Sought & Lost

He had been traveling for days, and this was it? The captain shook his head. 

“No,” he said, his face drawing into a resolute grimace.

“No?” said I.

“No. We didn’t follow the map correctly. We’ll try again.”

“But, sir, there- we haven’t even looked around yet.”

“Does this look like the place?” he pointed to the cliff face, a sheer, unyielding fortress of stone. It had been made unclimbable by the recent storm, making the rock slick with mud and rain. Surrounding our ship was a forest of fallen trees, swept in by the high tide. Their fallen, dead branches looked almost more dissolute than the captain. 

The years had not been kind to him. His eyes had grown sunken and almost lifeless, drained from months of searching. His hair was unkempt. It had begun as a neat cut, slowly growing out until it looked akin to the hair of a girl. Now, it was tied back with any spare ribbon he could find, pieces slowly falling into his eyes as he grew more agitated.

He had been searching for this fabled prize for almost five years, really diving into the search for the past year. I had been the only one staying by his side. The rest of the crew came and went, coming for the promise of the legend and leaving because of lost hope. I had almost left a couple of times, but I found myself caught in the young captain’s quest. I couldn’t escape, and I figured that this journey was one worth taking, even if it led nowhere else other than company with a friend. Maybe more.

My captain had been growing frantic the last few weeks; his eyes would dart around in a panic. I did not know what the cause of his distress was, but still, I tried my best to soothe it when he started yelling at the crew. I fixed him tea and told him to go lie down. Sometimes that was not enough.

He had been staring at the cliff for a while now. No words had escaped his lips, but his eyes grew impatient again. I could see him searching for some possible way that this could be his answer. His prize. 

“Fine. You know what, Ness? Go. Search around for a while,” he said. I saw the wrinkle in his brow, the way he was scratching his head. I knew that the captain was close to firing the whole crew if I did not intervene.

“Sir, why don’t you have something to eat, and lay down for a while.”  He grunted. I put a hand on his back, lightly steering him back down the bow. “Many sleepless nights in a row are not good for anyone, captain, even you.”

“I suppose… I suppose that is true.”

We walked back into his quarters. He plopped down on the four-poster bed that dominated the room, although it looked as though no one had slept there for several nights. Dust collected on the bedside tables. I went to the kitchen. Boiling water over a small fire, I gathered some herbs and leaves from the last port we visited and plopped them into the cup with some chamomile. I hoped to let the captain sleep long enough that I could wake him with good news. Maybe he would be fonder of me. Once I had scrounged up some biscuits with my meager cup, I brought it back to the captain, who I found in the map room, pouring over the paper that had led us here. 

“I don’t- I don’t- unders-s-st-and-and,” he said to himself. I sighed at the stutter, and he looked up at me in surprise. “Are you not going out to look around?” he asked.

“Sir, you need some rest. I brought you some food, but eat it in your quarters and rest awhile.”

“Alright,” he grumbled, taking the tray from my hands and pushing past me into the hall. I sighed again, looking around at the mess. Papers were pushed through nails in the wall, some maps, some frantic scrawlings of ravings from the captain. I took loose papers and put them away, sealing the ink pots that had already spilled, not meant for the rocky life on the sea. Old fables and legends had been marked over, random lines in ancient poetry circled and crossed out, connections being made in places I couldn’t fathom. There was a paper in the middle of the table, one that had seen the most care to it. It was this page that had started the journey, an old nursery rhyme long thought to lead to a treasure long lost to the sea.

When I finished tidying the room as best I could, I closed the door and locked it to prevent the restless captain from wasting away in the office.

Breaking back out onto the deck, I was hit with a burst of salty air. The crew, having overheard the captain’s suggestion, had moved the ship to the water. I nodded at the men and told them to bring the ship around to the side of the cliff, where it was shorter. I took a team with me, climbing the hill up to the cliff to get a look around. The cliff was a lone spike in the sea, an island from a long-sunk land.

On the top of the cliff, the wind was unbridled in its force. My hair was growing too long, and it whipped around my eyes, preventing me from properly looking around. I squashed it under a bandanna from the pouch tied around my waist. Once I could properly see, I noticed a little island on the opposite side of the cliff. We had not seen it before due to the sheer mass of the cliff, but seeing it now, it was very odd. It looked almost like the nose of a dolphin, a normal island with a sharp point rising in the middle. It, unlike the gray of the cliff, was made of black stone. Very peculiar, but I decided not to tell the captain about it until he was well again. I did not want to raise his hopes just to dash them away again. 

“Sir,” I heard one of the men say, “look here.” He handed me a spyglass from his pocket and pointed in the direction of the island.

“Ah,” I said, peering. Upon closer inspection, there were several shapes on the island. It was still too far away to make out any distinct shapes, but they were all different. 

“What do you think it is, sir?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps some dirt and sand?”

“Shall I tell the crew to take the ship to the island?”

“No, the captain needs time to rest,” I took my eye from the spyglass, peering around at the setting sun. “Besides, it is growing dark. We will go when the captain wakes tomorrow.”

The group headed back to the ship, and I turned in early. I did not have much hope for the island, and I was wary about the captain. If this was a failure, I feared that he might be driven mad. He had searched for so long that the searching had become the thing that defined him. He had no other hobbies, no loves. His only thoughts were devoted to finding this treasure. 

The captain stumbled out of his quarters around noon, groggy and mumbling about “wasting time.” I took him to the kitchens to have some food and told him of what I had seen. Immediately, he perked up, his eyes wary.

“Ness, are you sure you saw something?”

“Aye. it was a very… odd looking island.”

“Hmm. how far away?”

“Not far. About a league from the ship.”

“I see.” he stood up to face the crew.

“Men, take us to the island. We may have a treasure on our hands.” The men cheered, glad to finally have some hope. The ship was then thrust into precise chaos, with men readying to go back out and find the legendary prize.

We were getting closer to the island. Peering through my telescope, I could make out more of the tan shapes. They were long and lean, and there were many all around the little island. I still suspected them to be just piles of sand, as I was not close enough to determine any detail. The captain took the spyglass from me and peered at the island. “It is strange, I'll give you that,” he murmured.

“Yes, sir. The black rock is intriguing.”

“Can you see what the little blobs are? My eyesight is too poor to make out the shapes.”

“I don't know yet, sir.”

“Ah. pity that.”

“I'll know more when we get close, sir.”

“Right.” He handed it back to me and went into the map room for a time. 

Eventually the call of “land ho!” rang out, and he came up to the bow with me to catch first sight of the treasure. Looking through the telescope again, I saw that the misshapen blobs were not sand, but women on the beach draped in sails from a shipwreck that had sunk beneath the sea. “Look, captain,” I said, handing him the device. He peered through it and a look of surprise came across his face.

“I see. Poor girls, they must have been stranded here from a passenger ship.”

“Shame, that. But we can still help them, no?”

“‘Course we can,” then, he paused. “Do you hear something, Ness?” I strained my ears to listen. A faint sound of women’s voices was being carried across the waves.

“Aye, sir. They must be calling out to us.”

“Yes…” he said, trailing off and turning to direct the men. As we got closer, I continued to look at the island. I could make out more details in their faces. I realized not all of them were female. There appeared to be one or two men among the bunch. The closer we got, the more I realized that one of the men on the rock only looked like a woman because of his long hair, almost the same length as the captain's mane. We were only a little ways away now, close enough that the singing of the survivors was clear in my ears. But for me, the singing remained unintelligible. It didn't sound like any language I had ever heard, but still, the sound was beautiful to me. I turned and saw the captain pressed against the rail of the ship, straining his ears to hear the song. I turned back to the island and realized that the captain must have just jumped the railing, because there he was, sitting amongst the people, calling to me. I felt a sensation wash over me, like I was stuck behind a wall, on the other side of which was a life I had always dreamed of. I pressed against the rail, wishing that I had the strength to break through and join them on the beach. I understood the song, even though I did not know the words just yet. The captain was down there, calling out to me.

“Jump,” he said. The tired was gone from his eyes, a look of pure joy as he held out his arms. The others did the same, and called out to me.

“Jump,” they said, “it is not too high. The sand will cushion your fall.”

I looked down. Yes, I thought. The sand looked warm and soft. In fact, I was only two feet off the ground. Nothing could hurt me if I jumped. After all, the captain survived. He looked so happy, laughing amongst his new companions. They laughed and played with their hair, getting ever closer to each other. I wanted that. I had wanted that for so long.

I jumped. The last thing I remembered was the thought of pure happiness, followed by the thought that I had been falling too long, the only sound I heard was the wind wrapping around me. Panicking, I looked down to see a beach of sharp rocks. I knew then my mistake, too late to do anything but fall.