Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

eS. eas, eS ee > lean against while you listen and think. And all about you, stretching out into the miles, only and always the enormous silence of the sea, spreading out a thousand miles every way into the everlasting, brooding night. And not a light anywhere, out on all the waste of waters; nor ever a sound, as I have told, except the faint moaning of the masts and gear, as they chafe and Whine a little to the occasional invisible roll of the ship. And suddenly, across all this silence, I heard Jensen’s voice from the head of the starboard steps, say:— : “Did you hear that, Duprey?” ; “What?” T asked, cocking my head up. But as I questioned, I heard what he _ heard—the constant sound of running water, for all the world like the noise of a brook running down a hill-side. And the queer sound was surely not | a hundred fathoms off our port bow! “By gum!” said Jensen’s voice, out of the darkness, “That’s damned sort of funny!” “Shut up!” I whispered, and went across, in my bare feet, to the port rail, where I leaned out into the darkness, and stared towards the curious sound. : The noise of a brook running down a hill-side continued, where there was no brook for a thousand sea-miles in any direction. “What is it?” said Jensen’s voice again, scarcely above a whisper now. From below him on the main-deck, there came several voices questioning: == Mark!” “Stow the talk!” “,.°. there!” “Listen!” “Lord love us, what is it?” ... And then Jensen muttering to them to be quiet. There followed a full minute, during which we all heard the brook, where no brook could ever run; and then, out of the night there came a sudden hoarse incredible sound:—ooaaze, oooaze, arrrr, arrrr, oocaze—a stupendous sort of croak, deep and somehow abominable, out of the black- ness. In the same instant, I found myself sniffing ‘the air. There was a queer rank smell, stealing through the night. “Porrard there on the look-out!” I heard the mate singing out, away att. “Forrard there! What the blazes are you doing!” I heard him come clattering down the port ladder from the poop, and then the sound of his feet at a run along the main-deck, Simultaneously, there was a thudding of bare feet, as the watch below came racing out of the fo’cas’le beneath me. “Now then! Now then! Now then!” shouted the Mate, as he charged up on to the fo’cas’le head. “What's up?” | : “It's something off the port bow, Sir,” I said. “Running water! And then that sort of howl. . . . Your night-glasses,” I suggested. ~Can’t see a thing,” he growled, as he stared away through the dark. “There’s a sort of mist. Phoo! what’a devil of a stink! “Look!” said someone down on the main-deck. “What’s that?” I saw it in the same instant, and caught the Mate’s elbow. 88 : CORnMIE OOOKS (E©)