That Vanderdecken ever shifts his flag is not to be supposed. Yet there could be no mistake, for mark what follows: “Thirteen persons altogether saw her, but whether it was _Van Dieman_ or the _Flying Dutchman_, or who else, must remain unknown.” The ships in company flashed to know if the people of the _Bacchante_ had seen the strange red light, so that probably no “shadowy being” was ever testified to by a greater number of eyewitnesses. But the thing is placed beyond dispute by what followed. “At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the _Flying Dutchman_ fell from the fore-topmast-crosstrees, and was smashed to atoms.” And then, “at the next port we came to the admiral was also smitten down.” There was nothing less to expect, but indeed a very great deal more. An old sailor to whom I related this story said that certainly the appearance looked uncommonly like the _Flying Dutchman_, and for his part he was willing enough to believe it was; if he had a misgiving, it lay in the smallness of the trouble that followed. “The fallin’ of a young seaman from the masthead and the sarcumstance of a hadmiral being took wuss wasn’t consequences sufficient if that there wessel wur the genuine Phantom. The _Baykant_ (so he called her) herself oughter ha’ got lost. That’s what would have happened when I was fust goin’ to sea; but there’s bin a good many changes since then, and who’s agoin’ to say that that there curse ain’t growed weak like physic wot’s kept too long?”
But, be this as it may, there can be no doubt that Vanderdecken is still afloat, cruising about in a ship that glows at night, and whose rotten timbers are charged with the villainous quality of causing disaster and misery to vessels within the sphere of the horizon the ancient Batavian floats in.
This is a scientific age, and it is really time that we found out who this Dutchman is or was. Is there no man clever enough to devise a specific for the neutralization of the evil influence of an endevilled structure? Let such a medicine be discovered, and I’ll warrant no lack of able-bodied Jacks willing to embark in quest of the spectral pest. It would be a venture worth starting a company to undertake. “This company is intended to supply a want that has long been felt.” The object would be twofold: first, to render Britannia’s dominion of the sea more comfortable than it can be whilst Vanderdecken is suffered to sail aimlessly about with a freight of curses in his hold, and Death keeping a look-out at the masthead; and, secondly, to supply the public with an attraction. Well, it will be admitted that the _Flying Dutchman_ would prove a lucrative “draw.” Think of her moored just below London Bridge, and the charge a shilling a-head to view her, small boys half-price! We may take it that Vanderdecken is heartily sick of his hard-up and hard-down life off Agulhas, and would gladly settle down to an immortality of still water (and Hollands), without expecting an apology for the quality of the air of the Pool and the Isle of Dogs.