Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

be Sr se = The influence of the First World War was strong on H, P. Lovecraft, for in his youth he was an ardent Anglophile and remained almost fanatically so long after the end of that conflict. Thus the portrayal of the “Prussian beast” created by propagandists was accepted by him at face value and utilized in this story of a U-boat that ran afoul of an unearthly foe. Notwithstanding the fact of Nazi horror during the Second World War, we must perforce admit the artificial nature of Lovecraft’s protagonist's boasting—yet even so th author's mastery of suspenseful terror carries “The Temple” along to a real clrmax of ocean-bottom shock. : Vanuscript found on the coast of Yucatan “N AUGUST 20, 1917, I, Karl Hein- rich, Graf von Altberg+Ehrenstein, Lieutenant-Commander in the Imperial German Navy and in charge of the submarine U-29, deposit this bottle and record in the Atlantic Ocean at a point to me unknown but probably about N. Latitude 20 degrees, W. Longitude 35 degrees, where my ship lies disabled on the ocean floor. I do so because of my desire to set certain unusual facts : before the public; a thing I shall not in all probability survive to accomplish in person, since the circumstances surrounding me are as menacing as they are extraordinary, and involve not only the hopeless crippling of the U-29, but the impairment of my iron German will in a manner most disastrous. On the afternoon of June 18, as reported by wireless to the U-61, bound for Kiel, we torpedoed the British freighter Victory, New York to Liverpool, in N. Latitude 45 degrees 16 minutes, W. Longitude 28 degrees 34 minutes; permitting the crew to leave in boats in order to obtain a good cinema view for the admiralty records. The ship. sank quite picturesquely, bow first, the stern rising high out of the water whilst the hull shot down perpendicularly _ to the bottom of the sea. Our camera missed nothing, and I regret that so fine a reel of film should never reach Berlin. After that we sank the lifeboats with our guns and submerged. | . When we rose to the surface about sunset a seaman’s body was found on the deck, hands gripping the railing in curious fashion. The poor fellow . 89 Gomi oy oe)