The Oxenaforda Set
“Ok, everyone, and smile!” Captain Aaron Baldwin said as he held a phone out in front of him.
A research crew had set sail off the coast of Land’s End in Kernow to finally find the wreck of the Merchant Royal, a ship that had sunk somewhere off the coast of South-West Saxonia in 1641.
When they were ten statute miles from their point of departure and twenty-five miles from the suspected wreck they were searching for, the crew decided to take a group photo to serve as a memento of their trip.
The team did as their Captain had ordered, and he took the photo just as a particularly large wave splashed aboard.
“How did it come out, mate?” Dylan Jones, a renowned treasure hunter whom various research groups called on for large expeditions such as this, said as he rushed over to check the photo.
“It looks fine to me, I think,” Aaron said, smiling as he examined the picture. “But we could do one more for luck.”
“Ok, guys, back into positions, let’s go!” Dylan said, clapping his colleagues into order as he ran back in front of the camera.
The group wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders and smiled as Αaron took another photo.
“Was that one better, mate?” Dylan said, jogging over to his Captain.
“Yes, I think that one will be fine,” Aaron said before something in the photo caught his eye.
“Hang on,” he said, scrunching his face as he scrutinised the image. “Eh?”
Dylan wrinkled his brow and puckered his mouth. “What’s wrong, mate? Your thumb in the way or something?”
Aaron showed Dylan the photo and pointed at someone in particular. “Have you seen that person before?”
Dylan ‘um’d as he inspected the man with pale blue, almost luminous skin wearing old-fashioned clothing, staring blankly at the camera.
He scanned the deck around him. “Dunno, mate. I don’t remember seeing anyone like that around.”
“If there was anyone like that on the ship, they’re not here now,” Aaron said, gazing at his crew.
“Cat,” Dylan said. “Was there anyone next to you on your left? Do you know?”
Catalina Martinez, the deep-sea diver on board who was going to be the first person to see the Merchant Royal and its treasure, gawped at Dylan and shrugged. “No, I was at the end of the back row.”
“You sure?” Dylan said. “Cause there certainly seems to be someone next to you in the photo.”
Catalina furrowed her brow and skipped over to the phone.
She examined the image and went pale. “No. I definitely don’t remember a creepy man standing next to me.”
“So, the photo is showing someone who shouldn’t have been there,” Aaron said, grimacing at his comrades.
Catalina lightly hugged herself and glanced around. “This ship isn’t haunted, is it?”
Dylan shrugged. “Maybe we’re passing over a wreck? The Atlantikôi is a ship graveyard after all.”
“I sure do hope not,” Catalina said, shuddering. “I don’t want to be stranded with dead people where I can’t get away from them easily.”
Dylan stared out to sea and widened his eyes. “What if it was a crew member of the Merchant Royal?”
Aaron shook his head. “It can’t be; the Merchant Royal is eighteen nautical miles away.”
“We don’t know for sure, though, do we?” Dylan said. “It could be right under our noses.”
Catalina peered over the edge, into the deep, cavernous blue. “Do you want me to have a look?”
Aaron shook his head. “No, no. Let’s wait until we’ve reached the known recorded location of the Merchant Royal.”
Dylan gazed ahead of him and noticed that the rest of the crew was huddled around the starboard side of the ship, staring out to the sea.
“What are they looking at?” Dylan said, glancing at Cat and Aaron. “A stray Whale, perhaps?”
Aaron squinted as he observed his crew. “I haven’t the foggiest, but it must be interesting.”
Aaron marched over to his team, and Dylan and Catalina tailed him.
“Now then, what are we all looking at?” Aaron said as he made his way to the front of the crowd.
“A ship,” Eddie Verne, a hypnotherapist invited on board to help people who needed it overcome their fear of the sea, said. “But it’s unlike any ship I’ve ever seen.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow and gazed ahead of him.
On the horizon was a jet-black shape encroaching on the research vessel.
Aaron zoomed in on the shape using his phone’s lens.
It was a ship, an old ship, closely resembling the classic idea of a pirate ship.
Aaron put down his phone and stared blankly into space. “It can’t be”.
“Can’t be what?” Dylan said, scrunching his nose.
“It almost looks like…” Aaron said, his face becoming deathly pale.
“The Merchant Royal,” Catalina said, as the black ship finally reached the research vessel and lay side by side with it.
Dylan observed the crew on board; they all wore old-fashioned maritime clothing and had pale blue skin.
“Let’s have a look at that photo again,” Dylan said, grabbing Aaron’s phone and examining the image.
He put the phone down and gawped at the ship in front of him, gulping. “They look like the guy in the photo.”
Catalina stared at Dylan wide-eyed. “You’ve gotta be kidding, right?”
“No,” Dylan said, handing her the phone. “Look for yourself.”
Catalina compared the photo with the crew in front of her. “Oh geez.”
The crew on the black ship stood aside and allowed their Captain to move to the front.
He cleared his throat. “Good evening, my name is John Limbrey, and I am the Captain of the Merchant Royal. Who here is the Captain of your vessel?”
Silence fell over the research team as their skin went colourless and icy-cold sweat beaded on their skin.
Aaron stepped forward, cleared his throat, and raised a trembling hand. “That would be me.”
Captain John Limbrey smiled at him, revealing a row of golden-yellow teeth. “Excellent. We’d love to have a word with you if you don’t mind.”
A smirk appeared on Aaron’s face. “By all means, we could be of use to each other.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” John said, lightly bowing his head. “Permission to come aboard, Captain.”
Aaron ordered his crew to disperse and gestured for the visitors to come on board the ship.
John Limbrey glided across the ships, his crew floating behind him.
Aaron led everyone into the control centre of the research vessel.
Those who were near a crew member of the Merchant Royal felt a sheet of ice run through their entire body.
“This is actually happening, right?” Catalina said, leaning into Dylan’s ear. “We’re not all at sea in a metaphorical sense, are we?”
“I dunno,” Dylan said. “We’ll just have to go along with it.”
Catalina frowned and gulped as they squeezed into the ship’s interior.
Once everyone was inside and the two Captains had opened a dialogue, Dylan called his brother Ben, an eminent historian and ardent sceptic, to reassure him with some much-appreciated rationality.
“The Fata Morgana is a well-known phenomenon,” Ben said over the phone as Dylan watched a living man have a polite chat with a ghost. “When a layer of warm air sits on top of a much colder layer of air near the surface of the ocean, it creates an atmospheric dust, acting as a lens projecting an image. My wife has had a similar experience.”
“But the crew’s on board, mate,” Dylan said, perspiration flicking off his hair. “Captain John Limbrey is talking to the leader of our team.”
On the other side of the room, Aaron vacated his seat and allowed Eddie Verne to take over, who grinned at John and shook his hand.
“Have you taken sufficient fluids?” Ben said, sighing heavily. “Are you sure what you’re seeing doesn’t exist entirely in your head?”
“Everyone’s seeing the same thing, mate,” Dylan said, gulping down a cup of tea. “No one’s dehydrated. You’ve seen the photo I’ve sent you, right?”
“Indeed,” Ben said. “Your captain’s phone could’ve been in panorama mode, the longer exposure creating an extra person in the image.”
“How does that explain the fact I’m looking at him right now?” Dylan said, breathing heavily as he stared ahead.
The ghostly figure in the photograph locked eyes with Dylan and slowly waved at him.
Dylan laughed awkwardly and quickly waved back.
“There are specialised apps that incorporate ghosts into photographs,” Ben said. “Aaron may be playing a trick on you, perhaps by hiring a troupe of actors for added effect.”
Dylan observed Eddie Verne swinging a fob watch in front of John Limbrey, making him fall into a trance.
“Somehow I don’t think that’s the case, mate,” Dylan said. “Everyone’s too deep in their roles for this to be a prank.”
“Captain John Limbrey shouldn’t even be there,” Ben said. “There’s documented evidence he provided that proves he survived the sinking of the Merchant Royal.”
Dylan gazed at the floor. “Do we really know that?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure,” Ben said, sighing heavily on the other side of the phone. “I’m not sure how much more help I could be if you’re so insistent on disagreeing with me.”
Dylan gulped down some water. “You’re not gonna like this, mate, but I think they’re ghosts.”
On his side of the call, Ben waited for his eyes to complete a full rotation of their sockets before he bid his brother goodbye and ended the call.
Dylan pressed his phone hard against his ear long after the call had ended, until Eddie got out of his seat and addressed the crowd.
“Ok, a slight change of plan to our journey,” Eddie said. “Once we find the wreck, we are going to retrieve the treasure and take it to Ando Verpia, where John and his crew were originally taking them before the Merchant Royal sank.”
The research team broke into unintelligible babbling.
“Eh?” Dylan said, raising an eyebrow. “But that adds an extra hundred and eighty-nine miles to our journey!”
“The Abafala Maritime Museum are expecting the wreck and its treasure,” Catalina said, scowling at Eddie. “How are they going to feel if they only get half of what they want?”
Aaron used his hands to lower the volume of his crew like he was turning down the lights with a dimmer switch.
He simpered at Catalina and lowered his head. “The museum only wants the wreck, not the treasure.”
“I believe that if we achieve John’s original objective, then he and his crew will finally have eternal rest,” Eddie said.
“How do we all feel about the plan?” Aaron said.
The crew mumbled amongst themselves before Dylan stepped towards Eddie and Aaron.
“It’s worth a try, I guess,” Dylan said, shrugging.
The others nodded their heads, gawping at their Captain.
A wry smile appeared on Aaron’s face. “Ok, let’s find the Merchant Royal.”
With that, he sprang off his feet towards the steering wheel of the ship, and his team rushed to their positions.
“I’d like to invite you aboard our ship, Mr Verne,” John Limbrey said, showing the hypnotherapist his cracked, stained teeth. “We have much to discuss.”
Eddie rubbed the back of his neck and gazed towards Aaron.
But Aaron was too fixated on the wheel to care much about what Eddie was doing.
Eddie turned back around to Captain Limbrey and smiled. “I’d love to. Show me the way, good sir.”
So whilst everyone else was preparing to locate the Merchant Royal, Eddie Verne silently followed his new friends out of the ship and onto the ghost of the Merchant Royal.
Once the research vessel arrived above the presumed final resting place of the Merchant Royal, Catalina got into her Scuba gear, climbed over the side of the ship, and plunged into the Atlantikoi ocean.
Catalina enjoyed being in the sea; it was her happy place.
When she was alone, surrounded by nothing but water and various sea life, Catalina found time to think over things that whirled around her head.
Such as why her team was so willing to accept that the ghosts of Captain John Limbrey and his crew had visited them, and that returning the treasure to its intended destination would enable them to pass into the afterlife.
Catalina shuddered once she realised that she had no other alternative to the past few hours’ events.
She floated down to the bottom of the ocean like a mermaid, flitting her legs and pirouetting in the water.
Catalina was so at home in the deep blue that she considered herself somewhat amphibious, like a human frog.
Eventually, a black cavernous mass appeared in the choir depths, on the bottom of the sea floor.
A devious smile appeared on Catalina’s face behind her mask.
It was the wreck of the Merchant Royal, a lot worse for wear than the ghost vessel she had just seen, but the same ship nonetheless.
So it did sink ten leagues from Land’s End, as was believed.
Catalina was beginning to doubt even that, but she was glad that her dive was worth it after all.
She pushed herself through one of the ship’s portholes and explored the remains.
Catalina felt a chill run down her spine as she meandered past the skeletons of the unlucky crew who went down with their ship.
Amongst the bones, she discovered a large treasure chest.
Catalina’s eyes lit up as she propelled herself towards it.
At last, she grabbed the wooden box and opened it.
Gold and silver coins shone in her eyes, almost blinding her.
She writhed in the wreck, searching for similar treasure.
Clumps of gold, silver, and sixteenth-century coins came into view, scattered amongst human remains all along the length of the hull.
Catalina wriggled back towards the box and tried to lift it, but it was too heavy.
Instead, she shot out of a porthole and rose to the surface.
Once she rose from the ocean like Ariel, she called to the research vessel.
“The wreck is down here,” Catalina said. “We’ve rediscovered the Merchant Royal!”
The crowd on deck, including Dylan, began to cheer and jump around.
They took turns bringing each other into a warm embrace.
“Did you find any treasure, Cat?” Dylan said, peering over the side of the boat.
“Yeah, loads of it,” Catalina said, splashing about in the water. “Too much for me to take on my own; we need to use the salvage cage.”
“Great, I’ll go and tell Aaron,” Dylan said, rushing into the control centre.
With that, Catalina climbed back onto the ship and helped her crewmates prepare to salvage the wreck.
It was a shame that the treasure would not be permanently displayed with the wreck, Catalina thought to herself; it would have made quite an exciting exhibition.
Once the crew had brought the wreck and its almost two billion dollars’ worth of treasure onto the ship, they began their voyage to Ando Verpia.
“Has anyone considered selling it?” a member of the crew said to his crewmates. “We could earn a lot of money from it, enough for us all to focus on our passions full time.”
His comrades groaned and grimaced at him.
“Come on, mate,” Dylan said, frowning at the man. “That’s not what we do. We discover lost treasures so that other people can enjoy and learn from them in museums.”
The man gazed down at his feet and smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.
“It was just a suggestion,” he said, laughing awkwardly.
Finally, the ship arrived in Ando Verpia, and the crew took the treasure to the city’s main museum.
“Well, thank you for this unexpected donation,” the museum’s curator said, smiling at her new exhibits. “It’s very much appreciated.”
“John Limbrey’s crew was taking the treasure here anyway when the ship sank,” Aaron said. “We just thought we’d complete the journey.”
“It doesn’t matter that the museum wasn’t the actual intended recipient of the treasure, does it?” Catalina said to Dylan, leaning in close to him. “The crew of the Merchant Royal will still end their haunting, won’t they?”
Dylan sighed. “We’ll just have to hope. We only know that Merchant Royal was delivering goods to Ando Verpia, but not exactly where in the city. We don’t even know whether we did actually encounter the lost souls of the ship’s crew.”
“Yeah,” Catalina said, laughing darkly. “I sure hope we didn’t come here for no reason.”
“Well, either way, it wasn’t in vain,” Dylan said, placing an arm around Catalina’s shoulders as the crew strode out of the museum back to their ship. “We’ve done a good thing by giving a museum a donation they weren’t expecting.”
“I guess so,” Catalina said, smiling at the sun above her.
Halfway between the museum and the ship, Aaron received a call from Eddie Verne, who had spent the last few hours or so on the Merchant Royal.
“We’ve done it, Ed,” Aaron said, laughing. “The treasure has arrived in Ando Verpia, three hundred and eighty-five years overdue.”
“I thought you might have done,” Eddie said over the phone. “I’m back in Land’s End after the local lifeguard rescued me from the sea.”
Aaron’s mouth shrank. “Oh.”
“You see, as I was talking with John Limbrey and his crew, they and the ship evaporated into the sky, and I was left flailing in the sea.”
Aaron laughed. “Interesting.”
Dylan, overhearing enough of the phone call to know what was going on, wrinkled his brow and checked the group photo on his phone.
The mysterious person in the photograph was no longer there; it was almost as if he had never been there to begin with.
Dylan placed the phone back into his pocket and chuckled to himself. “Cool,” he said to himself.
“It was lucky the lifeguard’s were already out at sea when they found me,” Eddie said. “Otherwise I don’t know how I’d survive. I might have even joined the crew of the Merchant Royal.”
Aaron laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re safe and sound on the mainland. We’ll see you in Aberfala, with the wreck of the Merchant Royal.”
“Good, I look forward to seeing it,” Eddie said before bidding farewell and ending the call.
“Right,” Aaron said, clapping his hands and taking charge of his group. “Let’s go home.”
And so Captain Aaron Baldwin and his crew returned to their research vessel and completed their journey, whilst the crew of the Merchant Royal finally got their freedom, having met their original objective.
The Robinsonverse 