August 13th 1717

    The cargo ship carrying the chest did not make port today. It’s rumored that all her cargo was lost at sea thanks to Captain Black Bellamy and his crew of Pirates. The Royal Navy could find no survivors, nor cargo amongst the wreckage. What happened out there? Did a mishap occur with the storage of black powder? Reports of a terrible storm in that area were being told as well, on that very day of the disappearance. I fear that the loss of the chest is immeasurable, and incalculable. How shall I explain this to my master? I should have taken greater measures and not chartered a merchant vessel. I’ll be lucky if I’m not flogged for this…

    I can understand the value of the chest as it being rumored to have originated in a monastery in Lindesfarne, Northumbria 793.a.d. The Viking Sagas spoke of a cursed chest imbued by the power of the White Christ to exact revenge upon the Vikings for the massacre that took place in the monastery. I’m not a highly educated man like the master, but I pride myself that I have learned to read under his tutelage. And so, as I have read from his other volumes that he laid strewn about while he slumbered at his fireplace from sheer mental exhaustion, that the chest has also seen many other lands in its centuries of travels. A historian in the 12th century noted that the same chest was logged in a royal treasury under the reign of King John Lackland October 30th 1215 a.d. There is more than enough controversy over the details of his quick and sudden demise in 1216 a.d. There are even some that say he didn’t die that day at all…but disappeared instead.

     Now that this has happened, I can’t help but wonder if the master were meant to possess the chest at all? The master seems to be consumed by this artifact, dedicating all his days in hopes of the discovery of it. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he hired out a mercenary vessel on the morrow to see the wreckage with his very own eyes. I wish to have no part of the cursed thing.

    I think tomorrow would be a good day for me to slip away and fetch those other volumes from Mr. Kensington in Wales. The fresh air would be a welcomed change from these dreary walls.

~End of Journal Entry~