Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

starboard, in a multitudinous muttering. ... “Damn funny! ... funny ,€eey!” : “Give way!” said the Old Man, loudly. “T’ll bottom this!” | “lll bottom this. ... Bottom this ... this!’ The echo came back in a veritable rolling of unexpected sound. And then we had dipped our oars again, and the night. was full of the reiterated rolling echoes of our rowlocks. Suddenly. the echoes — and there was, strangely, the sense of a great space about us, and in the same moment Phe coun mi dec water running appeared to be ditectly before us, but somehow up in the air. “Vast rowing!” said the Captain, and we lay on our oars, staring round into the darkness ahead. The Old Man swung the beam of his lamp upwards, making circles with it in the night, and abruptly I saw something looming vaguely through the thinner-seeming mist. “Look, Sir,” I called to the Captain. “Quick, Sir, your light right above you! There’s something up there!” The Old Man flashed his lamp upwards, and found the thing I had seen. But it was too indistinct to make anything of, and even as he saw it, the darkness and mist seemed to wrap it about. * “Pull a couple of strokes, all!” said the Captain. “Stow your talk, there in the boat!.. .. Agam! ..... Thatdl dof Vast pulling!” He was sending the beam of his lamp constantly across that part of the night where we had seen the thing, and suddenly I saw it again. “There, Sir!” I said. “A little to starboard with the light.” He flicked the light swiftly to the right, and immediately we all saw the thing plainly—a strangely-made mast, standing up there out of the mist, and leoking like no spar I had ever seen. It seemed now that the mist must lie pretty low on the sea in places; for the mast stood up out of it plainly for several fathoms; but, lower, it was hidden in the mist, which, I thought, seemed heavier now all round us; but thinner, as I have said, above. “Ship ahoy!” sung out the Skipper, suddenly. “Ship ahoy, there!” But for some moments there came never a sound back to us except the con- stant noise of the water running, not a score yards away; and then, it seemed to me that a vague echo beat back at us out of the mist, oddly:—“Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy!” “There’s something hailing us, Sir,” said the Third Mate. Now, that “something” was significant. It showed the sort of feeling that was on us all. 3 : “That’s na ship’s mast as ever I’ve seen!” I heard the man next to me mutter. “It’s got a unnatcheral look.” “Ahoy there!” shouted the Sida again, at the top of his voice. “Ahoy 123 | there! OF COMIGcaOOKS With the suddenness of a clap of thunder there burst out at us a vast, com