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The following is the personal account of a journalist who claims to have sailed upon the RMS Stillwater on her last voyage before the ship and her crew of 19 men and women was reported missing in the spring of 1895. The Stillwater was never found, neither were the remains of her crew, nor the cargo she was carrying. To this day, their fate remains a mystery.
I saw it for the first time late in the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set.
The clouds were red, promising fair weather ahead, which felt like a cruel joke, considering our present circumstances. It was day twelve of what was supposed to be a fourteen day voyage, and we were nowhere close to our destination. With food supplies starting to run low, rationing among the crew and passengers alike had put everyone ill at ease and set tempers to sparking. Today had been the first clear day in an uninterrupted four day streak of snow and sleet, and I had gone out onto the icy deck to breathe some fresh air before the storm forced us down below again.
Perhaps I ought to introduce myself. My name is Kato, and I am- was - a journalist aboard the RMS Stillwater on her voyage from Keltro to Mierkov in the North. The ship. though a fairly typical ocean liner, was unfamiliar to me. I'd booked passage alongside a couple dozen passengers and several more tonnes of mail to be delivered to Mierkov upon the Stillwater's arrival. However, as it turned out, nothing about this particular voyage was to go as planned.
As I stared out across the expanse of shifting ice that lay ahead of our ship that evening, I thought that I glimpsed something glittering green in the water. I craned my neck, expecting a piece of driftwood, perhaps a lost fishing bauble, but the dark blue water between the cracked sheets of ice was empty. Between the unpredictable roiling of the ship and my cabin mate, a swarthy laborer from Marksburg who seemed to dislike me just as much as I abhored his cacophonous nightly snoring, I hadn't found myself well rested for some time.
I chalked the sighting up to a trick of the eye and headed back down to the galley at the sound of the dinner bell, putting the strange image of fish scales from my mind.
The second sighting was not by my own eyes but rather that of another passenger not a day later. She and her husband were well-to-do citizens of Mierkov, the pair returning from visiting the birth of their nephew. She claimed that she'd seen the ghostly apparition of a pale woman in the water that day. Though the sailors had thoroughly searched the water with eyes and spyglasses both, none had seen the woman in the water and her claim was dismissed by most as anxiety-induced hysteria. Until the next night, that is, when one of the night watchman said that he had heard a voice calling his name from just beyond the stern of the ship throughout his watch.
When I questioned him about the details, he told me that it had started towards the very end of his watch, lasting a little under an hour in duration, and that he had been too uneasy to follow it to the railing to find the source. Despite the laughter and teasing he received from his fellows, he stubbornly stuck to his story. Despite the tale being something I had heard before in many a ghost story, I found myself inclined to believe him by the look in his eyes as he told me the story.
There was markedly less laughter the next evening when one of the night watchmen went missing. He'd showed up for his post, relieving the previous man of duty, and then never been seen again. No body had been found in the water. No sign of a struggle on deck. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.
The crew searched the entire ship that day, every square inch of the cargo hold and each individual cabin (much to the displeasure of some of the passengers), but the search failed to turn up anything of note. The Captain of the Stillwater gruffly addressed the passengers that evening in the galley. He told us that the night watch had been doubled, that every man would be accompanied by a fellow, and that nobody was to go anywhere alone, especially at night. Passengers were encouraged to remain in their cabins for the duration of the journey, which the Captain assured us would only be another four days if the weather continued to be fair.
I remember thinking to myself at the time that the decree seemed to be something of an overreaction. After all, stranger things had happened only for men to turn up drunk or delirious but ultimately unharmed a day or two later. However, just like the night watchmen who had first reported the eery voice calling his name, I saw something strange in the Captain's eyes. He was unnerved, though trying his best not to show it. I immediately wanted to know why.
I got my answer soon enough. Four days, as it turned out, was more than enough time for things to go monstrously wrong disastrously fast.
The first night of those four long days, I woke in the early hours of the morning to the sight of my cabin mate pressing his face against the porthole window of our cabin. His breath fogged in the chill air and his fingertips left smears of oil against the thick glass pane as he peered myopically through it. When I groggily asked him what he was doing, he shushed me, holding a finger in the air for a long moment, only to ask me the next moment with an urgency I had never heard before if I could hear 'that'.
I replied no, telling him that I did not hear anything, and asking him what 'that' was. When he failed to respond, I asked him to return to bed. In response, he hurled an expletive at me and began pulling his boots on, not even bothering to tie the laces. My attempts to persuade him to remain in the cabin fell upon deaf ears. He left in only his trousers, boots, and a thin undershirt, taking no coat despite the weather outside being well below freezing. I remained awake and petrified in the stale-smelling cabin for the rest of the night, peering out the window occasionally until the sky lightened enough to justify leaving.
I learned that he, along with three other passengers and one crewmate, three men and one woman, had disappeared that night. They were never seen again, their names added to the growing list of missing persons aboard the RMS Stillwater. Their disappearances, though strange and tragic, were not among the strangest things that we were to witness those next three days.
In the morning, I confronted the Captain at breakfast as he sat amongst his men, smoking a pipe and looking grimly down at his clenched hands. I accused him in anger and fear, loudly voicing my suspicion that that he knew more than he had told us. Other passengers, a few of whose cabin mates or family had also disappeared that night, joined me in righteous anger.
What he told me, I would not come to believe until that night, when I looked upon the water alongside the rest of the men and women who had stuffed their ears with waxed cotton, and beheld the shapes in the cold dark water that lazily circled our liner — more like carrion birds than sharks.
He said firstly, that the storm had blown us off course, a fact he'd been carefully trying to conceal from the passengers, and secondly, that the waters we currently found ourselves treading through were cursed. Angrily, I demanded to know exactly how off course we had been blown. As the cartographer piped up, I was relieved to learn that he had been telling the truth. We were still four days away from our destination. But the route was not the same.
Some of the others inquired about this 'curse'. The Captain eventually yielded enough to tell us that this 'cursed route' was not often used by ships passing through the area. Sailors were a superstitious lot, and they all knew the tales of the vessels that had passed through this area — some never to be seen again while others immediately found themselves beset by terrible misfortune shortly afterward. The most common story from this area, however, involved sightings of strange creatures in the frigid water. The stories painted them as ghosts or banshees sometimes, other times as creatures that were not quite beast but also not quite man but all with the ability to lure a man to a watery grave.
Hearing this, I had a suspicion that perhaps my cabin mate may have been hearing something calling his name after all. Yet, stubbornly, I resisted the truth, demanding that the old man prove it to us. He refused at first, claiming it to be far too perilous a venture, but with mounting pressure from both passengers and crew, eventually gave in, provided we honor a few key concessions.
The first of these concessions was by far the most eccentric, but the Captain was so grave and insistent that those of us who had spoken up unanimously agreed to comply. We were to stuff our ears with cotton and tallow, creating a wax seal that muffled all sound. The second concession was simple - that we were not to approach the water, and that we would follow the Captain's orders.
As dusk fell, those ten of us who had agreed to the concessions gathered in the galley whilst the rest of the passengers retreated, some grumbling and incredulous, others silent and fearful, to their rooms. It was unusually silent as the Captain led us to the deck - and not just because of the cotton stuffed into our ears. Indeed, it seemed as though the typical sounds of the ocean around the natural creaks and groans of the ship had subsided entirely. The mostly full moon above us cast the shapes of the men and women into strange shifting shadows. The crew stood among us, some armed with guns, others white-knuckling harpoons and machetes.
We stood in abject silence as the first of the figures hauled itself up onto the ice floes. It appeared at first as a woman. Then, one's eyes would drift quite naturally to where the pale, humanoid torso transitioned into the tail of a fish. Though this was like no fish I had ever seen, at least a full meter and a half in length and pale as a ghost, studded with overlapping plates that put me in mind of armor. It terminated in a broad caudal fin, like that of a shark's, with two more sets of fins on either side of its sleek, powerful body.
As for the human part of the creature's body, it appeared to be that of a naked human female's, with slim, muscular arms and a head crowned by long, dark hair that pooled, inklike, about her slim shoulders, half hiding her breasts and throat. There was another set of fins that emerged at the hips. Yet there was something strange about it, particularly when I set my mind to look upon her face. So pale, it was. There was no hint there of blood flush there on her cheeks, and her wide, deep set eyes did not wrinkle or crinkle at the corners as a human's would even as she blinked sideways, a clear membrane sliding across her irises. I cannot recall what color they were. Only that they were dark, the pupils swallowed by the darkness of her irises.
I remember feeling slightly perturbed at that moment. Then, the creature opened its mouth and (I presumed by the movement of the vocal cords in her throat) began to sing. I'm not sure if "singing" was really the right word for it. I could see the back of her throat open up, but no words were shaped by her lips or tongue. Regardless, I found myself overtaken by a powerful and immediate fascination for her, though my latent curiosity had me craning my neck to catch sight of the others that continued to lazily circle around the ice floe, their fins sometimes cresting the surface of the water. The man at my shoulder also appeared deeply taken, his body swaying slowly as he, too, devoured the sight of the otherworldly creature before us.
Though I was still unable to hear much through the layer of cotton and wax I had painstakingly stuffed into my ears, it was clear that others had not been as diligent. About three of us started to sway forward, utterly entranced by the song. I might very well have been among them, if the ear-shattering sound of a gunshot had not shattered the night just then.
The Captain had discharged his firearm into the air. The creature went sliding back into the water with a feral hiss that enwrinkled her porcelain pale face, nostrils flaring as her lips curled back to reveal two rows of slim, sharp teeth. I recognized them immediately as the teeth of a creature that subsisted primarily from ripping and tearing raw meat from the carcasses of other creatures. Thinking back, it could not have been clearer that this creature was a predatory one - and that the crew of the Stillwater was next on its menu. The pack had been hunting us ever since the liner had drifted into their hunting grounds. Now, our only way out was forward.
One man managed to slip free from the protective corral that the crew had established, making a break for the side of the ship where another of the creatures waited in the dark water below, mouth also open in song. It beckoned to him with a webbed hand tipped with sharp claws. He dove to his death without hesitation. The waters churned red as the rest of the pack converged upon their floundering prey. His screams pierced our ears as we found ourselves herded below deck, but they did not last for long.
After that night, those of us who had witnessed the creature on the floes were united by a common agreement - that the Stillwater must continue forth. The ship was very nearly out of foodstuffs, still carrying nearly two dozen people, and the weather had taken a turn for the foul come the following morning. Another storm was blowing in from the North, battering us with sheets of sleet and icy rain that soon turned to snow, the waves growing in height.
Still, we firmly believed that we could make it if we could only hold out for another two days.
I was among the first to volunteer to patrol the halls to prevent more of us from being lured to our deaths. Needless to say, after that night, it became mandatory procedure to stuff one's ears before exiting the cabins. Between our combined efforts, no more souls were lost to the singing creatures waiting in the dark water, but they were not the only frightful thing we encountered during those two days.
The storm that beset us that day was among the fiercest I have ever seen, far nastier than the first wintery storm we'd sailed through. The skies turned black with dark clouds. We needn't have stuffed our ears, for the roiling thunder was all that we could hear, a perpetual rumble in the background - as if old Triton himself were grumbling with displeasure.
If the tales of the brave men and women who ventured above decks to steer us true were to be believed (a story that the passengers who had observed the storm from the porthole windows of their cabins corroborated), the strange lightning storm that danced upon the waters and illuminated the horizon was green. A frightful sight to behold, no doubt. Two more men were swept from the deck by waves so tall that they threatened to capsize the Stillwater, further reducing the crew's numbers. Those cloistered in the cabins below spent most of the time in prayer, whether beseeching their creators or simply to distract themselves from their hungry bellies.
The storm battered the Stillwater for nearly two more days. Then, on the morning of the third day, it finally let us go. The rains stopped. The clouds receded. The waters calmed. One of the crew began to yell joyously from the mast that they had spotted the guiding light of a lighthouse up in the distance.
Through god's grace, we had somehow made it through, emerging from the storm onto the Northern coastline, just half a day from Mierkov. Despite the Captain's gruff reassurances that the creatures would not stray from their hunting grounds and had not followed us, I found myself nervously plugging my ears when I ventured up above decks along with the rest of the other sun-starved passengers. I confess that I nearly wept with joy when it came my turn to cradle the telescope's lens against my eye and look upon the lighthouse for myself.
We docked in Mierkov later that day. I can say that I have never been so relieved as I was that day to step upon dry land again. After the majority of the crew had disembarked, I went to wish the Captain farewell and extend to him a standing invitation to my home in the city in thanks for his guidance and sound judgement, for I knew that without him, we certainly would have been lost.
However, as I clasped his hand in mine that final time, I found myself overcome with the most peculiar certainty that this was the last time that I would ever see him. Seeing the look upon my face, he asked me what was wrong. I replied that I'd just had a silly thought and that he should think nothing of it. He harrumphed, clasped my shoulder, and told me to be on my way.
I heard news a month or so later that the RMS Stillwater, along with her twenty odd crew members, had been declared missing off the coast of Saluzec, immediately south of Mierkov. There had been talk of strange storms in the area - an oddity, considering that the area was famed for its mild winters and placid weather. One of the men that I spoke to, a sheep farmer who had been grazing his flocks upon the cliffs around the time of the disappearance, mentioned green flashes in the sky. Unfortunately, I was able to find very little else.
Every attempt I've made at research regarding the strange creatures we encountered has been met, if not with outright dismissal, then with frustration, mostly on my account. The sources I found have all been either bedtime stories for children or old wives' tales, passed down orally, of course. There does seem to be some legend among the locals in the area of men and women with the lower bodies of fish, but none like the ones I encountered. Certainly, there is no mention of them devouring humans in their stories.
Years later, I visited the same lighthouse that we glimpsed when we emerged from the maw of the storm. I climbed to the very top with the Keeper's watchful eyes at my back, so that I might look out upon the sea from behind the rusted iron railing and imagine the Stillwater bobbing on the waves in the far distance.
I leave you with this final piece of information. Take me for a fool, call it hogwash from an overactive imagination, but as I was turning to leave the lighthouse for good, I thought that I glimpsed a flash of green light upon the horizon. In my sentimentality, I found myself imagining it as a final goodbye of sorts from the Stillwater, her Captain, and her crew. After all, I've never seen its like since.
This is my recounting of my time aboard the RMS Stillwater. May she and her crew, wherever they may rest, find eternal peace on the waves.
I saw it for the first time late in the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set.
The clouds were red, promising fair weather ahead, which felt like a cruel joke, considering our present circumstances. It was day twelve of what was supposed to be a fourteen day voyage, and we were nowhere close to our destination. With food supplies starting to run low, rationing among the crew and passengers alike had put everyone ill at ease and set tempers to sparking. Today had been the first clear day in an uninterrupted four day streak of snow and sleet, and I had gone out onto the icy deck to breathe some fresh air before the storm forced us down below again.
Perhaps I ought to introduce myself. My name is Kato, and I am- was - a journalist aboard the RMS Stillwater on her voyage from Keltro to Mierkov in the North. The ship. though a fairly typical ocean liner, was unfamiliar to me. I'd booked passage alongside a couple dozen passengers and several more tonnes of mail to be delivered to Mierkov upon the Stillwater's arrival. However, as it turned out, nothing about this particular voyage was to go as planned.
As I stared out across the expanse of shifting ice that lay ahead of our ship that evening, I thought that I glimpsed something glittering green in the water. I craned my neck, expecting a piece of driftwood, perhaps a lost fishing bauble, but the dark blue water between the cracked sheets of ice was empty. Between the unpredictable roiling of the ship and my cabin mate, a swarthy laborer from Marksburg who seemed to dislike me just as much as I abhored his cacophonous nightly snoring, I hadn't found myself well rested for some time.
I chalked the sighting up to a trick of the eye and headed back down to the galley at the sound of the dinner bell, putting the strange image of fish scales from my mind.
The second sighting was not by my own eyes but rather that of another passenger not a day later. She and her husband were well-to-do citizens of Mierkov, the pair returning from visiting the birth of their nephew. She claimed that she'd seen the ghostly apparition of a pale woman in the water that day. Though the sailors had thoroughly searched the water with eyes and spyglasses both, none had seen the woman in the water and her claim was dismissed by most as anxiety-induced hysteria. Until the next night, that is, when one of the night watchman said that he had heard a voice calling his name from just beyond the stern of the ship throughout his watch.
When I questioned him about the details, he told me that it had started towards the very end of his watch, lasting a little under an hour in duration, and that he had been too uneasy to follow it to the railing to find the source. Despite the laughter and teasing he received from his fellows, he stubbornly stuck to his story. Despite the tale being something I had heard before in many a ghost story, I found myself inclined to believe him by the look in his eyes as he told me the story.
There was markedly less laughter the next evening when one of the night watchmen went missing. He'd showed up for his post, relieving the previous man of duty, and then never been seen again. No body had been found in the water. No sign of a struggle on deck. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air.
The crew searched the entire ship that day, every square inch of the cargo hold and each individual cabin (much to the displeasure of some of the passengers), but the search failed to turn up anything of note. The Captain of the Stillwater gruffly addressed the passengers that evening in the galley. He told us that the night watch had been doubled, that every man would be accompanied by a fellow, and that nobody was to go anywhere alone, especially at night. Passengers were encouraged to remain in their cabins for the duration of the journey, which the Captain assured us would only be another four days if the weather continued to be fair.
I remember thinking to myself at the time that the decree seemed to be something of an overreaction. After all, stranger things had happened only for men to turn up drunk or delirious but ultimately unharmed a day or two later. However, just like the night watchmen who had first reported the eery voice calling his name, I saw something strange in the Captain's eyes. He was unnerved, though trying his best not to show it. I immediately wanted to know why.
I got my answer soon enough. Four days, as it turned out, was more than enough time for things to go monstrously wrong disastrously fast.
The first night of those four long days, I woke in the early hours of the morning to the sight of my cabin mate pressing his face against the porthole window of our cabin. His breath fogged in the chill air and his fingertips left smears of oil against the thick glass pane as he peered myopically through it. When I groggily asked him what he was doing, he shushed me, holding a finger in the air for a long moment, only to ask me the next moment with an urgency I had never heard before if I could hear 'that'.
I replied no, telling him that I did not hear anything, and asking him what 'that' was. When he failed to respond, I asked him to return to bed. In response, he hurled an expletive at me and began pulling his boots on, not even bothering to tie the laces. My attempts to persuade him to remain in the cabin fell upon deaf ears. He left in only his trousers, boots, and a thin undershirt, taking no coat despite the weather outside being well below freezing. I remained awake and petrified in the stale-smelling cabin for the rest of the night, peering out the window occasionally until the sky lightened enough to justify leaving.
I learned that he, along with three other passengers and one crewmate, three men and one woman, had disappeared that night. They were never seen again, their names added to the growing list of missing persons aboard the RMS Stillwater. Their disappearances, though strange and tragic, were not among the strangest things that we were to witness those next three days.
In the morning, I confronted the Captain at breakfast as he sat amongst his men, smoking a pipe and looking grimly down at his clenched hands. I accused him in anger and fear, loudly voicing my suspicion that that he knew more than he had told us. Other passengers, a few of whose cabin mates or family had also disappeared that night, joined me in righteous anger.
What he told me, I would not come to believe until that night, when I looked upon the water alongside the rest of the men and women who had stuffed their ears with waxed cotton, and beheld the shapes in the cold dark water that lazily circled our liner — more like carrion birds than sharks.
He said firstly, that the storm had blown us off course, a fact he'd been carefully trying to conceal from the passengers, and secondly, that the waters we currently found ourselves treading through were cursed. Angrily, I demanded to know exactly how off course we had been blown. As the cartographer piped up, I was relieved to learn that he had been telling the truth. We were still four days away from our destination. But the route was not the same.
Some of the others inquired about this 'curse'. The Captain eventually yielded enough to tell us that this 'cursed route' was not often used by ships passing through the area. Sailors were a superstitious lot, and they all knew the tales of the vessels that had passed through this area — some never to be seen again while others immediately found themselves beset by terrible misfortune shortly afterward. The most common story from this area, however, involved sightings of strange creatures in the frigid water. The stories painted them as ghosts or banshees sometimes, other times as creatures that were not quite beast but also not quite man but all with the ability to lure a man to a watery grave.
Hearing this, I had a suspicion that perhaps my cabin mate may have been hearing something calling his name after all. Yet, stubbornly, I resisted the truth, demanding that the old man prove it to us. He refused at first, claiming it to be far too perilous a venture, but with mounting pressure from both passengers and crew, eventually gave in, provided we honor a few key concessions.
The first of these concessions was by far the most eccentric, but the Captain was so grave and insistent that those of us who had spoken up unanimously agreed to comply. We were to stuff our ears with cotton and tallow, creating a wax seal that muffled all sound. The second concession was simple - that we were not to approach the water, and that we would follow the Captain's orders.
As dusk fell, those ten of us who had agreed to the concessions gathered in the galley whilst the rest of the passengers retreated, some grumbling and incredulous, others silent and fearful, to their rooms. It was unusually silent as the Captain led us to the deck - and not just because of the cotton stuffed into our ears. Indeed, it seemed as though the typical sounds of the ocean around the natural creaks and groans of the ship had subsided entirely. The mostly full moon above us cast the shapes of the men and women into strange shifting shadows. The crew stood among us, some armed with guns, others white-knuckling harpoons and machetes.
We stood in abject silence as the first of the figures hauled itself up onto the ice floes. It appeared at first as a woman. Then, one's eyes would drift quite naturally to where the pale, humanoid torso transitioned into the tail of a fish. Though this was like no fish I had ever seen, at least a full meter and a half in length and pale as a ghost, studded with overlapping plates that put me in mind of armor. It terminated in a broad caudal fin, like that of a shark's, with two more sets of fins on either side of its sleek, powerful body.
As for the human part of the creature's body, it appeared to be that of a naked human female's, with slim, muscular arms and a head crowned by long, dark hair that pooled, inklike, about her slim shoulders, half hiding her breasts and throat. There was another set of fins that emerged at the hips. Yet there was something strange about it, particularly when I set my mind to look upon her face. So pale, it was. There was no hint there of blood flush there on her cheeks, and her wide, deep set eyes did not wrinkle or crinkle at the corners as a human's would even as she blinked sideways, a clear membrane sliding across her irises. I cannot recall what color they were. Only that they were dark, the pupils swallowed by the darkness of her irises.
I remember feeling slightly perturbed at that moment. Then, the creature opened its mouth and (I presumed by the movement of the vocal cords in her throat) began to sing. I'm not sure if "singing" was really the right word for it. I could see the back of her throat open up, but no words were shaped by her lips or tongue. Regardless, I found myself overtaken by a powerful and immediate fascination for her, though my latent curiosity had me craning my neck to catch sight of the others that continued to lazily circle around the ice floe, their fins sometimes cresting the surface of the water. The man at my shoulder also appeared deeply taken, his body swaying slowly as he, too, devoured the sight of the otherworldly creature before us.
Though I was still unable to hear much through the layer of cotton and wax I had painstakingly stuffed into my ears, it was clear that others had not been as diligent. About three of us started to sway forward, utterly entranced by the song. I might very well have been among them, if the ear-shattering sound of a gunshot had not shattered the night just then.
The Captain had discharged his firearm into the air. The creature went sliding back into the water with a feral hiss that enwrinkled her porcelain pale face, nostrils flaring as her lips curled back to reveal two rows of slim, sharp teeth. I recognized them immediately as the teeth of a creature that subsisted primarily from ripping and tearing raw meat from the carcasses of other creatures. Thinking back, it could not have been clearer that this creature was a predatory one - and that the crew of the Stillwater was next on its menu. The pack had been hunting us ever since the liner had drifted into their hunting grounds. Now, our only way out was forward.
One man managed to slip free from the protective corral that the crew had established, making a break for the side of the ship where another of the creatures waited in the dark water below, mouth also open in song. It beckoned to him with a webbed hand tipped with sharp claws. He dove to his death without hesitation. The waters churned red as the rest of the pack converged upon their floundering prey. His screams pierced our ears as we found ourselves herded below deck, but they did not last for long.
After that night, those of us who had witnessed the creature on the floes were united by a common agreement - that the Stillwater must continue forth. The ship was very nearly out of foodstuffs, still carrying nearly two dozen people, and the weather had taken a turn for the foul come the following morning. Another storm was blowing in from the North, battering us with sheets of sleet and icy rain that soon turned to snow, the waves growing in height.
Still, we firmly believed that we could make it if we could only hold out for another two days.
I was among the first to volunteer to patrol the halls to prevent more of us from being lured to our deaths. Needless to say, after that night, it became mandatory procedure to stuff one's ears before exiting the cabins. Between our combined efforts, no more souls were lost to the singing creatures waiting in the dark water, but they were not the only frightful thing we encountered during those two days.
The storm that beset us that day was among the fiercest I have ever seen, far nastier than the first wintery storm we'd sailed through. The skies turned black with dark clouds. We needn't have stuffed our ears, for the roiling thunder was all that we could hear, a perpetual rumble in the background - as if old Triton himself were grumbling with displeasure.
If the tales of the brave men and women who ventured above decks to steer us true were to be believed (a story that the passengers who had observed the storm from the porthole windows of their cabins corroborated), the strange lightning storm that danced upon the waters and illuminated the horizon was green. A frightful sight to behold, no doubt. Two more men were swept from the deck by waves so tall that they threatened to capsize the Stillwater, further reducing the crew's numbers. Those cloistered in the cabins below spent most of the time in prayer, whether beseeching their creators or simply to distract themselves from their hungry bellies.
The storm battered the Stillwater for nearly two more days. Then, on the morning of the third day, it finally let us go. The rains stopped. The clouds receded. The waters calmed. One of the crew began to yell joyously from the mast that they had spotted the guiding light of a lighthouse up in the distance.
Through god's grace, we had somehow made it through, emerging from the storm onto the Northern coastline, just half a day from Mierkov. Despite the Captain's gruff reassurances that the creatures would not stray from their hunting grounds and had not followed us, I found myself nervously plugging my ears when I ventured up above decks along with the rest of the other sun-starved passengers. I confess that I nearly wept with joy when it came my turn to cradle the telescope's lens against my eye and look upon the lighthouse for myself.
We docked in Mierkov later that day. I can say that I have never been so relieved as I was that day to step upon dry land again. After the majority of the crew had disembarked, I went to wish the Captain farewell and extend to him a standing invitation to my home in the city in thanks for his guidance and sound judgement, for I knew that without him, we certainly would have been lost.
However, as I clasped his hand in mine that final time, I found myself overcome with the most peculiar certainty that this was the last time that I would ever see him. Seeing the look upon my face, he asked me what was wrong. I replied that I'd just had a silly thought and that he should think nothing of it. He harrumphed, clasped my shoulder, and told me to be on my way.
I heard news a month or so later that the RMS Stillwater, along with her twenty odd crew members, had been declared missing off the coast of Saluzec, immediately south of Mierkov. There had been talk of strange storms in the area - an oddity, considering that the area was famed for its mild winters and placid weather. One of the men that I spoke to, a sheep farmer who had been grazing his flocks upon the cliffs around the time of the disappearance, mentioned green flashes in the sky. Unfortunately, I was able to find very little else.
Every attempt I've made at research regarding the strange creatures we encountered has been met, if not with outright dismissal, then with frustration, mostly on my account. The sources I found have all been either bedtime stories for children or old wives' tales, passed down orally, of course. There does seem to be some legend among the locals in the area of men and women with the lower bodies of fish, but none like the ones I encountered. Certainly, there is no mention of them devouring humans in their stories.
Years later, I visited the same lighthouse that we glimpsed when we emerged from the maw of the storm. I climbed to the very top with the Keeper's watchful eyes at my back, so that I might look out upon the sea from behind the rusted iron railing and imagine the Stillwater bobbing on the waves in the far distance.
I leave you with this final piece of information. Take me for a fool, call it hogwash from an overactive imagination, but as I was turning to leave the lighthouse for good, I thought that I glimpsed a flash of green light upon the horizon. In my sentimentality, I found myself imagining it as a final goodbye of sorts from the Stillwater, her Captain, and her crew. After all, I've never seen its like since.
This is my recounting of my time aboard the RMS Stillwater. May she and her crew, wherever they may rest, find eternal peace on the waves.
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