Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

crew had come running up from the fo’c’stle. The cook had come out his galley and was standing open-mouthed, looking dazedly around, one hand clutching his apron and the other holding a cleaver. “Mathews let out an oath and dropped down the poop companion to the main deck. He was badly shaken, and he ran ’midships toward the men. I was close behind him too! ““Who the hell’s making that racket?’ he shouted hysterically. “No one answered him. The men had stopped and were looking ungasily about. Again came those awful screams, ringing all over the ship, and the + strange voice thick and hoarse with utter fear: ‘It’s coming aft! It’s coming aft!’ “Mathews stopped short and stared about him. ‘My God!’ he whispered to me. “Am I going mad?’ And then we both saw the men were pointing at something and after a moment the cook exclaimed i in a relieved voice, ‘Why, it’s only the parrot, sir!’ “I can remember the vast flood of relief that came over me. I stopped shak-. ing and let out a big sigh, and I could see that Mathews visibly relaxed. ‘Id forgotten the parrot,’ he said with a queer laugh, and he walked round to the forepart of the galley where the bird’s cage hung. The men gathered about too anid some of them laughed, though there was nothing of mirth in the sound and not much of reassurance. Mathews looked into the cage and I peered over his shoulder. Since we had given the bird some water that morning it had apparently recovered, for now it was sitting on its swing — -perch—but sort of crouched down. And I tell you it acted like no parrot I have ever seen, before or since. Bi: “Every one of its tattered remaining feathers was erect. Its eyes were fixed and staring and did not blink. It shivered the whole length of its body at reg- | ular intervals and did not move when Mathews shoved a tentative finger through the bars and spoke to it in a soothing voice. Even as we watched it the bird crouched lower, opened its beak and gave vent to one of those horrible | screams. And this time it was the sound of a man in awful pain, wave on ' wave, abruptly cut off. There was an aching silence for a second and then. = the parrot croaked distinctly, with a queer tremulous catch in its voice: ‘You can’t shoot it! You can’t shoot a thing like that!’ And the voice was again strange, the third we had heard, distinct in “mbre and pitch. The voices of three separate men! “T can remember that for at least a minute there was a tense and frozen silence. I could hear my heart thumping and the cold sweat was running | down my throat. Mathews had pulled his finger back from the cage as if it | burned him and he was the first to speak. ‘I never thought of it,’ he said, his i words flat and strangely without expression. ‘J never thought of it, but it’s simple enough. . . . He knows what it’s all about! He knows what happened. He saw!’ He spoke like a man half asleep, staring wide-eyed and ashen- faced at the crouching, shivering parrot. The men began to stir uneasily and one or two of them looked hastily over their shoulders. “T nudged Mathews in the back. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I whispers ‘We can’t have the men getting all jumpy.’ lil comicbooks.com