The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

past her. And now I perceived that she lay full
broadside on to us, and that her three masts were gone close down to the
deck. Her side was streaked in places with rust, and in others a green
scum overspread her; but it was no more than a glance that I gave at any
of those matters; for I had spied something which drew all my
attention—great leathery arms splayed all across her side, some of them
crooked inboard over the rail, and then, low down, seen just above the
weed, the huge, brown, glistening bulk of so great a monster as ever I
had conceived. The bo'sun saw it in the same instant and cried out in a
hoarse whisper that it was a mighty devilfish, and then, even as he
spoke, two of the arms flickered up into the cold light of the dawn, as
though the creature had been asleep, and we had waked it. At that, the
bo'sun seized an oar, and I did likewise, and, so swiftly as we dared,
for fear of making any unneedful noise, we pulled the boat to a safer
distance. From there and until the vessel had become indistinct by reason
of the space we put between us, we watched that great creature clutched
to the old hull, as it might be a limpet to a rock.
    Presently, when it was broad day, some of the men began to rouse up, and
in a little we broke our fast, which was not displeasing to me, who had
spent the night watching. And so through the day we sailed with a very
light wind upon our larboard quarter. And all the while we kept the
great waste of weed upon our starboard side, and apart from the mainland
of the weed, as it were, there were scattered about an uncountable
number of weed islets and banks, and there were thin patches of it that
appeared scarce above the water, and through these later we let the boat
sail; for they had not sufficient density to impede our progress more
than a little.
    And then, when the day was far spent, we came in sight of another
wreck amid the weeds. She lay in from the edge perhaps so much as the
half of a mile, and she had all three of her lower masts in, and her
lower yards squared. But what took our eyes more than aught else was a
great superstructure which had been built upward from her rails,
almost half-way to her main tops, and this, as we were able to
perceive, was supported by ropes let down from the yards; but of what
material the superstructure was composed, I have no knowledge; for it
was so over-grown with some form of green stuff—as was so much of the
hull as showed above the weed—as to defy our guesses. And because of
this growth, it was borne upon us that the ship must have been lost to
the world a very great age ago. At this suggestion, I grew full of
solemn thought; for it seemed to me that we had come upon the cemetery
of the oceans.
    Now, in a little while after we had passed this ancient craft, the night
came down upon us, and we prepared for sleep, and because the boat was
making some little way through the water, the bo'sun gave out that each
of us should stand our turn at the steering-oar, and that he was to be
called should any fresh matter transpire. And so we settled down for the
night, and owing to my previous sleeplessness, I was full weary, so that
I knew nothing until the one whom I was to relieve shook me into
wakefulness. So soon as I was fully waked, I perceived that a low moon
hung above the horizon, and shed a very ghostly light across the great
weed world to starboard. For the rest, the night was exceeding quiet, so
that no sound came to me in all that ocean, save the rippling of the
water upon our bends as the boat forged slowly along. And so I settled
down to pass the time ere I should be allowed to sleep; but first I asked
the man whom I had relieved, how long a time had passed since moon-rise;
to which he replied that it was no more than the half of an hour, and
after that I questioned whether he had seen aught strange amid the weed
during his time at the oar; but he had seen nothing, except that once he
had fancied a light had shown in the midst of the