The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1880-02-19
The Spectre Pilot.


raised her battered boom to catch the
rays OF the setting sun.
A thick glaze of ice covered her from
keel to rail-from truck to deck. Even
the ropes and sails We're partially stiff
ened with it.
Her whole appearance showed the
rough usage she had sustained among
the foes and storms of the Antarctic.
But little of her bulwarks on either
side remained. They had been stove
in and splintercd in many places.
The paint on her sides was worn
away; long streaks of rust extended
above and below her fore, main and
mizzen chains, and her hull was bruised
and battered from bow to stern.
All these things gave to her an ap-
pearance that was almost unearthly, and
which harmonized well with her name,
the Flying Dutchman, painted on her
stern. She was not, however, the
Flying Dutchman about which everyone
has read, and her captain was the good
Simon Pearl stern, matter-of- fact per-
sonage from the town of Salem.
The old water.dogs shook their heads
solemnly when they read the name
upon Pearls vessel as she lay off the
dock waiting for men. The Portuguese
sailor and the Spaniard crossed them
selves when they saw ii and, in fact, all
agreed that no good luck would ever at
tend a craft bearing the awful name of
the lying Dutchman.
But Captain Pearl refused to change
the name.
At last he succeeded in shipping a
crew-many of whom were green
hands-and the vessel sailed, the cap
tain carrying with him his pretty niece,
Mabel-a rosy, bright-eyed damsel of
twenty, who was an orphan, and who
had accompanied her uncle on previous
voyage.
Pearl had doctor on board-a good
looking young man OF twenty-five,
named George Lossing-who, the mo-
ment he saw Mabel and aOnversed with
her, decided that she would make an ex-
cellent wife.
In fact, she was intelligent, so mod
est, and with all her charming vivacity,
so plainly showed the "housewifery"
faculty in her neat management of the
cabin, and in certain occurrences of
manner, that she charmed the young
doctor.
In spite of her ominous name, the
ship, although meeting with many mar
row escapes in tie Antarctic Ocean, and
although frozen in the ice for months,
had received excellent luck in the whal-
ing line.
On this afternoon, in 1858, she was
bound home, full of whale and seal oil,
which would bring rich harvest to
Pearl (who was her owner as we'll as her
captain), provided she reached her des-
tined port of safety. Would she ever
reach it
This was the question often PROFOUND
ed by her crew.
Some of them were Of the opinion
that she never would, on account of hen
name, and all felt uneasy on the
subject.
On dark nights when the wind wa,
bowling around the craft, driving the ic'
before it, the watch would shrug thei
shoulders and peer through the gloom
as if every moment expecting &c beholC
some spectral vessel flying past them o.
ranging alongside.
But the ship had now shaken off tn
last grinding mass of ice from her sides
and illimitable extent Of clear water
glistening in the rays of tie sinking sun
sire tched before her.
Down in the cabin sat Mabel and tn
doctor, watching her red light COMM
through the window.
The girl had just promised to b
Georges wife, and he held both of he
hands in his.
THE sky is without cloud, she said
softly. 81 feel as if this is enblemat
ical of our future"