The wrecked galleon, once-proud and laden with riches, lay submerged and rotted on the silty bottom of the ocean. Long strands of kelp, the color of rust and iron, draped the crumbling hull, and clusters of barnacles covered the boards, the broken masts, the tangled rigging. The waters around the wreck were clear, but seemed to hold a strange shadow that moved now here, now there, like the shadows of clouds that glide about a sunny place, only the sun was not there.

Schools of fish avoided the wreck, veering away from it whenever they neared its dark, watery bulk. All was silent below the churning waves, even the fish seemed to shiver and shiver with fear, their gills fluttering rapidly, their eyes wide and staring. Here and there in the wreck, a pale, bloated face could be glimpsed, grinning hideously from beneath the rotting wood.

None of the merfolk swam anywhere near the wreck, and if the younglings strayed too near, their parents hurried them away. The wreck, so the tales went, was shunned by all the sea-dwellings, the merfolk, the sea spirits, even the great white dolphins, because if they dared to approach it, the souls of those lost on the ship would take their vengeance upon those who could live and breathe beneath the water that had claimed their lives.