The Ship's Ghost

Several, years old - and his father, Heinrich (Felix Aylmer), is still at his best when he was a boy, but, when his father comes to visit him in Berlin, the ice castle is empty and ready to be forgotten.

The remaining ice castle is made to resemble a circus, with its gaily pattering right ears, its dimming green skirts waving nearly within the white beads of a sunset paper boat; the same looved and cruel snoutless snout is the voice of a savage boghog, who, when looking at the same sinking waters, found it oddly light; and, when a boy has shown a large pale horse, it tends to scare the boy.

The old man might have told what he saw, and it is so odd that the girl with the carpenter brother is always so veiled and different from the otherwise plain and simple story of his savage master.

There is another, and much more interesting, fact about the history of Germany. This is that the while the real race was at its apex, the magic of the world was very soon under attack from the neighboring country.

The witch hunts Europe, the devil-bearer to nature, and the cold snows of the cellar;

The rain and the snows of the cold wet days, the roll of rainy clouds, the pitter-patter of the horses as they sped along the wet fields; the late grass-stacks and the dusty bricks, now and then the green leaves behind.

There was no one of it in the whole of Germany, and the mowning mist rolled across the poor helpless horse, as well as the snows of the rainy fields and the snows of the damp swamp.

‘Old Waldo,’ said the old man, and the old man together consoled with parental love.

And so they sat there, leaning, chatting, and the old man learning to speak English. He learned to read and write English, and he knew the people well. He pushed a branch of a palm to jumperdant lips of the old man, and that sent a faint white light across the dark horses as he was led by the cracked sage leaf and a wounded eagle.

And the wise old man went on, and over the old man’s shoulder, high up in the church, looked round, and said within himself

“O ye bastards, let not these lunatics throw their food to such strange everythings.”

Then he bent down and took the knife, and saw that it was a black one, just as black as a dragon. But the young girl, seeing the blade, knew it was a bloody one. She held it in her trembling hand and then threw it with a soft splash.

This was the most terrible noise the inspector had ever heard.

Following the dogcat’s account, the other club came out and settled down on the deck of the boat, and the old man went out to meet the boat’s owner, and put in a very good home.

And that was all for the old boy. He had gone out to the boat’s last day, and had found the all-black dog. The dogs were all black, worn-out; the long-lost boy was sitting in the middle of the room, and the long-lost girl was leaning over the chair.

‘The ship says,” he said, “but the outside world is not what we know it to be. It is that we only know it to be what we know.”

And she sat looking at him.

“Do you think,” she said, “that the spirit is still in the ship, do you think that the ghost is still there?”

“The ship says that it is indeed the ship’s ghost,” said Arthur. “The ghost of the ship, the ghost of the ship, lies still on the board. How do you know that?”

“Because the ship’s ghost was a very nice thing to hear,” said the old man, “for a boat’s ferry to the sea which is supposed to be sunk to the bottom of a deep waters river by no means. No one’s ever used to the idea of it, and it is a very curious thing.”

“I don’t know,” said the old man, “I don’t know. I think we’re on a ship.”

“Is that strange?” said Arthur.

“No,” said the old man, “you can’t be very helpful. How do you know that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, why don’t you tell me?”

“Because I don’t want to make the most of it.”

“Why?”

“Because if I do, it’s not the story I want to hear.”

[END TRANSMISSION]

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Editor’s Notes

The text here came out of a regular sample when I was training another fiction model. It must have had whatever the default generation settings are for the samples in gpt-2-simple.

I’ve added capitalization, quoatation, formatting and emphasis, and removed these 2 lines from the very end:

And that, really, was the end of it. He turned, and the girl stood.

“What did you say?”

Removed those so it could have some finality