The old man spoke on.<\/p>\n
It was a weary time when our throats were parched\u00a0and we watched with glazed eyes at the silent sea about us.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Then, in the west I saw a shape: a speck, a distant ship that tacked and veered.\u00a0<\/em>Standing there on the sun-baked deck, I watched. I stared. And at last cried, “A sail! A sail!”<\/em><\/p>\n My\u00a0crewmates\u00a0raised a cry of joy. But as we watched, the ship stopped tacking. And though no tide was turning, the distant ship kept approaching.\u00a0How could this be so?<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n And now that ship stood between us and the setting sun. Silhouetted against the blazing light, it was a ghost of a ship: masts and mizzens, spars and booms, sails lying limp. And yet it drew closer.<\/em><\/p>\n Was that a woman on the deck? Or no, now were they two\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a woman and an other?\u00a0<\/em>And now, they drew beside us.<\/em><\/p>\n There stood the woman, but what was that other?\u00a0<\/em>Oh, it was Death<\/strong> itself! It was Death<\/strong> that walked beside her.<\/em><\/p>\n The woman with bright red lips and lifeless skin cast dice on the deck of that ship and then stood. \u201cI\u2019ve won!\u201d she cried.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>And in that instant, the sun was gone without so much as a fading of the day. In that instant, we were cast in the darkest night.\u00a0<\/em>And then, that ship was gone.<\/em><\/p>\n We sailed until the moon came up, under the stars on a silent sea. <\/em><\/p>\n And in the dim light, one by one\u00a0I now watched my crewmates drop. One by one, with a thump they fell lifeless to the deck. And now with the Albatross hanging around my neck, I was the only one standing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 3. The old man spoke on. It was a weary time when our throats were parched\u00a0and we watched with glazed eyes at the silent sea about us.\u00a0 Then, in the west I saw a shape: a speck, a distant ship that tacked and veered.\u00a0Standing there on the sun-baked deck, I watched. I stared. And at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3324,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions\/3324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}