“Steady at twenty-two knots,” he ordered. They had seen no ice but were on notice to watch for any sign of it.
“We have made better time every day,” Thomas Andrews said proudly. He had designed the ship, and that very night, he was going back to his stateroom to list cosmetic changes he wanted to make to the Titanic to make it even more luxurious; he told us this at dinner.
“Now, the winds have died down, and we shall make even better time,” the Captain said and then waved as if to have Stead go ahead with the story. “Fine ship, Andrews.”
Maggie brown interrupted, “What happened to the mummy, then?”
Stead shrugged, “Some of the crew moving it was injured, and one died. People viewing the exhibit and the workers at the museum suffered illnesses and accidents. The museum curator was so concerned, that he had sealed the mummy in her case in the basement. It remained there for years until a wealthy American purchased it, and it is here right now in the cargo hold.”
Mrs. Astor fanned herself, “Oh, goodness. That’s a terrible story.” She was young and extraordinarily lovely, but like a lady of good breeding, she was always prone to faints and paleness.
I genuinely liked her and admired her genteel manners; except for my own companionship, I preferred a hearty female like Maggie Brown. Yes, she was older than I, but I was not looking for a ‘we’; it was something I had discovered about my own tastes.
“It is just a story, Maddy. Do not worry yourself. We have a mystery to solve. An American. That narrows it down so we can figure out if she is aboard the ship,” Maggie Brown said, “Who here is likely to have bought a cursed mummy?”
“I did not,” Peter Cavendar said, “I saw you looked to me first.”
“You would not tell us if you did own the mummy,” Maggie said.
Jenny laughed as she covered a smile, “I would tell.”
“I don’t believe in curses,” John Astor said.
“Curses aren’t real, but evil is always with us, struggling to be set free,” I said. All eyes turned to me, and I felt my aunts’ disapproval, “and I dare anyone to say he has not had a nightmare or felt a shiver at times, maybe right on this voyage.”
“We’ve had fine weather and a great trip. I will take your wager. I have enjoyed these last few days,” Astor said. He took his wife’s shaking hand and clasped it tightly before planting a kiss on her knuckles.
I had made people uncomfortable.
Mr. Stead, Mrs. Brown, Jenny, and John gave me smiles of support, so I felt a little better but was sorry Mrs. Astor was frightened.
Thomas Andrews frowned and said, “I have slept fine. I say you are affrighting the ladies, Sir.” He did not say it rudely but casually, and he looked at Mr. Stead as well, to show the story of the mummy was disquieting. It was his reminder that most ladies were not accustomed to such tales at dinner.
Maggie Brown was an exception.
I was not there to argue. I apologized under the glare of Aunt Annie and the frown of Aunt Delora. I considered that Stead had been the one who told the story of the Egyptian curse and said that the mummy was aboard; I had only commented upon the idea of curses being phantasmagoric.
Mr. Stead cast me a devilish grin, and I knew all was fine.
After dinner, I strolled along the deck alone, looking out to the water. The sea was like glass, calm, dark, and reflective. It was like nothing I had ever seen. The ship cut a trail through the black glass with no moon to light the way, only the ship’s lights to break up the pitch-black ink of the night.
There, just out of the corner of my eye, what did I see?
It looked to be a giant fish, a shark perhaps, but it was too big. The dorsal fin (or I supposed it to be) was a tall, dark triangular shape that cut through the water quickly, and then I saw what might be his tail or caudal fin, and it was large as well. One determines a fish’s size by the length of fin to fin and by my estimate, this monster was a hundred feet long or more.
Impossible, a whale, then?
But when he swam by, keeping up with the ship, I knew he was real and fast to be keeping our speed of twenty-two knots, whatever he was. He was a leviathan.
I could hardly believe my eyes. What a chance of my lifetime this was.
However, despite my excitement, I felt the most terrible dread as I watched the shark swimming in the gloomy waters. It was more than a question of why a fish would want to follow a loud, large ship as this. How was he so massive?
He was a titan shark, and I was aboard a titan of a ship. Explicable as it was, I felt the creature came to issue a challenge; I felt he was malignantly aware of us and was a threat to us.
And there in that strange, yellowish mist, what was that? We were at sea and nowhere near land, and yet I could swear there was a landscape in the mist, a place with diseased trees that dripped with ichors, and a hazy, soggy bog as the ground.
In the reddish sky, terrible bat-like creatures with beaks of molded green chased yellow-winged, bird-like things that were sharp angles and pudgy white flesh. When the bat-things snatched the birdish creatures from the air with terrible talons, dark red blood and pieces of gossamer flesh fell to the damp ground to be sucked and slurped into the miasma.
I could faintly hear horrible shrieks and an incessant buzzing. Far away, out of my sight, I heard the clumping of heavy feet and a wail so high-pitched and mournful that it made my ears ache. I was almost out of my wits with fright, wondering what prodigious beast might make such a clamor.
My skin prickled, and the nape of my neck broke out in chills.
“Go away, foul things,” I whispered to myself.
Beneath the gnarled trees were boughs and deadfalls from which creatures peeked. They were not soft furry animals but absolute visions from hell. Fangs sprouted from long, oily snouts, and they raked long, steely claws when they spied onlookers.
Three crew men stared at the mist as well, jaws agape. I knew, now, that I was not seeing with the sights of a madman, as they, too, saw the landscape wafting and juxtaposed over the sea. The great fish swam between the ship and the landscape that followed. I had no doubt that they were somehow, infernally connected.
“What is that?” the man asked as he clutched his head as if viewing the other world caused tremendous headache and nausea. He gagged. “And the feckin’ fish… the boat is mor’n ninety feet abeam, and he’s longer. Do you see ’im?”
One of the crewmen ran to the railing and climbed up on it to better watch the enormous fish. “Look at ’im.”
“Climb down,” I urged him, “or you will fall.”
He chuckled at such an idea, but as the ship normally shivered as she sailed, he went wide-eyed with panic and fear before he plunged over the railing and into the sea.
We must report it as a man overboard and call for help although he would have little time to survive swimming in the frigid water, but we stared, frozen.
“There he is,” one of the other crewmen called, and I suddenly did not know if he meant he saw his crewmate or the big shark.
I watched as the fallen man showed as a small dark spot on the white of the wave-wash; he was afloat and struggling against the iciness of the sea. The poor devil must be mightily cold.
“Eh?” one of the men made a sound between a groan and a yelp.
Bursting like a grape, the man in the water suddenly split open as several of the shark’s teeth snagged him. The fish made a jerk to the side, and the wet, split crewman flipped into the black maw; the beast swam under the waves and off to the side. Had we not been watching, we would not have seen the terrible creature make a meal of the poor sod.
But the horror was not ended.
I had hardly accepted the huge shark and what he had done as my attention was drawn back to the fog lying on the water.