Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

actual complete disappearances. I don’t know. No one knows, and we can only wonder. I do hear that some scientists have recently suggested the sur- vival in deep waters of some of those gigantic animals that occupied the world in ancient times, before man came. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to™me. “But we'll let that pass. What I wanted to tell you when I started out was of an experience that came to me. I shall never forget it. No man could. It was one of those nightmarish things that remain with a man all his life, and I suppose everyone goes through something as ghastly at least once before he dies, if he follows the sea... . Yes, I'll take another drink! “It all happened a long time ago. I was just a young third mate then, around twenty, serving my first voyage as an officer on the bark Doyon out-of Sydney for Callao. We had good sailing weather, as I remember, and we were coming up to the South American coast after a couple of weeks out, when we sighted just such a ship as I have been talking of. : “I don’t want to exaggerate or to imagine things after all these years, but Pll swear there was something eerie about her from the moment we first saw her. It was early in the morning, as I recall, and I had just come up from breakfast to take over from the mate—a decent sort of chap named Mathews, tall and well-built, not many years older than I was myself but very highly strung, as I afterwards discovered. ee ““That’s a queer-looking packet ahead of us,’ he remarked when I joined him on the poop. He had been staring through the glasses and now he handed them to me. ‘Looks like she’s not under control,’ he said. I stared through the glasses myself and saw a small barkentine some distance ahead of us and apparently crossing our bow. She was under plain sail but her after-booms were jarring crazily and it was obvious that she was yawing all over the sea. I could discover no sign of life on her decks, nor could I locate anyone at her wheel and I suggested to Matthews that he’d better-call the skipper, ~ ‘T’ve sent for him,’ he observed and so we both continued to inspect the strange ship until the skipper came on deck. The morning was very calm, with a gentle wind from the south. There was no sea, just a long oily swell almost a bottle-green in color, and the sky was a clear blue dotted with a few clouds on the weather horizon. It was warm, too, but I remember I felt uneasy and a little chilled, just as if I had a presentiment of what was to come. The skipper came on the poop rubbing his eyes, for he always slept late, and he took the glasses from the mate with considerable impatience. “What is it now?’ he said bad-temperedly, and he stared through. the glasses for some time. Then he said, ‘By George, it looks like she’s abandoned!’ and I knew from the sound of his voice he was feeling pleased, thinking of the salvage. “Well, to cut a long story short, we hove the Doyon to and the skipper sent the mate and myself away in our longboat, together with four of the men. We came up under the barkentine’s counter amd read her name, painted in white letters, “Robert Sutter—San Francisco,’ and it didn’t need a second look to tell she was abandoned all right. One of the men got aboard over. her midship rail when she rolled down, and he threw us a line so the rest of us could swing up. We left two men in the boat and proceeded to inspect 107 im) 3 Connicloooks.Cconn