Synopsis/Details
A hot humid, windless day aboard the merchant ship. The crew is on edge; the ocean water has suddenly become hot to the touch, muddy, and covered in rising gas bubbles.
The sailors witness a bizarre aquatic eruption in the distance. The Captain and mates peer through their glasses, but the anomaly vanishes, leaving the crew uneasy and the oppressive heat lingering in the air.
During the night watch, Darky, an apprentice, is on deck and freezes in terror as an enormous, intelligent, and grotesque black face , an ab-human, rises from the depths to stare directly at him and his friend. He rushes to tell Jepson, the Second Mate, what he has witnessed. Captain Armitage dismisses the sighting as a hallucination, though he orders an intense watch.
As night deepens, a thick, claustrophobic sea fog rolls in. The ship is suddenly haunted by muffled, deep braying sounds that carry a horrific, mocking echo of humanity. Through the mist, the crew spots a drifting barque, the Scottish Heath, that was thought lost at sea.
As the spectral vessel drifts closer, they realize the deck is crawling with a swarm of white seal-like creatures with tentacles instead of arms, watching them with grotesque intelligence.
Realizing the abandoned ship has already been claimed as a communal nest for these predators, the crew prepares for the worst. The demons of the sea begin to scale the hull of their vessel.
The quiet, horrific realization hits the crew that they are trapped in the open ocean and hunted by forces far older and more alien than humanity.
