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123The ships to the New World were always over-filled, what with the lure of prosperity and freedom. Down in steerage, it was not uncommon for insane tales of terror to arise amongst the Irish poor, with their Celtic mode of imagination. Their minds, haunted by images of cold bogs and trackless forests, were populated by a vast array of wild creatures, whose forms and habits predated even their fevered Catholicism. Witches, banshees, giants; I've heard the poor swear blind they'd seen them in the rolling green of the Old World, and well might they have. To see the fear incited in them by a floating clump of seaweed or the shadows on the ship at night, one feels assured of the existence of frightful creatures, and glad for the company of those that know the charms to keep them at bay.
123Of course, not all the horrors were in their minds, and I've seen such gruesome things in steerage you won't believe. Kept awake one night by the perrenial coughing of the sick below me, I took a stroll around the ship. Soon thereafter, I heard a great commotion, and called the crew to follow me towards the source. The scene we burst in upon was so aberrant that two of the sailors vomited on the spot. Beaten and senseless, a woman lay at the centre of a crowd, clutching a blighted piece of meat we later deduced was her grandchild. Driven insane with hunger, she had knocked its head against the side of the ship and had been eating the body for a week, only being found out when the stench of the thing grew so great it overpowered that of sweat and waste. Declared a witch by her fellow passengers, she looked more like a skeleton, and we dispatched her with haste, and some degree of pity on my part.
123Nothing I've seen or heard yet compares, however, to the tale told me by the Captain of the Sea Lily, and the events that occured during the ship's last voyage. It's a famous, or rather, an infamous tale now, and though a fair few doubt it, I myself am inclined to believe. The Captain looked at me with such painful intensity as he recounted it that any doubts I had were swept away on a tide of awful belief.
123The first sounds, he told me, were reported on the twentieth day of the voyage. That is, it was on the night of the nineteenth they occured. Down in steerage, a sort of 'bad knocking, like as you get unwanted on stormy nights'. Of course, the crew thought they knew better and laughed off the fears of the poor. Wild rumours were bound to be a staple of any voyage, and even the most superstitious sailor was wont to mock the fantastic imagination of the immigrants. A sort of rudimentary check was done, to reassure the passengers, and by midday most had forgotten the noise. That night, though, the knocking began again, with a dreadful plurality to its character. Terrified as they were, the steerage passengers couldn't sleep, and sat awake listening to the blasphemous rapping.
123The next morning, they elected a spokesman, one Patrick McKellen, who demanded to meet with the Captain, and sat upon the stairs leading to the upper deck until, his interest piqued, the Captain deigned to meet him. However, his assertion that the supernatural knocking had begun again only gained him a contemptuous leer, and McKellen was sent on his way, a bitter look in his eyes. Others begged the crew during the day to set up a watch, but their pleas were whisked away in the sea winds, the sailors only growing more irritated with the story. When the time came to lock the poor in steerage for the night, some scattered voices chattered on about the noises, but the majority just clambered dutifully into the hole.
123When the black sky began to make the stars look pathetic, however, the noises began again, with an intensity the passengers had not heard before. Then they stopped. The poor sat awake until dawn, but the sounds did not start again. Upon their release for the day, though, the poor were horrified to hear that a sailor had gone missing during his watch. The Captain ordered the ship searched top to bottom, but they found no trace of the man, and talk of the knocking during the night began again with a new fervor.