Read "The Death Ship, Volume Ii" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
We stood in silence for some moments, hand in hand; then finding Van Vogelaar furtively watching us, I quitted her side; at the same moment Vanderdecken came on deck.
I went to the foremost end of the poop and there stayed, leaning against the bulwark, my mind very full of thought. Though I had been in this vessel a week, yet now, as on many occasions, I found myself conceiving it to be a thing incredible that this craft should be the famous Death Ship of tradition, the talk and terror of the mariner's forecastle; and such a feeling of mystification thickened my brains that a sudden horror stung me from head to foot with the sensation the nervous are possessed with, when, in a sudden panic, they fear they are going out of their minds. But, by keeping my eyes fixed on Imogene, I succeeded ere long in mastering this terrible emotion, even to the extent of taking a cheerful view of my situation; first, by considering that, for all I knew, I had been led by the Divine hand to this ship for the purpose of rescuing the lovely girl from a fate more dismal and shocking than tongue could utter or imagination invent; and next, by reflecting that if God spared my life so that I could relate what I had seen, I should be famous among sailors as the only seaman that had ever been on board the Phantom Ship, as she is foolishly styled, eaten with her commander, mixed with her crew, beheld the discipline of her, and looked narrowly into all circumstances of her inner or hidden life.