The Ghost Ship | Page 3

grumbling at
the loss of so many turnips; the captain of the weird vessel
acknowledging the justice of the claim and tossing a great gold brooch
to the landlord by way of satisfying the debt; the deplorable fact that all
the decent village ghosts learned to riot with Captain Bartholomew
Roberts; the visit of the parson and his godly admonitions to the
Captain on the evil work he was doing; mere craziness, you will say?
Yes; but the strange thing is that as, in spite of all jocose tricks and
low-comedy misadventures, Don Quixote departs from us with a great
light shining upon him; so this ghost-ship of Richard Middleton's,
somehow or other, sails and anchors and re-sails in an unearthly glow;
and Captain Bartholomew's rum that was like hot oil and honey and fire
in the veins of the mortals who drank of it, has become for me one of
the nobilium poculorum of story. And thus did the ship put forth from
the village and sail away in a great tempest of wind--to what
unimaginable seas of the spirit!
The wind that had been howling outside like an outrageous dog had all
of a sudden turned as melodious as the carol-boys of a Christmas Eve.
We went to the door, and the wind burst it open so that the handle was
driven clean into the plaster of the wall. But we didn't think much of
that at the time; for over our heads, sailing very comfortably through
the windy stars, was the ship that had passed the summer in landlord's
field. Her portholes and her bay-window were blazing with lights, and
there was a noise of singing and fiddling on her decks. "He's gone,"
shouted landlord above the storm, "and he's taken half the village with
him!" I could only nod in answer, not having lungs like bellows of
leather.
I declare I would not exchange this short, crazy, enchanting fantasy for
a whole wilderness of seemly novels, proclaiming in decorous accents

the undoubted truth that there are milestones on the Portsmouth Road.
Arthur Machen.

The Ghost-Ship
Fairfield is a little village lying near the Portsmouth Road about
half-way between London and the sea. Strangers who find it by
accident now and then, call it a pretty, old-fashioned place; we who live
in it and call it home don't find anything very pretty about it, but we
should be sorry to live anywhere else. Our minds have taken the shape
of the inn and the church and the green, I suppose. At all events we
never feel comfortable out of Fairfield.
Of course the Cockneys, with their vasty houses and noise-ridden
streets, can call us rustics if they choose, but for all that Fairfield is a
better place to live in than London. Doctor says that when he goes to
London his mind is bruised with the weight of the houses, and he was a
Cockney born. He had to live there himself when he was a little chap,
but he knows better now. You gentlemen may laugh--perhaps some of
you come from London way--but it seems to me that a witness like that
is worth a gallon of arguments.
Dull? Well, you might find it dull, but I assure you that I've listened to
all the London yarns you have spun tonight, and they're absolutely
nothing to the things that happen at Fairfield. It's because of our way of
thinking and minding our own business. If one of your Londoners were
set down on the green of a Saturday night when the ghosts of the lads
who died in the war keep tryst with the lasses who lie in the
church-yard, he couldn't help being curious and interfering, and then
the ghosts would go somewhere where it was quieter. But we just let
them come and go and don't make any fuss, and in consequence
Fairfield is the ghostiest place in all England. Why, I've seen a headless
man sitting on the edge of the well in broad daylight, and the children
playing about his feet as if he were their father. Take my word for it,
spirits know when they are well off as much as human beings.
Still, I must admit that the thing I'm going to tell you about was queer
even for our part of the world, where three packs of ghost-hounds hunt
regularly during the season, and blacksmith's great-grandfather is busy
all night shoeing the dead gentlemen's horses. Now that's a thing that
wouldn't happen in London, because of their interfering ways, but

blacksmith he lies up aloft and sleeps as quiet as a lamb. Once when he
had a bad head he shouted down to them not to make so much noise,
and in the morning he found an old guinea left