The wind had weakened, and the waves were still huge, but much calmer. At least the strange sounds of the ship about to break apart could no longer be heard inside the cabin.
After Van Helsing and I came out of the cabin, we found ourselves aboard this moving ship. No matter how one looked at them, the people on board did not seem like ghosts.
But they were. I saw the captain—the owner of that abandoned villa. He did not look like the madman of legend at all. Instead, he was as spirited as he appeared in the portrait, despite having supposedly been dead for decades.
The weather had been terrible for the past three days. The ship had charged wildly through massive whirlpools and storms, and everyone had been too busy keeping it afloat to pay us any attention. The second mate had volunteered to steer the ship and keep watch, allowing the crew to sleep for a few hours. Only then did someone notice us.
Van Helsing claimed to be a doctor, and I was his assistant. The crew quickly accepted our new identities.
"Captain, you'd better come take a look," the first mate said. Then we went up onto the deck. The thick fog still had not dispersed; even the rising sun could not pierce it. But that was good news, because at least we had seen the sun.
A bloodcurdling scream suddenly came from the cabin. The captain and first mate returned to the crew's quarters, while I heard something outside the cabin striking all around us, making a dull thumping sound like someone knocking on a door.
This was the middle of the sea. Who would be "knocking" beneath the waves?
"Ghost!" a sailor suddenly shouted. "It's Bly's ghost!"
Bly was the missing sailor.