The Ghost Ship

by ~Amberspike-Sama

Allie Junforth stood with one hand on the ship’s wheel, her gaze focused on the waters ahead. The pall of night hung over the open ocean, the moon beaming from the cloudless sky and casting a dim silver glow across the lightly lapping waves. Far off, the tips of icebergs loomed, barely visible, on the horizon, but their points seemed the only defining feature of the ship’s surroundings—all the rest appeared to be an eternity of darkened ocean, lacking any hint of life.

“It’s very quiet tonight,” Allie observed.

Behind her, a young man with untidy brown hair crossed his arms and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I always thought it seemed pretty lonely when we’re out at night like this. Like we’re the only people in the world.”

“Indeed. Especially in winter…the cold seems to bring out that feeling. How cold is it out there, anyway? I nearly froze while on lookout a few hours ago.”

“Uh, I don’t know…I haven’t been out yet tonight.”

Allie turned slightly, the beads in her hair clinking together as she glanced back at the man. “I thought you just had lookout duty, Calvin.”

“Nah, I got Ninian to take it. Paid him a bit to tell Verty that I was down with food poisoning of some sort. I thought she might actually believe it because it was him telling her, but she’s getting to know me too well. She’s making me take the four in the morning watch now, even though fifty cents made Ninian perfectly willing to do double time…”

“Cal, you should have known that she wouldn’t believe that.”

“Well, she didn’t question me the time I told her I had cargo watch on D deck,” Calvin said, smirking.

Allie raised an eyebrow. “But this ship doesn’t have a D deck.”

“I told her while she was talking to Asport. It took about an hour for her to figure it out, because she was only barely listening at the time. I ought to have advised Ninian to wait until she was busy before describing my terrible illness to her…”

“What you ought to do is actually try and work for a change.”

“Oh, trying to get out of work is far more entertaining than actually doing it, believe me.”

“Captain Ordros is going to dismiss you one of these days if you keep it up,” Allie warned.

Calvin’s smirk widened. “No, Verty knows she isn’t going to get a Second Mate that can navigate better than me.”

“That’s awfully conceited of you.”

“It’s true, though. Didn’t I tell you that I spent my whole childhood aboard merchant ships? I learned how to do dead reckoning when I was ten, and I’m sure you can’t say that about the other qualified Seconds—”

“What nonsense are you boasting about now, Mr. Rothrope?”

Calvin and Allie turned, startled, at the sound of the voice. A tall, thin woman stood in the doorway to the steeringhouse, her lips curved into a very slight smile; the widest smile Allie could recall seeing from her on a day-to-day basis.

“Nothing, Vert—I mean, Captain…” said Calvin, attempting to look innocent and failing.

Vertiline Ordros surveyed him coldly. “I told you to stop calling me ‘Verty.’”

“Yes. Yes, you did. I was only calling you that behind your back, and forgot for a moment not to do it to your face.”

“I don’t want you to call me that annoying nickname at all,” said Vertiline, crossing her arms. “I’m quite tired of it by now.”

Calvin snickered in spite of himself. “Yes, Captain. It has gotten a bit old…I need to invent a new one. Perhaps ‘Leany’…”

Vertiline shot Calvin a silencing look, then withdrew a rolled-up map from the pocket of her black frock coat and approached Allie with it. She paused for a moment beside the ship’s wheel, studying the map, then showed it to Allie, pointing at a line drawn on it in red pencil.

“We’ll need to redirect our course eastward and stop at the coaling station near Numidia. Mr. Asport miscalculated the amount of fuel we have in storage.”

“Asport? Miscalculating? Since when?” Calvin gave a laugh as Allie turned the wheel towards the right.

“He’s allowed to make a mistake once in a while,” Vertiline snapped. “The stop will not take long, anyway. I determined that if we increase our speed to full after rounding the tip of the island and remain that way until we pass the mountainous part of the coast, we should still reach port on time.”

“Still, that has to be the first time in my memory that Asport’s messed up,” remarked Calvin. “Without me deliberately trying to mess him up, of course. Like the time with the engine room telegraph—heh, I thought he was going to kill me…”

“Well, you nearly drove him mad by ringing the thing repeatedly with no order to send. That was very unkind of you, Mr. Rothrope.”

“It was funny, though, the way he came running up, practically foaming at the mouth—wasn’t it, Allie?”

Calvin looked at Allie, who just sighed and rolled her eyes at him. Receiving no agreement from her, he glanced back at Vertiline and opened his mouth to assert that the incident had indeed been very funny—

—only to find the captain staring, wide-eyed, at something visible through the paned windshield.

“Huh?” A prickle of fear shot down his spine from Vertiline’s expression alone. He turned as though in a dream, finding himself staring blankly at a dark, looming shape that had seemingly appeared from nowhere in front of the ship—a shape which they were approaching rapidly.

“What is that?!”

Allie went into action at once, spinning the wheel to the right as far as it would go. The ship veered wildly, but it was apparent that they would not be able to turn quickly enough to avoid a collision.

Thinking quickly, Vertiline leapt around Allie, gripped the brass handle of the engine room telegraph, and spun it around, ringing a bell and settling the small arrow on its round dial to the ‘STOP’ command. Almost immediately, an answering ring was heard, and the vibrations from the propellers slowed and cut off abruptly, sending a shudder through the steel frame of the ship very much like that of a blow.

“Did we hit it?” Allie wondered aloud in a near-whisper.

Neither Calvin nor Vertiline gave a response. Vertiline, on her part, was too busy gaping at a whitish, flickering light from the looming shape, her lips moving without a sound.

She knew a signal lantern when she saw one.

The lantern flickered on and off at regular intervals, the only light from whatever sort of craft was up ahead. As moments passed, it became apparent that its glow was quickly fading, as though it were running out of fuel. Soon, it was so muted that Vertiline could not make out whether it was on or off at all, and another second’s passing assured her that it was no longer burning.

“‘Your ship is’…your ship is what?” she muttered. “In danger? Ms. Junforth, did you—”

“It’s gone,” said Allie, in astonishment.

Vertiline glared impatiently at Allie. “Yes, I’m well aware the light is gone, but did you—”

“No, Captain!” exclaimed Calvin. “The ship. It’s not there, it just sort of…”

Vertiline looked out the paned windshield again. To her utter disbelief, the dark ship they had nearly rammed had vanished, leaving only an expanse of impossibly undisturbed, softly moonlit sea.

Nearly a minute went by with none of the three speaking a word.

In the end, it was a stern-looking man that broke the stifling silence, who climbed up a flight of stairs to the steeringhouse and positioned himself behind Vertiline with his hands on his hips.

“What in the world is going on here? I still have the boilers lit, and I’d like to know why we’re not going anywhere!”

“Sorry, Mr. Asport,” Allie began, exchanging glances with Vertiline, “Not long ago we thought we almost collided with another ship. We were watching it when it disappeared as unexpectedly as it had materialized…”

“You should have seen it, Azzy!” Calvin cried. “It was like a ghost ship! It was out here in the middle of nowhere and then gone before our eyes, without leaving a wake or anything!”

“Ms. Ordros, what is this all about?” Asport inquired, adjusting his glasses and gazing down at Calvin skeptically.

Vertiline sighed heavily. “To be honest, Mr. Asport, in all my years I’ve never seen anything like that. I’m not sure what to make of it—it was so sudden—”

“Where’s the mate on watch? If there was really a ghost ship out there, wouldn’t he be in here and raving about it as well?” Asport pointed out.

“Mr. Rothrope, fetch Mr. Leweret,” commanded Vertiline.

Calvin nodded a little and left through the side door of the steeringhouse, passing Asport without one of his usual snide comments. This in itself caused Asport to become aware that something had to be seriously wrong, and a troubled expression crossed his gaunt features.

Another minute, and Calvin returned with a red-haired man, who shed his thick overcoat as soon as he entered the steeringhouse, glad to be out of the cold.

“What do you want me for, Captain? Is this about Cal again?”

“No, this isn’t about Mr. Rothrope’s chronic illnesses or exploits on D deck,” said Vertiline. “I merely need to know whether you saw a ship nearly crash into us before the engine was shut off—whether I, Ms. Junforth and Mr. Rothrope were hallucinating, or you simply neglected to alert us about said ship for whatever reason.”

Ninian Leweret looked terribly confused. “Is this a joke? I didn’t see a thing.”

“You were awake out there, weren’t you?”

“How could I not be? It’s as cold as death out there!” exclaimed Ninian. “Really, what are you going on about?”

“The three of us saw a ship,” Vertiline insisted. “All three of us did. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t have seen it.”

“Yeah, Ninian—it just about scared the life out of us, too, it came up so fast!” added Calvin.

Ninian motioned helplessly with his hands. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re trying to trick me, this isn’t very funny! I was standing watch faithfully the whole time and I didn’t see a thing in this frozen waste of an ocean. When you shut the engine off, I just figured something had gone wrong in the engine room. You can look all around for yourself, and there’s nothing for miles—”

Allie brushed back a strand of her beaded hair. “I do believe Calvin was right.”

“What do you mean?” asked Vertiline.

“He was right in calling it a ghost ship. Spirits, of course, can choose to manifest so only certain people can see them.”

“Allie, don’t start with all your mad superstitious stuff again,” said Calvin. “I said it was like a ghost ship, not that it was. I don’t know what it actually was.”

“It makes sense, though.” Allie’s violet eyes sparkled. “Out here, away from civilization, would be a perfect place for spirits to dwell. Perhaps it was the ghost of a ship that was wrecked, returning to warn us about some danger—Captain Ordros, you thought it was attempting to signal us, so—”

“Oh, so it was signaling us too? How interesting,” retorted Asport, with abundant sarcasm.

“I saw a signal lantern out there; I won’t deny it,” said Vertiline. “But you saw it as well, Allie.”

“Yes, of course. I wasn’t paying attention to the message, but it was most definitely a signal lantern.”

Asport shook his head. “You expect me to believe that…”

“Why, it’s what we saw. Before the ghost ship faded away, it was attempting to signal us. ‘Your ship is’; that’s what Captain Ordros believes it said—maybe ‘your ship is in danger.’”

“‘In danger’ was a complete guess. I didn’t see what came after those first three words.”

“So, it could have just as well been ‘your ship is beautiful’, or ‘your ship is traveling in the wrong direction’?”

Vertiline frowned, her face’s light lines of age becoming harshly pronounced. “Possibly. I have no idea. Mr. Asport, please treat this situation a bit more seriously.”

“What is there to be serious about? You three are going on about a ghost ship, and Mr. Leweret here saw absolutely nothing! Ms. Ordros, I’d expect you of all people to be the sensible one, instead of going on about receiving messages from a nonexistent vessel!”

“Leander! I am trying to be sensible about this, and I know what I saw!” Vertiline hissed. “I would chalk it up to a trick of the light had I not seen that signal lantern! I only ask that you cease looking at me like I’m a madwoman, so we can all move on from this unexplainable incident!”

Leander Asport scoffed and turned away. “Yes, please, let’s drop this matter and get moving again. As I said, I left the boilers burning, and I can’t afford to waste any coal. I’ve been attempting to run the engine all day on slightly less fuel than usual, but due to its remarkable inefficiency, I haven’t been able to conserve much…”

“Will we run out soon?” asked Allie. “The ghost ship could have been warning us that—”

“No, not soon. We just ought to stop at Numidia, since I doubt the amount we have will take us all the way down the coast. I would like to look at a few of the valves, too; since I’ve had some difficulty getting the pressure up in a few parts of the engine. Not a significant amount of difficulty, of course, but enough to make me a bit uneasy.”

“Oh, you’ve just hated this ship’s engine for as long as I’ve been here,” Calvin remarked. “You just want to be transferred to some newer ship and away from mad people like me, and Allie, and possibly Leany.”

“Truth be told, you’re the only one I can’t stand, Calvin,” said Asport. “I can live with that outdated engine—I’ve worked with worse in the past. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I’m the only one? Ah, what an honor…”

“Well, no one else is as singularly immature as you! You exasperating trickster…I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole ‘ghost ship’ incident is of your doing.”

“Calvin couldn’t have set it up!” exclaimed Allie, causing the others to cast surprised glances at the normally composed young woman. “He was with us the entire time, and it wasn’t as though he had Ninian simply flash a lantern from the bow. It was definitely the shape of a ship that displayed itself to us. Though…”

She trailed off momentarily, her brow furrowing. “…Though, it did seem that the shape seemed somehow—”

The blast tore through the ship without warning, overtaking her words.

Calvin gave a cry of surprise as the floor pitched forward, knocking him off balance. Allie’s breath caught in her throat and she swung the steering wheel about as she stumbled, nearly falling as well. Ninian lost his footing and slammed into a section of wall next to the windshield, while Asport and Vertiline staggered a bit but somehow managed to remain standing. The lamps mounted on the walls of the steeringhouse flickered wildly, plunging the room into near-darkness for a moment. As the ship rocked back in the opposite direction and the lights rose once more, all eyes turned, accusingly, to Asport.

“Please tell me that wasn’t what I think it was,” said Vertiline.

Asport’s face was ghastly pale, terror evident in his eyes.

“The boiler. The boiler…the valves, those valves…oh, Vertiline, the safety valve must’ve…must’ve…”

He turned suddenly and bolted down the steps to the lower decks. Vertiline quickly followed, and Calvin took to her heels, leaving a stunned Allie and Ninian behind him.

It didn’t take long before the sound of rushing water met the ears of the three, and Calvin winced as he stepped in a rising puddle, soaking one ankle in icy water. Vertiline stopped at the base of the stairs, and, looking over the captain’s shoulder, Calvin could make out through a cloud of steam where a torrent was gushing in between the twisted steel remains of a wide boiler. The men that had manned the boilers and monitored the engines ran about like frightened ants, a few fear-blinded, half-scorched individuals pushing past Vertiline and Calvin up the stairs.

“Captain, should I..?” Calvin began, pressing himself against the wall to let the men go by.

“Yes, yes, ready the lifeboats! Get up there, now!”

Asport’s voice rose over the roar of the water, ordering the men who hadn’t gotten the idea to take to the stairs as well. Calvin lingered for a second, unable to sprint up the steps himself with the engine room crew in his way, and noted a few sickeningly recognizable shapes floating among the riveted bits of steel on the surface of the water. The explosion had been lethal.

Finally the stairs cleared, and Calvin ran for his life. Vertiline trailed him, holding the hem of her skirts to her knees, with Asport and another engineer at the back of the group; a middle-aged man who jabbered half-hysterically about the explosion.

“There was nothing I could do, Chief, the needles on the gauges shot up so fast, I couldn’t think, there was nothing—”

“Mr. Windon, I understand!” growled Asport. “Shut your mouth and hurry! With the size of that opening this ship won’t stay afloat long!”

The three came to the top of the steps, with Calvin darting out of the steeringhouse to where the lifeboats were kept. Ninian, figuring what he was after, scrambled after him to help; while Vertiline pointed Allie off to the cabins.

“Wake up anyone that might still be asleep and get them out! We’re abandoning ship!”

As though coming to some awful realization, Allie stared at Vertiline; then hastily gathered her wits again and sprinted off, throwing open doors and yelling to rouse sleeping crewmembers. Vertiline stood in the steeringhouse until Allie returned with a number of somewhat disoriented men behind her, who rushed out into the frigid air of the top deck.

“That’s everyone,” Allie said breathlessly. “I made sure.”

Vertiline nodded and frowned, feeling the downward slope of the floor beneath her increase a little more. “Let’s get out of here, Ms. Junforth.”

The two women made their way to the lifeboats, climbing into the back of one that Calvin was standing by, ready to release the ropes that held it suspended next to the bulwark of the ship. Calvin glanced down at the water, where a ship filled with the engine room workers was already rowing away; then surveyed the inhabitants of the second boat and gave Vertiline a look, asking whether that was everyone. Vertiline nodded again, and Calvin reached for the lever that held the pulleys fast…

He froze abruptly, staring at something large and looming up ahead, something awfully, awfully familiar.

It’s our ship.

There it was, completely intact, its steeringhouse lit well enough that he could make out a few shapes inside, as the electric generator down in the flooded engine room failed and the lights around him plunged into darkness. Awestruck, he stepped away from the lifeboat, watching the phantom ship turn sharply, then stop, wondering whether it was his imagination, or if he really could hear his own fearful exclamation and the jangling of the engine room telegraph that accompanied those events.

“Unbelievable…” Vertiline breathed, petrified in an equal amount of amazement. She was beginning to understand now, and Calvin was as well.

Leaving the lifeboat suspended behind him, he bolted back into the steeringhouse, stumbling on the tilted floor as he threw open a cabinet, retrieving a lantern and running to the bow of the sinking ship. With shaking hands, he lit the lantern, and then held it up in front of him, switching the shutters open and closed.

Maybe this is our chance, a second chance…

He messaged as fast as he could, barely thinking as he did each letter in turn. The ghostly image of the ship before him was very clear, almost clear enough that he could see himself standing there; watching in awe something that at the time he hadn’t known what to make of. Vertiline was watching too, he knew, and he hoped she’d be able to tell the entirety of what he was sending, the words that could change everything—

YOUR SHIP IS UNSAFE! TELL ASPORT!

As he reached the fourth word, Calvin realized that the spectral ship was fading like a dying light; he tried to hurry, but his efforts were in vain. In seconds, it was completely gone, leaving only the endless waters to bear witness to what he had to say.

The signal lantern dropped from his listless hand.

“Mr. Rothrope!” screamed Vertiline. “Goodness, Calvin, get over here and lower the lifeboat! Do you want to drown?!”

Calvin hung back for a moment longer, shaking his head at the empty sea; then bolted to the lifeboat, threw the lever and jumped into the boat as it slowly descended. He took a seat next to Allie, who placed her hand atop his with a surprising amount of pity.

He looked into her violet eyes, wondering. She glanced away from him, towards the stern of the ship, the beads in her hair clinking as she moved.

“I guess it wasn’t a ghost ship, really,” he remarked awkwardly.

“No,” she sighed. “I was going to say something before about the shape of it. It looked to me like the ship was almost lopsided…now I know why.”

She pointed to where the stern was gradually dipping deeper into the water. The boiler that had exploded had been near the far end of the engine room, and he could tell that the ship was both tilting backwards and towards the starboard side. To someone watching from ahead, it would have indeed seemed at a lopsided angle.

“Strange, what fate offers us…” mused Allie. “I thought at first you had a chance, but it was destiny, really. The past was already written, and you were only acting out the script.”

“Yeah…it doesn’t really matter, does it? What happened. It didn’t change a thing.”

“No. Though, I’m sure it’ll find a place in all those tales you tell people at port.” Allie managed a smile.

“Yeah, like that time with the fishing ship I served as Third Mate on…” said Calvin, picking up an oar. “That one sank too, though without anything supernatural going on, and it was some badly built sailing ship. Smashed into a reef out by Epiria Major…I was below deck moving crates around when the water blasted in, and broke an arm in two places when it threw me against a wall. Then of course it took so many hours to find a place to go ashore, and then we couldn’t find a doctor, while I was ready to strangle whoever had been at the wheel, even though it’s hard to strangle someone one-handed…”

“Calvin, now is not storytime!” Vertiline snapped. “Start rowing, and that goes for the rest of you as well! We need to get some distance from the ship before it goes down!”

Calvin smirked and did as he was told without complaint, with the others following suit. As they left the doomed ship, its pointed bow was rising towards the heavens, as though seeking in its final hour to touch a star-sprinkled sky it would never reach.

They rowed away from the inevitable, the lifeboat trailing after its twin across the moonlit sea.