The lookout of the HMS Albatross squinted through his spyglass at the mass of broken wood and sail floating off the coast. The ship was dashed to smithereens. Eviscerated. Whether by being rammed into the jagged promontory, or via a blown powder magazine, it was hard to tell. The ruins laying before the Albatross could have been anything from a man o’ war to a little exploration or trading schooner, like the vessel of the observers; it was impossible to determine given its current state of annihilation. The lookout swept his gaze across the snapped masts, torn sails and cracked bulkheads.
What happened to this ship?
They were too far north for pirates, and the ice flows hadn’t picked up yet.
A storm perhaps?
The wreck appeared to be somewhat recent, albeit inconclusive.
The lookout considered himself a seasoned sailor, and he served on a warship during the war with the French. He saw a great many broken and wrecked ships, but none matched this. It was as if the ship was bombarded over and over again, and then it finally collapsed under its own weight, only to be bombarded still more. No bodies floated in the sea. No flag of a foreign nation raised on the shore. The only thing there was...
The lookout blinked. He looked again. On the rocky shore of the beach lay a man, spread eagle, the tide ebbing around his shoes.
“Man-ho! Starboard!” called the lookout to the crew below.
Within an hour, the ship anchored itself, and a launch prepared to investigate, and potentially rescue, the motionless figure on the beach.
The driftwood, rope, and sails from the destroyed vessel scattered the otherwise pristine sea like casualties on a battlefield. A board fragment spotted bearing an ‘HM-’, it but was promptly cut off after the M. It was formerly British. At this time, many of the men were uncomfortably reminded of tales of krakens and serpents that populated foreign waters, ready to devour anyone unlucky enough to cross their paths.
However, the boat made it to the beach unmolested, with a man occasionally pushing some wreckage away with an oar. The landing party cautiously approached the figure, spread on the rocky turf with arms wide, as if embracing death. He was clothed, exceedingly pale, and alive.
As the men approached, his eyes opened. He made an immense effort to speak, but his voice came small and raspy. He coughed pathetically.
The men looked around amongst themselves. How long had he been here? His aliveness would be a miracle if he was here any longer a night or, God forbid, several days.
“Ho, sailor! What became of you?” the captain started abruptly. The captain was a former gunnery officer and disliked idleness.
The man tried to respond, but his wisp of a voice was inaudible. After several seconds of this, the man’s arm twitched. He was trying to raise it: he clutched something in his icy palm.
The captain nodded to a sailor, who gently removed the contents of the man’s severely frost bitten fingers. It was a small piece of parchment. In the man’s other hand, he held a petite mapping pencil.
The man, a cartographer perhaps, laid his head down and closed his eyes.
“Get him on back to the boat,” the captain ordered.
The men, eager for something to distract from the stark situation, busied themselves getting the dying cartographer back to launch.
The captain waited until his men were at a discretionarily appropriate distance, and then he opened the small parchment scrap. On it, in a hurried, panicked scrawl, was written GO. The captain frowned. Something fishy was going on here. This was the French at their antics again, the captain decided, and he intended to explore the entire island in order to find them if he had to. The captain crumpled the parchment and tossed it into the water. It peacefully drifted off.
It was late in the day, and as the sun began to descend, some crew members began to notice a curious Light emanating from inland.
