Virgin of the Sea Series - The Virgin of the Sea #1

CHAPTER 6

1. THE VIRGIN OF THE SEA

SWAYING SAILOR

Simon Verbeeck and his few companions examined that footprint on the strange beach carefully. It was clear that it was the footprint of a small man. Finally, they looked at each other with questions in their eyes.

"Apparently, there's a welcoming committee waiting for us," Simon remarked.

"Maybe it's the footprint of the Flying Dutchman," Rieckert joked.

But where they stood, they had a strange feeling, a sense that this footprint symbolized a peculiar secret and that it would lead them to new discoveries. Although they joked with each other, there was a cold feeling running down each of their spines. Just one footprint on this deserted, wind-swept island, which lay lost like a pearl in the vast sea. One footprint here where the wind almost eternally rustled through the palm leaves alone. What stranger could be here? So far, away from all the known sea routes, alone on this island?

With the drive of a typical adventurer, Simon Verbeeck quickly began to follow the footprint. He ordered one of the men to climb up into one of the coconut palms and survey the area. His goal was to see if he could spot a ship approaching because Simon was on guard and uneasy, not knowing where De Santos was hiding. The almost deathly silence here unsettled him and made him feel restless because he preferred to see and hear things rather than see and hear nothing. There was something ominous about this silence. De Santos was like a magician; he would overwhelm you before you realized it, just as he had overwhelmed Jeremiah Harding.

Soon the searchers came across other tracks. These were tracks crisscrossing the sand, not different tracks, but all exactly the same tracks.

And then, after they had walked about a kilometer from where they had first seen the footprint, they stopped in their tracks and stared at a scene that filled them with horror. One of the sailors accompanying Simon had spotted it first, and with a trembling hand, he pointed up into the air.

"Look there, captain," the man said, frightened, raising his hand.

Simon Verbeeck and Wilhelm Rieckert, who are beside him, lift their heads and look in the direction the man is pointing. Simon Verbeeck has seen many faces and witnessed many cruel scenes, but it seems this scene fills him with deep disgust, awakening a dark revulsion within him because it is so horrible and so mysterious.

High up on one of the tallest coconut palms, just below the cluster of leaves, two men are hanging. The decomposing corpses sway slowly back and forth in the wind that has risen on the island. They hang by their necks, high above the sand. From here, it isn't even clear whether they are black or white.

Simon and the others cautiously step closer and stand directly under the two people who have died so horribly. The tall seafarer's curiosity drives him up the slanted trunk of the coconut palm. He climbs to the top, braving the dreadful smell of the two corpses that sway there, like two giant palm fronds withered by the wind.

When he reaches the top, he can see that they must have been seamen, but their faces are so weathered by death that he can't make out anything further. The rapidly decaying bodies, on the verge of becoming skeletons, are tied with ropes to a thick leaf stem of the coconut palm. The two corpses' hands hang limp at their sides, and their feet stir softly in the light wind.

Their faces, already so decayed, are horribly contorted in death.

Simon cannot endure the sight before him for long. He climbs back down the trunk to the ground.

"They look like seamen to me," he says to Wilhelm Rieckert. "But how on earth they got up there, and why, only heaven knows."

They leave the ghastly scene and continue searching for the island's solitary inhabitant.