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BY WILLIAM GILMORE SYMMES.

It was on a pleasant day in the month of September,
that I received a notification from the captain
of a small vessel, in which my passage for a
distant port had been engaged, apprising me of his
intention to sail immediately. I had been already
delayed for some days, the wind being in our teeth;
and, though still loth, as all young travellers usually
are, to leave home for the first time, the suspense
and impatience from waiting had been such, that
the hurrying call had the effect of something like a
pleasurable reprieve upon my mind, and I instantly
obeyed it. A few moments sufficed to complete my
preparations, and in two hours all hands were on
board, and the little swallow-like packet, under out-spread
wings, and a clear and beautiful sky, was
rapidly leaving the land. We had but two

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passengers beside myself, both equally young, and equally
new to the perils and mysteries of the sea; and for
a moderately long voyage, the prospects of enjoyment
were rather more limited than was desirable.
We were soon conscious of our mutual dependence,
and accordingly we entered into a determination,
each of us, to do our little for the common comfort
and gratification. What with striding the narrow
deck, half the time in the way of one another—
watching the land of our birth-place and homes
fast receding from our eyes, and calculating, with
many doubts, the various chances of our voyage, we
contrived, as may be supposed, to get through the
first day very amicably, and with tolerable satisfaction.
We were now fairly at sea. The plane of
ocean became rapidly undulated and more buoyant.
Broad swells of water bore our bark like a shell,
sportively upon their bosoms, then sinking with
equal suddenness from beneath, left it to plunge and
struggle in the deep hollows, until borne up by other
and succeeding billows. Space and density, in glorious
contrast and comparison, were all at once before
us, in the blue world of vacuity hanging and stretching
above, and the immense, seldom quiet, and murmuring
mass spread out below it. The land no longer
met our eyes, though strained and stretched to the
utmost. The clouds came down, and hung about
us, narrowing the horizon to a span, and mingling
gloomily with the surges that kept howling perpetually
around us, growing at each moment more
and more threatening and restless. Not a speck

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besides our own little vessel was to be seen amidst
that wide infinity, that, admirably consorted, was at
once beneath, above, around, and about us. Two
days went by in this manner, with scarcely any
alteration in the monotonous character of the prospect.
Still the weather was fine—the clouds that
gathered between, formed a shelter from the intensity
of a tropical sun, and, in that warm time and
region, were a positive luxury. But, towards the
evening of the third day, there was a hazy red
crown about the sun as he sunk behind the swell
in our front—a curling and increasing motion of
the black waters, rushed impetuously forward into
the wild cavern into which he descended—the
wind freshened, and took to itself a melancholy
and threatening tone, as it sung at intervals
among the spars and cordage; and, while it continued
of itself, momentarily, to change its burden,
appeared, with a fine mystery, to warn us of
a yet greater change in the aspect and temper of
the dread elements, all clustering around us. The
old seamen looked grave and weather-wise, and
shook their heads sagaciously, when questioned
about the prospect. The captain strode the deck
impatiently and anxiously, giving his orders in a
tone that left little doubt on my mind, of a perfect
familiarity, on the part of the ancient voyageur,
with the undeceptive and boding countenance of
sea and sky. Night came on, travelling hurriedly,
and cloaked up in impenetrable gloom. The winds
continued to freshen and increase; and but a single

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star, hanging out like hope, shot a glance of promise
and encouragement through the pitchy and threatening
atmosphere. The prospect was quite too
uncheering to permit of much love, or many looks
on the part of fresh-water seamen. By common
consent, we went below, and ransacking our trunks,
were enabled to conjure up a pack of cards, with
which, to the no small inconvenience of our captain,
we sought to shut out from thought any association
with the dim and dismal prospect we had just been
contemplating. He did not, it is true, request us to
lay aside our amusement, but he annoyed us excessively
by his mutterings on the subject. He bade
us beware, for that we were certainly bringing on a
storm. He had seen it tried, very often, he assured
us, to produce such an effect, and he had never
known it fail. His terrors brought us the very amusement
for which he was unwilling we should look
to such devilish enginery as a pack of cards. We
had not needed this, to convince us that the seaman
was rather more given to superstition than well
comported with the spirit of the age. He was a
Connecticut man, thoroughly imbued with blue
laws, Cotton Mather, &c., and all the tales of demonology
and witchcraft, ever conceived or hatched
in that most productive of all countries in the way
of notions. He lectured us freely and frequently
upon his favorite topic, on which much familiarity
had even made him eloquent. We encouraged him
in his failing, and derived our sport from its indulgence.
Believing fervently himself every syllable he

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uttered, he could not understand our presumption
in doubting, as we sometimes did, many of the veracious
and marvellous legends of New-England and
the “Sound,” which he volunteered for our edification;
and when at length, convinced of the utter
impossibility of overthrowing what, no doubt, he
considered the heresy of our scepticism, he appeared
to resign himself to the worst of fates. He evidently
regarded each of us as a Jonah, not less worthy of
the water and whale than his prototype of old; and,
I make not the slightest question, would have tumbled
us all overboard, without a solitary scruple,
should the helm refuse to obey, or the masts go by
the board. His stories, however, I am free to confess
for myself, and I may say for my companions
also, however our philosophy might be disposed to
laugh at the matter, had a greater influence upon
all of us than we were willing to admit to one another.
Upon me, in particular, the impression produced
was peculiar in its character. Not that, for a
single moment, I could persuade myself, or be persuaded
by others, that the mere playing of any
game whatever could bring down upon us the
wrath of Heaven, or “hatch a fiendish form upon
the deep,” but naturally disposed to live and breathe
only in an “element of fiction and fantastic change,”
I drank in every thing savoring of the marvellous
with an earnest and yielding spirit. He seemed to
have been born and to have lived all his life in a
“witch element.” He had stories, filled and worked
by this principle, of every section of the world in

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which he had sojourned or travelled. He had seen
the old boy himself, in the shape of a black pigeon,
in a squall off the capes of Delaware; and once, on
the night of the twenty-seventh June, had himself
counted the phantom-ships of the British fleet, under
Sir Peter Parker, as they were towed over the bar
of Charleston, in South Carolina, to the attack of
Fort Moultrie. What seemed to vex him the most
of these things was, that the Carolinians, whom he
pronounced a most obstinate and unteachable race,
refused to believe a word of the matter. But his
favorite legend, and that which he believed as
honestly as the best authenticated chapter in scripture,
was that of the Flying Dutchman, who was
driven out of the German Ocean; and in process of
time, and for some such offence, was doomed to a
like travail with the wandering Jew. This identical
visionary he had seen more than once, and on
one occasion had nearly suffered by speaking him.
It was only by dint of good fortune and bad weather
that he escaped unseen by that dreadful voyageur,
to be noticed by whom is peril of storm and
wreck and utter destruction. It was of this dangerous
sail he had now to warn us. We were told that
this sea, and almost the very portion which we now
travelled, was that in which the Dutchman, at this
season, usually sojourned for the exercise, with more
perfect freedom, of his manifold vagaries—a power
being given him, according to our worthy captain,
for the due and proper punishment of those who,
when his spirit was abroad upon the waters, dared

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to palter and trifle in idle games, sport, and buffoonery.
The voyageur evidently apprehended
much, and as the gale freshened, his countenance
grew more gloomy, and his words more importunate
in reference to those levities and sports which
we had fallen into. To pacify him we forbore, and
were compelled to refer to other resources for the
recreation which we required at such a time. There
were three of us, and we told our several stories.
The youngest of our trio was young indeed. He
was tall, slender, graceful; eminently beautiful, a
highly intelligent mind, and a finely wrought and
susceptible spirit. He was deeply in love, truly
devoted to the young maiden, and the short time
contemplated to elapse before they should again
meet, was one of great and bitter privation. Becoming
intimate from the circumstances of our situation,
and probably from certain innate sympathies,
we learned all these particulars from his own lips.
He described the charms of his mistress, gave us the
entire history of his connection, his hopes and fears
and prospects; and, in turn, we were equally communicative.
His name was Herbert.

The storm increased, and with so much violence,
that we were fain to go upon the deck, impatient of
our restraint below, though by no means secure,
even with ropes and bulwarks and a tenacious
grasp above. I shall never forget the awful splendor,
the fearful, the gorgeous magnificence of that
prospect. In the previous ten minutes the gale had
increased to a degree of violence that would not

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permit us to hang out a rag of sail, and the vessel,
under her bare poles, was driving upon and through
the black and boiling waters. Nothing was now
to be seen but the great deeps, and vast and ponderous
bulk and body which groaned with its own
huge and ungovernable labors. Horrible abysses
opened before us, monstrous and ravenous billows
rushed after us in awful gambols. Mountains gathering
upon mountains, clustering and clashing
together, threw up from the dreadful collision tall
spiry columns of white foam, that keeping its position
for a few seconds would rush down towards us,
like some god of the sea, bestriding the billows, and
directing their furies for our destruction. Under
such impulses we drove on, with a recklessness
fully according with the dread spirit that presided
over the scene; now darting through the waters,
occasionally rushing beneath them, then emerging
and throwing off the spray, that shone upon the
black and terrific picture, in a contrast as grotesque
as the tinsel ornaments upon the robe of a tyrant,
in the thick of the battle, or at the execution of
thousands. On a sudden our course was arrested
by a mountain of water, under which our vessel
labored. She broke through the impediment, however,
with a fearful energy. Another sea came on,
which we shipped, and the bark reeled without
power beneath the stroke. I was thrown from my
feet, and seized with difficulty by the side, the water
rushing in volumes over me. Again she sprung
up and righted, but with a shock that again lost

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me the possession of my hold. At that moment a
shriek of agony rushed through my senses; and
immediately beside me a passenger, one of my companions,
torn from his hold, was swept over the
side, into the unreturning ocean. He passed but a
foot from me, in his progress to the deep. How terrible
was his cry of death—it will never pass out of
my memory. He grasped desperately at my arm as
he approached me. He would have dragged me
with him to death, but I shrunk back; and his look—
the gleam of his eye—its vacantly horrible expression
will never leave me. The vessel rushed
on, unheeding; and I saw him borne by the waves
buoyantly for many yards in her wake before he
sunk. He called upon Heaven, and the winds
howled in his ears, and the waters mocked his supplications.
Down he went, with one husky cry that
the seas stifled; and the agony was over. That cry
brought a chilling presentiment to my heart. Despair
was in it to all. Though I seemed to live under
a like influence, there was a degree of strange recklessness
even in our scrupulous captain, for which I
could not, and indeed did not seek to account. I
felt assured we could not long survive. Our vessel
groaned and labored fearfully; her seams opened,
and the water came bubbling and hissing in, as if
impatient of their prey. Still she went on, the violence
of the storm contributing to the buoyancy of
the billows, and aiding her in keeping afloat. But,
amidst all this rage and tumult, the strife of warring
and vexed elements, there was yet one

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moment in which we were under a universal calm;
one awful moment afforded, seemingly by the demon
who had roused the tempest, that we might be
enabled adequately to comprehend our situation.
The feeling in this extremest moment was the same
with all on board, with no exception; and one unanimous
prayer went up to heaven.

It was but a moment. The winds and the
waves went forth with redoubled violence and
power. There seemed an impelling tempest from
every point of the compass. Suddenly a broad
and vivid flash of lightning illuminated the black
and boiling surges; lingering upon them sufficiently
long to give us a full glance of the scene.
Immediately in our course, came a large and majestic
vessel. She had no sails, but pursued a path
directly in the teeth of the tempest. She came
down upon us with the swiftness of an eagle. Her
decks were bare, as if swept by a thousand seas—
we were right in her path—there was no veering,
no change of course—no hope. the voice of the
captain rose above the tempest—it had a horror
which the storm itself lacked. It spoke of the
utter despair, which was the feeling of all of us
alike. “The Flying Dutchman,” was all he could
say, ere the supposed phantom was over us. I felt
the shock—a single crash—and crew, cargo, vessel,
all—were down, crushed and writhing beneath its
superior weight, struggling with, and finally sinking
beneath the exulting waters. But where was
she, the mysterious bark that had destroyed us?—

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gone, gone! no trace of her progress, except our
broken fragments—our sinking hopes.

There had been no time for preparation or for
prayer. The fatal stranger had gone clean over,
or, indeed, through us; and, though sinking myself,
it appeared to me that I could see her keel,
with a singular facility of optical penetration, cutting
the green mountains behind me, with the velocity
of an arrow. Around me, scattered and sinking
with myself, I beheld the fragments of our vessel,
together with the struggling atoms of our crew
and company. Among these, floating near me, on a
spar, I recognized the fair and melancholy features of
young Herbert, the passenger, whose love affair I
have already glanced at. I felt myself sinking, and
seized upon him convulsively. The spar upon which
he rested veered round, and, grasping it firmly, I
raised my body to the surface. He felt conscious of its
inadequacy to the task of supporting both of us, and
strove to divert its direction from me. But in vain.
Neither of us could prove capable of much, if any
generosity, on such an occasion, and at such a time.
Our grasp became more firm; and, while death and
desolation and a nameless horror enveloped every
thing in which we were the sole surviving occupants,
we were enemies, deadly and avowed enemies—
we, who had exchanged vows of the warmest
friendship—to whom our several hopes and
prospects had been unfolded with a confidence the
most pure and unqualified—we sought each other's
destruction, as the only hope in which our own

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lives could repose. He appealed to me with tears—
spoke of the young girl who awaited him—the joys
that were promised—the possibility of both surviving,
if I would swim off to a neighboring spar
which he strove to point out to me. But I saw no
spar; I felt that he strove to deceive me, and I became
indignant with his hypocrisy. What was his
love to me? I laughed with a fierce fury in his face.
I too had loves and hopes, and I swore that I would
not risk further a life so precious in so many ways.
The waters seemed to comprehend our situation—
a swell threw us together, and our grasp was mutual.
My hand was upon his throat with the gripe
and energy of despair; his arms, in turn, wound
about my body. I strangled him. I held on, till
all his graspings, all his struggles, and every pulsation
had entirely ceased. My strength, as if in close
correspondence and sympathy with the spirit that
prompted me, seemed that of a demon. In vain
did he struggle. Could he hope to contend with
the fiend of self, that nerved and corded every vein
and muscle of my body? Fool that he was, but
such was not his thought. He uttered but a single
name—but a brief word—through all our contest.
That name was the young girl's, who had his
pledges and his soul—that word was one of prayer
for her and her happiness; and I smiled scornfully
even in our grapple of death, at the pusillanimity
of his boyish heart. I had aspirations, too, and I
mocked him with the utterance of ambitious hopes.
I told him of my anticipated triumphs; I predicted

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my own fame and future glory, and asked the value
of his worthless life, in comparison with mine. He
had but one answer to all this, and that consisted
in the repetition of the beloved one's name. This
but deepened my frenzy and invigorated my hate.
Had he uttered but one ambitious desire—had he
been stimulated by one single dream of glory or
of greatness, I had spared his life. But there was
something of insolence in the humility of his aim
that provoked my deepest malignity. I grappled
him more firmly than ever, and withdrew not my
grasp, until, by a flash of lightning, I beheld him
blacker than the wild waters dashing around us.
I felt the warm blood gush forth upon my hands
and arms from his mouth and nostrils, and he hung
heavily upon me. Would the deed had not been
done. Would I might have restored him; but the
good spirit came too late for his hope and for my
peace. I shrunk from my victim. I withdrew my
grasp—not so he. The paroxysm of death had
confirmed the spasmodic hold, which, in the struggle,
he had taken of my body. My victory was
something worse than defeat. It was not merely
death—it was the grave and its foul associations—
its spectres and its worms, and they haunt me for
ever.

We were supported by the buoyancy of the ocean
alone, while under the violence of its dread excitements;
and I felt assured that the relaxation to
repose of the elements, would carry us both down
together. Vainly did I struggle to detach myself

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from his grasp. Freed from one hand, the other
would suddenly clasp itself about my neck, with a
tenacity only increased by every removal. His face
was thrust close into my own—the eyes lit up by
supernatural fires glaring in my own; while the
teeth, chattering in the furious winds, kept up a perpetual
cry of death—death—death—until I was
mad—wild as the waters about me, and shricking
almost as loudly in concert with the storm. Fortunately,
however, I had but little time for the contemplation
of these terrors. The agony of long
suspense was spared me. The storm was over.
The spar on which I floated, no longer sustained
by the continuous swell, settled, at length, heavily
down in its pause, and without an effort, I sunk bebeath
the waters, the corpse of my companion
changing its position, and riding rigidly upon my
shoulders. Ten thousand ships had not sustained
me under such a pressure. The waters went over
me with a roar of triumph, and I felt, with Clarence,
how “horrid 't was to drown.” Even at that moment
of dread and death, the memory of that vivid picture
of the dramatist came to my senses, as I realized
all its intensely fearful features in my own fate.
What was that fate? The question was indeed
difficult of solution, for I did not perish. I was not
deprived of sense or feeling, though shut in from the
blessed air, and pressed upon and surrounded by
the rolling and yet turbulent waters. For leagues,
apparently, could I behold the new domain into
which I was now perforce a resident, the cold corpse

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still hanging loosely but firmly about my shoulders.
I settled at length upon a rock of a broad surface,
which in turn rested upon a fine gravelly bed of
white sand. Shrinking and sheltering themselves
in innumerable crevices of the rocks around me,
from the violence of the storm that had raged above,
I was enabled in a little time to behold the numberless
varieties of the finny tribe that dwelt in the
mighty seas. Many were the ferocious monsters by
which I was surrounded; and from which I was
only safe through the influence of their own terrors.
There were huge serpents, lions, and tigers of the
ocean. There roved the angry and ever hungry
shark—his white teeth, showing like the finest saws,
promising little pause in the banquet on his prey.
There leapt the lively porpoise—there swam the
sword-fish, and galloped the sea-horse. They were
not long in their advances; I saw the sea-wolf prepare
to spring—the shark darted like an arrow on
my path, and, with a horror too deep for expression,
I struck forth into the billows, and strove once more
for the upper air. A blow, from what quarter I know
not, struck the corpse from my shoulders, and was
spent upon my head. My body was seized by a
power in whose grasp all vigor was gone, and every
muscle relaxed. On a sudden the entire character
of the scene was altered. My enemies assumed a new
guise and appearance, and in place of fish and beast
and reptile, I perceived myself closely surrounded by
a crowd of old and young ladies, busily employed
with a dozen smelling bottles, which they

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vigorously and most industriously employed in application
to my nostrils. Where was I? Instead of a
billowy dwelling in the sea, I was in possession of
the large double family pew in the well-known
meeting-house. I had never been to sea—had not
killed my companion—was not drowned, and hope
never to be; but the whole affair was a vast effort
of diablerie—a horrible phantasm of the incubi,
got up by the foul fiend himself, and none other, for
my especial exposure and mortification. The old
ladies told me I had been trying to swim in the
pew; the young ladies spoke of an endeavor to
embrace the prettiest among them; the gauntlike,
however, most charitably put it down to a spiritual
influence; as, entre nous, doubtless it was. So
much for taking late dinners with a friend, drinking
my two bottles of Madeira, and going to a night
meeting when I should have gone to bed.