Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

Now, you never saw such a packet as that, not in a hundred years, nor yet two hundred, I should think. She’d got a rum little main-deck, about forty feet long, and then came a step about two feet high, and another bit of a deck, with a little house on it. That was the after end of her; and more I couldn’t see, because the light of my lamp went no farther, except to show me vaguely the big, cocked-up stern of her, going up into the darkness. I never saw a vessel made like her; not even in an old picture of old-time ships. Forrard of me, was her mast—a big lump of a stick it was too, for her size. And here was another amazing thing, the mast of her looked just solid stone. “Funny, isn’t she, Duprey?” said the Skipper’s voice at my back, and I came round on him with a jump. “Yes,” I said. “I'm puzzled. Aren’t you, Sir?” “Well,” he said, “I am. If we were like the shell-backs they talk of in books, we’d be crossing ourselves. But, personally, give me a good heavy Colt, or the hefty chunk of steel you’re cuddling.” He turned from me, and put his head over the rail. “Pass up the painter, Jales,” he said, to the bow-oar. Then to he Third Mate:— “Bring ’em all up, Mister. If hoe s going to be anything rummy, we may as well make a picnic party of the lot. . . . Hitch that painter round the cleet yonder, Duprey,” he added to me. “It looks good solid stone! . . . That’s right. Come along.” He swung the thin beam of his lantern fore and aft, and then forrard again. “Lord!” he said. “Look at that mast. It’s stone. Give it a whack with the back of your axe, man; only remember she’s apparently a bit of an old- timer! So go gently.” I took my axe short, and tapped the mast, and it rang dull, and solid, like a stone pillar, I struck it again, harder, and a sharp flake of stone flew past my cheek. The Skipper thrust his lantern close up to where Id struck the mast. “By George,” he said, “she’s absolute a stone Se ee stone, afloat here out of Eternity, in the middle of the wide Atlantic. ... Why! She must weigh a thousand tons more than she’s buoyancy to ey It’s just impossible. . It’s— He turned bic Hea quickly, at a sound in the darkness along the decks. He flashed his light that way, across and across the after decks; but we could see nothing. “Get a move on you in the boat!” he said sharply, stepping to the rail and ne down. “For once [d really preter a little more of your com- ~ pany. He came round like a flash. “Duprey, what was that?” he asked ‘n a low voice. | 97 CORMIE OOS »COM