whispering among themselves. They make gestures, too, and when they are tired they sway pathetically against the sky.
I took a turn about the deck and bawled out the men and told them to go to the devil. Then I got my pipe out and blew grotesque yellow effigies into the cold air. They danced in the moonlight and made the situation irredeemable. I came back to Oscar eventually and asked him point-blank what he meant by “it.” But Oscar didn’t answer me. He simply turned, and pointed.
Something white and gelatinous oozed over the rail and ran or slid for several feet along the deck. Then a larger bulk seethed out of the darkness and stood poised above the black stern-post. A second object descended upon the deck, coming down with a thud and running at a tangent with the first over the smooth, polished boards.
I saw two of the men get quickly to their feet and I heard Oscar shout out a curt command.
The thing upon the deck spread out and became broader at its base. It reared into the air a livid appendage encircled with monstrous pink suckers. We could see the suckers loathsomely at work in the moonlight, opening and closing and opening again. We were affected by a queer aromatic stench and we felt an overpowering sense of physical nausea. I saw one of the men reel backward and collapse upon the boards. Then a second idiot keeled over, and a third — a third actually advanced towards the loathsome object on his hands and knees, as if fascinated.
At that moment the moon seemed to draw nearer, to actually careen down the sky and hang above the cordage. Then suddenly the amorphous tentacles shot forward, like released hawsers, and struck against the nearest mast, and I heard a splintering, and a noise like thunder. The arms quivered and seemed to fly in all directions. Then they flopped back over the side.
I fastened my eyes upon our black topsail mast-heads, and questioned Oscar in a very low voice. “Did
Oscar nodded and shuffled his feet. The men on the deck whispered among themselves, and I knew intuitively that a spirit of rebellion was rife among them. And yet even Oscar exonerated me!
“Where would we have been if you hadn’t brought us in here? A-drifting, probably — rudderless and sailless. Our sails may look like the skin on a water-logged corpse, but we can use ‘em — when we can get the masts into shape. The lagoon looked innocent enough, and most of us were for coming in here. But now they whine like yellow puppies — and blame it on you. The idiots! If you just say the word-”
I stopped him, for I didn’t want the men to take his proposal seriously, and he spoke loud enough for them to hear. The men, I felt, were scarcely to blame — under the circumstances!
“How many times has the
“Eight times!” said Oscar. “It took the boatswain on the third trip. He shrieked and threw up his arms, and turned yellow! It twined itself about his leg, and set its great pink suckers to work on him; and the rest of us could do nothing — nothing! We tried to get him away, but you cannot imagine the sheer pull of that white arm. It oozed slime all over him, and all over the deck. Then jt flopped back into the water, and carried him with it! I “After that we were more careful. I told the men to go below, but they only glowered at me. The thing fascinates them. They sit there and deliberately wait for it to return. You saw what happened just now. The thing can strike like a cobra, and it sticks closer than a lamprey; but the idiots won’t be warned. And when I think of those quivering pink suckers I feel sorry for them — and for myself! He didn’t utter a sound, you understand, but he turned livid under the gills and his tongue stuck out horribly, and just before he disappeared over the side I noticed that his lips were all black and swollen. But as I told you, he was immersed in yellowish slime, in ooze, and the life must have gone out of him almost at once. I’m sure that he didn’t really suffer. With God’s help, it’s we who have to suffer!”
K “Oscar,” I said, “I want you to be quite frank, and if necessary, even brutal. Do you think that you can explain that thing? I don’t want any wretched theories, Oscar. I want you to fashion a prop for me, Oscar, something for me to lean upon. I’m so very tired, and I haven’t much authority here. Oh, yes, I’m supposed to be in command, but when there is nothing to go upon, Oscar, what can I say to them? How can I get them down into the cabin? I pity them so. What do you think it is, my friend?”
“The thing is obviously a cephalopod,” said Oscar, quite simply, but there was a look of shame and horror in his eyes, which I didn’t like.
“An octopus, Oscar?”
“Perhaps. Or a monstrous squid! Or some hideous unclassified species!”
A fabric of greenish cloud covered the face of the moon, and I saw one of the men crawling on his hands and knees along the deck. Then he gave a sudden, defiant scream, ran to the rail and held out his arms. A white exudation ran the entire length of the rail. It rose up and quivered amidst illimitable shadows, and then it poured in an abominable stream over the scuppers and enveloped the hectic form of the wretch, and it made no sound. The poor fool tried to get away. He screamed, made shocking grimaces, fell down upon the deck and tried to draw himself along by his hands. He pawed at the smooth, slippery surface, but the thing had wound its tentacles about his leg, and it pulled him slowly and hideously.
His head struck against the scuppers, and a crimson stream, no wider than a hawser rope, ran down the deck and formed a miniature pool at Oscar’s feet. A sucker fastened upon his right temple, and another got in under his shirt and set to work upon his bare chest. I tried to get to him, but Oscar held fast to my arm, and would not tell me why. The body became white, slimy, changed before our eyes. And not one man stepped forward to prevent it. Suddenly, while we watched, the dead man, whose eyes had already glazed, was jerked forcefully towards the scuppers, again and again.
But he wouldn’t go through. His head was soon pounded into ah unimaginable resemblance of something we didn’t care to think about, and we became deadly sick. But we watched, strangely fascinated, even perhaps more than a little resentful. We were watching something brutal and incredibly alive, and we beheld it in an unrestrained exercise of all its faculties. There, under a shrouded moon, in the phosphorescent wilderness of exotic waters, we saw the law of man outraged by something mute, misshapen, blasphemous, and we saw industrious retching matter, brainless and self-sufficient, obeying a law older than man, older than morality. Here was life absorbing another life, and doing it forcefully, and without conscience, and becoming stronger and more exultant through the doing of it.
But it couldn’t get the body through the scuppers. It pulled and pulled, and finally let go. The wind had gone down, and oddly enough as it let go and fell back into the dead calm of water, we heard an ominous splash. We rushed forward, and surrounded the body. It seemed to swim in a river of white jelly. Oscar called for something which had become necessary, and we wrapped it up decently and threw it overboard. But Oscar repeated a few words mechanically out of the little black prayer- book, which he imagined were appropriate. I stood and stared at the dark opening in the forecastle.
I don’t know to this day how I got the men through the dark opening. But I did it — with Oscar’s aid. I can see Oscar standing with his glistening head against a voiceless wilderness of stars. I can see him shaking his fists at the slinking cowards on the deck, and shrieking out commands. Or were they insults? I know that I stepped forward and helped him, and I think I must have used my fists, for later on I discovered that my knuckles were bruised and discoloured, and Oscar had to bandage them. It is queer how Oscar has faded in my memory, for I thought a great deal of him, in spite of his queer ways, and his large hungry eyes, and his fringe of yellow hair. He helped me get the men into the forecastle, and so did Boucke. Boucke, with a perfectly horrified face, and with lips quivering and struggling with a vicious inarticulateness!
I We drove them in like sheep, but sheep often rebel and are troublesome. But we got them in, and then we turned and looked back at the gaunt masts, swaying soul-lessly against the lifeless, sombre regularity of calm sea and sky, at the hanging ropes and frizzled sails, and at the long, moon-washed rails, and the encrimsoned scuppers. We heard Boucke inside, blubbering idiotically to the men. Then something made a dreadful gurgling sound in the water, and we heard a loud splash.
“It’s risen again,” said Oscar, in a tone of despair.
I sat in my cabin, reading a book. Oscar had bandaged up my hands, and left, and he had promised not to disturb me. I endeavoured to follow the little printed signs on the white page before me, but they called up no images, stimulated me to no response. The words did not take shape in my mind, and I did not know whether the stupid phrases that I sought to understand formed part of an essay or a short-story. The title of the book itself I cannot now recall, although I think that it had something to do with ships and the sea, and derelicts, and the
