Fresh Water Pirates- The Legend of Death's Dungeon
The Legend of Death's Dungeon
In the early settling years, back when the Viking pirates of Norway and Sweden were conquering as much land as possible in the northern lands of the Americas, a fleet of pirate ships from Norway disappeared. The Norwegian government waited for a year to hear word from this fleet, as those ships carried much government treasure, including the royal china, royal suits of armor, royal chests filled to the brim with gold coin and generations of family heirloom jewelry.
When no word from those ten pirate ships reached the Norwegian King's ears, he ordered his own fleet of ships to follow the supposed route the pirates had sailed the year before. Ten ships, Rasende Berger, Sot Oliver, Hoy Anders, Modig Olaf, Bla Osmund, Leende Abalisa, Rosa Martha, Lojal Britt, Intelligent Cousin, and Hurtig Cousin, all set sail for the Americas. They knew they had to sail the Greatest Lakes, and last word of any sighting of the pirates came from lands off the deepest darkest lake.
The waters were frigid, and choppy, but not as angry as the ocean waters, so the noble captains and sailors thought nothing of the voyage. Once they discovered the lazy pirates beached along the shores of beautiful evergreen land, they figured they would have worries only for recapturing the stolen riches from the Norwegian Royalty to fatten their reward when they report back to the King.
Once the ships reached the deepest darkest lake, the weather changed from sunny blue skies and healthy winds to a nasty, violent, howling wind and pounding sleet storm. The faces of the sailors were pelted with hail, the decks slicked over with slippery ice, and the forceful winds carried a few unfortunate members of the ship overboard. Once anyone hit the freezing waters, they instantly fell into shock and drowned.
The three fastest ships, Rasende Berger, Bla Osmund, and Rosa Martha, found themselves in the worst of the storm, their bows dipping into the icy destructive waves. With a careful look into a telescope, one brave sailor discovered that they were near land. If they could only safely land ashore, they could save themselves from such a furious storm.
The three ships signaled to the others to turn back and escape the storm. The other seven ships turned back, but they found land just outside the storm and safely harbored for the night. Seven Captains, Bjorn, Stein, Fleming, Hans, Matts, and Nils, quickly ran for the lighthouse near their landing. The lightkeeper, Barbara Jones, showed them on her large telescope where the three doomed ships were trying to sail through treacherous waters.
"They will never make it past Deaths Dungeon, especially on such an angry evening," Barbara Jones told the Captains. They barely understood English, so she had to draw a quick visual of what she meant. She drew a tiny island North East of a larger island, which was North East of a very large island. The three islands actually curved a bit, like a dog's tale. She then drew a large circle in the water between the islands and drew a face with x's for eyes and a frowning mouth. She pointed to that circle again and said, "Death's Dungeon!" She then ran her finger across her throat and stuck her tongue out to one side, rolling her eyes up into her head. The Norwegians got it, very clearly. These waters were haunted. Angry spirits of evil natives possessed the waters and ate up any intruders. The three ships were doomed.
Rushing back to the telescope, the captains saw the waters starting to swirl in a vicious funnel, pulling the three ships into the deep dark ring of evil. The waters circled so quickly in such a concentrated circle between the rocky islands, that the funnel swelled with high rims on the outside, and an empty dry rocky center. An eye, the Norwegians thought, an evil eye, opened in the middle of the deadly water funnel. There they saw ten smashed pirate ships, the treasures momentarily sparkling amongst the wreckage. One by one, each of the royal ships caught in the spinning water were tossed into the wreckage pile with the others. The captains shrieked and gasped, holding their fine-boned hands to their eyes or their hearts.
Barbara Jones brought the men into her small kitchen where she put water on the stove for tea and had bread fresh out of the oven. She served them honey and butter on hot steaming caraway bread and hot mint-chamomile tea in china patterned with blue violets. Wrapping hand-knit wool blankets of many colors around their shoulders, she tried her best to comfort these sad and frightened captains.
Once their hands quit trembling with cold and mourning, and their stomachs felt the hospitality of Barbara Jones, the captains recovered their bravery and started to vote on the next plan.
"I say we wait until morning and go for it. That smaller island is pretty close to where the ships were swallowed by the evil spirits of the sea. This may be only an occurrence of the night. We all know how still and calm the morning waters have been this trip. I say we set sail early in the morning, anchor at the tiny island, and dive for the treasure. If we can successfully bring back some of the stolen treasure, we will be rewarded quite handsomely!" Captain Matts pounded his fist on the table and his eyes glowed with ambition.
Captain Fleming shook his head. "No no no! These waters are possessed by the devil and his servants. I will not knowingly take my ship and my weary men into such dark, dark waters only to be swallowed up by those murderous spirits!"
"Barbara," Captain Stein asked, "does anyone live on any of those islands?" He had that look that Norwegians have when their thick skulls are hiding spinning gears, working to full capacity.
Barbara shrugged and then shook her head. "I have never seen any mankind over on those islands. I have only seen deer, turkeys, wolves... the occasional cougar walks over the ice to that island in the winter, but otherwise, not much else. No one dares go over there." She poured herself some tea and stirred a spoonful of honey into the minty tea.
The other captains knew that look in Captain Stein's face. He had already calculated a plan. He had worked all kinds of numbers and diagrams and equations in his head, but he continued to review the details with a devious grin on his face before sharing his idea. He took up and walked outside, leaving the other captains and Barbara Jones to enjoy their safety and comforts in the warmth of Barbara's cozy kitchen.
Captain Sven climbed to the lookout window to look for Captain Stein. He spotted the sturdy fellow standing at the rocky beach, surveying the horizon, sticking his finger out in the air to feel the temperature of the wind. He turned this was and that, in an attempt to understand the strange wind's patterns. Captain Sven snarfed when he saw the huge toothy smile on Captain Stein's face, out in that blustery cold wind, ice bits piling up on the shoreline, violent water crashing against a cliff out further down the beach.
"He's crazy!" Captain Sven announced. "I have no idea what he is up to, but the man is crazy. I can see it in his face."
Captain Stein spent two more hours out in the frantic miserable weather before he blew back into the lighthouse. He shook himself like a sheepdog inside the door, and rubbed his hands together to try to get the warmth back in his fingers before he communicated what he devised.
"Barbara?" Captain Stein inquired of his warm hostess, who had been sitting in a rocking chair knitting and telling jokes to the captains near the roaring fireplace.
"Captain Stein? Get your tail end over here by the fire- you must be close to death. My God, get some mulled wine off the stove there and quick before you get sick!"
"Yes, Ma'am," he replied with a smile. He knew that she was the main captain in that lighthouse, and she was to allow him into her lighthouse, he was to follow her instructions with out question.
"Barbara, these winds just as strong in the morning?"
Barbara Jones wasted no time nodding her head dramatically. "Yes, oh Yes! But in the morning the winds seem to come from the North West, blowing North East."
Captain Stein took out his compass just for show. He had already observed his compass many times outside. "Ah, and I see that we are actually a bit North East, not due North as it might seem. Aha! I think that might work beautifully."
Sitting in complete silent with hands wrapped around mugs of hot mulled wine, the other captain looked completely lost, in fact they wondered if he had a fever.
"If the deer, turkeys, and wolves like it there, than I would guess I would too," stein muttered to himself. The others stared at him, completely wordless.
"I don't know about you, brave Sirs, but I am in no special situation to take this ship back to Norway. I have no desire for the reward, nor for the treasure. I do, however, have the pioneering desire to have some land to call my own. And since that land over there is completely uninhabited and obviously safe from intruders, I plan to settle there. Anyone with me? Shall we start our own Little Norway?"
The next morning, Captain Stein had taken his sails and lines and oars and such, and created for himself a large kite with a bar from which to hang and steer. He climbed on top of the cliff where the water had been crashing earlier that night, and he jumped.
The wind took his sail/kite up into the air, quite high, according the Barbara Jones journal, and he successfully flew himself from one island to the next. By noon he was waving his sail like a flag in celebration.
Legend has it that Captain Stein was the first man to settle Scandish, a skinny long island in the middle of the Greatest Lakes. These days the Death's Dungeon still tosses boats and ships to and fro, but has not taken down a ship since that dreaded night the King of Norway lost three of his finest ships. A popular tourist attraction is the scuba dive called, "The Haunted Ship Wrecks of Death's Dungeon." Locals, descendents of the Great Captain Stein, still swear they can see ghost ships flying the Norwegian flag swirling and swirling in Death's Dungeon on a foggy February evening.
Copyright 2007 Laura Beck Nielsen
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