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West Bass Island - 1.13.1910
🕑 Added 2019-04-24 13:30:11 +0000 UTCThe above image is what I have tried to safely recreate based on the journal entry I have. For those who cannot read the script in the image, I have transcribed the text below;
January 13th, 1910
It was not the screaming that disturbed me. I had heard men scream before. I was hidden, stowed away in the rowboat hanging off the side of the vast ship, in which I had heard many types of exclamations from the sailors ever since we left Philadelphia. I had heard cries of exasperation and shouts for joy at night when they tried to quietly gamble. I had heard cursing and swearing as they managed their tasks in the heavy rain. And I had heard hoots and hollers when one of them produced what I believed to be a magazine of ill repute.
No, it was not the screaming that disturbed me. It was the rending of flesh and bone as one sailor was ripped in half alive only five or six feet from my hiding place that disturbed me.
There was more shouting. There was the firing of guns. There was the sound of running. There was more rending.
And eating.
Throughout all of it I stayed beneath the canvas stretched over the rowboat. For the sounds of shouting, gunfire, and running always ended. What did not end was the yowling.
It was a cross between a horse neigh and a lion roar. It echoed over every noise the hopeless men could make, and it celebrated its victory.
Or, what I presumed was its victory. I dared not peak out under the canvas, but I heard no more resistance from any sailors. For days its heavy hoofsteps stalked across the ship. When it neared I held my breath and prayed. Soon I had eaten all of the rations I had pilfered from the galley, the remaining containers the only reason I could stay my needs that would have otherwise forced me to leave the apparent safety of the boat.
I had plenty of time to think. To wonder. Why was I not yet found? What was this beast? I recalled newspaper stories of a devil chased from ocean to river across New Jersey. Was this the beast injured by cannon fire? When climbing the ropes onto the ship I presumed I had gotten grease on my garments, but perhaps this was in fact the creature’s blood? Was this obscuring my scent from the creature’s hunt?
And how long was this vessel to drift captainless through the great Lake Erie?
That last question was soon answered. Shortly after my hunger had grown so ravenous that I was considering leaving my nest I heard a different type of rending - that of the metal bow catching upon a rocky underlay of the lake. The great ship - whose name I had never ascertained - heaved, and my sanctuary swung wildly.
Somewhere I heard explosions. And above those the yowling of the devil beast. It was time. I needed to act. I would either be taken by the ship as it sank, or the maws of the beast as it ate its last meal.
I threw off the canvas and immediately began to lower my sanctuary towards the churning water below. As I did I looked out across my ark for the first time since the screaming started. I could not see very far, for the air was full of a dense fog mixing with black smoke. Across the deck I could see the glow of a fire billowing up from below. The farthest I could see in detail was only a few planks beyond the edge of the rowboat.
All of the wood was stained and smeared with the blood of those who had unknowingly ferried me. Large hoofprints had been left in the dried red.
I could not waste any more time on morbid curiosity, as another explosion rocked the ship. I resumed lowering myself down the side of the sinking vessel.
As I did I saw a silhouette rise up in the fog, lit from behind by the spreading fires. The devilish beast’s head was long and equine, its neck serpent like. I could make out the torn wings of a demon, and the hands of one as well.
And it was coming towards me.
I prayed that the fog was as thick for it as it was for me. Soon I was lower than the deck line of the ship, I hoped out of sight in time. With haste I was in the water, grabbing for the oars. The fog appeared thicker around me, and while I knew not what I wanted to go towards, I certainly knew what I wanted to go from.
The yowling began again. For the first time I thought I heard pain from the creature.
I rowed. I rowed and I rowed.
And suddenly something ripped through the fog. I could not tell if it was the beast or another threat, but it put me in the water. So I swam.
I swam and I swam until I felt my feet touch sand. And then I walked and I walked until water drenched clothes and exhaustion brought me down. And then I crawled. I crawled and I crawled until I finally collapsed upon a beach.
Then I slept. I slept and I slept.
And when I awoke I was in a bed on West Bass Island.
