Our next stop in the South Seas was the decaying colonial isle of St. Peters. Our captain, H. H. Humphreys, sent us on an unusual errand: we were to go to shore with a cardboard box and deliver it to a man named Mr. Lao. We were explicitly told not to look at the item in the box.
Of course, we looked in the box.
Inside was a stone idol that we all found quite disturbing. (Read: immediate Sanity loss.) However, our attempt to offload the idol on Mr. Lao was unsuccessful; we were informed that Mr. Lao "fell down the Stairs," meaning that he took a self-directed tumble down an infamous part of the island behind the French tower. We also learned from a salty dog of a sailor that the idol was connected to a maritime cult of ancient origins. Furthermore, we heard rumors of a mysterious location known as the Isle de Cranios.
We wanted to take a look at the tower under control of the French authorities for ourselves. When we spoke to the French soldiers outside, they were friendly and cordial. Our meeting with Captain Rochelle, the island's governor, went a bit more strangely. When we showed him the idol, he immediately commandeered it and declared that it had been stolen from a French museum and needed to be returned. Instead of fighting to keep ahold of our property--especially since French soldiers were filing into the room--we decided to hide out in the nearby cemetery to watch and see where Captain Rochelle took the idol.
Most of us hid behind some tombstones while we kept watch on the tower, but a few of our group decided to explore the church presiding over the burial grounds. They found the priest bleeding from empty eye sockets, gibbering something to the effect that it was "too late to stop what was coming."
When Captain Rochelle and his men exited the tower, they did so in ritualistic garb. They had the idol with them, along with a number of zombie-like men whose eyes glowed green. We followed them to where they had a number of motor boats moored. They took off into the swamps, and we took the two boats they left behind and gave chase.
Two of our party stopped to examine a strange green lantern and were assaulted by what were either the walking dead or men in trances. They had to beat a hasty retreat.
The rest of us kept pace as we shadowed the boats...until it was clear that they planned to jump ship for a larger vessel and take the idol to some unwholesome location. We rammed Captain Rochelle's boat with out own, bellowing "Uncle Sam sends his regards." A gunfight broke out, but we sent Rochelle and his men down to Davy Jones's locker. We recovered the idol and...well, that's where we ended the session.
