The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories
“How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on
the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones
by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember it’s quite dark on the
lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar
on that deck he isn’t thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and
stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces.”
“Why?” I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of
command in which it was flung out.
“To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to
drag a man’s body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck
oars were left alone, of course they’d stop rowing and try to pull up
the benches by all standing up together in their chains.”
“You’ve a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about
galleys and galley-slaves?”
“Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But,
perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something.”
He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered
how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate
abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of
extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in
unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt
against the overseas, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate
establishment of a kingdom on an island “somewhere in the sea, you
know”; and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy
the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. I
had the consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of
purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.
When next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets for
the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words
tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most of
all was he drunk with Longfellow.
“Isn’t it splendid? Isn’t it superb?” he cried, after hasty greetings.
“Listen to this--
“‘Wouldst thou,’ so the helmsman answered,
‘Know the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.’
By gum!
“‘Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.’”
he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting
me. “But I can understand it too,” he said to himself. “I don’t know how
to thank you for that fiver. And this; listen--
“‘I remember the black wharves and the ships
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.’
“I haven’t braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it.”
“You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?”
“When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in
Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,
‘When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox.’”
He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was
shaking himself.
“When that storm comes,” he continued, “I think that all the oars in
the ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their
chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way, have you done
anything with that notion of mine yet?”
“No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world
you re so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of
ships.”
“I don’t know. It’s as real as anything to me until I try to write it
down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had
loaned me ‘Treasure Island’; and I made up a a whole lot of new things
to go into the story.”
“What sort of things?”
“About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a
skin bag, passed from bench to bench.”
“Was the ship built so long ago as _that_?”
“As what? I don’t know whether it was long ago or not. It’s only a
notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I
bother you with talking about it?”
“Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?”
“Yes, but it’s nonsense.” Charlie flushed a little.
“Never mind; let’s hear about it.”
“Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed
and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be
supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It
seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It is so real to me, y’know.”
“Have you the paper on you?”
“Ye--es, but what’s the use of showing it? It’s only a lot of scratches.
All the same, we might have ‘em reproduced in the book on the front
page.”
“I’ll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote.”
He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of
scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.
“What is it supposed to mean in English?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it means ‘I’m beastly tired.’ It’s great
nonsence,” he repeated, “but all those men in the ship seem as real
people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see
it written and printed.”
“But all you’ve told me would make a long book.”
“Make it then. You’ve only to sit down and write it out.”
“Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?”
“Not just now. I’m reading all the books I’ve bought. They’re splendid.”
When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the
inscription upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands,
to make certain that it was not coming off or turning round. Then...
but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding
myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private in a
corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible,
was “the Greek antiquity man.” The policeman knew nothing except the
rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage through all the
houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly gentleman called away
from his lunch put an end to my search by holding the note-paper between
finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.
“What does this mean? H’mm,” said he. “So far as I can ascertain it is
an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part”--here he glared
at me with intention--“of an extremely illiterate-ah-person.” He read
slowly from the paper, “Pollock, Erckman, Tauchnitz, Henniker”--four
names familiar to me.
“Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of
the thing?” I asked.
“I have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular
employment. That is the meaning.” He returned me the paper, and I fled
without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.
I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been
given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing
less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small
wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are
so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in
this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did
not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge
since Time began. Above all he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge
sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for
bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial
education does not include Greek. He would supply me--here I capered
among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with
material to make my tale sure--so sure that the world would hail it as
an impudent and vamped fiction. And I--I alone would know that it was
absolutely and literally true. I--I alone held this jewel to my hand for
the cutting and polishing. Therefore I danced again among the gods till
a policeman saw me and took steps in my direction.
It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no
difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came
to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph--drunk on
Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past
lives, and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I
could not hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both
into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as
new as it was to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my
patience to breaking point by reciting poetry--not his own now, but
that of others. I wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of
mankind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn
Charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to
imitate them; but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of
enthusiasm should have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.
“What’s the use of my telling you what _I_ think, when these chaps wrote
things for the angels to read?” he growled, one evening. “Why don’t you
write something like theirs?”
“I don’t think you’re treating me quite fairly,” I said, speaking under
strong restraint.
“I’ve given you the story,” he said, shortly replunging into “Lara.”
“But I want the details.”
“The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley?
They’re quite easy. You can just make ‘em up yourself. Turn up the gas a
little, I want to go on reading.”
I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing
stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what
Charlie did not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind
me I could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him
in good temper. One minute’s want of guard might spoil a priceless
revelation: now and again he would toss his books aside--he kept them
in my rooms, for his mother would have been shocked at the waste of
good money had she seen them--and launched into his sea dreams. Again I
cursed all the poets of England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had
been overlaid, colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the
result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the
muttered song through a City telephone in the busiest part of the day.
He talked of the galley--his own galley had he but known it--with
illustrations borrowed from the “Bride of Abydos.” He pointed the
experiences of his hero with quotations from “The Corsair,” and threw
in deep and desperate moral reflections from “Cain” and “Manfred,”
expecting me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow
were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was
speaking the truth as he remembered it.
“What do you think of this?” I said one evening, as soon as I understood
the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could
expostulate read him the whole of “The Saga of King Olaf!”
He listened open-mouthed, flushed his hands drumming on the back of the
sofa where he lay, till I came to the Songs of Emar Tamberskelver and
the verse:
“Emar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered: ‘That was Norway breaking
‘Neath thy hand, O King.’”
He gasped with pure delight of sound.
“That’s better than Byron, a little,” I ventured.
“Better? Why it’s true! How could he have known?”
I went back and repeated:
“‘What was that?’ said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
‘Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.’”
“How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and
go _z-zzp_ all along the line? Why only the other night.... But go back