Tales of Terror from the Black Ship

by Chris Priestley

  He looked at the image of the Buck and saw – as he knew he would – that the ship was in the Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius scratched into the background. He registered this with a calmness that surprised him. Was it possible, after all, that even something as dark and strange as this could be accepted?

  He did not look at the drawing of the sailor. He did not find that image so easy to accept. The scene with the ship seemed simply to reflect what he could see around him and, miraculous though that evolving drawing was, it did at least have its roots in the world he knew.

  The drawing of the sailor and the thing that followed him – the Scrimshaw Imp, he supposed – portrayed a mystery, and a mystery that troubled him both in its inscrutability and in the sinister nature of what it illustrated.

  Edward’s mind was still buzzing with questions as he stepped ashore. What was it that the picture represented? Did it show an actual event or was it symbolic in some way? What did it mean? Was it a warning? Was the scrimshaw tooth signalling danger or luring him towards some kind of unknown and unknowable peril? Then, all at once, as if in answer to these questions, he looked around and noticed for the first time where he was.

  A sense of dread numbed his entire body as he gradually recognised the scene around him. He felt like he had when the scrimshaw tooth had been dropped in the ocean. He felt as though he were drowning.

  This was the quayside depicted on the scrimshaw tooth. There was the tall ochre building with the clock tower, the pantiled roof and the arrow-shaped weathervane. One of his crewmates was up ahead. He had an urge to call to him, to tell him of the dread that was mounting in his heart – but how could he? He would sound deranged.

  It seemed utterly incongruous that on a day such as that day – with the sun high in a cobalt sky, with seabirds crying and fishermen singing as they brought their catch ashore – that on a day like that there could be something so dark and from the sunless world of shadows so near.

  And yet he knew with every fibre of his being that the thing from the scrimshaw tooth, the Scrimshaw Imp, whatever it was, was there. If he turned now he would see it, the shadow-thing, and the fear and dread of seeing the terrible vagueness of it was almost unbearable. He could feel its breath on the back of his neck.

  In desperation Edward took out a clasp knife and, opening it with shaking hands, he began to gouge and scrape away at the image of the Scrimshaw Imp on the tooth. Why had he not thought of this before? He felt a giddying sense of triumph. In seconds, all that was left of the shadowy form was a collection of deep scratches. Then the pain began.

  Every inch of his body was aflame with agony. Blood was pouring from him, dripping on to the scrimshaw tooth and the cobbles. His legs would no longer support him and he fell to the ground. As he lay there, his life draining away, he could see his arms and hands were slashed and scratched as if by some giant blade, and he knew he was not the sailor in the picture. He was the Scrimshaw Imp.

  Edward’s vision blurred . . . He became aware of a face, of someone leaning towards him, asking him who he was and what had happened. The face was full of horror at the sight of such injuries. It was the expression his face must have worn in Alexandria.

  With his dying breaths he tried to warn the sailor, who even now was picking up the scrimshaw tooth. But his mouth would no longer answer the brain’s call, and was so entirely ruined that were it still connected it could not have formed the words.

  Just as Edward had, the sailor saw that there was nothing he could do and, not wanting trouble, he chose to leave. The last thing Edward saw, as he lay with one ragged ear to the ground, was the image of the sailor stopping to look at the scrimshaw tooth, putting it in his pocket and walking on.

  *

  ‘Ethan,’ said Cathy, ‘you’re hurting.’

  I had been holding Cathy’s hand to comfort her during the story, because I could see she had been unduly frightened by it from the very start. But the tale had clearly had an effect on me also, for I was now crushing my poor sister’s hand as every muscle in my body contracted with dread.

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  As always, Thackeray looked mightily pleased to have caused such a reaction in us and again I had to fight the urge to punch him on the nose. Outside, the storm was easing and there was a welcome calm about the headland and our inn. The branches at the window had ceased their fidgeting and clawing.

  ‘It seems the storm has had its fill of us,’ said Thackeray. ‘My ship will return soon and I will be on my way, and you good folks will have the place to yourselves once more. I thank you kindly for your hospitality.’

  ‘You are very welcome,’ said Cathy. ‘I wish you would stay and meet our father.’

  ‘Mr Thackeray does not want to meet Father, Cathy,’ I said. ‘He must not keep his ship waiting – whatever ship that is.’

  I said this last in a particular tone that I hoped would signify that I personally doubted that he was even a sailor and was more likely some sort of vagabond or con man.

  ‘Is there something you want to say, friend?’ he said.

  ‘Only that I still wonder at how you came to be here on such a night,’ I said. ‘The weather has been far too wild for any ship to reach the harbour. How is that you came ashore?’

  ‘I swam,’ he said.

  ‘Very funny,’ I said. ‘But I wonder why you do not wish to say.’

  Thackeray closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. When he opened them he looked at Cathy, and when he spoke his voice was cool and quiet. The wind had dropped as if in response, and there seemed to be a hush of expectancy in the air.

  ‘Storms are part of a sailor’s life,’ said Thackeray, ‘and every mariner, from fisherman to admiral, has his mettle tested some time or other. Storms come and go. A ship like mine would not normally be troubled by them. But some storms are exceptionally powerful. Such was this one.’

  I opened my mouth to interrupt him, but there was something about his expression that made me think better of it.

  ‘Perhaps I was distracted by the proximity to the place where I was born and spent my tender years. Perhaps I was thinking about Cathy and the life we might have had. Perhaps I was looking towards this very inn perched up here on the clifftop.’

  He took a drink and slowly lowered the empty glass.

  ‘Whatever the cause,’ he said, ‘I did not see the wave that knocked me overboard.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Cathy. ‘You were thrown into the sea in that storm? How did you survive, Mr Thackeray?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thackeray,’ I said with a raised eyebrow. ‘How did you escape drowning?’

  As usual he ignored me and addressed Cathy instead.

  ‘Time and again the rolling waves crashed over me and dragged me under, but each time I surfaced again. I saw the inn on the cliff and knew that I was heading towards the shore. In no time I was standing in the surf in the bay at the base of these cliffs.’

  ‘And how did you get from there to here?’ I asked. ‘The cliffs are high and treacherous.’

  ‘I climbed,’ he said calmly.

  ‘You climbed?’ I laughed.

  ‘Ethan!’ chided Cathy.

  ‘I cannot tell you what to believe,’ said Thackeray, sitting back in his chair. ‘I can only tell you what occurred.’

  The storm was over now and there was a silence such as I had never known before. The sea had ceased its roar and the gulls their crying. Thackeray looked down at the table, his face veiled by shadow.

  ‘I knew this inn as a boy,’ he began, without looking up, ‘in happier days. I thought that I might see it one more time.’

  He seemed so sincere in these reflections that I had to remind myself that he can only have been a few years my senior. If he had been here often enough to have grown sentimental about it, I would have remembered him. Cathy was clearly having the same difficulty,
despite her desire to believe in this strange visitor.

  ‘But we would have been here when you came,’ she said. ‘I may have been so young as to have forgotten – though I am known for my good memory – but Ethan would surely have some recollection, what with you both being boys. Don’t you remember us?’

  There was a pause. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ he said quietly, ‘as I have said. Such things and the memories of them are the wake a life leaves at its passing.’

  I am a little ashamed to say I took some satisfaction in seeing Thackeray struggle to come up with any sensible explanation, and in seeing the look of disappointment that clearly showed on my sister’s face.

  ‘The storm has blown over, Cathy,’ I said. ‘Mr Thackeray should be going.’

  ‘Ethan is right, Miss Cathy,’ Thackeray said, standing up. ‘I must be on my way.’ He gave me another of his patronising smiles.

  ‘But surely your “ship” will be long gone, Mr Thackeray,’ I said, unable to resist the temptation to pick further at the fabric of his tale.

  ‘She will come for me soon enough,’ said Thackeray. ‘She is not a ship to leave her crew behind.’

  He smiled and moved towards the door. But he had barely left the table when Cathy grabbed him by the arm, surprising me and herself by her boldness.

  ‘Oh please, Mr Thackeray,’ she said in her most pleading voice. ‘Please, please, please. One more story before you go.’

  I sighed loudly, glaring at Cathy, but she paid no heed.

  ‘But I thought my last tale frightened you, Miss Cathy,’ said Thackeray.

  ‘So it did,’ she said with a giggle. ‘But I do so love to be frightened!’

  Thackeray grinned and, to my dismay, sat back down.

  ‘Very well, then, Miss Cathy,’ he said. ‘One more story. Just for you.’

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  The Black Ship

  The ship had been becalmed for more than two days. Not the merest breath of wind blew. The wide flat ocean stretched itself out to north and south, as black and limpid as a barrel of pitch under the cold night sky.

  Now, to the city dweller and the farmer there is nothing especially ominous about a still night; far from it. The quiet means that their sleep will be untroubled and filled with peaceful dreaming.

  But a sailing man is made of different stuff. He needs to feel the roll of the ship beneath his feet. He wants to hear the creak of taut rigging and the crackle of sailcloth filled to bursting.

  Without wind in its canvas, without waves on the sea, a sailing ship becomes imprisoned, trapped as if by ice. That thing of beauty which can transport you to the four corners of the world becomes in windless weather a sad and useless beast.

  Time was becalmed along with the ship, and to bide away those long hours of inactivity some of the mariners crowded into the captain’s cabin to tell tales, for no man loves a story more than a sailor, either in the telling or the hearing.

  The men sat around the long map table. The low curved ceiling was ribbed with beams. A leaded window opened out on to the ship’s stern. A lantern was the only illumination in the cabin.

  This lantern was the temporary property of each storyteller in turn, meaning that while the tale was in progress the audience sat silently focused on the grimly uplit face of the storyteller.

  Jacob the cabin boy poured the captain another drink and stood back, listening to the stories. Gibson, a thick set and surly man hailing from the coast of Northumberland, was telling his tale, the lantern shining in his face, his gold tooth twinkling as he spoke.

  ‘We struck the reef at night,’ he growled. ‘The sound was something terrible to hear. The timbers cracked and split like they was being chewed by some great monster. As she was going down, a mighty wave slapped into her and broke her in two.

  ‘Men were falling into the sea every which way. You could hear them shouting and calling, their voices filled with that fear a sailor has in his voice when his ship is shot from under him.

  ‘The lucky men drowned there and then, God bless their souls, and died good sailors’ deaths, taken down deep to the ocean bed to rest alongside their ship.

  ‘Those of us afloat could now see there was an island beyond the reef. It was a long way off but it was a hope and I was a strong swimmer. But no sooner had I made my first move than I heard the screams.

  ‘Men ahead of me were being forced by the waves on to the reef as they swam. Some of you know those reefs. Those reefs are jagged with coral and spiked with shells. They can rip the flesh from you in minutes.

  ‘One after another of my shipmates was thrown against that infernal reef to be chewed and gnawed by it, while I, for the luck of being that much further out to sea, floated in the blackness, listening to their death throes.

  ‘As dawn came I could see the island clearly, but just as clearly I saw that I would never be able to reach it, for the reef spread out far beyond my view, barring my way.

  ‘Clearly, too, I could see the sport it had had with my shipmates. Floating between the reef and me was a sight no man should have to see: a stinking soup of flesh and blood that would have made a butcher puke.

  ‘The first fin flashed by me so close I felt the watery draft of the shark’s passing. Within minutes there were a dozen. I had thought all the crew were dead until the sharks began to feed, but then the screaming began again. Mercifully, it did not last long.

  ‘An old sea dog told me once that sharks come to movement like they come to blood and that the thing to do is to keep still. So that’s what I tried to do, though I had to tread water to stop myself drifting on to the reef.

  ‘The sharks gorged themselves and I saw smaller fish move in to pick the bones while sea birds flew in, squawking, dropping to the water and flying off with some vile piece of meat hanging from their beaks.

  ‘When they had had their fill, the sharks began to leave, their fins cutting through the water like black-sailed schooners. One after another they glided by. One even brushed against me as it did so and I felt the sleek leather of its skin against my hand.

  ‘The last shark turned to swim away and I was pleased to see that it took a route past me at some distance. But as it came level with me it hesitated and changed direction. It swam slowly past my legs. I saw its terrible soulless eye roll back and then it turned and took my ribs in its jaws and bit deep.

  ‘I could not cry out for the pain of it, but I somehow still had the wits to pull my knife from its sheath at my side and I stabbed the beast with all my strength. It rolled away with a piece of me in its jaws and my knife in its head.

  ‘Now I was bleeding and still had no way of getting to the island. Sooner or later the sharks would return; I only hoped I would be dead before they came.’

  ‘I swear those sharks take a bigger piece of you every time you tell this tale, Gibson,’ said Finch, a skinny Cornishman.

  Most of the crew laughed and Gibson blushed a little and then laughed along with them. Jacob saw his chance and grabbed the lantern.

  ‘I’ve got a tale, if you’ve the guts to hear it!’

  One or two of the sailors snorted and signalled to him to put the lantern back.

  ‘Come, lad,’ said one. ‘This is men’s business. Listen if you’ve a mind to, but leave the tale-telling to them as have a tale to tell. Besides, Gibson here hasn’t finished.’

  ‘Let the boy tell his tale,’ said Finch. ‘We know Gibson’s story well enough. We could do with a new one!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gibson, slapping Jacob on the back. ‘Let him speak if wants to.’

  Several sailors grumbled noisily, but Jacob grabbed a stool and sat himself down at the table. The lantern lit up his face and threw a giant’s shadow on the curved cabin ceiling.

  ‘Pipe down now, lads,’ said the captain. ‘As I see it, if young Jacob has a tale, th
en he’s as much right to tell it as any man here. Go on, son, sing out.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jacob, ‘the tale I tell was told to me by the cook on a brig I served on about a year past. This cook – Dawson was his name – he worked on a merchant ship sailing out of Bristol, bound for the Spice Islands.

  ‘The ship was a fine one with a good captain, and they made good time, rounding the Hope without a care. Then, when they thought they were safe and they were near their destination, a fearful storm blew up with waves like mountains with foaming white peaks.

  ‘The captain and crew they did their best, but the storm was too great. It downed the mainmast like it was a twig and crippled the ship, and then a mighty wave hit like an axe and broke her in two. All the crew were drowned.

  ‘All, that is, except this sea-cook, Dawson, who had managed to reach a piece of the mainmast and had held on for dear life throughout the raging of the storm.

  ‘When the storm ended, Dawson found himself afloat among the wreckage of his ship and the dead of the crew. He called out for survivors but no answer came.

  ‘How many days Dawson clung to that mast he never could say, but however terrible the days were, with the sun beating down on him like a hammer, the nights were worse, knowing that he was surrounded by miles of empty black ocean with only the bloated, floating dead of his shipmates for company.

  ‘Then, one day, a fog rolled in across the sea. It came upon him so sudden-like and thick that, though it meant some respite from the sun, it filled him with dread.

  ‘And all at once he heard it: the wonderful sound of water slapping against timbers, the rustle and flap of sailcloth. It was a ship! Rescue was at hand!

  ‘Sure enough, the faint shape of masts and sails hove into view through the mist, becoming darker and darker all the while. Dawson’s heart rose up like a bird and tears of joy ran down his sun-cracked face.

  ‘But then, as he was about to raise his arm aloft and sing out for help, his attention was distracted by a movement in the water nearby. A body that had kept grim company with him those past few days, face down and floating some two feet away, twitched.’