The Ghost Pirates (Annotated) E-Book

William Hope Hodgson

• Herausgeber: ePembaBooks
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

• This edition includes the following editor's introduction: The sea as the origin of horror, an indispensable mark of William Hope Hodgson's literature

Originally published in 1909, “The Ghost Pirates” is a compelling and terrifying horror novel by English writer William Hope Hodgson. Hodgson is considered by many to be one of the best authors to ever write horror.

“ The Ghost Pirates” is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils (of quasi-human aspect, and perhaps the spirits of bygone buccaneers) that besiege it and finally drag it down to an unknown fate. With its command of maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power. - H.P. Lovecraft

Leseprobe

William Hope Hodgson

The Ghost Pirates

Table of contents

The sea as the origin of horror, an indispensable mark of William Hope Hodgson's literature

THE GHOST PIRATES

Author's Preface

The Hell O! O! Chaunty

Chapter 1 - The Figure Out of the Sea

Chapter 2 - What Tammy the 'Prentice Saw

Chapter 3 - The Man up the Main

Chapter 4 - The Fooling with the Sail

Chapter 5 - The End of Williams

Chapter 6 - Another Man to the Wheel

Chapter 7 - The Coming of the Mist and That Which It Ushered

Chapter 8 - After the Coming of the Mist

Chapter 9 - The Man Who Cried for Help

Chapter 10 - Hands That Plucked

Chapter 11 - The Search for Stubbins

Chapter 12 - The Council

Chapter 13 - The Shadow in the Sea

Chapter 14 - The Ghost Ships

Chapter 15 - The Great Ghost Ship

Chapter 16 - The Ghost Pirates

Chapter 17 - The Silent Ship

The sea as the origin of horror, an indispensable mark of William Hope Hodgson's literature

The life of the English author William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) is full of tribulations and curious anecdotes: he joined the merchant navy when he was very young, he tasted the gall of the sea (both the harshness of maritime life and the annoyance of his fellows, to the point that he had to prepare himself physically to face the taunts and quarrels of the sailors who harassed him). He turned to photography to portray life aboard ship. Fed up after eight years of sailing the seas, and using his knowledge and the work of his body, he ran a bodybuilding gym in an era before the cult of muscles. Finally, he tried his hand at writing, first with articles on physical education and bodybuilding and later with fiction. He survived on the emoluments obtained from the publication of his stories in numerous magazines, while his novels, although they won him some critical recognition, failed to meet sales expectations. He died during the First World War when he was hit by a German shell. It is fair to remember that he also earned a reputation as a saviour, a hero (in 1898 he received the Royal Humane Society medal for rescuing a sailor from dying in shark-filled waters).

His texts suffered the vicissitudes of the minor or peripheral writer. Hodgson's wife, Betty Farnworth, fought for her husband's work not to be forgotten, although it was thanks to the insistence of Mr. Herman Charles Koenig that it was recovered. Koenig was responsible for introducing his books to H. P. Lovecraft (another minor and eccentric writer, in turn), who discussed his work in the now famous monograph that the American wrote on the horror genre (“ Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 1927). It is true that Lovecraft, nevertheless, noticed more in Hodgson's novels than in his stories, and that he blamed him for his relapse into an anachronistic style.

The corpus of his literary production can be summarized in a collection of short stories and four novels: “The Boats of the Glen Carrig” (1907), “The House on the Borderland“ (1908), “ The Ghost Pirates” (1909) and “The Night Land” (1912). He also wrote poems, articles on various subjects and a navigation diary. In The Navigation Diary he wrote down the main activities he carried out on the ship on duty, with annotation of the schedules, as well as the practice of some distractions such as physical training -either with his punching bag or with weights-, the improvisation of a dark room to develop his photographs or reading. It is worth mentioning an article in which Hodgson details his encounter at sea with a hurricane, an experience that he documented with photographs. It was a thrilling and harrowing voyage as he steered his ship towards the eye of the cyclone, riding "over monstrous seas that kept on rising in a frightful manner..." Hodgson tells us of the impenetrable darkness, the deafening noise of the wind, the huge waves that lashed and tossed the ship, the strange light phenomena caused by the electrical apparatus, the wreckage and accidents, the fear of never getting out of that chaos. All this accumulation of events and experiences at sea seep into his works, both in some novels (“The Boats of the Glen Carrig” and “ The Ghost Pirates”) and in most of his short stories and poems. In the latter there is a perennial presence of the watery element: the sea appears personified as a wild entity, with all its might and strength subduing the human being, oblivious to any value system that is not the expression of its implacable laws. Nature wields before us its codes of violence. By the sea, some of the best poems are taken over by a voice that mentions death, that expresses the sensation of its imminence. Hodgson's stories can be classified under different headings. Most of them, and the best, needless to say, are of a marine theme. Hodgson never ceased to explore, from his own unpleasant experiences, the sea as a frame for his stories, the surrounding scenery of multiple nightmares, and as an atmosphere. A sea with which the characters will have to fight at every moment and in whose bosom awaits the unfathomable danger, the roar of horror. His literature is part of a long line that would include Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Let us keep in mind that the sea is an ambivalent entity that has been charged, over the centuries, with numerous representations and symbolism. It is a space of transformation, a giver of life (food) and death. It is a way of communication between peoples and of discovery of lands. Habitat of monsters and home of the unknowable. Its tempestuous waters have also been imputed to be the image of the subconscious. And the shipwreck, emblem of every crisis, of every misfortune. In its limitless extension, the sea resembles a frenetic desert, a desert in which the infinite solidity of the sand particles is replaced by the deadly gathering of myriads of water drops (and in each of them awaits the promise of drowning, of asphyxiation). Life on the high seas thus becomes a daily test of survival and a liquid experience of confinement. Whoever frequents Hodgson's preternatural stories will observe that he often repeats some motifs, some circumstances, even some threatening beings. Thus, for example, a sort of viscous and unreal matter, a living being similar to an immense mold, populates stories such as "The Derelict" (1912) or "The Voice in the Night" (1907). In both cases, the gelatinous mass devours everything alive in its path, only Hodgson does not throw the characters into a futilely accelerated plot, but plucks the same string over and over again, obtaining a music of increasing tension, embedding in the reader's mind the anguish little by little. Fear can have the face of ghostly presences barely interviewed (as in "The Habitants of Middle Islet"), or it can also represent the encounter with natural forces such as the arrival of a cyclone (its imminence barely insinuated within a setting where strangeness takes over everything as in “The ‘Shamraken’ Homeward-Bounder”). The sea entails an ungovernable force when it unleashes its destructive capacity. Apart from being an antagonist, it contains in its bosom, as if it were an immense aquarium, a host of beings, an accursed fauna: octopuses, squids and giant crabs. Also the flora, with the passivity that we suppose it, rises in the form of intimidation: hence to fall in the Sargasso Sea that Hodgson's idea constitutes the advent of paralysis and perdition. The impossibility of escape.

On our planet all beings have emerged from the waters since the origin. The primordial soup harboured the breeding ground for the first vestiges of cells to form. And, since then, water has played a primordial role. Millions of years passed before living things ventured fortunately to exist outside the oceans. Once they conquered the land, they adapted and disavowed their origin, even though their bodies only function through chemical reactions produced in aqueous media. For the terrestrial being, water is reminiscent of the origin and, simultaneously, a sign of the end, of death. To sail the seas is perhaps an exercise of archaeology in the memory of the original living forms, but also an attempt to play with death. Each wave resolves itself into the possibility of asphyxiation, of confinement. It is to this ancestral and perennial terror that the best pages of William Hope Hodgson tend to turn.

The Editor, P.C. 2022

THE GHOST PIRATES

William Hope Hodgson

To Mary Whalley

"Olden memories that shine against death's night— Quiet stars of sweet enchantments, That are seen In Life's lost distances… "

The World of Dreams

Author's Preface

This book forms the last of three. The first published was " The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'"; the second, "The House on the Borderland"; this, the third, completes what, perhaps, may be termed a trilogy; for, though very different in scope, each of the three books deals with certain conceptions that have an elemental kinship. With this book, the author believes that he closes the door, so far as he is concerned, on a particular phase of constructive thought.

The Hell O! O! Chaunty

Chaunty Man . . Man the capstan, bullies! Men … … Ha!-o-o! Ha!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Capstan-bars, you tarry souls! Men … … Ha!-o-o! Ha!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Take a turn! Men … … Ha!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Stand by to fleet! Men … … Ha!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Stand by to surge! Men … … Ha!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Ha!—o-o-o-o! Men … … TRAMP! And away we go! Chaunty Man . . Hark to the tramp of the bearded shellbacks! Men … … Hush! O hear 'em tramp! Chaunty Man . . Tramping, stamping— treading, vamping, While the cable comes in ramping. Men … … Hark! O hear 'em stamp! Chaunty Man . . Surge when it rides! Surge when it rides! Round-o-o-o handsome as it slacks! Men … … Ha!-o-o-o-o! hear 'em ramp! Ha!-oo-o-o! hear 'em stamp! Ha!-o-o-o-o-oo! Ha!-o-o-o-o-o-o! Chorus … . They're shouting now; oh! hear 'em A-bellow as they stamp:— Ha!-o-o-o! Ha!-o-o-o! Ha!-o-o-o! A-shouting as they tramp! Chaunty Man . . O hark to the haunting chorus of the capstan and the bars! Chaunty-o-o-o and rattle crash— Bash against the stars! Men … … Ha-a!-o-o-o! Tramp and go! Ha-a!-o-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Hear the pawls a-ranting: with the bearded men a-chaunting; While the brazen dome above 'em Bellows back the 'bars.' Men … … Hear and hark! O hear 'em! Ha-a!-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Hurling songs towards the heavens—! Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Hush! O hear 'em! Hark! O hear 'em! Hurling oaths among their spars! Men … … Hark! O hear 'em! Hush! O hear 'em! Chaunty Man . . Tramping round between the bars! Chorus … . They're shouting now; oh! hear A-bellow as they stamp:— Ha-a!-o-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o-o! A-shouting as they tramp! Chaunty Man . . O do you hear the capstan-chaunty! Thunder round the pawls! Men … … Click a-clack, a-clatter Surge! And scatter bawls! Chaunty Man . . Click-a-clack, my bonny boys, while it comes in handsome! Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Hear 'em clack! Chaunty Man . . Ha-a!-o-o! Click-a-clack! Men … … Hush! O hear 'em pant! Hark! O hear 'em rant! Chaunty Man . . Click, a-clitter, clicker-clack. Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Tramp and go! Chaunty Man . . Surge! And keep away the slack! Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Away the slack: Ha-a!-o-o! Click-a-clack Chaunty Man . . Bustle now each jolly Jack. Surging easy! Surging e-a-s-y!! Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Surging easy Chaunty Man . . Click-a-clatter— Surge; and steady! Man the stopper there! All ready? Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Click-a-clack, my bouncing boys: Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Tramp and go! Chaunty Man . . Lift the pawls, and come back easy. Men … … Ha-a!-o-o! Steady-o-o-o-o! Chaunty Man . . Vast the chaunty! Vast the capstan! Drop the pawls! Be-l-a-y! Chorus … . Ha-a!-o-o! Unship the bars! Ha-a!-o-o! Tramp and go! Ha-a!-o-o! Shoulder bars! Ha-a!-o-o! And away we blow! Ha-a!-o-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o-o-o! Ha-a!-o-o-o-o-o!

Chapter 1 - The Figure Out of the Sea

He began without any circumlocution.

I joined the Mortzestus in 'Frisco. I heard before I signed on, that there were some funny yarns floating round about her; but I was pretty nearly on the beach, and too jolly anxious to get away, to worry about trifles. Besides, by all accounts, she was right enough so far as grub and treatment went. When I asked fellows to give it a name, they generally could not. All they could tell me, was that she was unlucky, and made thundering long passages, and had no more than a fair share of dirty weather. Also, that she had twice had the sticks blown out of her, and her cargo shifted. Besides all these, a heap of other things that might happen to any packet, and would not be comfortable to run into. Still, they were the ordinary things, and I was willing enough to risk them, to get home. All the same, if I had been given the chance, I should have shipped in some other vessel as a matter of preference.

When I took my bag down, I found that they had signed on the rest of the crowd. You see, the "home lot" cleared out when they got into 'Frisco, that is, all except one young fellow, a cockney, who had stuck by the ship in port. He told me afterwards, when I got to know him, that he intended to draw a pay-day out of her, whether any one else did, or not.

The first night I was in her, I found that it was common talk among the other fellows, that there was something queer about the ship. They spoke of her as if it were an accepted fact that she was haunted; yet they all treated the matter as a joke; all, that is, except the young cockney— Williams—who, instead of laughing at their jests on the subject, seemed to take the whole matter seriously.

This made me rather curious. I began to wonder whether there was, after all, some truth underlying the vague stories I had heard; and I took the first opportunity to ask him whether he had any reasons for believing that there was anything in the yarns about the ship.

At first he was inclined to be a bit offish; but, presently, he came round, and told me that he did not know of any particular incident which could be called unusual in the sense in which I meant. Yet that, at the same time, there were lots of little things which, if you put them together, made you think a bit. For instance, she always made such long passages and had so much dirty weather—nothing but that and calms and head winds. Then, other things happened; sails that he knew, himself, had been properly stowed, were always blowing adrift at night. And then he said a thing that surprised me.

"There's too many bloomin' shadders about this 'ere packet; they gets onter yer nerves like nothin' as ever I seen before in me nat'ral."

He blurted it all out in a heap, and I turned round and looked at him.

"Too many shadows!" I said. "What on earth do you mean?" But he refused to explain himself or tell me anything further—just shook his head, stupidly, when I questioned him. He seemed to have taken a sudden, sulky fit. I felt certain that he was acting dense, purposely. I believe the truth of the matter is that he was, in a way, ashamed of having let himself go like he had, in speaking out his thoughts about "shadders." That type of man may think things at times; but he doesn't often put them into words. Anyhow, I saw it was no use asking any further questions; so I let the matter drop there. Yet, for several days afterwards, I caught myself wondering, at times, what the fellow had meant by "shadders."

We left 'Frisco next day, with a fine, fair wind, that seemed a bit like putting the stopper on the yarns I had heard about the ship's ill luck. And yet—

He hesitated a moment, and then went on again.

For the first couple of weeks out, nothing unusual happened, and the wind still held fair. I began to feel that I had been rather lucky, after all, in the packet into which I had been shunted. Most of the other fellows gave her a good name, and there was a pretty general opinion growing among the crowd, that it was all a silly yarn about her being haunted. And then, just when I was settling down to things, something happened that opened my eyes no end.

It was in the eight to twelve watch, and I was sitting on the steps, on the starboard side, leading up to the fo'cas'le head. The night was fine and there was a splendid moon. Away aft, I heard the timekeeper strike four bells, and the look-out, an old fellow named Jaskett, answered him. As he let go the bell lanyard, he caught sight of me, where I sat quietly, smoking. He leant over the rail, and looked down at me.

"That you, Jessop?" he asked.

"I believe it is," I replied.

"We'd 'ave our gran'mothers an' all the rest of our petticoated relash'ns comin' to sea, if 'twere always like this," he remarked, reflectively—indicating, with a sweep of his pipe and hand, the calmness of the sea and sky.

I saw no reason for denying that, and he continued:

"If this ole packet is 'aunted, as some on 'em seems to think, well all as I can say is, let me 'ave the luck to tumble across another of the same sort. Good grub, an' duff fer Sundays, an' a decent crowd of 'em aft, an' everythin' comfertable like, so as yer can feel yer knows where yer are. As fer 'er bein' 'aunted, that's all 'ellish nonsense. I've comed 'cross lots of 'em before as was said to be 'aunted, an' so some on 'em was; but 'twasn't with ghostesses. One packet I was in, they was that bad yer couldn't sleep a wink in yer watch below, until yer'd 'ad every stitch out yer bunk an' 'ad a reg'lar 'unt. Sometimes—" At that moment, the relief, one of the ordinary seamen, went up the other ladder on to the fo'cas'le head, and the old chap turned to ask him "Why the 'ell" he'd not relieved him a bit smarter. The ordinary made some reply; but what it was, I did not catch; for, abruptly, away aft, my rather sleepy gaze had lighted on something altogether extraordinary and outrageous. It was nothing less than the form of a man stepping inboard over the starboard rail, a little abaft the main rigging. I stood up, and caught at the handrail, and stared.

Behind me, someone spoke. It was the look-out, who had come down off the fo'cas'le head, on his way aft to report the name of his relief to the second mate.

"What is it, mate?" he asked, curiously, seeing my intent attitude.

The thing, whatever it was, had disappeared into the shadows on the lee side of the deck.

"Nothing!" I replied, shortly; for I was too bewildered then, at what my eyes had just shown me, to say any more. I wanted to think.

The old shellback glanced at me; but only muttered something, and went on his way aft.

For a minute, perhaps, I stood there, watching; but could see nothing. Then I walked slowly aft, as far as the after end of the deck house. From there, I could see most of the main deck; but nothing showed, except, of course, the moving shadows of the ropes and spars and sails, as they swung to and fro in the moonlight.

The old chap who had just come off the look-out, had returned forrard again, and I was alone on that part of the deck. And then, all at once, as I stood peering into the shadows to leeward, I remembered what Williams had said about there being too many "shadders." I had been puzzled to understand his real meaning, then. I had no difficulty now. There were too many shadows. Yet, shadows or no shadows, I realised that for my own peace of mind, I must settle, once and for all, whether the thing I had seemed to see stepping aboard out of the ocean, had been a reality, or simply a phantom, as you might say, of my imagination. My reason said it was nothing more than imagination, a rapid dream—I must have dozed; but something deeper than reason told me that this was not so. I put it to the test, and went straight in amongst the shadows— There was nothing.

I grew bolder. My common sense told me I must have fancied it all. I walked over to the mainmast, and looked behind the pinrail that partly surrounded it, and down into the shadow of the pumps; but here again was nothing. Then I went in under the break of the poop. It was darker under there than out on deck. I looked up both sides of the deck, and saw that they were bare of anything such as I looked for. The assurance was comforting. I glanced at the poop ladders, and remembered that nothing could have gone up there, without the Second Mate or the Time-keeper seeing it. Then I leant my back up against the bulkshead, and thought the whole matter over, rapidly, sucking at my pipe, and keeping my glance about the deck. I concluded my think, and said "No!" out loud. Then something occurred to me, and I said "Unless—" and went over to the starboard bulwarks, and looked over and down into the sea; but there was nothing but sea; and so I turned and made my way forrard. My common sense had triumphed, and I was convinced that my imagination had been playing tricks with me.

I reached the door on the portside, leading into the fo'cas'le, and was about to enter, when something made me look behind. As I did so, I had a shaker. Away aft, a dim, shadowy form stood in the wake of a swaying belt of moonlight, that swept the deck a bit abaft the main-mast.