Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE TEMPLE ) 97 ing terror. Returning to the submarine, I turned off the lights and sat think- ing in the dark. Electricity must now be saved for emergencies. Saturday the 18th I spent in total darkness, tormented by thoughts and memories that threatened to overcome my German will. Klenze had gone mad and perished before reaching this sinister remnant of a past unwhole- somely remote, and had advised me to go with him. Was, indeed, Fate pre- _.___ serving my reason only to draw me irresistibly to an end more horrible and | unthinkable than any man has dreamed of? Clearly, my nerves were sorely taxed, and I must cast off these impressions of weaker men. I could not sleep Saturday night, and turned on the lights regardless of the future. It was: annoying that the electricity should not last out the air and provisions. I revived my thoughts of euthanasia, and examined my auto- matic pistol. Toward morning I must have dropped asleep with the lights on, for I awoke in darkness yesterday afternoon to find the batteries dead. I struck several matches in succession, and desperately regretted the improvi- dence which had caused us long ago to use up the few candles we carried. After the fading of the last match I dared to waste, I sat very quietly without a light. As I considered the inevitable end my mind ran over pre- ceding events, and developed a hitherto dormant impression which would have caused a: weaker and more superstitious man to shudder. The head of the radiant god in the sculptures on the rock temple is the same as that carven bit of wory which the dead sailor brought from the sea and which poor Klenze carried back into the sea. | 3 I was a little dazed by this coincidence, but did not become terrified. It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive short cut of supernaturalism. The coincidence was strange, but I was too sound a reasoner to connect circumstances which admit of no | logical connection, or to associate in any uncanny fashion the disastrous a events which had led from the Victory affair to my present plight. Feeling 4 the need of more rest; I took a sedative and secured some more sleep. My q nervous condition was reflected in my. dreams, for I seemed to hear the cries of drowning persons, and to see dead faces pressing against the portholes of the boat. And among the dead faces was the living, mocking face of the youth with the ivory image. I must be careful how I record my awakening today, for I am unstrung, and much hallucination is necessarily mixed with fact. Psychologically my case is.most interesting, and I regret that it can not be observed scientifically by a competent German authority. Upon opening my eyes my first sensation was an overmastering desire to visit the rock temple; a desire which grew every instant, yet which I automatically sought to resist through some emotion __ Of fear which operated in the reverse direction, Next there came to me the im- books*¢ ae ee