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Introduction

This is a pirate tale told to warn sailors who venture out onto the ocean. The phenomenon described as the result of an encounter with the Yellow Man is the Pathos, a degenerative disease that causes depression and a loss of hope. It is commonly triggered by long excursions at sea. This condition disproportionately affects pirates, leading many to believe it is a curse.

The Legend of the Yellow Man

There be many perils out there on the grand an' majestic briny. Terrible beasts, plague, famine, war...but the worst of them, be the Curse of Sorrows, bestowed by the blackest son of demon what ever roamed the sea.

There was a man once, a fine sailor, who loved a pirate wench - his first mate. They sailed the seas together for many years. But she left - went ashore, the rotten bitch, an' left him with a terrible choice. He chose the sea, to her dismay, an' she hung herself from the rafters o' her landlubberly home. 'Tis said that regret turned his heart to blackness.

Yellow be his hair, like the bile of a dyin' man. His eyes, yellow as a beggar's teeth; his skin be the sallow color of goose fat. The wretch is naught but skin an' sinew, so that ye can hear the very creakin' of his bones as he moves.

He stays in that fine place of the sea where no land is in sight, not by the strongest of telescopes; where the air is dead calm, an' you forget anythin' but bleakness n' nothingness, like the world was just a passin' fancy. There, he will appear on the crow's nests of lost ships, staring about with his eyes empty as a rich man's grave.

Were ye to look upon them, you'd find yerself blind to all the good and benny things in this world - wenches and wine, the fair wind on yer face, the taste of grub or the freedom of the sea. Ye'd forget the goodness in life, sure as ye live. All the light'd leave yer sight, as the Yellow Man, he plunders the very passion for life from yer veins to feed his own emptiness. We of the nautical persuasion calls it the Curse of Sorrows, and ye'd never be free of it.

Most men throw their own sorry selves overboard when struck by the Curse, but some learn to live with it. The Yellow Man, he's taken a great many wretched lives at sea. He takes more than yer blood n' guts - he takes yer soul. Ent no knowin' what happens to a man after death if'n he's been blighted with this acursed condition. 'Tis not no earthly disease or plague; 'tis despair, whose icy teeth gnaw at yer very soul for eternity.

So beware along yer travels, an' should you meet the Yellow Man, hide yer eyes.