Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 2

Chapter 2

And now,

Kraken in a Coffee Cup.

Chapter Two

“Who’s there?” cries the captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the customs. That harmless question mangles me, and for the instant I almost run. Thus far, he has not looked up, though I now stand before him; but no sooner does he hear my hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 

“We sail with the next coming tide and welcome enough any honest man that goes a passenger,” he says.

“Not a passenger,” I say. “I’ve come to offer my hand.”

“I’ve hands enough.”

“I’ve been told otherwise, sir.”

“I have discernment enough to detect crime in any,” the captain says, “but in this world, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. I’ll charge you thrice the usual sum and be assented to, or else judge you openly.”

“I was sent by the widow above the coffin-maker’s,” I say.

The captain rests uneasy in his chair. “The ship you seek is forever out, never again to find her harbor, but if upon her you mean to sail, I’ll point you to your state-room. You travel weary and look in need of sleep.”

For a room of my own, I would sail through the straights of Hades. I sign a contract, written but unread. I enter and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing my foolish fumbling, the captain laughs lowly and mutters about the doors of convicts’ cells.

All dressed and dusty as I am, I throw myself into my berth, and find the little state-room ceiling almost resting on my forehead. The air is close, and I gasp. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk beneath the ship’s water-line, I feel the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the deep shall hold me in the smallest of his bowels’ wards.

Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in my room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, though in slight motion, hangs infallibly straight and betrays the false levels among which it hangs. The lamp torments me; as lying in my berth my restless glance finds no refuge. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. 

The time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship, all careening, glides to sea. I sleep a hideous sleep and see no black sky and raging sea, feel not the reeling timbers, and little hear nor heed the far rush of the awaited ship, which even now is cleaving the seas with its passing.

Then from a dreamless slumber, the frightened master shrieks in my dead ear. Startled from my lethargy by that direful cry, I stagger to my feet, and grasping a shroud, stumble to the deck to look out upon the sea. A panther billow leaps over the bulwarks and bathes me in its claws. Wave after wave leaps into the ship and runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. The white moon shows her frightened face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, and aghast, I see the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, only to be beat downward again towards the tormented deep.

Terrors upon terrors run shouting through my soul. The sailors mark me; more and more certain grow their suspicions and furiously they mob me with their question. 

“Why have you come?”

“The widow sent me,” says I, “to serve aboard her husband’s ship.”

The mariners’ faces show both their understanding and their fear, but still, they turn from me and seek by other means to save the ship than to feed me to that widow’s husband. Their efforts are in vain, and the indignant gale howls louder.

The captain calls a halt to their striving. “This storm is the first sighting of the country to which this man journeys. This sea is the shore to which he’s sailed.”

They take me up as an anchor and drop me into the sea; and an oily calmness floats out from the east. The sea is still as I carry down the gale with me, leaving smooth water behind. I go down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that I scarce heed the moment when I drop seething into the ship awaiting me. 

I am sprawled out soaking wet on dry wood—the deck of a mighty vessel with rigging like a pit of vipers. The sea runs above me, through the rigging, and against the sails which catch and deflect the waters as if they were a strong north wind. We are a bubble beneath the waves, riding at speed the currents.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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