by Ben Hammott
“Please, ask away.”
“It’s been what, about four hundred years since Tom’s adventure? Why didn’t he or his family release the story earlier?”
“You have to remember the era when this happened. Back then, sailors were a highly superstitious bunch. Ship owners already found it hard enough to hire crews to risk the long journey to Africa and beyond, and round the infamous Cape that had claimed so many ships and crews. If the story got out there were real-life sea monsters attacking ships in the area; even fewer would be willing to risk the voyage. Even with the evidence of the creature’s arm to back up his unlikely tale, Tom was worried, and with good reason I suspect. He believed that if he reported what happened to bring about the demise of all his shipmates, he’d be ridiculed or accused of madness by the wealthy shipowners and merchantmen who would do anything to protect their lucrative trades. That’s why he decided to keep quiet and move on. Better everyone outside his family believed all aboard the Fortuyn had perished.”
“I feel for Tom,” said Vince.
“Oh, from all accounts, he had a good life after the nightmares faded to a manageable level. He married, had kids and lived to a ripe old age.” Lizzy glanced at the wall clock and stood. “Time for me to go—hospital appointment.” She took a piece of paper ripped from a small notepad from a pocket and handed it to Vince. “My details if you need to contact me.”
Vince climbed to his feet. “Thank you Lizzy, you’ve been so generous. If there’s a anything I can do for you, please ask.” He took a business card from his pocket and gave it to her. “Now, can I give you a hug?”
Lizzy spread her arms. “Hug away.”
They hugged and separated.
Vince picked up the box from the table. “Don’t forget this.”
Lizzy shook her head. “It’s yours now to do with what you will, as is Tom’s manuscript. Goodbye, Vince, and good luck with your writing.”
“Goodbye, and thanks again, Lizzy. I promise to get the book written before...quickly.”
Lizzy laughed. “I’m sure you’ll do your best.” She gave him a little wave goodbye and walked out onto the street.
Vince sat down, looked at the box and leather satchel containing Tom’s manuscript and let out a deep breath. He had a good feeling about this. Thanks to Lizzy, his dream break might have just landed in his lap. Keen to get started on this new venture and contact his agent about this fortunate turn of events, he gathered up everything and headed home.
TRAVIS ATHERTON, VINCE’S agent, placed the small casket onto his desk and tapped Tom’s photocopied manuscript he had just speed-read. “If this extraordinary tale is real, and I’m not yet convinced it is, you could have a bestseller on your hands.”
Vince nodded enthusiastically. “That’s what I’m hoping. I’ve already arranged a meeting with a zoologist, Catherine Dresdale, to see what she can tell me about the creature to which the arm belongs. If I can ascertain it’s not of any known creature, then it’ll go a long way to shed validity on Tom’s story. I’ve already spoken to someone at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam about Tom’s ship, the Fortuyn, and it did disappear with all hands in a storm around the Cape of Good Hope. After checking the dates, I found it was only after the date of its disappearance that the sightings of the ghost ship the Flying Dutchman began to occur. I’m heading to Amsterdam next week to go through their archives to see what else I can find to back up Tom’s story.”
“That’s all good, Vince,” said Travis glancing at the arm again. “And this Elizabeth Hardy wants nothing for the story?”
“That’s what she told me, and she gave me the manuscript and arm. She’s a fan of my work and believes I’ll do Tom’s story justice, which I’ll do my utmost to achieve. And as I explained, she has cancer so sadly doesn’t expect to be around long enough to enjoy any money she might have been able to get for the manuscript rights.”
“That’s very gracious of her, but I’d be happier if we had something in writing to legalize your publishing rights. It might prevent any complications further down the line. She may recover and decide she wants some form of payment, especially if it becomes a best seller.”
“I truly hope she does recover, and if she does, she has money, so I’m certain she won’t change her mind, but I will ask her. However, if she declines, I won’t be pushing her into signing anything she doesn’t want to.”
Travis sighed and shrugged. “Okay, whatever you think is best. I’ll get something prepared for you to show her.” He scribbled a note on his desk pad to remind him. “When are you meeting with this animal expert? It’ll be interesting to find out if the limb’s something she’s never come across before.”
Tom glanced at the clock. “Today, in about an hour at the Natural History Museum, so I had better get a move on.” He stood, rewrapped the arm and closed the box.
“Let me know how it goes. Depending on the outcome, I’ll start working out the best way to use it and put together a promotional package to present to the publishers when I tout your book around. Hopefully, I’ll be able to incite a bidding war.”
Vince headed for the door. “Good luck with that. I’ll be sure to let you know about any results from the limb. Later then.”
Travis raised a hand goodbye, and after Vince had left, pondered which of the big five publishing houses he would contact first if the arm turned out to be from a unique species. Excited by the future deals, he typed The Flying Dutchman into his web browser to see how well known it was. He smiled at the almost eleven million results the search term had found. Even if the limb was of a known creature, the book should still achieve reasonable sales, fifteen percent of which would come to him. If there was a movie deal, it could turn out to be a lucrative enterprise for them both.
AFTER ARRIVING AT THE Natural History Museum, Vince had been led to the back rooms and asked to wait for Catherine Dresdale to come and collect him. She had done so a few minutes later and taken him to her laboratory.
Asking her to play along and he’d explain how it came into his possession after she had examined it, Vince placed the casket on the workbench and watched as Catharine opened it and folded back the canvas wrapping. Her puzzled expression that followed was, he thought, a good sign she didn’t immediately recognize the arm.
Intrigued, Catherine slipped on rubber gloves and carefully lifted out the strange limb. After turning it over in her hands to view it from different angles and sniffing it, she looked at Vince. “This is either a clever forgery or from a species I’ve never encountered before. Where did it come from?”
Vince explained about his meeting with Elizabeth Hardy, and without going into too much detail, a little about her long-dead relation, Tom, and the manuscript he had written from his experiences at sea.
Used to dealing with scientifically-based factual evidence, Catherine raised her eyebrows before refocusing on the arm. “It all seems a bit farfetched to me. However, I must admit the limb has piqued my interest. If you agree, I’d like to take a small sample to test for DNA. If any is present, I’ll be able to check it against our extensive database of existing DNA markers for known species. Even if it doesn’t result in an exact match, it should reveal to what family of animals it belongs. Essentially, the genetic similarity of organisms is what determines their relation to one another biologically.”
“If you don’t find a match in your database will that point to this limb being from a new species?”
“Determining a new species is a bit more involved. Usually, except for long-extinct species—dinosaurs, for example—where fragments of fossilized skeletons might be all that is available, a complete specimen is involved. We’ll have to wait for the test results, and depending on what they point to, I’ll confer with a few of my colleagues to see what we can discover. Even then the difference between species is not meaningful in a clear biological sense. There is no line between ‘these are different species’ and ‘these are different variants of the same species.’ There’s not even
a line between that and ‘these might as well be brother and sister.’ It’s a spectrum.”
A bit bewildered by the scientific terminology, Vince asked, “How long until you have a result?”
“Depending on the viability of the sample, with the specialist equipment I have access to here, six to eight hours to get a DNA marker and a few minutes to check it against our database. If the results return a match failure, I’ll consult with my colleagues and then contact you with our findings. So, to answer your question, if it’s the good news you are hoping for—a new species—it will be tomorrow, but if I find a match, later today.” She glanced at her watch. “Make that Tonight.”
“That’s quicker than I thought. I’m looking forward to learning the results.”
“Then I can take a sample?” confirmed Catherine. “I would also like to take some photographs.”
Vince nodded. “Yes, please do on both counts.”
When Catherine had her sample and photographs, Vince made his way back to the museum’s public areas and headed home to start his writing.
LATER THAT NIGHT, BUSY typing at his PC, Vince paused to answer his ringing phone. “Hi, Vince speaking.”
“Hello, Vince, it’s Catherine from the Natural History Museum.”
Expecting bad news because she had rung tonight, Vince’s face dropped. “Hello, Catherine, how did the results go?”
“In your favor. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I thought you’d like to know my preliminary thoughts.”
Vince perked up. “Thank you; I would.”
“You’ll be pleased to learn that I failed to find an exact match for the DNA sample I took with any on our database. Its closest neighbor seems to be cephalopods. To elaborate; the taxonomy of life on Earth is divided into five or six kingdoms, one of which is Animalia, the animals. One phylum within Animalia is Mollusca, mollusks, and one class within Mollusca is Cephalopoda, cephalopods. The modern cephalopods are octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus. A fun fact is that nautiluses can have up to ninety arms, shells and have been around for five hundred million years. There are many extinct cephalopods, including a large subclass of ammonites that we know from their abundant fossil remains. But what is strange and has some of us a little excited here is that there also seems to be a remote link with species in the arthropod phylum. These include the group of invertebrate animals with jointed legs and an exoskeleton. Their relatives include scorpions, crabs, mites, insects, crustaceans, lobsters, prawns, and centipedes and millipedes. Spiders and octopuses are in the phylum Mollusca, but the arthropods and the mollusks branched off from the same ancestor at least seven hundred million years ago, so to find one significantly bearing all these traits still alive a few hundred years ago—and probably still alive today—is extremely exciting.”
“Wow! It’s a lot to take in, and I don’t pretend to understand all of what you’ve just told me...”
“Sorry, it was a bit of an info dump, but that was my layman’s explanation. I’ll try and make my report easier for you to understand.”
“Appreciated,” said Vince. “However, what I think I gleaned from your information is that the creature the limb came from is a new species as far as you can determine and that you think it might be from a species that has been around for millions of years.”
“Basically, yes, and there are precedents,” replied Catherine. “With none or just little changes to their prehistoric appearance and behavior, creatures roaming the earth, seas, and skies millions of years ago can be found in the modern world from scary descendants of prehistoric deep-sea sharks to a 120 million-year-old ant. A few examples are imperial scorpions that have been around for four hundred million years; tadpole shrimp for three hundred million; and jellyfish for six to seven hundred million. The horseshoe crab, considered to be the closest relative to the legendary trilobite, ranks among the most well-known of the living fossils, having remained virtually unchanged for an astonishing four hundred and fifty million years. Lastly, there is the coelacanth, which has physically evolved over the last three hundred and sixty million years, and until it was discovered still living in nineteen thirty-eight, was thought to have died out sixty-five million years ago during the great extinction in which the dinosaurs disappeared.”
“Although I’ve heard about the discovery of the coelacanth, I didn’t realize there were so many more creatures still around from the dinosaur age.”
Catherine laughed. “The dinosaurs occupied a relatively short period in the scheme of evolution, having first appeared in the Triassic Period around two hundred and forty-five million years ago. The species your creature is from would have witnessed them come and go. Though I’m certain there’s no connection, one species, Lampreys, reminds me of the behavior of the tentacles on the larger creature and the kelp stalks you mentioned. Lampreys are jawless fish characterized by a many-toothed, funnel-like, sucking mouth that thirty-eight of their known species use for boring into the flesh of other fish to suck their blood. The oldest lamprey fossil found in South Africa dates back to some three hundred and sixty million years ago, but its striking resemblance with modern specimens is indisputable.”
“That’s amazing,” exclaimed Vince, wondering how much of this information to include in his book.
“It sure is. I’ve set up a meeting with a few of my scientific colleagues tomorrow morning to discuss my findings. I’ll contact you with the outcome before I write up my report, but I’m confident you can expect more favorable news.”
“Exciting,” said Vince. “And thank you, Catherine.”
“My pleasure, Vince. If, as I suspect, we determine this is a new species with a lineage millions of years old, then I would, with your permission, like to write a paper on it for a scientific journal.”
“Please, feel free to do so. It’s the least I can do to return the favor.”
“Thank you. Well, until tomorrow.”
Vince said goodbye and ended the call. This exciting news could only bode well for his book. Excited by the prospect, he rang his agent to inform him of the fortunate turn of events. Tomorrow he would contact Lizzy to let her know the limb’s DNA results backed up Tom’s story.
CHAPTER 2
Finished
It took Vince three months to research and write his dramatized account of Tom’s story, which had included a visit to the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam to browse through their extensive archives on the Dutch India Company and ships of the era. It had proved to be a fruitful and worthwhile trip. To get the feel and layout of the type of vessel that Tom would have been aboard, he also visited the impressive full-size replica of the three-masted “Amsterdam” located at the Amsterdam maritime museum quay. The Amsterdam was a large vessel of the Dutch East India Company, which on its maiden journey to Batavia in the winter of 1749 sank in a storm in the English Channel. Its remains were found a few years back, prompting the building of the replica.
Vince had just completed the final edit the day before, and after a final readthrough, he would hand it over to Travis. After converting it into a Mobi file, he transferred it to his Kindle reader, stretched out on the sofa with a pad and pen beside him to jot down any required edits, and started reading.
TOM’S STORY
The True Catastrophic Events of the Fortuyn as Witnessed by Tom Hardy, the Sole Survivor from the Aforementioned Vessel.
MY NAME IS TOM HARDY and I have a tale to tell many will not believe. That, however, is not the reason for me writing my story down. It is an attempt to banish the awful nightmares that plague my sleep. I am putting quill to paper to recount the reasons for them. Hopefully, turning these images into words will transfer them from my thoughts onto paper, which I can then lock away until one day when I am long dead, the truth about what happened will finally be revealed.
The events leading up to my ill-fated voyage and my resulting nightmares begins innocently enough, and if I had known then what I know now, I would not have set out on my fateful journey.
> It begins in April in the year of our Lord, 1793.
With my yearning for adventure and to see more of the world, I had little interest in working at my parents’ apple orchard in Somerset. I wanted to go to sea and travel to exotic lands. I could read and write, so other options were open to me other than apple picking, but I chose adventure. Though my parents were at first against it, they realized tending the trees and picking apples to be turned into cider held no excitement for me, and eventually relented. Hoping I would get it out of my system and would then settle down into the family business, at the age of seventeen they bid me farewell and safe travels.
Brimming over with excited anticipation at the adventures I would surely have, I traveled to London and headed straight for the main docks to seek employment. It was a noisy, bustling place. Cargo from countries I had never heard of was unloaded into barges heading to other destinations along the bustling Thames. At night (and sometimes during the day) the River Pirates, Night Plunderers, Scuffle-Hunters and Mud Larks, attacked vessels or broke into warehouses to steal the lucrative cargo. Spices were a particular favorite of these nefarious vagabonds; light to transport and easy to sell.
After spending a couple of months of part-time work helping to load the barges, I met Wagner Mesling, a Dutch sailor who spoke surprisingly good English. He worked for the Dutch East Indian company. We became friends, and when I told him I was looking for adventure, he knew just the place where I could find it; aboard one of the East India vessels. He secured me a position as the assistant cook on the ship he was taking back to Holland.
Six weeks later, Wagner procured a further position for me on the same ship he had found employment on as a seaman, and I was to be the cabin boy aboard the Dutch East India vessel, The Fortuyn.
It was with a sense of high adventure and excitement that I set sail on my first voyage to a strange land. I was heading for Java.