Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

60 ; PRANK BELKNAP. LONG? {R: swell, and plunged doggedly forward. A vast black column ascended from its broken smoke-stack. “They’re putting on steam!” cried Bill. “But they haven’t a chance in the world.” ) “Not a chance,” confirmed Tom, “One broadside will blow ’em to atoms.” Bill stood up and clapped his hands to his ears. The rest of us were nearly deafened by the thunderous report. “What did I tell your” shouted Tom. We looked at the tug. The smoke-stack was gone and she was wallowing ‘ in a heavy swell. “That was only a single shot across her bows,” said Bill. “But it did a lot of damage. Wait until they open fire with the big guns!” We waited, expecting to see something interesting. But we saw something that nearly frightened us out of our shoes. Between the cutter and the tug a gigantic, yellowish obscenity shot up from the water and towered thirty feet in the air. It thrashed wildly about and made a horrible gulping noise. We could hear the frenzied shrieks of the men on the tug, and from the deck of the cutter someone yelled. “Look at it! Look at it! Oh, my God!” “Mercy in heaven!” groaned Bill. “We're in for it!” sobbed Tom. For a moment the thing simply towered and vibrated between the two boats _ and then it made for the cutter. It had at least a thousand legs and they waved loathsomely in the sunlight. It had a hooked beak and a great mouth that opened and closed and gulped, and it was larger than a whale. It was horribly, hideously large. It towered to the mounting zenith, and in its mephitic, blasphemous immensity it dwarfed the two boats and all the tangled shipping in the harbor. 1 : “Aire we alive?” shrieked Bill. “And is that there shore really Long Island? I don’t believe it. We’re in the Indian Ocean, or the Persian Gulf or the middle of the Hyperborean sea . . .That there thing is a Jormungandar!” “What's a Jormungandar?” yelled Tom. He was at the end of his rope and clutching valiantly at straws. 7 “Them things what live on the bottom of the arctic seas,’ groaned Bill. “They comes up for air once in a hundred years. I’ll take my oath that 9 there thing’s a Jormungandar.” : 3 Jormungandar or not, it was apparent to all of us that the monster meant business. It was bearing down upon the cutter with incredible ferocity. The { water boiled and bubbled in its wake. On the other boats men rushed hyster- ically to the rails and stared with wide eyes. | The officers of the cutter had recovered from their momentary astonishment and were gesticulating furiously and running back and forth on the decks. Three guns were lowered into position and directed at the onrushing horror. A little man with gilt braid on his sleeves danced about absurdly on his toes and shouted out commands at the top of his voice. “Don't fire until you can look into his eyes,” he yelled. “We can’t afford ~ to miss him. We'll give him a broadside he won't forget.” booksicom — t (9) shes : See ae com