Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

f THE MAN WITH A THOUSAND LEGS 61 “It isn’t human, sir!” someone yelled. “There never was nothing like ‘it before in this world.” The men aboard the tug were obviously rejoicing. Caps and pipes icandee into the air and loud shouts of triumph issued from a hundred drunken throats. “Fire!” shouted the blue-coated midget on the cutter. “It won't do ’em no good!” shouted Bill, as the thunder of the guns smote our ears. “It won't do ’em a bit o’ good.” As it turned out, Bill was right. The tremendous discharge failed to arrest the progress of the obscene monster. It rose like a cloud from the water and flew at the cutter like a flying-fish. Furiously it stretched forth its enormous arms, and embraced the cutter. It wrenched the little vessel from the trough of the wave in which it Wale lowed and lifted it violently into the air. . Its great golden sides shone like the morning star, but red blood trickled from a gaping hole in its throat. Yet it ignored its wounds. It lifted the small steel ship into the air in its gigantic, weaving arms. I shall never forget that moment. I have but to shut my eyes and it is before . me now. I see again that Brobdingnagian horror from measureless abysses, that twisting, fantastic monstrosity from sinister depths of blackest midnight. And in its colossal arms and legs I see a tiny ship from whose deck a hundred little men fall shrieking and screaming into the black maelstrom beneath its churning maws. Yards and yards it towered, and its glittering bulk hid the sun. It were to the zenith and its weaving arms twisted the cutter into a shapeless mass of glistening steel. 3 “We're. next!’ muttered Bill. “There ain’t nothing -can save us now. A man ain’t got a chance when he runs head-on against a Jormungandar!” That and ne: Jormungandar, % piped “Bovac “ICs: a human being what’s been out all night. But I ain’t saying we’re not in for it.’ My other companions fell upon their knees and little Harry O’Brien farmed yellow under the gills. But the thing did not attack us. Instead with a heart- breaking scream that seemed outrageously human it sank beneath the waves, carrying with it the flattened, absurd remains of the valiant little cutter and the crushed and battered bodies of innumerable men. And as it sank loath- somely from sight the water about it flattened out into a tremorless plateau- and turned the color of blood. Bill was at the oars now, shouting and cursing to encourage the rest of us. “Pull, boys,” he commanded. “Let’s try to make the south shore before that there ih comes up for breath. There ain’t one of us here what wants to live for the rest of his life on the bottom of the sea. There ain’t one of us here what ‘ud care to have it out with a Jormungandar.” In a moment we had swung the boat about and were making for the shore. - eonmmicbooks.con: