A crew of pirates have landed on a desert West Indian isle to bury their loot, and find a strange antique jar that has been washed up out of the sea. The thing is made of a strong, heavy, almost infrangible earthenware; but they manage to break off the neck with hammers, and discover that the jar is filled with a dark, aromatic wine. All of them drink the wine, excepting one Puritan abstainer who tells the story. After drinking it, they go mad and begin to babble in an unknown tongue, and to perform strange rites on the beach, including the sacrifice, in a very peculiar manner, of the pirate captain on an improvised altar. Some of them seize the Puritan, and make him swallow a little of the wine; and though he does not become so demented as the others, he has a shadowy vision of some monstrous being that comes up out of the sea, and of shimmering, mirage-like domes and walls that rise from the waters. He is overcome with terror, and flees in one of the boats to the ship, leaving the others to continue their mad revel, which ends in death.

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