Ghost Ship by Keith Topping

Author:Keith Topping [Topping, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781903889084
Google: G7MEAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1903889081
Publisher: Telos Pub Ltd
Published: 2002-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

ATLANTIC OCEAN DRIFT

Alone, alone, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a soul took pity on

me, my soul in agony.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT

MARINER

FRUSTRATED, I WAS LEFT TO WANDER THE SHIP AGAIN, WONDERING if, like Coleridge’s Mariner, I was to remain trapped within a nightmare of my own imaginings for all eternity. Alone and vulnerable on this ship upon a wide and pitiless painted ocean.

I found myself, once again, at the ship’s bow, watching the waves. An unrelenting darkness was encroaching on the horizon, threatening to smother the twilight. Another night of troubles and storms was heading our way.

The sky was bleeding, streaks of scarlet scoring the distant horizon beneath banks of swirling cloud. Under this angry, vicious sky came the ocean, the setting sun’s reflection spray-painting the lapping waters gold.

I was in a highly alert, nervous state that I had experienced on only a few occasions before. There was a slight trembling of the fingers, a quickening of the pulse. Words seem inadequate when describing it now. Perhaps the total response would find its best expression in the chords and harmonies of dramatic music. In a condition such as this, all the senses tend to become heightened. Behind my back I heard the faint noise of pursuit. It was simultaneously the feather-light tread of the panther, the hiss of the blade, the soft and deadly flap of the wings of an angel of death.

I somehow managed not to turn around. To do so would, in ways that border on the ridiculous, have cheapened the clinical perfection of the moment. Made it less beautiful in its completeness.

‘Here’s a penny for your thoughts,’ said a bright female voice from behind me.

So transfixed had I been on the surging, frothing and foaming ocean that I had momentarily forgotten that there were, in fact, other people around me. Real people.

Living people.

‘Thank you, but I’m afraid I don’t have any change to give you.’

I heard soft laughter and finally turned – a little light-headedly, so long had I been staring at the azure ripples and spit-white spray. I squinted, my eyes momentarily blinded by the brilliant dying sunlight. Haloed within its luminescence, Miss Lamb smiled back at me and my discomfort. ‘You seemed lost in thought, Doctor.’

‘Lost?’I asked, and then coughed, my throat dry and tasting of salt. I was a little surprised at such a perceptive observation. I gave her a half-hearted smile of confirmation. ‘I was looking at the sea.’

‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Untamed. A slave to no-one.’

Another interesting observation.

‘Actually, I was thinking about Samuel Coleridge,’ I continued.

Miss Lamb joined me at the gnarled whitewashed iron railings overlooking the ship’s deep bow, and below that, the angry waves. ‘Water, water everywhere yet not a drop to drink?’ she misquoted with a soft and gentle hint of laughter that was carried away on the wind. Beneath us, the sea seemed to join in with the merriment, its waves swishing and leaping as the ship cut straight through them.

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