Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 114: what you’re looking at

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

“But you couldn’t get him away. You couldn’t get the men away either; they all seemed riveted to the spot, watching that poor devil of a parrot. It mumbled to itself nearly all the time. Then it would chatter out some words we could not understand—not English words. Nor did it always use the same language. Mathews had a little command of Spanish and swore the bird often talked in that tongue. I am certain I caught German words and once or twice certain phrases in Polynesian which I'd picked up while on a trading-schooner through the Islands. “You understand that the parrot was certainly old, incredibly old, I would say. It was almost featherless; it must have had many masters in its time. You know they say those birds live for a century or longer. And God knows. where this bird had been and what it had seen. The things it muttered must have come from its ancient memory of many masters of many nationalities. And between its mutters it would let out those awful screams, exquisitely dif- ferent screams—the screams of different men in agony and terror. And im- mediately after each scream it would choke out some phrase, not always in English, as I’ve said, but in other languages too. “I don’t know if a bird can go insane, but if one can that parrot was very close to it. There was only one thing we could deduce from its actions. It had been frightened almost out of its life, and the screams it gave and the words it shouted had been hammered into its head by some awful happening. The words it muttered half-mechanically were from long ago; the words it shouted were of recent memorizing. It was horrifying. It seemed trying to tell us something. From behind its fixed, unwinking eyes there seemed to - hover a shadow; I even felt there was an uncanny flicker of pleading. It wanted to make us understand that it had seen something no living thing had seen before, something so monstrous and ghastly it had penetrated at once and indelibly even into its own cynical and calloused brain. “How long we all remained about that cage, silent and shuddering, I do not know. But it was the night chill coming into the wind that roused us, that and the smell of the supper burning on the galley stove. We had all insensibly crowded together, as if each man feared to stand alone. The man at the wheel began to shout, his voice frightened. He wanted to know what was the matter and he wanted to be relieved. I told one of the other men to go aft and he went, but only with the greatest reluctance, his hand on the haft of his sheath-knife and his head continually turning to glance over his shoulder or at the darkening sea. And still at irregular intervals that crazy parrot let out its blood- curdling screams and shouted blindly at us: ‘I's _ coming aft. It’s coming aft!’ or that desperate, ‘My God, Collins!’ or that flat, despairing, “You can’t shoot it. You can’t shoot a thing like that!’ “IT shook Mathews finally and told him we ought to be getting back to the poop. We hadn’t eaten yet, and it was getting dark. ‘Eaten?’ he said, literally staggering as he went aft with me. ‘Eaten? How can you talk of eating?’ He stumbled up on the poop and leaned against the main cabin skylight, mopping his wet forehead. “What was it that came aft?’ He whis- pered hard, shivered and tried to straighten himself. “The mate of this ship, was named Collins, according to the articles we found,’ he said. ‘And only 112 COMIC OOO. CO —