did with her, you never knew how it would end. Ah! she was a wicked beast. … Or perhaps she was only just insane.’

He uttered this supposition in so earnest a tone that I could not refrain from smiling. He left off biting his lower lip to apostrophize me.

‘Eh! Why not? Why couldn’t there be something in her build, in her lines, corresponding to … What’s madness? Only something just a tiny bit wrong in the make of your brain. Why shouldn’t there be a mad ship?—I mean mad in a shiplike way, so that under no circumstances could you be sure she would do what any other sensible ship would naturally do for you. There are ships that steer wildly, and ships that can’t be quite trusted always to stay, others that want careful watching when running in a gale, and again there may be a ship that will lie to badly and make heavy weather of it in every little blow. But then you expect her to be always so. You take it as part of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a man’s peculiarities of temper when you deal with him. But with her you couldn’t. She was unaccountable. If she wasn’t mad, then she was the most evil-minded, underhand savage brute that ever went afloat. I’ve seen her run beautifully in a heavy gale for two days, and, on the third, broach^* to twice in the same afternoon. The first time she flung the helmsman clean over the wheel, but, as she didn’t quite manage to kill him, she had another try about three hours afterwards. She swamped herself fore and aft, burst all the canvas she had set, scared all hands pretty nearly into a panic, and even frightened Mrs Colchester down there in those beautiful stern cabins that she was so proud of. When we mustered the crew, there was one man missing. Swept overboard, of course, without being either seen or heard, poor devil; and I only wonder more of us didn’t go. Another voyage, one day—there was a little wind, but no sea to speak of—the mate hauls down the outer jib and sends some hands to stow it. That brute had been going along steady as a church all the morning. Directly the first two men got out on the boom, without any warning, she takes a confounded dive and snaps the spar short off by the cap. All in a minute, there she was up in the wind, with all the head-gear under her port bow, and only an old cloth cap tangled up in the wreckage left of the two men. Gone! Never had one single glimpse of either of them. Always something like that—always. I heard an old mate tell Captain Colchester once that it had come to this with him—that he was afraid to open his mouth to give any sort of order. She was as much of a terror in harbour as at sea. You could never be certain what would hold her. On the slightest provocation, she would start snapping ropes, cables, wire hawsers^* like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy, unhandy—but that does not quite explain that power for mischief she had. Not to me, anyhow. And I knew her well. You know, somehow, when I think of her, I can’t help remembering what we hear of uncontrollable lunatics breaking loose.’

He looked at me inquisitively.

‘In the ports where she was known,’ he went on, ‘they dreaded the sight of her. She thought nothing of knocking away twenty feet or so of solid stone facing off a quay or wiping off the end of a wooden wharf. She must have lost miles of chain and hundreds of tons of anchors, in her time. When she fell aboard some poor unoffending ship, it was the very devil of a job to haul her off again. And she never got hurt herself—just a few scratches or so, perhaps. Of course, they had wanted to have her strong, and she was. Strong enough to ram polar ice with. And as she began, so she went on. From the day she was launched she never let a year pass without murdering somebody. I think the owners got very worried about it. But they were a stiff-necked generation, all those Apses. They wouldn’t admit there could be anything wrong with the Apse Family. They wouldn’t even change her name. “Stuff and nonsense,” as Mrs Colchester said. They ought at least to have shut her up for life in some dry-dock or other away up the river, and never let her smell salt water again. I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably did kill some one every voyage she made. It was perfectly well known. She got a name for it far and wide.’

I expressed my surprise that a ship with such a reputation could ever get a crew.