Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 12
Chapter 12
Table of Contents
If you’re new to the story, I suggest beginning with the table of contents so you’ll understand the origins of the text and why I say it was co-authored by Herman Melville.
And now,
Kraken in a Coffee Cup.
Chapter Twelve
Call me Eleazar. From some leagues below—never mind how many precisely—having little or no terror in our souls, and nothing particular left to drink in Sirene, we sail back into the shadowed deep to seize the watery fates of men. Souls drive before us and gather in our wake as phosphorescent trails. No one chastises me for standing at the bow in slack-jawed wonder while others toil; most know something of the moment I am perpetually discovering, like a sailor crying first sight of land, only to discover an archipelago, one shore after another; land ho, land ho, land ho.
This is your name, says the shore. This is your crew.
The cooper’s name is Cooper, which is both sensical and disappointing, and the cabin boy’s name is John. The creature we fear, he, too, has a name, and I feel his presence surging. In the profound hush of this nearly invisible sphere, a quiver in my soul detects him, this strange specter; and in the distance, a great gray mass lazily rises and disentangles itself from the darkness. He gleams before our prow like an avalanche, newly slid from the hills, glistening from horizon to horizon.
I expect the boats to be launched in battle, but transfixed upon his brilliance, I cannot see that I alone behold him: a vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, innumerable long arms radiating from his center and curling, twisting like a nest of anacondas. No perceptible face or front does he possess, undulating there in the billow-less sea, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.
With a low sucking sound he slowly disappears again; and my mind gasps for even a vague idea of his true nature and form; and in my soul, I know, that the one to whom these arms belong, by them formed the ocean’s bed and tucks to rest all who sleep there.
I recall the great kraken preached by the Norwegian bishop, but kraken is not his name; neither that nor beast, as we most often call him. The gospel of Matthew tells us: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
A superstitious crew will call him devil, but the scripture never speaks of a devil who reigns in hell. No. Hell was made as his chastisement. The one able to destroy both body and soul in hell, he is god; and I have seen him manifest.
#
I awake from blasphemy into the cabin, upon the cot I call my bed. In this room filled with shadow, a shadow moves, and I recognize the form of the captain watching me. His angles are not correct, and I reason the captain must be standing near the light; what I see beholding me is his shadow cast upon the wall; yet, no candle burns nor wick within its lantern.
He has a name, but that true name remains hidden from me, another presented in its place. With no intended humor, he calls himself Captain Charon.
“You’ve seen the creature, lad,” he says.
It’s not right to call a creature that which is not created.
The shadow moves off the wall and through the space that spans between us; now suspended, without the wall’s firm surface, it blurs into another form I recognize, one of the dusky phantoms which chased our boats at the captain’s orders.
“What are you?” I whisper.
“Your familiar captain is standing upon the deck and leading his crew.” He passes over me and lays flat upon the wall that stands between me and the sea, and there the silhouetted form of the captain stands watch over me again. “We are one, he and I, each the other’s shadow cast.”
“Impossible,” I say.
He moves out just enough from the wall to turn his head and still hold the form of his head turning; two black eyes and the captain’s jaw. “Don’t clutch to concepts which here cannot apply.”
#
I sit among that small scattered congregation, near the door and beside the black-eyed widow, and I ponder death upon the waters—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity. But what then? What they call my shadow is my substance.
The storm-pelted door flies open and the chaplain’s shadow shades the pulpit. His face is the hardy winter of a healthy old age, but among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shines certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February’s snow. He carries no umbrella and has not come by carriage, for his tarpaulin hat runs down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket fights to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it’s absorbed. Hat and coat and overshoes are one by one removed and hung in an adjacent corner; then, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly ascends the pulpit.
Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which forms its back is adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. High above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floats a little isle of sunlight, from which beams forth an angel’s face; and this bright face sheds a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck.
The pulpit itself is paneled in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rests on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak. What could be more full of meaning? The world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; the pulpit is its prow.
The father rises in a mild voice of unassuming authority. All is quiet and every eye upon him. He pauses a little; then kneels in the pulpit’s bows, folds his large brown hands across his chest, uplifts his closed eyes, and offers a prayer so deeply devout that he seems to kneel and pray at the bottom of the sea.
Then, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship foundering is a fog-breached sea, he reads the hymn;
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
With a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots and a slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, the congregation rises and echoes in response;
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
Our singing swells high above the howling of the storm.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
The father drops, and then lifts his face again, a deep terror in his eyes. “The bottom of woe is deep. But is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? When the ship of this base and treacherous world has gone down beneath us, delight in him whose strong arms yet support Him. Delight, though He bring you good or evil; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”
He says no more, but waves a benediction, covers his face with his hands, and so remains kneeling, till all the people depart, and he is left alone.
#
My recumbent position grows wearisome, and by little and little I sit up; my clothes well tucked around me. I sit in this crouching manner for some time, until at last, I open my eyes. No man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essence. Coming out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness, a disagreeable revulsion consumes me. I am a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then can I unite with this wild captain in worshiping his tentacled deity? But what is worship? I answer myself; to do the will of god, that is worship.
And what is the will of god but fate?
—Thaddeus Thomas
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