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THE ELECT AMONG THE DAMNED

By W. T. Block

It was a night the Druids crave,

When hellish legions flee the grave

And head for Bristol's keep,

When murderers escape their lairs,

Their hangman ropes enlaced with hairs,

Entwined like snakes asleep

Down poured the rain on Bristol's quays,

Where ships of every nation raise

Their masts in trim salute.

And in the slums along the shore

The sailors swill and then explore

Abodes of grim repute.

Amid the gloom of shanty town

A tiny mission did abound

With gospel, grub and tune.

And sailors stopped between their rum

As others did throughout the slum

To hear old Tom McCune.

There on All Hallows Eve at night

Old Tom stood by the mission site

And watched the pounding rain.

When from the shadows three men raced

Into the mission door and placed

A drunk in grievous pain.

His breath reeked high of rum and rye,

And bloody threads adorned his eye.

A fever wracked his brain.

Old Tom bent low and felt his head,

Then tucked the sot away in bed

In clothing dry of rain.

His quivering lips bespoke of ships,

Of years and years on ocean trips,

Of wine and women too.

And underneath his dimpled chin

Were swollen knots upon the skin

Of deadly purple hue.

"Rum, rum, I need!" the drunk did plead

And from his nose began to bleed.

"I'll pay you!" he did state.

And lo! Within his bony grasp,

He held a coin so tightly clasped,

A shining piece of eight.

"I have no rum," the chaplain said

As close beside the drunkard's bed

He placed a bowl of broth.

Tom's youngster fed him through a straw

As Tom massaged the drunkard's brow

With a dampened cotton cloth.

"My ship, my ship, where is my ship?"

The sailor gasped with whispered lip.

"I see my captain now."

Then with a jerk he sat upright.

Beyond the room with glassy sight

He saw a spectral prow.

"Come now, my Sire, we must away

Unto the land of living day

Where icy jaws impale.

Tomorrow's dawn is twenty years

Since last you played at chess with peers

And luck on you befell."

"Ah, come, my helmsman, point the bow

Unto the southern icy flow,"

The spectral captain said.

"And there I'll meet the other two.

Such peers at chess I never knew -

Elect among the dead."

"How long, my Sire, beneath the stars

Since first we lashed our sails to spars?"

He asked upon the deck.

The helmsman like, beneath his chin

The buboes bulged the purple skin

Upon the specter's neck.

"Of years, eight score or likely more

Ago, from Thames' beloved shore.

It seems not such a while.

With rogues insane and thieves in chain,

A hundred weary souls in pain,

We sailed for Norfolk Isle."

"But never Norfolk Isle we find.

The winds around that isle of pine

Lash out before the mast.

And though my ghoulish crew may strain

To reach that isle of prison chain,

We fail before the blast."

The phantom hellship sped on down.

In twenty hours she came aground

Within Antarctic's jaws.

Beside her stood a spectral bark,

A slave ship filled with pagans dark,

Engulfed in icy claws.

A stub-nosed whaler yawed her sails

Nearby in Neptune's wintry gales

And stood ensnared to port.

Her handsome skipper, Captain Rye,

A pock-faced corpse a fathom high,

Seemed such a cheery sort.

These phantom skippers were no less

Than first to play the game of chess

Upon this frigid strand.

These demons three of bastard birth

Are verily of proven worth -

Elect among the Damned.

For forty days two demons first

Moved out their men and loudly cursed

While Rye stood by and viewed.

Then one of them, the helmsman's sire,

To win again he did aspire,

And was with luck imbued.

The slaver spook moved back a breadth,

His skull as white as choleric death,

And cursed a vicious oath.

Then Rye sat down to try his hand.

At last, the helmsman's sire began

"Ah ha! I've beat you both!"

Nearby across the glassy ice

The first mates tossed the ivory dice.

One shrieked in mirthful tone.

He gathered in the guineas gild,

Pieces of eight, and gold until

He picked up bone with bone.

A hoary rat exhaled his breath,

The one that brought the kiss of death,

Sat on the specter's head.

When all the chessmen back were stored

Upon the devil's fleet aboard,

The purple specter said.

"Where go you now, O Slaver Ghost

With all of your devilish pagan host

Till twenty years have ceased?'

"To Falkland's Isles where winds are fierce.

For twenty more I'll try to pierce

The passage to the east."

"For twenty more I will explore

To sail through Norfolk's tempest roar,

And on its shore I'll bask.

And you, O Rye, where go you then

Till time for us to meet again?"

The purple specter asked

"Two decades round this icy mound

I'll sail till next we come aground."

So spoke the pock-faced spook.

"The first of us to roll eleven

Will first in nineteen ninety-seven

Move king or queen or rook."

And on the decks of Satan's fleet

Rattled the chains on shackled feet

As bony dancers danced.

The pagan slaves wailed tones of woe

Like all the hellish hosts below

As scores of skeletons pranced.

But hold! My story's not yet told.

The sun released the talons cold

That gripped the specter ships.

The Devil's saints came on the decks,

Hung sail upon their derelicts

And sped them on their trips.

At last the sailor's voice grew hoarse.

The Devil's saint had run his course.

He fell back down again.

His breathing stopped upon the bed.

His eyeballs sunk into his head.

The coin fell from his hand.

"Put down your straw of soup, my son.

At last, the Devil's work is done."

Tom spoke his shrill command.

"Pick up the bowl of broth, the coin.

Methinks he now has gone to join

The Elect among the Damned!"