January 30, 2025 • 15 mins
A descendant of a survivor of Block Island’s most infamous shipwreck returns to the island and uncovers an insight as to who–or what–sank the Princess Augusta.
Written by Izzie Cava
Narrated by Izzie Cava
Composed by Simon Jones
Logo Design by Dana Gee
Instagram: @epilogue_audio
TikTok: @epilogue_audio
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Epilogue, where I tell you folktales and legends, then fabricate my own counterpart
(00:10):
from those root yarns.
I am that portrait in your attic, decaying while you floor it, but you can call me Izzy
Cobble.
Rock Island is a popular tourist destination for New England residents.
It's all beaches, ice cream parlour, sailboat rides, and the clear blue Atlantic as far
(00:34):
as the eye can see, but if you find yourself on the island in the off season, specifically
between Christmas and New Year's, you may see the Palatine Light, an apparition burning
just off the northern end of the island.
Many can attest to seeing the image of a flaming ship sailing off into the night, screams following
the vessel until it disappears without a trace into the December mists.
(00:58):
This apparition is some kind of psychic imprint of the final moments of the Princess Augusta,
an English ship chartered in 1738 by German immigrants from the Palatine region who left
Europe to seek religious freedom in America.
The Princess Augusta set sail from Rotterdam on course to Philadelphia with 340 passengers
and 14 crew members under the command of Captain George Long.
(01:21):
But he was not captain for the entire voyage, for the water supply was contaminated with
quote, fever and flux, killing over half the passengers and Captain Long.
The second command, Andrew Brook, took charge of the vessel as a continued sail in over
stormy waters.
They were very far north of their course when the ship started breaking apart amidst a blizzard
(01:43):
on December 27th at roughly 2 a.m.
The ship ran to the rocks off the northernmost point of Block Island, known as Sandy Point
Beach.
How the Block Island residents reacted is a matter of some debate.
The first and more likely course of events is that the Block Islanders rushed to the
aid of the surviving passengers, opening their homes to those in need.
(02:05):
20 died that morning, but the other 95 eventually made it to the mainland.
Two of the passengers even settled on the island, and one of them, Dutch Cattern, was
thought to be a witch.
But only one passenger went down with the ship, Mary van der Leyen, who was driven mad
by her suffering and refused to leave, which may be the screams that still follow the apparition.
(02:29):
But perhaps the Block Island locals were not so kind.
In fact, the island had a reputation for being full of wreckers, those who had lured
ships into the rocks so that they could scavenge valuables from amongst the wreckage.
This also may have been because it was not uncommon for ships to wreck off those shores,
due to Block Island's odd shape and geographic placement.
(02:51):
About a century later, in 1867, Newport resident Joseph P. Hazard told poet John Greenleaf
Whittier all about the wreck, inspiring Whittier's poem, The Wreck of the Palatine.
In it, the islanders are described as follows.
Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey, tearing the heart of the ship away, and the
(03:12):
dead never had a word to say.
The residents of Block Island were not very happy with that portrayal of their hospitality.
But if it were wreckers, then it would align with the ship being set ablaze, for that would
hide any evidence of their crimes.
This is not the only apparition of a ghost ship at sea.
With several having been reported from the New Brunswick area of Canada, there were origins
(03:36):
dating to similar wrecks from a similar era.
Some theories to what causes these images is that they are mirages, optical illusions
resulting from light being refracted through layers of air with different temperatures.
But that doesn't explain why the Palatine light appears every December, or why the
witnesses can still hear screaming.
(03:57):
Some storytellers believe seeing the Palatine light is an augury of good fortune.
Others believe it is important of certain doom.
Whatever the case may be, the Palatine light returns on the anniversary of the Princess
Augustus sinking, marking the ship's passing from this world to the next.
(04:17):
And now, for our block.
There was a passenger on board named Catherine Henry.
She survived both the illness and the wreck, making it safely to the mainland to start
her new life.
She was seeking religious freedom, but more than that, she was fleeing from her husband
in Germany, taking as much of his wealth as she dared and eventually settling in Pennsylvania.
(04:38):
Her counter the wreck was one of the strangest of them all, and largely dismissed because
of its absurdity.
Catherine was the last to see Mary VanderLynne alive, for they were roommates on the vessel,
given that they were two unaccompanied single women of means traveling abroad in need of
company.
The illness had shocked Mary, and Catherine did her best to placate her.
(04:59):
But when reports of the leak reached their cabin, it was the last straw from Mary, who
barricaded herself in their suite and refused to come out.
She begged and pried at the locked door, but to no avail.
The crew was able to pull Catherine away from their suite, but not before she succeeded
in opening the door, and seeing a strange light in their room, a pale and unnatural light
(05:19):
that overtook Mary, consuming her entirely.
Catherine wrote that as they sailed to shore, she looked down into the water and saw more
of those ghastly pale lights, moving like sharks towards the ship.
When she looked at the island, she saw more of those lights on the rocks, lights that
wavered and beckoned and blinded.
She tried to jump from the boat to save Mary from the oncoming threat, but the crew would
(05:43):
not let her go, and the ship was already in flames.
The islanders on the shore and the other passengers claimed they had never seen any sort of lights,
save for the firelight that shone out across the sea from the burning wreck.
Catherine's testimony was considered to be the delusions of a hysterical woman, but Catherine
kept her account anyways, passing it down through generations of her family.
(06:05):
Ironically, it was never read by a great-great-grandson of hers, Henry Klein, a college student on Long
Island whose friend had a beach house on Block Island.
Henry was aware of the Princess Augusta.
He'd heard about the wreck from off-handed family stories.
Stories about his mother's side was distantly German, and how their immigration to this
country was a tale of betrayal and intrigue that ends with a shipwreck.
(06:29):
But he'd never read about the strange lights that Catherine saw.
Regardless, on their first night, his friends took him to Sandy Point Beach for a bonfire.
There was drinking and dancing and laughing.
There were secrets told and promises made.
But Henry had unfortunately fallen into the habit of cigarettes, and left the warm light
of the fire for a smoke down the beach.
(06:51):
He walked far enough that he even stumbled on the marker, denoting the grave for those
lives lost in the Palatine Wreck.
As he was enjoying the sound of the sea and looking up at the stars in the sky, he saw
something strange on the rocks.
A pale light, shimmering in the salt air, moving as if it was alive.
He saw another come from the sea, then another, and recalled out to his friends, waving his
(07:15):
arms and screaming, that they were too far away, and the wind carried his voice off.
When he looked back at the rocks, the lights were gone.
He ran back to his friends and asked if they'd seen those mesmerizing lights, but they left
him off.
Believing Henry had won too many drinks, and he did a good night's rest.
The next day, Henry joined his friends for a stroll down Water Street, to shop, to dine,
(07:39):
to drink, and to watch the fairies come into the harbor.
His mind was still on those lights, addicted to the memory of how they shone just beyond
the break.
And while he did not talk about them with his friends, he feared no such ridicule from
the locals.
Given that it was the off-season, only a few shops were open, and the shopkeepers had all
(07:59):
lived on the island for the entirety of their lives.
He asked the man at the department store if he'd seen the lights off Sandy Point, and
the man told him it was too early to see the Palatine light.
Henry tried to explain that wasn't it.
It was something else, something living, something calling out to him.
The man at the department store kindly asked him if he needed any help sobering up, and
(08:22):
Henry left in a huff.
Then Henry asked the jeweler and the silversmith if they'd seen those lights.
Then they told him it wasn't time for the Palatine light.
Henry tried again to explain the light he saw, and his agitation startled the jeweler,
who threatened to call the authorities if Henry didn't leave immediately.
In a last-ditch attempt to prove his sanity, he asked the boy serving ice cream in the
(08:43):
ice cream parlor if he'd seen those lights dancing on the sea.
Getting ice cream in December was odd enough, but Henry's delusions frightened the team,
who called out to his mother to shoe Henry off.
Confused and doubting what he had seen, Henry rejoined his friends at the little art market
in the Empire Theater.
There were clothes and paintings and magnets for sale, and Henry stopped at a stall selling
(09:06):
tacky seashell souvenirs made into picture frames and jewelry and little dishes and whatnot.
He bought a little gift for his mother, and as the seashell vendor was wrapping it for
him, he decided to ask about the lights on the north of the island.
She froze.
She quickly got another vendor to watch her stall and led Henry to nearby Nichols Park,
when a hushed voice she told him that she too had seen them, but he mustn't tell the
(09:29):
locals.
They don't like it when people speak of impossible things at home on their island.
Then she gave him a warning.
He must not try to find the lights again.
She'd only ever met one other who had seen those lights, a kindly old woman called Miss
Cattern, and had been given the same warning she was giving him now.
Do not follow the lights.
(09:50):
Don't even look at them, lest he heed their call.
This warning echoes elsewhere in literature, namely in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey.
The sorcerer Searsie had warned the Greek hero Odysseus of the presence of sirens, that
any who heard their call were drawn to them, steering their vessels into the rocks and
making themselves a nice meal for those half-buried half-woman creatures.
(10:12):
But Odysseus was curious and wanted to hear their song, so while he had his crew stuffed
wax into the rears, he tied himself to the mast of his ship and heard them sing.
He barely survived the encounter.
Sirens are also in all its metamorphosis, wherein they are thought to be the human companions
of Persephone.
They were either blessed with wings to fly across the sea and find the goddess after
(10:35):
the king of the underworld had taken her for his bride, or cursed with Arabian features
by the goddess Demeter for not protecting her daughter from the underworld king's advances.
On Block Island, sirens were a little different.
For their voices did not carry over the wind, but their lights cut through even the harshest
of blizzards to be seen by even the most stalwart of men.
(10:57):
And that was not Henry Klein.
For that night he returned to Seredepoint.
Heedless of the warning he'd been so kindly given.
He walked up and down the beach, intermittently smoking his cigarettes.
It was a cloudy night.
A storm was brewing, but he paid it no mind.
His eyes remained fixed on the sea, looking out for those awful lights once more.
(11:18):
It took him hours to give up, but eventually he did, walking back up to the shore towards
his friend's house.
He cast one last look over his shoulder, and he saw them.
Or at least he thought he did.
As he ran towards the lights, he saw it was just the man from the department store.
The jeweler, the silversmith, the boy from the ice cream parlor, and his mother, all
(11:38):
holding flashlights and walking towards the Palatine grave marker.
Then they walked beyond it, out into the sea, climbing over the rocks in the surf as they
made their way deeper into the Black Atlantic.
Henry called out to them, but they didn't answer.
He went right to the water's edge, cautioning them that the surf was too violent for a night
swim, and the storm was just moments from breaking.
(12:01):
Just then, someone pushed past Henry, nearly knocking him over as they swam out to meet
the lights.
It was the seashell vendor, the same one who had issued the ignored warning.
He tried in vain to pull her back onto the sand, but she would not be stopped, and dove
in after the islanders.
He saw her in silhouette, climbing up the rock towards the ice cream boy in his pale
(12:23):
flashlight.
The sea was roiling, the storm was upon them, the waves rose up and obscured the lights.
Henry heard his scream, then when the wave crashed down, the seashell vendor was gone.
Henry was pushed again, but this time it was by the waves, without realizing it.
He'd gone out to his knees in the churning waters, and they were pulling him towards
(12:45):
those wavering flashlights.
He would never recall making the choice to dive into the sea and swim to the closest
rock, yet in one instant he was standing by the shore, and the next he was clinging to
the rocks.
The islanders had moved further out to sea, taking their shimmering beacons with them.
The mists were rising.
The storm had broken out in gales of freezing rain and biting wind, yet Henry followed them
(13:07):
nonetheless.
He looked up at the light he was closest to, and saw that the jeweler's features had
changed in the half-light.
They were sharper, more angular, somewhat avian.
A little ways away, the silversmith was hunched over, clinging to a slippery rock, but doing
so in such a way that his shoulder blades almost looked like folded wings, Henry shook the salt
(13:28):
water out of his eyes, refusing to believe what he saw.
A light on his periphery caught his attention, and when he looked up, the man from the department
store was offering him a hand, but the fingers on that hand were longer, curved, more talon-like.
Henry took the proffered hand and was lifted onto the rocks.
He was surrounded by the islanders and their mesmerizing lights, and the longer he looked
(13:50):
into each of those lights, the more their features changed into those of horrible monsters.
Then one by one, the lights went out.
As they went out, the shadows cast on their features deepened to their rotesquery.
Their sharp eyes didn't even look human anymore.
Henry did not know this, not even Catherine knew this.
(14:11):
But this was identical to Mary Vanderlein's final moment.
What Catherine did not see was Mary strike a match and drop it onto her skirt as the
islanders closed in.
Catherine only saw the Princess Augusta in flames.
Everyone since has always thought Mary Vanderlein went mad and stayed with the ship to satisfy
her insanity, but perhaps she was saving the passengers, making sure as many people as
(14:33):
possible made it to the mainland without these monsters feasting on their misfortune.
As they were about to make a meal out of Henry, in that terrible instant of total darkness,
that heartbeat before certain death, Henry took out his lighter and dropped it onto his
jeans.
In a moment, the monsters were ablaze, and so too was Henry.
(14:53):
The next morning, Henry's friends found him on Sandy Point Beach.
He was badly burned, and they rushed him to a hospital in the mainland.
As the authorities helped him board the ferry, he looked back at the stores on Water Street.
Through the windows, past the beach toys and summer displays, he saw the man from the department
store smiling at him.
(15:13):
The jeweler and the silversmith were polishing their wares in the window, and from the ice
cream parlor, the boy and his mother waved to Henry as the ferry sailed out of the harbor
and away from Lock Island.
That's the end of today's tale.
I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed telling it.
Please remember to like, share, and tell all your friends.
Join me next time for more fabricated folk tales on epilogue.
Welcome to Epilogue, where I tell you folktales and legends, then fabricate my own counterpart
(00:10):
from those root yarns.
I am that portrait in your attic, decaying while you floor it, but you can call me Izzy
Cobble.
Rock Island is a popular tourist destination for New England residents.
It's all beaches, ice cream parlour, sailboat rides, and the clear blue Atlantic as far
(00:34):
as the eye can see, but if you find yourself on the island in the off season, specifically
between Christmas and New Year's, you may see the Palatine Light, an apparition burning
just off the northern end of the island.
Many can attest to seeing the image of a flaming ship sailing off into the night, screams following
the vessel until it disappears without a trace into the December mists.
(00:58):
This apparition is some kind of psychic imprint of the final moments of the Princess Augusta,
an English ship chartered in 1738 by German immigrants from the Palatine region who left
Europe to seek religious freedom in America.
The Princess Augusta set sail from Rotterdam on course to Philadelphia with 340 passengers
and 14 crew members under the command of Captain George Long.
(01:21):
But he was not captain for the entire voyage, for the water supply was contaminated with
quote, fever and flux, killing over half the passengers and Captain Long.
The second command, Andrew Brook, took charge of the vessel as a continued sail in over
stormy waters.
They were very far north of their course when the ship started breaking apart amidst a blizzard
(01:43):
on December 27th at roughly 2 a.m.
The ship ran to the rocks off the northernmost point of Block Island, known as Sandy Point
Beach.
How the Block Island residents reacted is a matter of some debate.
The first and more likely course of events is that the Block Islanders rushed to the
aid of the surviving passengers, opening their homes to those in need.
(02:05):
20 died that morning, but the other 95 eventually made it to the mainland.
Two of the passengers even settled on the island, and one of them, Dutch Cattern, was
thought to be a witch.
But only one passenger went down with the ship, Mary van der Leyen, who was driven mad
by her suffering and refused to leave, which may be the screams that still follow the apparition.
(02:29):
But perhaps the Block Island locals were not so kind.
In fact, the island had a reputation for being full of wreckers, those who had lured
ships into the rocks so that they could scavenge valuables from amongst the wreckage.
This also may have been because it was not uncommon for ships to wreck off those shores,
due to Block Island's odd shape and geographic placement.
(02:51):
About a century later, in 1867, Newport resident Joseph P. Hazard told poet John Greenleaf
Whittier all about the wreck, inspiring Whittier's poem, The Wreck of the Palatine.
In it, the islanders are described as follows.
Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey, tearing the heart of the ship away, and the
(03:12):
dead never had a word to say.
The residents of Block Island were not very happy with that portrayal of their hospitality.
But if it were wreckers, then it would align with the ship being set ablaze, for that would
hide any evidence of their crimes.
This is not the only apparition of a ghost ship at sea.
With several having been reported from the New Brunswick area of Canada, there were origins
(03:36):
dating to similar wrecks from a similar era.
Some theories to what causes these images is that they are mirages, optical illusions
resulting from light being refracted through layers of air with different temperatures.
But that doesn't explain why the Palatine light appears every December, or why the
witnesses can still hear screaming.
(03:57):
Some storytellers believe seeing the Palatine light is an augury of good fortune.
Others believe it is important of certain doom.
Whatever the case may be, the Palatine light returns on the anniversary of the Princess
Augustus sinking, marking the ship's passing from this world to the next.
(04:17):
And now, for our block.
There was a passenger on board named Catherine Henry.
She survived both the illness and the wreck, making it safely to the mainland to start
her new life.
She was seeking religious freedom, but more than that, she was fleeing from her husband
in Germany, taking as much of his wealth as she dared and eventually settling in Pennsylvania.
(04:38):
Her counter the wreck was one of the strangest of them all, and largely dismissed because
of its absurdity.
Catherine was the last to see Mary VanderLynne alive, for they were roommates on the vessel,
given that they were two unaccompanied single women of means traveling abroad in need of
company.
The illness had shocked Mary, and Catherine did her best to placate her.
(04:59):
But when reports of the leak reached their cabin, it was the last straw from Mary, who
barricaded herself in their suite and refused to come out.
She begged and pried at the locked door, but to no avail.
The crew was able to pull Catherine away from their suite, but not before she succeeded
in opening the door, and seeing a strange light in their room, a pale and unnatural light
(05:19):
that overtook Mary, consuming her entirely.
Catherine wrote that as they sailed to shore, she looked down into the water and saw more
of those ghastly pale lights, moving like sharks towards the ship.
When she looked at the island, she saw more of those lights on the rocks, lights that
wavered and beckoned and blinded.
She tried to jump from the boat to save Mary from the oncoming threat, but the crew would
(05:43):
not let her go, and the ship was already in flames.
The islanders on the shore and the other passengers claimed they had never seen any sort of lights,
save for the firelight that shone out across the sea from the burning wreck.
Catherine's testimony was considered to be the delusions of a hysterical woman, but Catherine
kept her account anyways, passing it down through generations of her family.
(06:05):
Ironically, it was never read by a great-great-grandson of hers, Henry Klein, a college student on Long
Island whose friend had a beach house on Block Island.
Henry was aware of the Princess Augusta.
He'd heard about the wreck from off-handed family stories.
Stories about his mother's side was distantly German, and how their immigration to this
country was a tale of betrayal and intrigue that ends with a shipwreck.
(06:29):
But he'd never read about the strange lights that Catherine saw.
Regardless, on their first night, his friends took him to Sandy Point Beach for a bonfire.
There was drinking and dancing and laughing.
There were secrets told and promises made.
But Henry had unfortunately fallen into the habit of cigarettes, and left the warm light
of the fire for a smoke down the beach.
(06:51):
He walked far enough that he even stumbled on the marker, denoting the grave for those
lives lost in the Palatine Wreck.
As he was enjoying the sound of the sea and looking up at the stars in the sky, he saw
something strange on the rocks.
A pale light, shimmering in the salt air, moving as if it was alive.
He saw another come from the sea, then another, and recalled out to his friends, waving his
(07:15):
arms and screaming, that they were too far away, and the wind carried his voice off.
When he looked back at the rocks, the lights were gone.
He ran back to his friends and asked if they'd seen those mesmerizing lights, but they left
him off.
Believing Henry had won too many drinks, and he did a good night's rest.
The next day, Henry joined his friends for a stroll down Water Street, to shop, to dine,
(07:39):
to drink, and to watch the fairies come into the harbor.
His mind was still on those lights, addicted to the memory of how they shone just beyond
the break.
And while he did not talk about them with his friends, he feared no such ridicule from
the locals.
Given that it was the off-season, only a few shops were open, and the shopkeepers had all
(07:59):
lived on the island for the entirety of their lives.
He asked the man at the department store if he'd seen the lights off Sandy Point, and
the man told him it was too early to see the Palatine light.
Henry tried to explain that wasn't it.
It was something else, something living, something calling out to him.
The man at the department store kindly asked him if he needed any help sobering up, and
(08:22):
Henry left in a huff.
Then Henry asked the jeweler and the silversmith if they'd seen those lights.
Then they told him it wasn't time for the Palatine light.
Henry tried again to explain the light he saw, and his agitation startled the jeweler,
who threatened to call the authorities if Henry didn't leave immediately.
In a last-ditch attempt to prove his sanity, he asked the boy serving ice cream in the
(08:43):
ice cream parlor if he'd seen those lights dancing on the sea.
Getting ice cream in December was odd enough, but Henry's delusions frightened the team,
who called out to his mother to shoe Henry off.
Confused and doubting what he had seen, Henry rejoined his friends at the little art market
in the Empire Theater.
There were clothes and paintings and magnets for sale, and Henry stopped at a stall selling
(09:06):
tacky seashell souvenirs made into picture frames and jewelry and little dishes and whatnot.
He bought a little gift for his mother, and as the seashell vendor was wrapping it for
him, he decided to ask about the lights on the north of the island.
She froze.
She quickly got another vendor to watch her stall and led Henry to nearby Nichols Park,
when a hushed voice she told him that she too had seen them, but he mustn't tell the
(09:29):
locals.
They don't like it when people speak of impossible things at home on their island.
Then she gave him a warning.
He must not try to find the lights again.
She'd only ever met one other who had seen those lights, a kindly old woman called Miss
Cattern, and had been given the same warning she was giving him now.
Do not follow the lights.
(09:50):
Don't even look at them, lest he heed their call.
This warning echoes elsewhere in literature, namely in Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey.
The sorcerer Searsie had warned the Greek hero Odysseus of the presence of sirens, that
any who heard their call were drawn to them, steering their vessels into the rocks and
making themselves a nice meal for those half-buried half-woman creatures.
(10:12):
But Odysseus was curious and wanted to hear their song, so while he had his crew stuffed
wax into the rears, he tied himself to the mast of his ship and heard them sing.
He barely survived the encounter.
Sirens are also in all its metamorphosis, wherein they are thought to be the human companions
of Persephone.
They were either blessed with wings to fly across the sea and find the goddess after
(10:35):
the king of the underworld had taken her for his bride, or cursed with Arabian features
by the goddess Demeter for not protecting her daughter from the underworld king's advances.
On Block Island, sirens were a little different.
For their voices did not carry over the wind, but their lights cut through even the harshest
of blizzards to be seen by even the most stalwart of men.
(10:57):
And that was not Henry Klein.
For that night he returned to Seredepoint.
Heedless of the warning he'd been so kindly given.
He walked up and down the beach, intermittently smoking his cigarettes.
It was a cloudy night.
A storm was brewing, but he paid it no mind.
His eyes remained fixed on the sea, looking out for those awful lights once more.
(11:18):
It took him hours to give up, but eventually he did, walking back up to the shore towards
his friend's house.
He cast one last look over his shoulder, and he saw them.
Or at least he thought he did.
As he ran towards the lights, he saw it was just the man from the department store.
The jeweler, the silversmith, the boy from the ice cream parlor, and his mother, all
(11:38):
holding flashlights and walking towards the Palatine grave marker.
Then they walked beyond it, out into the sea, climbing over the rocks in the surf as they
made their way deeper into the Black Atlantic.
Henry called out to them, but they didn't answer.
He went right to the water's edge, cautioning them that the surf was too violent for a night
swim, and the storm was just moments from breaking.
(12:01):
Just then, someone pushed past Henry, nearly knocking him over as they swam out to meet
the lights.
It was the seashell vendor, the same one who had issued the ignored warning.
He tried in vain to pull her back onto the sand, but she would not be stopped, and dove
in after the islanders.
He saw her in silhouette, climbing up the rock towards the ice cream boy in his pale
(12:23):
flashlight.
The sea was roiling, the storm was upon them, the waves rose up and obscured the lights.
Henry heard his scream, then when the wave crashed down, the seashell vendor was gone.
Henry was pushed again, but this time it was by the waves, without realizing it.
He'd gone out to his knees in the churning waters, and they were pulling him towards
(12:45):
those wavering flashlights.
He would never recall making the choice to dive into the sea and swim to the closest
rock, yet in one instant he was standing by the shore, and the next he was clinging to
the rocks.
The islanders had moved further out to sea, taking their shimmering beacons with them.
The mists were rising.
The storm had broken out in gales of freezing rain and biting wind, yet Henry followed them
(13:07):
nonetheless.
He looked up at the light he was closest to, and saw that the jeweler's features had
changed in the half-light.
They were sharper, more angular, somewhat avian.
A little ways away, the silversmith was hunched over, clinging to a slippery rock, but doing
so in such a way that his shoulder blades almost looked like folded wings, Henry shook the salt
(13:28):
water out of his eyes, refusing to believe what he saw.
A light on his periphery caught his attention, and when he looked up, the man from the department
store was offering him a hand, but the fingers on that hand were longer, curved, more talon-like.
Henry took the proffered hand and was lifted onto the rocks.
He was surrounded by the islanders and their mesmerizing lights, and the longer he looked
(13:50):
into each of those lights, the more their features changed into those of horrible monsters.
Then one by one, the lights went out.
As they went out, the shadows cast on their features deepened to their rotesquery.
Their sharp eyes didn't even look human anymore.
Henry did not know this, not even Catherine knew this.
(14:11):
But this was identical to Mary Vanderlein's final moment.
What Catherine did not see was Mary strike a match and drop it onto her skirt as the
islanders closed in.
Catherine only saw the Princess Augusta in flames.
Everyone since has always thought Mary Vanderlein went mad and stayed with the ship to satisfy
her insanity, but perhaps she was saving the passengers, making sure as many people as
(14:33):
possible made it to the mainland without these monsters feasting on their misfortune.
As they were about to make a meal out of Henry, in that terrible instant of total darkness,
that heartbeat before certain death, Henry took out his lighter and dropped it onto his
jeans.
In a moment, the monsters were ablaze, and so too was Henry.
(14:53):
The next morning, Henry's friends found him on Sandy Point Beach.
He was badly burned, and they rushed him to a hospital in the mainland.
As the authorities helped him board the ferry, he looked back at the stores on Water Street.
Through the windows, past the beach toys and summer displays, he saw the man from the department
store smiling at him.
(15:13):
The jeweler and the silversmith were polishing their wares in the window, and from the ice
cream parlor, the boy and his mother waved to Henry as the ferry sailed out of the harbor
and away from Lock Island.
That's the end of today's tale.
I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed telling it.
Please remember to like, share, and tell all your friends.
Join me next time for more fabricated folk tales on epilogue.
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