The Death Ship, Volume I by W. Clark Russell

But though, after this piece of severe reality, Captain Skevington had very little to say about such elusive and visionary matters as had before engaged us, it was clear from some words which he let fall that he regarded our meeting with the Dutch battleship as a sort of reflected ill-luck from the snow that had passed the Phantom Dutchman, and the idea possessing him -- as indeed it had seized upon me -- that the Lovely Nancy was sure to meet with misadventure, and might have the power of injuring the fortune of any vessel that spoke with her intimately, as we had, caused him to navigate the ship with extraordinary wariness. A man was constantly kept aloft to watch the horizon, and repeatedly hailed from the deck that we might know he was awake to his work; other sharp-eyed seamen were stationed on the forecastle; at night every light was screened, so that we moved along like a blot of liquid pitch upon the darkness. On several occasions I heard Captain Skevington say that he would sooner have parted with twenty guineas than have boarded, or had anything to do with, the snow. Happily, the adventure with the Dutchman led the seamen to suppose that the master's anxiety wholly concerned the ships of the enemy; for had it got forward that the Lovely Nancy had sighted Vanderdecken's craft off the Agulhas, I don't question that they would have concluded our meeting with the snow boded no good to us, that we were likely ourselves to encounter the spectral ship -- if indeed she were a phantasm, and not a substantial fabric, as I myself deemed -- and so perhaps have refused to work the Saracen beyond Table Bay.

At that Settlement it was necessary we should call for water, fresh provisions and the like; and on the sixth of July, in the year 1796, we safely entered the Bay and let go our anchor, nothing of the least consequence to us having happened since we were chased, the weather being fine with light winds ever since the strong breeze before which we had run, died away.