Three guests were on their way to a wedding, when one of them--the bridegroom's nearest relative--was stopped by a Mariner with long gray beard and glittering eye, who constrained him to listen to his story. The Mariner once set sail in a ship bound southward. After crossing the equator the vessel was driven by strong winds toward the south pole, and was finally hemmed in by icebergs. An albatross which appeared at this time brought good luck: the ice split and the ship sailed northward. The Mariner, for no apparent reason, shot the bird of good omen. At first his comrades declared that he had done a hellish deed, but when the fog cleared away they justified him, believing that the fog had been brought by the bird. In this way they became accomplices in his crime. By killing the albatross the Mariner had offended the Spirit of the South Pole, who now followed the ship "nine fathom deep" to make sure that vengeance was meted out to the guilty man. As a sign of the Mariner's guilt the sailors fastened about his neck the dead bird. The vessel was now in the Pacific Ocean. On nearing the equator she was becalmed, and before long all the sailors were dying of thirst. Suddenly a skeleton ship appeared in sight, having on board Death and Life-in-Death. The two spectres were throwing dice to see which should possess the doomed Mariner. Life-in-Death won, and the Mariner was hers. If Death had won, his life would soon have ended; as it was, existence for him was to mean--for a time at least--life in the midst of the dead. No sooner had the spectre bark shot by than his comrades, four times fifty living men, dropped lifeless one by one. For seven days and seven nights he suffered agonies from the curse in their stony eyes; but he could not die, and he could not pray.