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- Samovar
- Jun 4, 2011
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I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻♂️hero...🧜🏻
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Interesting suppositions but ya probably should spoiler this, because, well.
I never got the sense that the shells ever really messed with people's heads all that much? They just act as a magnet for sea horrors, and the resulting fear, paranoia and cascading betrayals are all just humans being our cool wonderful selves.
The box definitely has two compartments and one of those is definitely filled with mercury but it seems as though all the big dramatic things that the box does hinge on the top compartment being open and someone touching the mercury. Specifically, I got the sense that while out at sea Beng opened the box and put the shell into the mercury, which is what did the whatever that incapacitated the mermaids, and that Dahl later took the shell out, and in both cases this proved fatal.
When Nichols is doing his murder, we see the shell situated in the bottom drawer of the chest, with the top locked. It seems to be the case that the shell was always in the bottom drawer, because like I said before if Nichols had taken it out of the top drawer he would be notably minus an arm. But, neither the bottom drawer providing any shielding nor the bottom drawer not providing any shielding seem to make any sense. If it does, then what's the point of the mercury bowl and how did the mermaids find the boat crew during Nichols' big stupid kidnap stunt when the only time the shell even briefly left the chest was during the murder? If it doesn't, why didn't the mermaids show up before the ship reached the Canary Islands, since they're clearly able to operate in British waters, and why wasn't the shell in the mercury compartment, and, again, I cannot stress this enough, what the gently caress were the Formosans thinking bringing the unshielded shell on a sea voyage?
While I'm here, here's another question: did the captain ever actually figure out what the shells were doing? I keep thinking that he just didn't notice Dahl was holding the third shell, but maybe he did and just didn't care because as far as he knew they were just some pretty baubles the mermaids didn't like having stolen from them. Maybe this is why he hesitated in telling the first mate "they're at... the bottom of the sea"?
Okay, one more; it's not clear exactly when Paul Moss and Davey James set the last mermaid free, and thus how many people were still on the boat at the time, but it seems unlikely that they could have carried her the whole way from the lazarette to the top deck without anyone noticing, right? I wonder if anyone else was in on the bargain. At that point, the official story seems to be that the captain scared the last mermaid into calling off the kraken and that the shells were all gone (see: "A third shell! Captain didn't throw them all overboard!"), and yet even after James, Evans and the ladies made their escape (so, unquestionably post-Bargain) Olus Wiater was still scheming to "trade wretched fish and shells for gold", so I have to wonder who exactly knew, told, and believed, what.
This sure is one of those stories you linger on for a while, isn't it.
For some reason I get the impression that the shells, once seen, cast some kind of charm or obsession on people who've seen them but don't know what they are - people think they are pretty and reckon they would fetch a high price. I propose that the container was the one way the shells could be transported safely without signalling to the fish-folk where they are, but the shells want to be found and will try to get others to take them to sea.
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Oct 22, 2019 18:09
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Dec 30, 2018 06:09
