The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (72 page)

The Skipper and the Mates were watching her closely through their glasses when an almost simultaneous exclamation of fear broke from them.

“My God!”

Crawling about the decks now visible in the thinning mist, were the most horrible creatures I had ever seen. In spite of their unearthly strangeness I had a feeling that there was something familiar about them. They were like nothing so much as men. They had bodies the shape of seals, but of a dead unhealthy white colour. The lower part ended in a sort of double curved tail on which they had two long, snaky feelers, and at the ends a very human-like hand with talons instead of nails—fearsome parodies of humans.

Their faces, which, like their arm-tentacles, were black, were the most grotesquely human things about them, and save that the upper jaw shut into the lower—much after the manner of the jaw of an octopus—I have seen men amongst certain tribes of natives who had faces uncommonly like theirs; yet no native I have ever seen could have given me the extraordinary feeling of horror and revulsion that I experienced towards those brutal looking creatures.

“What devilish beasts!” burst out the Captain in disgust.

He turned to look at the Mates and, as he did so, the expression on their faces told me that they had all realised what the presence of those bestial looking brutes meant.

If, as was doubtless the case, these creatures had boarded this vessel and destroyed the crew, what was to prevent them from doing the same with us? We were a smaller ship and a small crew, and the more I thought about the matter the less I liked it.

Her name, Lancing, could be read easily on her bows with the naked eye, while the lifebuoys and boats had the name bracketed with Glasgow painted on them, showing that she hailed from that port. At times the derelict would yaw wildly, thus loosing so much ground that we were able to keep some distance ahead of her.

Then, as we gazed at her, we noticed that there was some disturbance aboard, and several of the creatures started to slide down her side into the water.

The Mate pointed and called out excitedly.

“See! See! They’ve spotted us. They’re coming after us!”

It was only too true. Scores of them were sliding into the sea, letting themselves down with their long arm-tentacles. On they came, slipping by scores into the water and swimming towards us in great bodies. The ship was going some three knots an hour, otherwise they would have caught us in a very few minutes. As it was they came on, gaining slowly but surely, nearer and nearer. Their long tentacle-like arms rose out of the water in hundreds, and the foremost ones were already within a score of yards of us before the Captain bethought himself to shout to the Mates to fetch up the half dozen cutlasses comprising the ship’s armoury. Then, turning to me, he bade me go below and bring him the two revolvers out of the top drawer of his cabin table, also a box of cartridges that was there.

When I returned with the weapons he handed one to the Mate, keeping the other himself. Meanwhile the pursuing creatures were getting steadily closer, and soon a half dozen of the leaders were right under our stern. Immediately the Captain leaned over the rail and discharged the weapon amongst them; but without apparently producing any effect whatever. I think he realised how puny and ineffectual all efforts against such an enemy must be, for he did not trouble to reload his pistol.

Some dozens of the brutes had reached us, and the arm-tentacle rose into the air and caught at the rail. I heard the Third Mate scream suddenly as he was dragged violently against the taffrail. Seeing his danger, I snatched one of the cutlasses and made a fierce cut at the thing that held him, severing it clean in two. A gout of blood splashed me in the face, and the Third staggered and fell to the deck. A dozen more of those grasping arms rose and wavered but they seemed to be some yards astern. A rapidly widening patch of clear water appeared between us and the foremost of the monsters and I gave a crazy shout of joy, for we were leaving them behind. The cause was soon apparent; the wind, now that it had come, was freshening rapidly and the ship was running some eight knots through the water.

Away in our wake the barque was still yawing. Presently we hauled up on the port tack and left the Lancing running away to leeward, with her devilish crew of octopus-beasts aboard her.

The Third Mate was struggling to his feet with a dazed look. Something fell from him as he rose and I stooped to pick it up. It was the severed portion of the talon-like hand that had gripped him.

***

Three weeks later we anchored off ‘Frisco’. There the Captain made a full report of the affair to the authorities with the result that a gunboat was dispatched to investigate.

Six weeks later she returned to report she had been unable to find any signs, either of the ship herself, or of the fearful creatures that had attacked her. And since then nothing as far as I know has ever been heard of the four-masted barque Lancing, last seen by us in the possession of creatures which may be rightly called the demons of the sea.

Whether she still floats occupied by her hellish crew, or whether some storm has sent her to her last resting place beneath the waves is purely a matter of conjecture. Perchance, on some dark, fogbound night, a ship in that wilderness of waters may hear cries and sounds beyond those of the wailing of the winds. Then let them look to it; for it may be that the demons of the sea are near them.

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Counterfeits

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The Raft

by C. L.

P
ush off!” said the mate hoarsely.
 
The raft glided into the gloom, to lay motionless within a biscuit toss of the doomed brig. At her taffrail a lamp hung still and brilliant. Aloft, her canvas, pearly-hued in the gloaming, wore an aspect ghostlike and unreal.

In the silence the four occupants of the raft bent an expectant and fascinated gaze upon the vessel they had just quitted. Suddenly a hideous chatter pierced the sombre stillness, bringing the boy lounging upon the chest to his feet with a vigour that made the raft sway ominously.

“Jack! Jack!” he cried. And as if in answer to his call the clamour on the brig redoubled in volume. “Let’s take him off,” entreated the boy tearfully to the mate, who stood staring sullenly over the glassy surface towards the ship. “There’s plenty of time. I don’t believe she’ll sink any—”

“Curse your bird!” returned the other savagely. “Sit still or—”

The chattering ceased with a squeal as the brig gave a sudden horrifying lurch to starboard, a movement followed by the muffled rumble of shifting cargo. Again she swooped. For one brief instant her stern hung ludicrously in the air, then she plunged with a curious slithering movement beneath the surface of the smooth water. A couple of cough-like explosions, as the inrushing sea expelled the air from her hull, ruffled the slow swell, and the next moment the raft, with its awe-stricken watchers, was alone on the ocean.

With his face buried in his hands the boy sat whimpering softly to himself over the loss of his parrot. Karl Bronson, cook of the late “Cissie Williams,” leaning with one enormous hand on the stump mast, reflectively and without emotion revolved a quid in his heavy jaws. Tasker, a consumptive-looking man, the brig’s carpenter, seated on the end of the chest plucked with purposeless fingers at a hank of yarn.

With a deep sigh the mate turned to his companions. “There goes £20 worth of kit, to say nothing of the best billet this side the Horn.” If he expected an answer he received none, each of his hearers being deeply preoccupied with his own thoughts. The cook expelled his “chew” with violence, produced a length of twist, and measured a fresh quid with bovine placidity. The boy, rubbing his wet cheeks with grimy hands, stared resentfully at the spot where the brig had disappeared, while Tasker, intent upon his rope’s end, did not deign to raise his lack-lustre eyes from the job.

With the suddenness common to the tropics night had fallen, and the mate, after a few minutes spent in anxious speculation, wearily extended his length on the rough logs, braced his back against the chest, and presently repose fell upon the survivors of the brig.
 
Seven men and her captain had been lost in the terrific storm which had driven the little vessel some hundreds of miles from her course and started her planks in a leak, which, after three days of weary pumping, had vanquished the herculean efforts of the four occupants of the raft.

When morning broke it revealed to the sleepy eyes of the mate, who woke first, a strange scene. He glanced at his fellows in misfortune, still sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, the fierce rays of the morning sun streaming on their distorted, sweating features. A steady snore from the wide-open mouth of the “Dutchman” was the only sound which broke the oppressive stillness as the mate rose wearily to his feet with the intention of inspecting the contents of the provision chest, which had been securely lashed to the centre of the stable but unwieldy craft. As he looked from under his shading hand a cry broke from him—a cry that brought his companions, sleep-sodden and yawning, back to realities.

“The Sargasso, by God!” On every hand, save for the narrow ribbon of open water by which the raft had made its entrance, the bosom of the ocean was brown with weed, carpeted in places so thickly as to present an almost solid surface to the mate’s astonished gaze. Not a mile from the raft lay the dismasted hull of a large wooden ship, bluff-bowed, and with the high poop and low waist of a Spanish man-of-war of a long bygone age. Huge barnacles, or what the mate took for such, covered the hull in grotesque protuberances, while festoons of seaweed hung luxuriantly from her bulwarks and streamed defiantly from the huge lantern which swung at her stern.

In every direction, as far as the eye could see, dismal derelicts of a similar nature, from galleons, hundreds of years old, to small brigantines, some fully rigged, and modern steam vessels, dotted the seascape, each locked, as if for eternity, in the dreadful embrace of the Gulf weed.

There was something hideous and awful in that broad, brown expanse, which undulated almost imperceptibly with a slow, rolling motion; and with a gesture of loathing, the mate tore down the rude sail, which was stealthily drifting the raft further and further into the weedy wilderness.
 
The others surveyed the scene with dull eyes.

“Rum start this!” commented Tasker, and burst into a fit of coughing which choked further utterance. The boy rose owlishly to his feet, opened the locker, and revealed a well-stocked larder, so far as tinned beef, water, and ship’s biscuit went. Mechanically and silently he set out four pannikins of water, opened a tin of meat, and carved rude lumps with his clasp knife. Tasker and the cook looked on with lack-lustre eyes. Inertia seemed to have fallen on the raft, each of its occupants holding aloof from his fellows as well as the restricted space allowed. Bronson was the first to shake off the mysterious lethargy. He seized his portion of the rations, retired to the end of the raft, and fell to with the avidity and gusto of a wild beast.

They breakfasted in silence. Presently the carpenter threw down his platter with a clang, and proceeded to arrange the discarded sail so that it afforded a grateful refuge from the sun’s rays, now beginning to grow unpleasantly hot. He coughed furiously at short intervals.

“Do you happen to know where we are?” he said presently to the mate, who had also sought the shelter of the sail.

“Yes,” was the reply. “We happen to be in the last spot in the world I ever expected to bring up in. This is the Sargasso”—he vaguely indicated the expanse about them—“and the storm of the past week must have blown us something like five hundred miles from our course. All hands must fall to presently and warp the raft out the way she came in. And the sooner we’re out of this muck the better I, for one, shall like it. As for our chances afterwards—” He shrugged his shoulders and sat thinking, his eyes fixed upon the narrow ribbon of clear water on which the raft lay motionless.

With pole and kedge the four laboured well into the evening in their efforts to win blue water. The task of forcing the raft along the tiny channel proved interminable and, apparently, well-nigh fruitless, progress being so imperceptible. The mate’s plan, and the only plan possible in such a strait, was to hurl the little anchor as far as the length of rope attached allowed into the weed. Then all hands strained on the rope, and thus the unwieldy craft crawled towards the open sea. Oars they had none, these having been lost with the boats in the late storm.

Late towards the evening a calamity befell them with appalling suddenness. The little anchor parted while the raft was still some hundred or more yards from the point where the ocean lapped the weed. The full meaning of the disaster struck, perhaps, the mate with greater force. The carpenter realised in a lesser degree that a crowning blow had befallen them, but neither Bronson nor the boy seemed affected by what had happened. The raft was stocked with provisions and water was plentiful!
Utterly exhausted, the quartette sprawled under the star-powdered sky wrapped in sleep. A sudden movement of the raft woke the mate, whose repose herculean labours has rendered fitful. Broad awake in an instant, he shifted to his elbow to peer into the blue gloom. He saw what froze the blood in his veins and set his brain whirling.