In Coleridge’s poem the story is told by the Ancient mariner himself to an unwilling listener on his way to a wedding. During a voyage his ship was driven by a storm towards the South pole and caught in floating ice.
Suddenly an albatross arrived and the sailors hailed it as a sign of good luck, soon after the ice split, the wind blew and the ship, followed by the bird sailed north until the Mariner shot the albatross without a reason. The ship arrived to the Equator where the wind dropped.
The Mariner and the crew were immobile, the water supply ran out, they saw disgusting water snakes crawling on the surface of the sea. The sailor blamed the mariner and hung around his neck the body of the albatross to remind him of his evil deed. After that a skeleton of a ship arrived with Spectre- Woman and Life-in- Death as the only crew. Life- in-dead won the Mariner and then the Mariner’s shipmates died and so the mariner was left alone, trying to pray but he couldn’t.
So the dead bodies of his shipmates inhabited by angelic spirits began to work again and the ship moved to the Mariner’s native land. The Mariner was safe but he had a penance, actually he was condemned to wander through the world, relate his tale for all the eternity.