The clattering became silent for a long while, and the boy hoped the pirates had left them alone. No one came below deck to tell the boy, but he heard the shouting, the readying of canons, and the clamor of swords being drawn. Its black sails towered into the sky, and a red flag fluttered in the sea wind. One fateful day as they sailed on and on - for it was quite a long journey - a ship appeared on the horizon. The boy could not be persuaded to leave his bed for anything. Though his father tried to nurse him back to health he showed little improvement. The next thing he remembered was laying in a hammock in the belly of the ship and trying to hold in the contents of his own belly.ĭay by day the rocking of the ship put terrible visions of sea beasts and pirates into his mind. With his knees shaking and stomach writhing, he crawled up the wobbly gangplank and stumbled onto the ship. Far behind him stood the lovely white caps of the mountains. Ahead of him menaced the white sails of a ghastly ship. Yet the day of their departure came, and the boy gripped his luggage with white knuckles. An island, he thought, was more like a ship than real land.

The boy panicked at this news, for in all his life he never once imagined a fate more terrible than living on an island. His father’s announcement of their new home soon crushed that delight. Neither would he listen to the terrors of the sea as the sailors traded stories. The boy was delighted, for he would never again need to stare at the ships going out to sea. Now one-day the boy’s father announced a plan to travel to a distant land. He hated listening to those stories, but as much as he despised them, they amazed him. Many of those burly men bore vicious scars from the raiding brigands.

Even when the sailors were not telling tales of monstrous creatures they traded news of pirates. There they bested one another with terrible stories of sea witches, giant serpents, and the terrible Kraken. Often when the ships came to land, the sailors came to the inn of the boy’s father.

This terrible fear of the sea was likely the fault of the sailors’ many tales. His stomach turned over and his fear forbade him to set foot on one of the great sailing ships. He watched ships go out to sea, but each time they set sail he imagined himself standing on the deck watching the land sink away. Once upon a time in a fair kingdom by the sea, there lived a young lad who was terrified of the ocean.

Burly men at sea kraken