When l first met Hendrick van de Zee it never occurred to me that he was not like other men. Even now my reason rebels at what it is required to believe of him.

It began one night in early spring. l'd stumbled on a curious manuscript written by hand in 17th century Dutch and purporting to be the confession of the Flying Dutchman. l was having some difficulty with the translation, it was not a night for work, the moon was at the full, high over the sea, erotic and disturbing, l could hear the gypsy singer in the tavern below. l decided to go down and look for Pandora.

l found Pandora in the tavern with the young men who surrounded her. l was as much a slave of Pandora as they were. A few nights later Pandora came to my room, l was trying to reconstruct some pottery and Pandora wandered onto the balcony to look through my telescope.
She commented on the yacht which had appeared in the bay. l told her it probably belonged to the Flying Dutchman, a sailor doomed to sail the seas for eternity. She found this exciting and resolved to swim to the boat to greet the owner, l protested about the time but Pandora was already running for the door and in minutes was running down the beach towards the sea and van de Zee's yacht.

Later she told me that when she boarded his yacht he was painting a portrait which looked exactly like her. This alone intrigued and unsettled her and l noticed she wasn't quite as self assured as usual and had a slightly distant air about her.

Pandoras new friend had moved into a cottage in the gardens of the local hotel and was accepted without question by the social circle that revolved around Pandora. He was a man of vast culture with a knowledge of antiquities exceeding my own, even though l would have only put his age around 30 years.
Van de Zee would often listen to Pandora playing the piano, there was something in his manner when he listened to Pandora playing, he seemed rapt, transported to another world, l sensed an almost desperate ecstasy in his enjoyment. l was moved without quite knowing why. A sense of doom took hold of me. l know now how much they were in love but l have the idea they never spoke of it.

My apprehension gradually subsided until an incident occurred, so astonishing, that l could not have believed it if l hadn't witnessed it with my own eyes.

Van de Zee had come to my room to borrow a book of poetry and l asked him to help me with the translation of the Dutchmans manuscript, when l mentioned it purported to be the journal of the Flying Dutchman, van de Zee went silent. l thought l had offended him in some way but after a few minutes he said he would gladly help me and the translation would not present a problem.

His own story told in the hope of divine grace and merciful absolution.
Shun blasphemous rage and pity him his punishment.

It was her face. It was her face still, though now white and cold as marble. She would not smile at me any more in the sweet way she had of smiling, but it was still her face. The face I had seen in my mind's eye, carried in my heart of hearts through the days, weeks, months of my long voyage.
I had my own ship now and was vain of two things, my captaincy and my beautiful young wife, whose face was as innocent as a flower and as transparent as a child's.

I could have sworn upon that innocence as one swears by the holy mother of God. It was this face that I had before me when I withdrew from my ship's officers and their carousing. It was to this face that I had yearned in the endless hours of the night watch. It was to her that I had returned at last, my hands and pockets full of earrings and necklaces and circlets for her delicate arms, souvenirs of strange lands to beguile and delight her.

How I adored her pleasure in my gifts and to have found her faithless!, It was incredible and yet I could not doubt it.
My mind was a hive of swarming gadflies whose stings were my remorseless thoughts, I had shameful and bestial imaginings of her unfaithfulness. There was no cure for this but the knife! With one bloody blow I killed all that I loved on God's earth. It was still her face, so pure, how could it be so pure?

It was not a man but a walking emptiness that they led away to dungeons and courtrooms. And when my judgment was pronounced and the magistrate asked me whether I had anything to say I found words to speak so vain, so extravagant, so mad, such fateful words...

"The evil is done and cannot be undone. This bloody death I still should do and do again ten thousand times before I hang tomorrow. Send me then no priest to shroud me, I beseech no mercy nor plead any justice. Eternal penance be my comfort. Let mortal fools live in a wicked world, faith is a lie and God Himself is chaos! Faith is a lie and heaven a deception! A man might have immortal life and wander for all the generations of man over all the oceans of the world, let him sail to the edge of Doomsday he will find no woman faithful and fair. If this be folly then upon me let the Divinity that I reject make what sport he will of my immortal soul!"

The courtroom fell silent and the magistrate spoke,
"I tremble for the soul that will depart your body tomorrow. For the God you have blasphemed will judge your words as I have judged your deed. You have taken a life and yours is forfeit. Tomorrow you will die. But the part of you that does not die, the immortal part, what of that? He who knows our thoughts will He not hear our words? I pity you not my doom, but God's!"

I awoke in the dead of night from a deep sleep, a sleep it seemed of unearthly oblivion. The door of my cell was open... my guards were sleeping as if they were under a spell. I thought some unknown friend pitying my misfortune had drugged them so that I might flee the death the morning sun would bring me.
My ship was still anchored in the bay, my loyal crew received me. A small wind carried us soundlessly to the safety of the open sea. In the last darkness before the dawn while I was sleeping in my familiar cabin a dream came to me.

A voice spoke to me in words that passed like flames through my tortured ears to take possession of my burning brain. I knew without any doubt that what the voice told me was true, with an awful truth. My wife had not been faithless! What I had thought unchastely had been kindness merely, the warmth and sweet friendship and joy with which her gentle soul sought to encompass all creatures. I had killed sweet innocence and with it my hopes of earth and heaven.

I wanted to die, I wanted to plunge the knife into my own heart as I had in hers, but a power greater than my own held my arm. The voice spoke again. In my madness in the courtroom I had pronounced my own doom. I would have immortal life and wander for all the generations of men over all the oceans of the world.
It might be that I should sail till Doomsday. I would long for death, but death would be denied me.

Yet I might be redeemed. After seven years and ever again after seven years I might live as a mortal man among mortal men. For half a year I might seek the woman faithful and fair, who could restore to me the grace of God and the gift of peace, but, she must be willing to die for me. The words echoed in my mind. Willing to die? The answer came, "so that I might know the meaning of love". The voice faded away. This was my dream. Was it a dream?

I could hear the noise of the sea and the straining of the ship's timbers. It was a dream, a dreadful dream and nothing more. But if a man should have a dream and in that dream should take a knife to destroy himself and the knife were to fall from his hand, and if waking he saw that knife where it had fallen, what then?
But this was absurd, the knife had fallen to the floor in some other way not in a dream. Or perhaps in the manner of sleepwalkers I had left my bed and taken the knife and let it fall. My imagination was overwrought with the events of the past days. I would rest and the dream would be forgotten in the morning as vapours vanish in the rising sun.

But in the morning the memory of my dream was disturbingly vivid. There was no-one to be seen, no watch on deck, no helmsman at the wheel, no one aloft in the yards. No sailor to answer my call, it was very strange. Only a few hours ago I'd seen them. Could they have abandoned ship while I slept? But the longboat was secure!
I had seen my crew the night before, was it my crew I'd seen, or demons sent to deceive me? This was not a dream, I was alone, unspeakably alone. Was I alone? The helm was firm and the ship held to its course. I looked aloft with an unspoken command for now we were carrying too much canvas. Unseen hands obeyed my thought. I was captain of a ghostly crew. Was it true then, the doom that I had dreamed?

The words of the vision rang in my mind like a funeral bell. Would I sail alone till Doomsday longing for death, with death denied me? Above the main mast I saw a white gull circling, its wings were stained with blood.

Seven years and seven times seven years I have sailed, my ship without anchor my heart without hope. The mountains of ice that guard the southern pole cracked before me with the noise of thunder. I sailed though canyons of ice whose walls rise up and up into a measureless mist. Unharmed I sail through fields of ice where the frozen crags crash and mount each other, howling like souls in hell fire. Beyond the ice I sail into tropical calms where the ship's timbers become trees again with roots in the bottom of the sea. The sun breeds maggots as if water were carrion and vermin swarm upon us in sheets of horrid movement. I long for death, but death has been denied me.

Once in a storm the main mast, cleft by lightening, fell upon me. In that moment of dying, for in that moment I died, a great joy filled me. I was at last to be free of the burden of my doom, but life flowed back into my unwilling brain. After seven years and again after seven years I found harbour to see again with longing the lives of those who grow old and die, of those who suffer and die, of those who die. Morning and night I pray.
Up by star and star my futile prayers go into the outer frozen blackness, down into the unfathomable deeps where black water covers the abyss of the sea. My vain words seek the ear of God.
You who have the gift of life, the gift of love, pity the Flying Dutchman his punishment and pray that God's grace may grant him the best of all gifts, the gift of merciful death.

The story in itself was remarkable enough, but when the Dutchman was reading l realised that it was far to dark to see.When l reached over to switch the light on l realised he wasn't even looking at the manuscript.
The Dutchman arose and walked to the balconey, continuing to narrate the story. When he finished reading the manuscript he stared at me, though his thoughts were somewhere else, and then he slowly walked out of the room.

When l awoke the next day what had happened the previous night seemed quite fantastic, but undeniable. How could l tell Pandora of my fears for her without revealing my reasons for them.

As the months passed by Pandora and van de Zee were spending most of their time together. Pandora confided in me about a conversation she had with van de Zee in which he asked her what she would be willing to give up for love of him. Pandora had said she would give up her very life for him, when she asked the Dutchman what he would give up, he replied he would give up his salvation as his measure of love for Pandora. l recognised the magnitude of the Dutchmans sacrifice and though not without pity, l hoped he would keep his word and leave without Pandora.

On the day the Dutchman was to sail l looked out on the harbour at his yacht,l could see no one except the Dutchman. The ship seemed to be making itself ready for sailing. l imagined what his thoughts must be. His resolution had never wavered. Pandora would be safe, she would never see him again.
Just then Pandora walked into my room, l decided to give her the translation of the manuscript to read. After reading it she asked me who van de Zee really was, where were his crew, what did l know about him. l denied any special knowledge of him and tried to appear unconcerned. Pandora left the room and l went back on to the balcony.

l could see the Dutchmans yacht in the harbour, his sails hung loose, he was becalmed. He could order his ship but not the weather. l had a sudden sense of fatality, my fears seemed absurd, fantastic.
A short time later the weather turned for the worse, it was one of the sudden
dangerous storms common to this coast, the yacht was driven onto the rocks and smashed to pieces.

Two days later the bodies of Pandora and Hendrick van de Zee were caught in the nets of the local fishermen, no one imagined that anything strange or mysterious was involved. In van de Zee's hand was the book of poetry he had borrowed and which was open at this verse;

The book the Dutchman borrowed has been returned and yet l wonder, does this book come to me from the other side of time with a message not of death, but of life.
Hail and farewell Dutchman. May the consummation of your love endure as long as the punishment that made you worthy of it.

Last updated - April 19th 2003