Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

go?’ he said, his voice dropping. ‘Where and why? It’s all right for the skip- - per to talk of a third boat, but this ship carried no third boat. I’ve been over her again. There isn’t a sign of one.’ He went away and I could hear him “muttering to himself as he straightened up the room that had been the Cap- tain’s. : “A fine sort of business, wasn’t it? Yet we could have probably carried on all right and accepted things as we found them, if it hadn’t been for Mathews - and—something else. When I went on deck I found Mathews staring down at the splotch of black fur and dried flesh that must have once been a cat. “You can figure it out,’ he told me in a strained voice. “That poor little devil was running away from something and then it was killed. Think how fast it must have been, whatever it was killed it. You know how a frightened - cat can run,’ “What makes you think it was frightened?’ I asked him. But he only shook his head. Since that time I have seen a python smash flat a running dog with a blow of its snout—and that was quick work. Yet a dog isn’t as agile as a cat. You see what I mean? And that python’s snout only caught the dog in the small of the back. This, that was stuck to the deck, was ail flattened, head, body and tail, and all about it there was a faint but perceptible depres- sion in the hard teak planking, a sort of circle about four feet across. “*Then there’s this gun,’ said Mathews later on, coming back to the sub- ject. He held in his hand the nickel-plated revolver we had found in the scuppers. ‘Every shot fired. What at? Why?’ : , ‘T tried to talk him out of his somber mood, but each time I did so he would only shake his head and ask further questions—until I swear he had the whole crew of us completely jumpy when we might easily have forgot- ten the matter, or at least relegated it to the back of our minds. . . . Until, of course, the next thing occurred. “This was late that same afternoon, or rather close to evening. The men had gone for’ard, all except the helmsman, of course, and Mathews and I were pacing up and down the poop waiting for the seaman we had delegated as cook, to serve supper. The day was still fair, the sea calm and smooth. We were under full sail and making about six knots before a freshening wind which was coming up with the approach of nightfall. And then, all of a sudden, there came the most terrible scream and quite distinctly some one shouted, ‘My God, Collins!’ “T can’t describe the electrifying effect of the thing. That scream sent all our spines cold, froze the very blood in our veins. And that voice! There was everything in it that told of utter terror. More than that, it was a strange. voice—it belonged to no one of the men we had with us. _ “Mathews and I had stopped pacing the poop and were riveted to the planking. ‘Good heavens!’ said Mathews in a strained voice at last. “What— who was that?’ “Before I could even venture a reply there came a whole series of screams, splitting our very ear-drums. And then we heard another voice, a different voice from the first: ‘It’s coming aft. It’s coming aft!’ And if ever there was sheer, pitiful and desperate horror in any man’s tones there was in these. The 110 Comichooksnco