My other companions fell upon their knees and little Harry O’Brien turned yellow under the gills. But the thing did not attack us. Instead with a heartbreaking scream that seemed outrageously human it sank beneath the waves, carrying with it the flattened, absurd remains of the valiant little cutter and the crushed and battered bodies of innumerable men. And as it sank loathsomely from sight the water about it flattened out into a tremorless plateau and turned the color of blood.
Bill was at the oars now, shouting and cursing to encourage the rest of us. “Pull, boys,” he commanded. “Let’s try to make the south shore before that there fish comes up for breath. There ain’t one of us here what wants to live for the rest of his life on the bottom of the sea. There ain’t one of us here what ud care to have it out with a Jormungandar.”
In a moment we had swung the boat about and were making for the shore.
Men on the other ships were crying and waving to us, but we didn’t stop to hand in any reports. We weren’t thinking of anything but a huge monstrosity that we would see towering and towering into the sky as long as our brains hung together in our foolish little heads.
The body of a young man, about 25 years old, was found this morning on a deserted beach near Northport. The body was horribly emaciated and the coroner, Mr. E. Thomas Bogart, discovered three small wounds on the young man’s thigh. The edges of the wounds were stained as though from gunpowder. The body scarcely weighed one hundred pounds. It is thought that the youth was the victim of foul play and inquiries are being made in the vicinity.
[Statement of Harry Olson]
I hadn’t had a thing to eat for three days, and I was driven to the cans. Sometimes you find something valuable in the cans and sometimes you don’t; but anyhow, I was working ’em systematically. I had gone up the street and down the street, and hadn’t found a thing for my pains except an old pair of suspenders and a tin of salmon. But when I came to the last house I stopped and stared. Then I stretched out a lean arm and picked up the box. It was a funny-looking box, with queer glass sides and little peek-holes in the side of it, and a metal compartment about three inches square in back of it, and a slide underneath large enough to hold a man’s hand.
I looked up at the windows of the house, but there wasn’t anyone watching me, and so I slipped the box under my coat and made off down the street. “It’s something expensive, you can bet your life on that,” I thought. “Probably some old doctor’s croaked and his widow threw the thing away without consulting anyone… This is a real scientific affair, this is, and I ought to.get a week’s board out of it.”
I wanted to examine the thing better and so I made for a vacant lot where I wouldn’t be interrupted. Once there I sat myself down behind a signboard and took the contraption from under my coat and looked at it.
Well, sir, it interested me. There was a little lever on top of it you pressed and the slide fell down and something clicked in the metal box in back of it, and the thing lighted up.
I realized at once that something was meant to go on the slide. I didn’t know just what, but my curiosity was aroused. “That light isn’t there for nothing,” I thought. “This box means business.”
I began to wonder what would happen if something alive were put on the slide. There was a clump of bushes near where I was sitting and I got up and made for it. It took me some time to get what I was after; but when I caught it I held it firmly between my thumb and forefinger so it couldn’t escape, and then I talked to it. “Grasshopper,” I said. “I haven’t any grudge against you personally, but the scientific mind is no respecter of persons.”
The infernal varmint wriggled and wriggled and covered my thumb with molasses, but I didn’t let up on him. I held him firmly and pushed him onto the slide. Then I turned on the lever and peeped through the holes.
The poor devil squirmed and fluttered for several minutes and then he began to dissolve. He got flabbier and flabbier and soon I could see right through him. When he was nothing but ooze he began to wriggle. I dumped him on the ground and he scurried away faster than a centipede.
“I’m deluding myself,” I thought. “I’m seeing things that never happened.” Then I did a very foolish thing. I thrust my hand into the box and turned on the lever. For several moments nothing happened and then my hand began to get cold. I peeped through the holes and what I saw made me scream and scream and draw my hand out and go running about the lot like a madman. My hand was a mass of writhing, twisting snakes! Leastwise, they looked like snakes at first, but later I saw that they were soft and yellow and rubbery and much worse than snakes.
But even then I didn’t altogether lose my head. Leastwise, I didn’t lose it for long. “This is a sheer hallucination,” I said to myself, “and I’m going to argue myself out of it.”
I sat down on a big boulder and held my hand up and looked at it. It had a thousand fingers and they dripped, but I made myself look at ’em. I did some tall arguing. “Snap out of it,” I said. “You’re imagining things!” I thought the fingers began to shorten and stiffen a little. “You’re imagining all this,” I continued. “It’s the sheerest bunk. That box isn’t anything out of the ordinary!”
Well sir, you may not believe it, but I argued myself back into sanity. I argued my hand back to normal. The wriggling, twisting things got shorter and fatter and joined together and before very long I had a hand with fingers.
Then I stood up and shouted. Luckily no one heard me, and there wasn’t anyone to watch me dancing about on my toes either. When I got out of breath I picked the infernal box up and walked away with it. I made directly for the river. “You’ve had your day,” I said. “You won’t turn any more poor critters into jelly-fish!”
Well sir, I threw the vile thing into the river, but first I smashed it against the planks on the wharf until it looked like nothing on earth under the stars.
And that’s the end of you!” I shouted as it sank. I ought to have got a medal for that, but I ain’t complaining. It isn’t every man has the pleasure of calling himself a disinterested benefactor of humanity.
