A sailors last dream.
By Jim King. I had gone to bed, the blankets pulled up against the cold air of the night. No light save the street lamps and a few stars breaking through the clouds. Darkness and cold, a British winter night. Yet the sky overhead was blue, clear blue, the pale bright blue of a Mediterranean summer day. Not a cloud to be seen though I can only see a strip of the sky because of the walls. There are walls either side of me, twice my height, rough hewn and of great blocks. Lichen fills the gaps where mortar should be and softens the edges of the blocks. The walls stretch away before me and behind me, the same crude blocks piled one atop the other. Before me they go a good hundred steps and then stop, I can see the wall the marks the end of this, what is this, a passage, a walk way? The ground beneath me is dust and stones, three times my height from side to side though the sides at the base of the walls are thick with weeds and bushes, waist high and reaching across the path to catch legs and ankles. How many have walked this way before to have cut such a mark into the middle of the path, how many thousands of feet have worn away the cobblestones and left such a groove in the ground. The path slopes up before me and down behind me, a gentle slope but every score or so paces there are rough stone steps where it becomes steeper, blocks of stone worn away by countless footsteps. Before me in the distance, a wall, what is behind me, where did I come from? I look back, down the slope of the path, hundreds of steps I must have walked to reach this point and yet I remember none of them. I see the walls end and a glitter of gold and of crystal blue, some treasure perhaps, and yet I feel that is where I came from. Did I walk away from gold and jewels? Why am I here? I am compelled to walk onward, upward. Why I could not say but I cannot stop, I cannot turn about and walk down. My legs are not my own, they take a step onward, then another and another. This must be a dream, everything is so clear and yet so unreal. I will walk as my legs take me, as the dream takes me, I am not in control. Step by step, yard by yard and I can see the end of the path. But it is not the end for what I see is the place where it turns sharply to the right, I can see where the weeds turn and there is a gap where the path turns. My legs carry me onward, step by step. To the corner and beyond, the passage is the same, the crude walls towering above me on either side and the worn path sloping up before me until it ends some hundred paces hence. No not an end, it is another turning, another sharp turn to the right. Step by step my legs carry me up this path. How many have walked before me, who were they that walked here in such numbers. Why did they walk this way, were that as I am, compelled to walk this way or did they come of their own choosing. Another corner and once again I turn right but this time it is different. The wall to my right is unchanged but the wall to the left does not rise with the slop of the path and some seventy steps along this part of the path I can see over the wall to my left. My breath catches in my throat at what I see before me and below me. I am on an island, not the Mediterranean for where among those islands can you see the great circled bay of a volcanic isle or looked up the curve of the horizon far across crystal blue seas. Below me is a bay, a great curve of golden sand and blue waters, everywhere I can see shapes, forms, the wrecks of ships and the bodies of me. Before and below me I see pulled upon the sands the rotting remains of several ships, no more than bundles of logs or reeds tied together to form rafts and now little remains save the shapes etched in the sand, Greek or Roman galleys, splintered oars jutting from the hulls like the legs of a centipede, the decks and sides sagging as they rot. Medieval ships, the high bow and stern still visible on several of them. There a Viking long boat, or at least an oval shape of long rotted timber with a weather worn dragon still standing above the sand. The beach is covered in ships, more fill the waters just off shore and more still lay half submerged in the clear waters. The tall masts of some chocolate box clipper ship standing high above decks that are awash with water. More distant, not rotting timber but rusting iron. A great iron clad, now painted red as it decays. The forward turrets of this Dreadnaught point their guns skyward as if reaching for some salvation in the heavens. The golden sands are thick with the dead, bones clad in rags or rusted shells. Some in tattered finery, others in loincloths of linen, rich and poor now just bleaching bones. Sticks of wood or sticks of iron, bows or muskets, rotting away. Swords, axes, revolvers. Nothing more than rubbish washed upon the shore. I can see a thousand dead before me and a hundred ships and as I cast my gaze across the miles of sand around the bay I see a thousand times more dead and a hundred times as many ships and dark shapes further out that tell of more recent ships that could not reach the sand and vanished completely beneath the waves. My legs walk on and before I realise what is happening I turn another corner and the beach and the bay are gone. What is this place? Did the living come to this place only to die or were those who were dead bought here by some means. Did those ships sail here willingly, were they carried here by storm and misfortune. Or had they already met their fate before they were bought here to this grave yard of men and ships. No, this is not a grave yard, not just a place of the dead. For who walked this path in such numbers as to wear away the stones and cut so wide and deep a route in the dirt. Did the survivors of those ship wrecks make their way up here as I am making my way? Were they compelled or did they walk freely? Did they know what this place was, as they walked this path step by step and turned each corner. Another corner ahead of me, each corner is a right angle, each section shorter. I must be walking parallel to but above my original path. I must be slowly spirally around and up a great square shape. Another corner and another path, perhaps not as long and another corner and another path till I have turned seven corners and my legs no longer walk but return to my will. The path has ended, were it not for the lack of a roof I would call this place a room or chamber for though it is near as long as the sections of the path have been it is ten times as wide, a great open space. To my left the wall is again low and as I walk to it I can lean across the several feet of its thickness and look down upon the path below where I gazed upon the bay and the ships. Aside from the low wall facing the bay the other three sides of this, room, chamber, perhaps square or meeting place, the walls are twice my height and of the same rough cut stone. Crude but solid, great blocks I could scarcely stretch my arms across to tough each side. No, I am wrong in my recollection. There is a point where the wall is higher. The wall that runs across the back of this open place, its exact middle is taller and there is a door set in it. I did not see it at first, perhaps the glare of the sun was in my eyes, perhaps the green hues of the door blended with the lichen but I would swear I did not see it upon first glance. Still it was there, two great doors set as a pair, each so wide across that my finger tips at full reach could not touch the edges of a single door. On the outer side they were twice my height as the wall had been but the wall rose so some two feet of stone was above the tops of the doors. A great arch of stone that came to a pointed peak where the inner edges of the doors met three times my height above me. Great doors of metal, stained green with age and covered in what once were deep carvings but now were little more than weathered dips and rises in the metal. I see no hinges nor any handle but I could not muster the courage to touch either door. There was a chill in the air, before those doors. The bright summer sun high overhead and yet I shivered in my night shirt as some mortal dread touched my flesh. I tear my eyes away from the door and look across the wide open area and a thought strikes me, as I walked up the path the ground was worn away from many feet but here the whole area was so marked. It was almost as if thousands had walked up here and filled the square then walked to the door from every corner of this wide area. There was no single place more worn than any other. Almost as if people had stood here in crowds, spread out and waited then walked together through the doors to, to where? What was this place? Why was I here? It was strange, I could hear something now, faint and distant but it reminded me that I had not heard a sound here save my own steps upon the stone. It was faint, I could not make it out but somehow it was familiar. I waited as it grew louder, no not louder; it was coming closer as if whatever was making the sound was walking up the path. The noise teased me; I knew it but could not put a name to it. It was music, a song I had not heard in many a year. Violins and cellos playing together in harmony. Several of each, so familiar I could almost see them being played. A few men holding their violins to their shoulders, a few others bracing their cellos on the deck. I could almost see their faces. A voice, calling my name. “Ernest” it said. “Ernest” it called again, so close it was I turned to see who had spoken but I was alone. I would swear it was my brother Fred’s voice, when he was a younger man, when I had least heard him speak, when he was still among the living. How did I hear him now, calling me? Was this part of my dream. I called his name, “Fred Allen” I said then I shouted it but there was no answer for he was dead and this was just a dream. I had not seen my brother for fifty six years. Not since the day the sea had taken him and he had gone down with the ship in that icy water. Now, suddenly I remember the music, I remember where I had heard it last, so many years ago. They were playing it on deck, I remember hearing them as I stood in the swaying lifeboat helping a woman aboard. I heard the stings playing music, playing that song but I could never remember the tune. All those years and suddenly I remember it now. I hear a creak, the sound of ancient metal creaking as it moved. The chill grows, the sun seems to dim in the sky. A shadow falls across the open area though as I glance up I see not a single cloud above me. Then something makes me turn, makes me look at the great metal doors. As they slowly opened. Now I knew this place for I had looked upon it once before, so many years before. But I had not walked through the gate though many others had. A voice had called me, hands had pulled me away, up onto the deck of another ship. I had been rescued. The sea did not claim me that day. Or perhaps it did. These doors had opened for me once before, in nineteen twelve but I had escaped them. For fifty six years I had escaped them. Now they called to me and I walked through them as any sailor does who has been claimed by Davey. |