root of the standing corn, stood on rock and bank,
looking at the increasing magnitude of the waters, for sea and land
were visible from Saint Bees to Barnhourie. The sails of two vessels
were soon seen bent for the Scottish coast; and with a speed outrunning
the swiftest ship, they approached the dangerous quicksands and
headland of Borranpoint. On the deck of the foremost ship not a living
soul was seen, or shape, unless something in darkness and form
resembling a human shadow could be called a shape, which flitted from
extremity to extremity of the ship, with the appearance of trimming
the sails, and directing the vessel's course. But the decks of its
companion were crowded with human shapes: the captain, and mate, and
sailor, and cabin-boy, all seemed there; and from them the sound of
mirth and minstrelsy echoed over land and water. The coast which they
skirted along was one of extreme danger; and the reapers shouted to
warn them to beware of sandbank and rock; but of this friendly counsel
no notice was taken, except that a large and famished dog, which sat
on the prow, answered every shout with a long, loud, and melancholy
howl. The deep sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career
of these desperate navigators; but they passed, with the celerity of
waterfowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked many pretty ships.

"Old men shook their heads and departed, saying, 'We have seen the fiend
sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray': but one young
and wilful man said, 'Fiend! I'll warrant it's nae fiend, but douce
Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her
Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod
I would gladly have a toothfu'! I'll warrant it's nane o' your cauld,
sour slae-water, like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie's port, but right
drap-o'-my-heart's-blood stuff, that would waken a body out of their
last linen. I wonder where the cummers will anchor their craft?'--'And
I'll vow,' said another rustic, 'the wine they quaff is none of your
visionary drink, such as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips
in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they
sail in, which are made out of a cockleshell or a cast-off slipper,
or the paring of a seaman's right thumb-nail. I once got a hansel out
of a witch's quaigh myself,--auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot, whom
they tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore, but the cummer raise
as fast as they laid her down, and naewhere else would she lie but in
the bonnie green kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible fowk. So
I'll vow that the wine of a witch's cup is as fell liquor as ever did
a kindly turn to a poor man's heart; and be they fiends, or be they
witches, if they have red wine asteer, I'll risk a drouket sark for
ae glorious tout on't.'--'Silence, ye sinners,' said the minister's
son of a neighboring parish, who united in his own person his father's
lack of devotion with his mother's love of liquor. 'Whisht!--speak as
if ye had the fear of something holy before ye. Let the vessels run
their own way to destruction: who can stay the eastern wind, and the
current of the Solway sea? I can find ye Scripture warrant for that:
so let them try their strength on Blawhooly rocks, and their might on
the broad quicksand. There's a surf running there would knock the ribs
together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and commanded by
the Prince of Darkness. Bonnilie and bravely they sail away there; but
before the blast blows by they'll be wrecked: and red wine and strong
brandy will be as rife as dyke-water, and we'll drink the health of
bonnie Bell Blackness out of her left-foot slipper.'

"The speech of the young profligate was applauded by several of his
companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from whence
they never returned. The two vessels were observed all at once to stop
in the bosom of the bay on the spot where their hulls now appear: the
mirth and the minstrelsy waxed louder than ever; and the forms of
maidens, with instruments of music, and wine-cups in their hands,
thronged the decks. A boat was lowered; and the same shadowy pilot who
conducted the ships made it start toward the shore with the rapidity
of lightning, and its head knocked against the bank where the four young
men stood, who longed for the unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh,
and with a laugh were they welcomed on deck; wine-cups were given to
each, and as they raised them to their lips the vessels melted away
beneath their feet; and one loud shriek, mingled with laughter still
louder, was heard over land and water for many miles. Nothing more was
heard or seen till the morning, when the crowd who came to the beach
saw with fear and wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as they now seem,
masts and tackle gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name, country,
or destination could be known, was left remaining. Such is the
tradition of the mariners; and its truth has been attested by many
families whose sons and whose fathers have been drowned in the haunted
bay of Blawhooly."

"And trow ye," said the old woman, who, attracted from her hut by the
drowning cries of the young fisherman, had remained an auditor of the
mariner's legend,--"and trow ye, Mark Macmoran, that the tale of the
Haunted Ships is done? I can say no to that. Mickle have mine ears heard;
but more mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble
home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel: it was on
Hallowmass eve: the nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and
spell and charm were tried at my fireside; till, wearied with diving
into the dark waves of futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to
the more visible blessings of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle
courtship. Soft words in a maiden's ear, and a kindly kiss o' her lip,
were old-world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say
that I have been free of the folly of daunering and daffin with a youth
in my day, and keeping tryste with him in dark and lonely places.
However, as I say, these times of enjoyment were passed and gone with
me; the mair's the pity that pleasure should fly sae fast away,--and
as I could nae make sport I thought I should not mar any; so out I
sauntered into the fresh cold air, and sat down behind that old oak,
and looked abroad on the wide sea. I had my ain sad thoughts, ye may
think, at the time: it was in that very bay my blythe goodman perished,
with seven more in his company, and on that very bank where ye see the
waves leaping and foaming, I saw seven stately corses streeked, but
the dearest was the eighth. It was a woful sight to me, a widow, with
four bonnie boys, with nought to support them but these twa hands, and
God's blessing, and a cow's grass. I have never liked to live out of
sight of this bay since that time; and mony's the moonlight night I
sit looking on these watery mountains, and these waste shores; it does
my heart good, whatever it may do to my head. So ye see it was Hallowmass
night; and looking on sea and land sat I; and my heart wandering to
other thoughts soon made me forget my youthful company at hame. It might
be near the howe hour of the night; the tide was making, and its singing
brought strange old-world stories with it; and I thought on the dangers
that sailors endure, the fates they meet with, and the fearful forms
they see. My own blythe goodman had seen sights that made him grave
enough at times, though he aye tried to laugh them away.

"Aweel, atween that very rock aneath us and the coming tide, I saw,
or thought I saw, for the tale is so dream-like, that the whole might
pass for a vision of the night, I saw the form of a man: his plaid was
gray; his face was gray; and his hair, which hung low down till it nearly
came to the middle of his back, was as white as the white sea-foam.
He began to howk and dig under the bank; an' God be near me, thought
I, this maun be the unblessed spirit of Auld Adam Gowdgowpin, the miser,
who is doomed to dig for shipwrecked treasure, and count how many
millions are hidden forever from man's enjoyment. The Form found
something which in shape and hue seemed a left-foot slipper of brass;
so down to the tide he marched, and placing it on the water, whirled
it thrice round; and the infernal slipper dilated at every turn, till
it became a bonnie barge with its sails bent, and on board leaped the
form, and scudded swiftly away. He came to one of the Haunted Ships;
and striking it with his oar, a fair ship, with mast, and canvas, and
mariners, started up: he touched the other Haunted Ship, and produced
the like transformation; and away the three spectre ships bounded,
leaving a track of fire behind them on the billows which was long
unextinguished. Now was nae that a bonnie and a fearful sight to see
beneath the light of the Hallowmass moon? But the tale is far frae
finished; for mariners say that once a year, on a certain night, if
ye stand on the Borranpoint, ye will see the infernal shallops coming
snoring through the Solway; ye will hear the same laugh, and song, and
mirth, and minstrelsy, which our ancestors heard; see them bound over
the sandbanks and sunken rocks like sea-gulls, cast their anchor in
Blawhooly Bay, while the shadowy figure lowers down the boat, and
augments their numbers with the four unhappy mortals, to whose memory
a stone stands in the kirkyard, with a sinking ship and a shoreless
sea cut upon it. Then the spectre ships vanish, and the drowning shriek
of mortals and the rejoicing laugh of fiends are heard, and the old
hulls are left as a memorial that the old spiritual kingdom has not
departed from the earth. But I maun away, and trim my little cottage
fire, and make it burn and blaze up bonnie, to warm the crickets, and
my cold and crazy bones, that maun soon be laid aneath the green sod
in the eerie kirkyard." And away the old dame tottered to her cottage,
secured the door on the inside, and soon the hearth-flame was seen to
glimmer and gleam through the key-hole and window.

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