I had found the Scarlet Rose, hundreds of miles from where she reportedly sank three hundred years ago. That wasn’t possible. Ships don’t move across oceans on their own once they sink.
Swimming around the wreckage, I was convinced it was indeed the Scarlet Rose. It had the proper shape, and features and known hallmarks of the ship were still visible. Everything was as it should be for a pirate ship that had sunk over 300 years ago. But It was all in the wrong place. Back on my schooner, I checked my coordinates and maps. This was the right spot for an old-world War German U-boat, but not the 300-year-old pirate ship I’d found. I went over the old pirate ships’ records, yet no records show any ship in 100 miles of where I had been
.But it was there.
That night, visions of the wreck floated in my sleep. Opening my eyes, I was no longer on the schooner. I was on the deck of the Scarlett Rose. The crew shouting orders and the yelling of slaves deep within the hold echoed in my head. Out of shadows on the port side, a giant creature rose, its wake sending the ship in the opposite direction that it had been. The creature followed us. Its momentum pushed us much faster and further off course. Unable to handle the stress, the Scarlet Rose broke up, sinking to the seafloor.
I sat up in a cold seat and looked around frantically, relaxing when I realized I was in my stateroom on the schooner. I rose and looked out of the porthole at the moonlight-drenched sea, soft whitecaps gently rocking the ship. There was only one explanation for the Scarlet Rose to be so off course, and I had just had the vision of what happened to her.
My next quest was born from the image of the sea creature seared into my mind. I had to find the monster of the deep.
Swimming around the wreckage, I was convinced it was indeed the Scarlet Rose. It had the proper shape, and features and known hallmarks of the ship were still visible. Everything was as it should be for a pirate ship that had sunk over 300 years ago. But It was all in the wrong place. Back on my schooner, I checked my coordinates and maps. This was the right spot for an old-world War German U-boat, but not the 300-year-old pirate ship I’d found. I went over the old pirate ships’ records, yet no records show any ship in 100 miles of where I had been
.But it was there.
That night, visions of the wreck floated in my sleep. Opening my eyes, I was no longer on the schooner. I was on the deck of the Scarlett Rose. The crew shouting orders and the yelling of slaves deep within the hold echoed in my head. Out of shadows on the port side, a giant creature rose, its wake sending the ship in the opposite direction that it had been. The creature followed us. Its momentum pushed us much faster and further off course. Unable to handle the stress, the Scarlet Rose broke up, sinking to the seafloor.
I sat up in a cold seat and looked around frantically, relaxing when I realized I was in my stateroom on the schooner. I rose and looked out of the porthole at the moonlight-drenched sea, soft whitecaps gently rocking the ship. There was only one explanation for the Scarlet Rose to be so off course, and I had just had the vision of what happened to her.
My next quest was born from the image of the sea creature seared into my mind. I had to find the monster of the deep.
