The Sea Ghosts Way

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Sea Ghosts Way

(By Vincent Cornier)

(Copyright).

I shall never forget that Christmas night, mystic and wonderful, on which I saw the seaghosts go availing on the dim lower oceans. That night on which Dorothy told me she would be my wife. „ I went back to my humble “bed-sitter, a-quiver with happiness and astounded at my success. You see I had so little to commend me and I had held it was not exactly the thing to offer a girl the comparative hardships of a life to be shared on a shipping clerk’s moderate income after she had been long used to the luxuries, ‘ almost of her father’s rather ostentatious home. But the question had been swiftly asked against my sober judgment. Her reply had been slower, but as certain of intention. So there, in my drab room, I leaned back on the bed, my hands clasped behind my head, and gave myself up to dreams. ' . „ I felt behind my clasped fingers, pressed against the wall, the intervening fabric of my only rare and valuable possession, a fifteenth century chart of the lower oceans for which I had been offered various sums, rangimr from eighty pounds to two hundred and°fifty. Two hundred ,and fifty pounds! The sale-money of that old chart would amply furnish a home for Dorothy. A huge sum of money, I thought, and I was tempted. Yet a promise made in an hour of death forbade its sale. My grandfather bequeathed me that ancient chart, ten years ago. He was a roarino- old sea dog with a twist of language that scandalised his retirement as greatly as it signalised it. He liked two things about me. Firstly, I went to France in T 5 without being pushed, and secondly, I alone of “the relations” laughed and encouraged his incessantly harmless profanties instead of attempting smug repression. He willed me the chart with his uproarious blessing, extracting a promise from me always to retain it, and went down to tho last uncharted oceans of the west as all good mariners go, boots on and feet first'. Strangely enough, he left everything else he possessed to mercantile charities. Contrary to family beliefs' instead of dying a wealthy man he had only his bourse, furniture and a few pounds’ of balance in his bank. They turned away in bitter disappointment and left me alone with my chart. Debating there in my dim room, arguing for and against the eale of the chart, yet knowing I should never part with it, thinking of Dorothy, pulsing with happiness at the very murmur of her name, I slept and I dreamt ...

A cold dread wind blew in upon me —a blast that was as thin as a knife edge and

split my very marrow with icy cold. Damp was under my hair. My clothing sagged and crisped with frost, and the thunders of canvas were above me. The vast voice of the ocean talked beneath my feet, of horror. A gong called four times in quick double strokes, and someone called: “Gentlemen and mariners o’ th’ watch —aloft- wi’ ye all—aloft, aloft — aloft!” And the. threading sound of a silver pipe hung in the air. Tho roaring of wind and waters grew, and I saw the black fret of rigging before my eyes. Men in strangely old-time costume flitted about like shades.

I was on a high-pooped ship of oaken timbers. Five centuries ago. Great golden galleon lanterns burned at our stern and, when we rolled, cannon ran back from open ports with creaking ropes. And now the grotesque and horrible eeabeasts, depicted on my old charts, all .grew to life and filled that ghastly night with terror insuperable. Lambent sea snakes slipped across the nightmare seas and narwhals, dolphins and whales blew and passed along the green horizons. Phosphorescent sea-wrack lapped about our keel and a strange moaning, as of unearthly choirs, sang within our ehroud.s The mariners became misty things, shades, dim skeletons, grisly shapes. And the great grim galleon was a plunging city of. awful shadow. The storm winds howled amain and snow flew with us. The waters grew tumultuous, thunder roared, and lightnings flared. Great’, orange chains seemed strung across the rolls and in the fires of the night, sea-birds shrieked past. us as deathly bolts of flame. So we struck. Came the crashing of breakers and the echoes of a ghastly land against whose shores we smashed to wreckage. That vast Ship of spectral shadow splintered on rocks as though it were a model made of glass that had been hurled against a stone. The masts tottered and fell toward me. I screamed, clutched at a spar, and sank down with the ship, down with the sea ghosts to the sea. . I came to my senses on the floor! Horrified by the hideous dream, I had shot from bed and had gripped at the bottom roller of my chart, the “spar,” to save myself, and; in so doing, had torn my olden map of oceans clean in two. • I lay bewildered and genuinely scared. Then leapt to my feet ae near to a gibbering maniac as ever I am likely to be. For thousands of pounds in notes .was scattered all around me. Grandfather had hidden and bequeathed .me his fortune. A letter among the money told me that. His money had been packed between the glazed surface of the chart and ite stout linen back!