01.34

One night, the hero told a small crowd, we found an uncharted island in waters so deep that it was impossible to anchor the boat at any safe distance from it. Strong currents pushed our boat away when we lowered our sails. We sailed at a close distance, until currents slowed enough for some of us to disembark. The island was covered by a thick vegetation that made each step difficult. Close to the shore we found a small village of mud huts in ruin. The island had no altitude nor we were able to find any water source. People that lived there apparently fled for better land. Inside one of the huts we found drawings of strange, enormous creatures of the sea. We had reason to believe that those deep waters could have been home to some of those creatures, although we did not meet any. Those drawings were too full of details to simply be imaginary depictions. We looked around but found no tools to hunt or draw and found no animals on the island but some birds, making a chirping, deafening noise all day. When we decided to return to our boat, the underwater currents had regained strength and were pushing the ship with full sails raised away from the island. We had never seen anything like that in all our explorations. Desperate to reach the boat and free of any booty we entered the water and were quickly drawn away from the island by surface currents that pushed us close to our boat. When we eventually boarded, the island was already at a distance. Years later, returning in those waters, we found no trace of it. Apparently the unstable terrain, the depth of the seas and the currents had the better of the small island.