Extract* from the journal of Father Domingos Viçoso, priest of the parish of São Vicente on the island of Vulcão (1667-1710). Entry not dated, but believed to be written in April 1700.
*Translated from Portuguese
I have been in this parish long enough that I thought I had heard everything that might trouble my flock, yet last night I was surprised.
‘Last night’ is inaccurate. It was this morning, but still at least an hour before dawn, and still pitch black. The wind howled and the storm that had raged for the past day was beginning to die down. I was awoken by banging, I thought from the wind, but it was the rhythmic pounding of a fist on my door. Lit candle in hand, I opened it and a man fell into the room – soaked to the skin and blue with cold.
“Come over to the fire, friend. Let me light it.” He crawled into the room, limbs shaking and propped himself against the fireplace with great effort. I handed him a cup of spiced zimbro. “What ails you, my son?”
Between deep breaths and frequent shivers, the man (he later told me his name was Gaspar) retold his tale.
Two days earlier he had escorted a small merchant ship to a village on the east coast of the island. The plan was to sail back the next day, but the winds became fierce and the captain refused to sail till it calmed. Gaspar’s wife was with child and due to give birth any day and so he resolved to cross the island on foot. As any native of Vulcão knows, though the island is narrow, the interior is nigh impossible to navigate due to a maze of crags, cliffs, gullies and long dead volcanoes. Yet Gaspar’s will to return home let him see no other option.
He was making good progress, using the Sun to keep him on a westward bearing. He would be home soon, until he lost the Sun to clouds thicker than any he had seen. The storm followed soon after and though he was desperate to continue, he knew he must shelter, lest his wife become a widow. Another feature of the rugged Vulcãoan interior are the innumerable caves. Gaspar found one, but the wind blew the rain at such angles that he had to head deep into it to be dry.
In the deepest part of the cave, where so little light entered as to be permanently in twilight, he waited by a wide, flat pool, whiling away the time with thoughts of his wife and child. Had they been born yet? Restless, he skimmed stones on the water’s surface, counting the bounces. Three, four… five once. How deep was this pool he wondered; did it have fish in? He was awfully hungry.
His thoughts were interrupted (and his recounting of the story grew even more frantic) as the water exploded upwards and, in his words, “a monster lunged at me, a great serpent, a leviathan twelve feet long at least, with an enormous head and gnashing teeth. I kicked out to keep it at bay and with all my strength ran into the dark.”
He passed out from exhaustion soon after this. Later in the day I arranged for a wagon to carry him up the coast to his home village. I hear he was greeted by a new-born daughter.
~~~
Extract* from a letter written by Xavier Antunes – Papagaian architect, politician and geologist, to his friend Émile Rivière, an early explorer of caves for scientific purposes. Letter dated June 25th 1891.
*Translated from French
…Here is a tale that will be of interest to you. A saga that has taken up a great deal of my time and imagination.
As part of an expedition – funded by the University at Pacificadora – I was exploring and logging the caves found in the interior of Vulcão. Within one, around two hundred yards from the entrance, I found a collection of animal bones. Unlike yourself, I am no great anatomist, but they appeared to be from a monstrously large bird, perhaps ten feet tall (though we are yet to assemble the skeleton). The most intriguing feature, however, was a tooth lodged in the lower femur, which was significantly cracked. From the look of the tooth, it came from a shark.
For your reference, we were at least three miles from the sea as the crow flies, and further if one accounts for the winding routes in this area. The severity of the damage to the femur suggests a major injury that would render the animal incapable of walking for miles. A memory stirred within me of a folk tale my grandparents told of the Leviatian of Vulcão – a supposed monstrous serpentine beast that lives in these caves. I wondered if there was a truth to them after all.
We pushed further into the cave. It narrowed so a man could barely fit though before widening again. We were in a large chamber with a ceiling so high the lanterns could barely illuminate the stalactites that hung from it. Around the chambers edge was a rocky shelf, but the majority of the floor was a dark pool. We attempted to measure its depth but out instruments proved insufficient.
Could this cave, miles inland, connect to the sea? I dip my finger in the water – the taste was disgusting, but not salty. Not a conclusive test, mind you – a number of the rivers of Papagaios are home to sharks. They stay mostly within the brackish waters of the estuaries, but some venture inland for a time. It could be the same is happening here.
In an attempt to better ascertain its depth using what we had to hand, we attached a weight to several lengths of rope, tied together and cast it out into the dark. Hundreds of feet of rope disappeared without us feeling the bottom. We were pulling the rope back when we met resistance. We tugged again and the resistance grew. I approached the edge, lantern in hand, but the water was too dark to tell if the rope had snagged on a rock. Then with the speed of a falcon in freefall, the still water burst upwards and an enormous mouth lunged at me. I fell back, swinging the lantern as the beast plunged back into the depths.
Find attached to this letter a sketch of the creature as I best recall it.