"With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross..."
We had been a month at sea when the helmsman began to see things in the shadows that weren't there. We chalked it up to the days and nights at sea, the staggering chill of the Southern Sea, the lack of food that wasn't salted beef.
How were we to know that he had been slowly losing his mind? He gave no sign of it so far as we could tell: siting watch when it came his turn, pronouncing the time by his knowledge of the stars, the sun. If he too often looked to the horizon and shuddered, if he too often called out that he had seen something that was not there, what were we to think?
After the Albatross came, our great symbol of hope that flew round the mast and perched in the shrouds, who shared our food and answered to the name of God, all of our spirits lifted. The Albatross was such a jolly companion; an enormous white banner that flew pure and beautiful against the sun, leading us through the ice and bringing a stiff wind.
If after it arrived the mariner grew more unsettled, how were we to look at him and say "madness of the mind" and not "madness of the sea"? When we knew, alas, it was too late!
The mariner, armed with his crossbow and standing watch, stood over the gleaming white corpse of our good omen, our ocean friend, with a feral smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
"I have killed it," he said his eyes wide and vacant, "the demon that has dogged our steps and whispered such evil into the night." He grinned and it was a dead man's smile, a grimace without any humanity in it. "Here it lies," he called, "Dead at last, thank the Lord!"
And such a cry did rise from the assembled, but what were we to do? There it lay, the last tie we had to land and all of the good things it brought, and standing over it the mariner with his arrow dripping red.
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