Reflections of Evil

“We’re in for a blow, Mr. Jarmon. Look at those mares’ tails clouds on the horizon. It’s as if the gods are angry with each other and determined to take their fury out on man.” Captain William Payne handed the spyglass to his first mate.

“Nor I, Cap’n. The sky is black in the west and that pink glow—I’ve never seen the likes. July’s early for a big ‘cane, but could be. I don’t like the feel of this storm. It won’t be the biggest we’ve weathered, but it’s evil. It’s not a good, honest storm like we’ve been through before.”

The captain and first mate stood on the deck of the Mary Susan watching as distant lightning cut the clouds into shards. The shafts sizzled through the darkening sky, raising the hair on their arms. “She’ll be here tomorrow,” the captain confirmed. “We best be ready.”

This was the third voyage the two men had sailed as captain and mate. They had learned to trust each other’s knowledge of the sea and common sense. An unlikely pair, Payne stood 6’4” while Jarmon was a short 5’2”. The captain was a good fifteen years younger than his mate but had earned his position through family connections and reputation with the Charleston America Line. Hair and dress further marked them as opposites. Impeccable in attire, with a head of black curls, Payne had turned many a lady’s head before he had married the previous year. Mr. Jarmon was completely bald, always wearing a skullcap to protect his scalp from burning in the hot sun. Soft spoken, he commanded the sailors with inflections and innuendoes. They had no doubt that he would pull his knife and slit their throats if the need arose. He had done so before. Otherwise, he acted and dressed like any other man of the sea.

By morning, the storm had doubled in intensity and was closing in on them. “We can’t outrun it,” the captain reasoned. “Order the men to lash down everything on deck. Lower the main sails and put up the jib so that we’ll at least have steerage. If the storm is too bad, we’ll lower the jib and run with our mast and spars. Have the men run rope around the deck so that we can walk. I want all hands below, except those assigned to man the lines. Douse all lanterns and the coals in the galley. We don’t need a fire on the ship.”

Captain Payne knew he commanded a sturdy craft. Though small, the Mary Susan had weathered many a gale. With a crew of eight, counting the captain and mate, the deck of the schooner measured ninety-two feet, with a beam of twenty-six. Built to travel the east coast of the new country called America, the schooner could outmaneuver storms that would sink larger ships. Her hole was filled with salt from Bermuda. With luck they would be unloading their cargo in Charleston harbor tonight—tomorrow at the latest.



Already the seas were rising. Angry waves lashed at the bow like a forgotten mistress grasping for her lover. As Payne struggled across the deck, he held onto the ropes and rigging for support. Satisfied that the top deck was secure, he went below. Most of the men were calm, having lived through many storms. Several played cards or slept.

Crabby, the cook, took advantage of the extra time to scrub pots and pans. But his galley boy, Sylvester, was frantic. Forcing himself behind Crabby in the cramped kitchen, the pair banged into the stove, chopping block, and pots and pans that hung from the ceiling. “Get away from me, boy,” Crabby shouted, swatting at him with a rag. It did no good. Sylvester was almost deaf and of limited intelligence. His short statue, bug eyes and protruding tongue made him the object of constant ridicule. Crabby had found him on the New York dock, starved and trying to steal food from a vendor. He called him Sylvester. He thought that name had a certain class. He had convinced Captain Payne to rescue the boy. “He can help me in the galley, sir. I’ll teach him to peel potatoes and do dishes. I’ll put him to work, that I will.”

The sailors had argued against bringing Sylvester aboard. “Bad luck it is, Cap’n,” the one-eyed crewman had complained. “Don’t want no idiots on a ship. Bad luck, I tell you.”

Payne had ignored his crew, feeling a certain pity for the boy, and brought him on the Mary Susan. He remembered his own brother who struggled to understand his world. Unlike Sylvester, his brother had been born into a wealthy family who could care for him.

Though limited in intelligence, Sylvester had one peculiar talent. At some point he had become an expert marksman with a bow and arrow. The boy had a knack for shooting sea birds at such an angle that they landed on the deck of the ship. Then he and Crabby would pluck the feathers and provide fresh meat to men who were weary of eating everything dried or salted. When the ship anchored at some isolated spot, Sylvester would bring back a deer or rabbit. His talent was greeted with cheers and applause from the sailors. Sylvester would smile shyly, but was obviously pleased. Accustomed to kicks and abuse, he basked in the praise of a successful shoot.

Usually the captain believed he had made the right decision. Friendly and good-natured, Sylvester accepted his lot in life. Crabby often said that he couldn’t do his work without him. Today, though, he was a nuisance. Screeching an annoying, high-pitched wail, he clung to the cook’s waist in panic.

“Take him to my cabin, Crabby. I can’t have him down here upsetting the crew.”

“I will sir, and thank ye. It’s just that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know that the finest captain on the seas is in charge of this ship.”

“Stop the flattery and be gone with you. He’s getting on my nerves.”



Payne could sense the rising intensity of the storm when he returned to the deck. The waves had risen to at least fifteen feet, and were getting higher. The Mary Susan creaked and groaned under the strain. Salt spray, blown from the whitecaps, limited visibility to nearly nothing. Payne could not tell where the mist ended and the water began. Rain pummeled the deck, first coming from one direction, then another. Mr. Jarmon had turned the schooner so that it traveled with the waves to try to prevent damage.

“I’ll help you steer, Jarmon,” the captain barked. “That’s the only way we’ll make it—if we do it together.” Lashing themselves to the wheel to prevent being washed overboard, the two men struggled against the storm. The rain had plastered Payne’s black curls against his scalp, allowing irritating rivulets to stream into his eyes and drip from his nose. Jarmon had long since discarded his soaked cap.

The captain and his mate lost track of time. Fleeting thoughts invaded their concentration on the task. The captain remembered his new son—born one week before he left. Jarmon swore this was his last trip. He said that every time, but this now he meant it. He was getting too old and Miss Molly had told him she wouldn’t wait any longer. But the men had little time for reminiscing. As soon as their minds started to wander, they were jerked back to the present by a sudden lurch of the ship.

Hour by hour the fury increased. The waves crashed over the bow and grasped at the mast; the wind roared unceasingly. It howled through masts and spars like dead souls crying in torment. Payne and Jarmon had given up trying to control the schooner. Their lashing held them to the wheel; otherwise, they were too drained to care about their fate or that of the ship.

An ominous crack shook them from stupor. “It’s the main mast, Mr. Jarmon. She’s gone. I’ll climb up and cut the ropes loose before we capsize. She’s already starting to list.”

“I’ll go, Cap’n. A ship can sail without a mate but she has to have a cap’n.” Before Payne could argue, his mate was gone. The captain never heard the mast fall but knew Jarmon had accomplished his task when the schooner shuddered, then righted.

Payne lost track of time, returning to the nether world of submission to fate. At some point he realized that Jarmon had returned and the wind had lessened. Still he clung to the wheel in abdication.



“Lordy, Cap’n, look at that! I’ve never seen that before. It’s an omen, I tell you—an evil omen.” Jarmon shook Payne’s shoulder and pointed toward the horizon.

The captain roused himself and peered in the direction Payne indicated. In the distance, outlined in unearthly yellowish glow, was a mermaid. She perched on a slime-covered rock, in the middle of the ocean, where no rock should be. The scales on her sinewy tail sparkled from the distant sun; her seaweed hair fell across her shoulders and onto her bare breasts. In one hand she held a mirror, in the other, a comb. Ice green eyes, cold and dead, stared straight at the Mary Susan.

“It’s the witch,” Jarmon moaned. “If you see a mermaid with a comb and a glass in her hand, the ship is lost. She looks in her mirror and sees the fate of all doomed ships while she combs her hair.”

By now, lulled by the calm, the other sailors began coming on deck. Their joy at being alive was crushed when they saw the mermaid.

“It’s her—the Sea-Witch. She sees our ship in her magic mirror. We’ll all die!”

“It’s the Devil, come to take our very souls!”

“I met a sailor once. His cap’n saw the ghost and the ship sank. This man were the onliest survivor.”

“Is there no help for us? Is there nothing we can do?”

“I heard a tale once,” the one-eyed sailor spoke up, his good eye blinking with fright. “We have to look for a white pelican. That’s what will save us and change our lot.”

“I ain’t never seen a white pelican afore.”

“That’s because a white pelican is really an angel,” One-Eye explained. “An angel come to save us from the She-Devil.”

By now the apparition was fading into the clouds. She never took her lifeless eyes off the Mary Susan, and the men never doubted that they’d seen her.



The main mast was ruined, having broken off during the storm. It didn’t matter. There was no wind to push a sail. “She’s put a curse on us,” the sailors whimpered. “She’s becalmed the seas. We can’t even use our jib sail.”

“It’s ’cause we got that idiot on board,” grumbled the bolder men. “The She-Devil’s marked us. She knows we’re carrying one of her own.”

The sailors kept their mumbling to themselves. Captain Payne would not allow superstitious talk. “Doesn’t do any good,” he reasoned. “Just keeps everyone stirred up with lies and half-truths.”



Days stretched into weeks as supplies dwindled, then ceased altogether. Since the haul from Bermuda to Charleston was a short one, the Mary Susan carried little food or water in her hole. Even with strict rationing, provisions were gone within a fortnight. With no meat, there was no bait to put on the fishhooks the men fashioned out of bone.

Still no wind. The sea had turned a pinkish grey—beautiful, but a color unknown to the sailors. “It’s the She-Witch,” the men told each other. “She’s cursed us. She wants her idiot child.”



Dehydration and starvation brought changes in the men—beyond their usual superstitious nature. They became dizzy and faint, their arms and legs cramping as fluids were routed to support vital bodily organs. Skin and lips cracked, tongues swelled, noses bled. Sailors too weak to heave over the side of the ship simply emptied the pitiful contents of their stomachs onto the deck. The men began hallucinating. “I see a white pelican,” one would shout. “It’s there, off the stern.” But the imagined savior always turned out to be a stray gull or lone cloud.

Sylvester became more annoying than ever. He didn’t understand why he was hungry. He walked around the schooner whining an incessant, high-pitched chant. “Hun’gy, hun’gy,” he cried, rubbing his belly all the while. Strangely, he was unable to shoot a seabird, his arrows flying far off the mark.

“The Sea-Hag,” the sailors repeated. “She’s put her curse on the idiot.”



The men increased their torment of the unfortunate. One waved a knife and fork in his face, implying that Sylvester was to be the meal. Bored with lack of work, the sailors delighted in jumping from behind barrels or open doors and addling his brains even further.

Sylvester became a visible symbol of their plight. “We must throw him overboard,” the sailors whispered among themselves. “It’s the only chance we got.”

“If you’re serious,” One-Eye told them, the purple-red sinews in the eyeless socket pulsing with menace, “we must do it when Cap’n and Crabby aren’t around. We can corner him aft while Cap’ns at the wheel and Crabby’s taking his afternoon nap. We’ll act real friendly and ease him up there. Then we’ll slip him overboard so no one hears the splash.”

Their opportunity came the next day. Sylvester was being particularly annoying, following the sailors around, plucking at their clothes, and whining his incessant “Hun’gy. Hun’gy.”

“I can’t take anymore,” One-Eye told his mates. “Let’s get him. Crabby and Mr. Jarmon are below deck. Cap’n Payne is astern. Put your arm around the idiot. Act like you want to show him something at the front of the ship.”

Three sailors cozied up to Sylvester, smiling and mimicking his deaf mute jabbering. One man pantomimed that they were going to eat. That was all Sylvester needed. He would follow the men wherever they led.

Easing him into the narrow confines of the bow, the perpetrators surrounded him to block the view. Reaching down to grab his legs, the sailors lifted him to the rail. They were not quick enough. Strangely, Sylvester’s murky brain sounded a warning. His whining monotone became a wail of terror.

Had steering the ship required effort, Captain Payne would have ignored the cries as those of the wind or a bird. But his boredom with the immobile schooner allowed him to grasp the situation. “Unhand him,” he shouted. “Unhand the boy.” Rushing forward with pistol drawn, the captain dared his men to continue their evil. “Have we sunk to this low state?” he demanded. “Are we no more than savage beasts—turning on the least of our own?” The fury of the captain’s voice forced the sailors to drop Sylvester in an undignified heap on the deck of the schooner. “Who’s the ringleader here,” Payne continued. “Tell me before I feed the lot of you to the sharks.”

The crew turned toward One-Eye. “It were him,” they murmured. One-Eye planned it all.”

“I did, Cap’n, and I’ll not deny it.” The crusty old sailor had become belligerent. “That idiot ain’t nothing but trouble. We best be rid of him.”

The sailors drew together behind One-Eye. As a group, they closed in on the captain. “The boy’s evil, that he be.”

“Sooner he’s overboard, the better.”

“Mayhap the cap’n should go with him.”

Mr. Jarmon heard the commotion and rushed on deck. He edged toward the men, bushy eyebrows raised, voice low, but full of venom. “Mutiny? Is that what we have—mutiny? The Sea-Hag has put a hex on all of you. I’ll see the lot of you hanged when we get to Charlestontown. Now back off. Leave the cap’n be.”

Payne said nothing, but waited for the sailors to retreat. Then he pointed his long barreled pistol at One-Eye’s throat and backed the terrified man to the side of the ship. Together he and Jarmon hoisted One-Eye over the side and watched as he flailed toward the water. A malevolent black fin circled his splash. Soon brilliant red gushed to the surface. Poor fool, thought Payne. He may have been the lucky one—a quick, clean death instead of this lingering misery.



Life onboard the Mary Susan returned to the hell it had been before the attempt on Sylvester’s life. As dehydration increased, so did apathy. The sailors had lost the energy even to torment. Strangely, the boy showed few signs of deprivation, but continued his cries of “Hun’gy, hun’gy.”

“The Sea-Witch is taking care of her child,” the crew decided. But no one had the energy to repeat their sin. More than one sailor joined One-Eye as shark food. Hallucinations convinced them they had reached safe harbor.

Twenty-one days had passed. Captain Payne and Mr. Jarmon no longer conferred on strategy. There was no strategy. During the day, the sun baked the men as listless waves lapped at the immobile schooner. At night, the stars taunted them by plotting their course as being barely off shipping lanes—close, but out of telescope range.

This was the twenty-second day. Payne lay on the deck, his three-cornered hat pulled far over his face, his mind blank. He was vaguely conscious of noise and movement on deck, but paid little heed. Shimmers of red-hot glare wavered over the horizon. He thought he saw Sylvester stalking in the riggings. Another nightmare. With lips so swollen and parched they would not close, he tried to call to the boy, but gave up. His mind, like those of his crew, had long since stopped separating truth from fiction.

“Cat, Cat, wake uh!” Sylvester’s whining voice had changed to urgency. “Cat, cat, ‘ook wha I got!” The boy was shaking his captain vigorously. Something sticky dripped in Payne’s face. Still he made no effort to move.

“Cat, Cat, ‘ook. We’s saved. ‘ook wha I shot.”

Payne could have ignored the boy, but the cries of the crew gathered on deck had reached a crescendo. “The Witch-Child did it! He did her bidding.”

“Lord have mercy on our souls. Not only will we die, we’ll go straight to Hell.”

Payne opened one eye and raised himself enough to understand the commotion. Hanging dead and lifeless from the fist of the proud Sylvester was their salvation. A white pelican, the angel that would have rescued them, dripped its lifeblood over broken feathers and onto the deck of the Mary Susan. Its glassy eye stared at the captain in accusation. Behind them, plainly visible on the horizon, was the Sea Hag. She slithered off her rock and fishtailed over the waves. A smile of triumph illuminated the once dead face as she loomed ever closer toward the fated ship.

Edith Edwards has been a teacher, administrator and speech therapist in the public schools in Tennessee and North Carolina. She is the mother of two grown daughters and has two grandchildren. Her husband, Don, continues to encourage her writing endeavors. She has always loved the history, ocean and quaint charm of eastern North Carolina. At present, she lives and writes immersed in the beauty of this region.

“Reflections of Evil” is based on an old seafaring song about sailors seeing a mermaid with a comb and looking glass in her hand, and knowing that their ship was doomed. Edith’s first novel, “The Phantoms of Turtle Nest” will soon be released.

Help Spread the Word

Want to foward the information on this page to a friend? Click the Reflections of Evil, by Edith Edwards page link now for an easy way to e-mail your friends a link back to this page.

(Please note this link opens in a new window, so please make sure your pop-up blocker is deactivated.)