Ghost Ship by Ghost Ship

Author:Ghost Ship [Ship, Ghost]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

ATLANTIC OCEAN DRIFT

Alone, alone, al 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.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

Psssht, fssschwt, psssht, fssschwt.

I cleared my salt-lined throat. ‘“Like one that on a lonesome road doth

walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and no

more turned his head,”’ I replied.

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