Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

90 : | H. P. LOVECRAFT was young, rather dark, and very handsome; probably an Italian or. Greek, and undoubtedly of the Victory’s crew. He had evidently sought refuge on the very ship which had been forced to destroy his own—one more victim of the unjust war of aggression which the English pig-dogs are waging upon the Fatherland. Our men searched him for souvenirs, and found in his ceat pocket a ‘very odd bit of ivory carved to represent a youth’s head crowned with laurel. My fellow officer, Lieutenant Klenze, believed that the thing was of great age and artistic value, so took it from the men for himself. How it had ever come into the. possession of a common sailor neither he nor I could imagine. As the dead man was thrown overboard there occurred two incidents which ss created much disturbance amongst the crew. The fellow’s eyes had been closed; but in the dragging of his body to the rail they were jarred open, and many seemed to entertain a queer delusion that they gazed steadily and méck- ingly at Schmidt and Zimmer, who were bent over the corpse. Then Boat- swain Muller, an elderly man who would have known better had he not been a superstitious Alsatian swine, became so excited by this impression that he watched the body in the water, and swore that after it sank a little it drew its limbs into a swimming position and sped away to the south under the waves. Klenze and I did not like these displays of peasant ignorance, and severely reprimanded the men, particularly Miiller. — : The next day a very troublesome situation was created by the indisposi- tion of some of the crew. They were evidently suffering from the nervous strain of our long voyage, and had had bad dreants. Several seemed quite, dazed and stupid; and after satisfying myself that they were not feign- ing their weakness, I excused them from their duties. The sea was rather rough, so we descended to a depth where the waves were less troublesome. ere we were comparatively calm, despite a somewhat puzzling southward current which we could not identify from our oceanographic charts. The moans of the sick men were decidedly annoying; but since they did not appear to demoralize the rest of the crew, we did not resort to extreme measures. It was our plan to remain where we were and intercept the liner Dacia, men- tioned in information from agents in New York. In the early evening we rose to the surface, and found the sea less heavy. The smoke of a battleship was on the northern horizon, but our distance and ability to submerge made us safe. What worried us more was the talk of Boatswain Miller, which grew wilder as night came on. He was in a de testably childish state, and babbled of some illusion of dead bodies drifting past the undersea portholes; bodies which looked at him intently, and which he recognized in spite of bloating as having seen dying during some of our victorious German exploits. And he said that the young man we had found and tossed overboard was their leader. This was very gruesome and abnormal, so we confined Miller in irons and had him soundly whipped, The men - comicbooks.conn be