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Something Destroyed the Royal Fleet

712 Views Posted on: 07/26/2022

Ralph watched the sun go down on the horizon, the slightly rippling sea firmly embracing the changing hues of the sky, making it difficult to distinguish where the two met. 

He thought it was always too short-lived, that the moment to leave was resolved in the blink of an eye. A sad exit compared to the brightness of the day. 

He collected himself with a shiver and pulled his boots back on, the sand was already cool. 

Pensively he walked back toward the dock, occasionally casting a worried glance at the sailboats moored in the harbor. 

He had never seen so many boats, all at once.

Even the Invincible had arrived, obliterating the other ships nearby - including the small frigate he was on - as she towered above them with her five decks.

For weeks now, they’d talked of nothing but that expedition, to a top-secret destination. 

He felt like going for a drink but then, lingering in the doorway of the White Cliff  he decided against it; inside were some heated voices that he recognized straight away. 

Usually he spent the last night alone, always had. 

He arrived at Annie's tavern thinking that with any luck he would find an empty table at that hour. 

He greeted the woman cordially and went to take a seat in the half-light, after having ordered some gin and a piece of pie.

Sitting around a table in the center of the room were four sailors, with uniforms unbuttoned and dead drunk. They were sleeping soundly. Suddenly one of them seemed to wake up and realize that Ralph was there; he stretched out an arm as if to call his attention, but it immediately fell down to his side. He had fallen back asleep.

Good, Ralph thought as he turned his glass in his hands, as if to warm himself. 

He didn't have time to bite into his pie when a croaky voice made him jump.

"Hey sailor, buy your old colleague a drink!"

He looked around in disbelief to see a figure that seemed to have materialized at the table next to him. It was a man, aged by the years and dressed in rags, who was sitting hunched over. He held his glass outstretched in his direction, looking at him in an amused way; his few teeth sneering at him mockingly.  

Ralph unwillingly ordered two drinks, doubles. 

The old man took a long gulp, belched sonorously, and ran his gaze over Ralph’s jacket, greedily. 

"You know, I used to have a nice jacket, just like yours. Women were crazy about it. I used to be a snappy dresser, you know..."

Ralph remained silent, instantly regretting the doubles. 

"And then like all things, all things...come to an end..." he concluded, as  his head drooped down. 

The tavern fell into a deep silence, punctuated by heavy breathing and the sound of dishes being washed. 

Ralph finished eating and lit his pipe, glanced over Annie's form and, for a moment he felt good. He stretched out on his chair.  

He glanced out of the small window, it was pitch dark and there seemed to be a fair amount of wind. 

"ALARM!" cried the old man suddenly, waking up like one possessed, "It's him, I can see him, he's coming!"

"What the fuck are you gibbering about, you old cockroach..." muttered the sailor from before, making as if to get up. 

"Yes, yes, it's him! It's really him! He’s immense, and rising up from the sea!" continued the old man with spirited eyes, writhing around. 

"I’ll teach you a lesson or two about saying that shit!" yelled the sailor, moving threateningly towards him. 

Ralph stood in front of him and planted two fingers under his chin, taking care to show off the gold buttons of his uniform. 

"Annie! A round of drinks for these fine folks, my treat."

The sailor went back to his table muttering, spat in the old man's direction, and swilled his glass without a word. 

"What the devil are you going on about, old man?" Ralph said to him, "You ought to know well enough that such talk doesn't go down well, especially on the eve of departure."

The old man clung to his arm, terrified. 

"I saw it, I really saw it..." 

"What did you see?" Ralph urged him as he nodded towards Annie. 

"I was there, I was aboard the Firefly in '48..."

A cold chill shook through Ralph from head to foot.

These were stories reluctantly talked about. Some told of a perfect storm, others of a catastrophic pitch leak, still others of a brilliant surprise attack. 

The fact was that the best units of the Royal Fleet had disappeared into thin air that year, in the course of a mysterious exercise. 

Since then no major formation had taken to the sea again. 

Until that day. 

"You’re lying! No one ever came back!" apostrophized Ralph harshly.

"I did! We were a handful of men in a lifeboat; they picked us up after a week, like fish in a creel. They said the sun had cooked our brains. Cooked our brains, you know? " 

The old man looked at him with wide eyes, his upper lip quivering. He took a long swig.

"It was a dark night, as dark as the bottom of a cauldron," he took to recounting after wiping his mouth with a lurid sleeve, "the moon was a rotten, dull crescent, the stars shone pale, strangely. We were sailing in combat formation, those were the orders. I was the helmsman of that gem, I loved her."

The old man brought his hands in front of him, as if to clutch at something. 

"Suddenly we were engulfed by a thick fog, you couldn't see your own hand. I held tight to the ship’s wheel and steadied my course, praying to God we weren’t going to end up in some other ship’s ass."

"We tried to shout out to the nearby craft but no one answered. It seemed as if the vapors had swallowed up the world, or us. I sent for the captain, by then we’d been sailing like that for over half an hour. Blindly. All you could hear was a strange swishing along the surface of the water, it was like hundreds of fish jumping all around us. The guys were starting to get really nervous."

The man at the next table cleared his throat forcefully, Ralph shut him up with the tip of his finger. 

"When at last the captain joined me on deck I noticed a glow to starboard. They looked like two great burning lanterns hanging in the sky, far above the masthead of any ship. They were coming toward us as fast as if they had been hurled by a catapult. I didn’t have time to raise the alarm when a deadly explosion shook the air." 

"The vessel sailing to our right lit up like a match, even through that infernal fog I could glimpse the flames rising as high as the eruption of a volcano. Then their screams reached us, the poor things were roasting like rabbits, it was terrible."

The old man stopped, trembling. He took another sip and cleared his throat, now even the sailors at the next table waited silently. Only Annie pretended nothing was happening, rubbing vigorously at washed glasses.

"The lanterns, the lanterns flashed fiery darts in all directions. They went through the fog like glowing grenades, accurate and deadly. One by one all the ships of the fleet were struck, burning instantly as if covered in pitch, leaving no escape for the crews."

"The captain gave the order to abandon ship, and panic reigned supreme. There were only a few lifeboats, and many of the boys couldn’t swim; I saw more than one of them throw themselves overboard wrapped in chains, and a few put a bullet through their heads. I ran to the stern launch, which was the nearest to me. There was the quartermaster trying to drop a lifeboat overboard, he was a real gallows dirt that one, I say." 

The old man glared at the sailors at the nearby table, dug his pipe out of a pocket, lit it and took a long drag. 

"He wouldn't let anybody near, the bastard. He wielded a big knife to keep the rest of us at bay, and at the same time he was trying to control the ropes. Finally we managed to give him a couple of good blows, and throw him overboard. Old Abel had already lost his guts, but he was laughing all happy. Old Abel had quite a few scores to settle with the quartermaster, yes, sir."

"In short, we’d hardly got the lifeboat in the water when those damned lanterns seemed to notice us. They unloaded such a fiery pandemonium on us that was like being at the smithy. The sails and rigging were burning like paper, and the wood of the deck had turned into a lava flow."

In the room not even the faintest of movements could be heard, only the light tapping of a branch against a window marked time. 

"I managed to jump down, I was a strong swimmer then. I'm sure I could’ve done the keel-haul, no question about it. In short, I managed to get into the lifeboat, and there was old Jeremy, the cook. He was staring into space and gyrating his arms in the air, looking like a stupid peacock. Somehow I got the boat free of the ropes and forced old Jeremy to start rowing. We were just in time to pull away from the Firefly when the flames reached the arsenal. It was the biggest explosion I ever saw in my life, believe me. "

The old man spread his arms upward, emphasizing the image. 

"By this time the fog had practically cleared, and you cannot imagine the spectacle in which we were immersed. All around us the carcasses of the best vessels of the Royal Fleet ended up being consumed just like lots of little burning candles. The sea was cluttered with all sorts of rubbish, including the remains of a lot of poor souls. The water simmered like broth in a cauldron; it was the Apocalypse.``

"Old Jeremy wanted to flee straight away, that son of a bitch. But I made the bastard go around and we picked up half a dozen of them, more dead than alive. One was just a lad, he couldn't have been more than ten years old, he had a bad head wound and all he did was cry and roll his eyes like a puppet. Old Jeremy had a great desire to throw him overboard again, but I said he must die dry, like a sailor."

"At some point we decided to clear out, we'd had enough of that slaughter house. I managed to organize a couple of rowers and we just started to get going when the boy started screaming like a maniac, pointing behind us. We all turned and saw him, may God blind me now. We saw him, all of us."

"What did you see?" asked a sailor from the center table, a long dribble dangling from his mouth. 

"The Demon! An immense, gigantic man, standing upright over the sea, like Jesus! He was at least three hundred, no, what am I saying, four hundred feet tall! Thin and bony like an aborigine, black as coal. His chest was crisscrossed with a series of carvings that burned like coals. His burning eyes glowed like braziers; they were the lanterns of before!"

"That colossus was observing us carefully, as if we’d stolen something. I was ready to give myself up to God when suddenly the beast disappeared, swallowed up by a sudden gust of smoke. He'd spared us, that demon, go figure why. In the meantime, the boy had passed, either from injury or fright. We dumped him overboard and got the hell out of there."

"We were almost a week in that nutshell, every day we were one less. During the day it was practically impossible to sleep; the sun would go to our heads. Then, at night, I always had one eye planted on the horizon, sure that that holy sacrament would reconsider and come straight back for us. I was waiting my turn, when they finally fished us out, those fucking Dutch. I went ashore and swore no timber would ever see me again. "

"At some point we decided to clear out, we'd had enough of that slaughter house. I managed to organize a couple of rowers and we just started to get going when the boy started screaming like a maniac, pointing behind us. We all turned and saw him, may God blind me now. We saw him, all of us."

"What did you see?" asked a sailor from the center table, a long dribble dangling from his mouth. 

"The Demon! An immense, gigantic man, standing upright over the sea, like Jesus! He was at least three hundred, no, what am I saying, four hundred feet tall! Thin and bony like an aborigine, black as coal. His chest was crisscrossed with a series of carvings that burned like coals. His burning eyes glowed like braziers; they were the lanterns of before!"

"That colossus was observing us carefully, as if we’d stolen something. I was ready to give myself up to God when suddenly the beast disappeared, swallowed up by a sudden gust of smoke. He'd spared us, that demon, go figure why. In the meantime, the boy had passed, either from injury or fright. We dumped him overboard and got the hell out of there."

"We were almost a week in that nutshell, every day we were one less. During the day it was practically impossible to sleep; the sun would go to our heads. Then, at night, I always had one eye planted on the horizon, sure that that holy sacrament would reconsider and come straight back for us. I was waiting my turn, when they finally fished us out, those fucking Dutch. I went ashore and swore no timber would ever see me again. ""What about the others?" asked Ralph inquiringly. 

"All dead. Old Jeremy caught a bad case of pneumonia on the return trip, and ended up with the fish. The other was a great big gunner, no idea what his name was, you couldn't get a word out of him. He had two dead eyes, like a big ox's. One day we found him in the hold, he had shot himself in the chest. It took the bastard three nights to die."

The old man stopped abruptly, his eyes blank. He seemed to have run out of memory. 

"A great story, congratulations!" clapped the riotous sailor vigorously, "You should be a storyteller instead of dying of starvation."

 "Let's get out of here, boys, I've had enough of this baloney," another spoke up, rising to his feet, "This one never even set foot on a barge, trust me."

The four of them stood up mumbling, they moved a few steps towards the door, but were unconvinced. 

One lingered to observe the old man, he was reddish and freckled, practically beardless. 

His eyes were filled with terror.   

Ralph finished smoking his pipe, silently. He ordered another drink and gulped it down in one go, got up and went to pay Annie, carefully avoiding the old man's gaze. 

The woman watched him for a long time, tenderly. 

She offered him one last drink and wished him luck, almost sighing.

When he was in the doorway he heard the old man's shrill voice, calling him back desperately. 

"Sailor! You! Do you at least...believe anything I’ve said?"

Ralph paused, his hand lingering on the half open door from which a rivulet of rushing wind entered. 

He ignored him and rushed into the street, taking care to close the door tightly behind him. 

He walked absent-mindedly down the deserted road, dimly lit by sparse lamps. 

He glanced down toward the harbor. A red lantern glowed in the night above the great lighthouse that peered undaunted into the meanderings of the night. 

For a moment it seemed to him that the lantern split and rose far above the lighthouse. Whirling through the air like a fly gone mad. 

It lasted a moment. 

He gave himself a slap and started walking again, thinking that Annie's gin was really pretty bad. 

Text by Oliver Maria Pascoletti 

Translation by Clare Vibert Woodhouse 

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Tags : Apocalypse, Life and death, Voyage
Posted in: Short stories
Author: Oliver Maria Pascoletti
I like writing, sitting and hiking. I work in Dec Art as a copywriter and content creator.

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