Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures

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Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 1

by William Hope Hodgson




  The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” and

  Other Nautical Adventures

  Being The First Volume of

  The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson

  Edited by Jeremy Lassen

  Night Shade Books • San Francisco & Portland • 2003

  This edition of The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”

  and Other Nautical Adventures © 2003 by Night Shade Books

  Cover and interior artwork © 2003 by Jason Van Hollander

  Layout and design by Jeremy Lassen

  Introduction © 2003 by Jeremy Lassen

  A Note On the Texts © 2003 by Jeremy Lassen

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition

  ISBN 1-892389-39-8

  E-ISBN: 9781597803687

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  This series is dedicated to the readers, editors, publishers and scholars who have worked tirelessly since William Hope Hodgson’s death to ensure that his work would not be lost or forgotten. Without their efforts, these volumes would not be possible.

  In particular, the editor would like to thank S. T. Joshi, Mike Ashley, Jack Adrian and George Locke for their generous support.

  Unreality, and the Borderlands

  of Human Existance

  Mr. Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious

  treatment of unreality – H. P. Lovecraft

  Among those fiction writers who have elected to deal with the shadowlands

  and borderlands of human existence, William Hope Hodgson surely merits a

  place with the very few that inform their treatment of such themes with a sense

  of authenticity. – Clark Ashton Smith

  IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that William Hope Hodgson is one of the great fantasists of the 20th century. The purpose of this introduction is not to sing the praises of William Hope Hodgson, nor to provide critical analysis of the success or failures of his fiction. Many have done so, far more eloquently, and insightfully than could be done in this limited forum. The purpose of this essay is to introduce the materials that make up this, the first volume of The Complete Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.

  It was Hodgson’s nautical fiction that first captured his contemporary reader’s imaginations. His experiences of life at sea gave this nautical fiction a grounding in reality which, when combined with his weird and cosmic sensibilities, created balanced and remarkably effective narratives. Even his non-weird sea fiction benefited from this dynamic: His realistically detailed backgrounds served to make the overly dramatic flourishes of his adventure fiction seem less outlandish. His popular success encouraged editors to give him top billing in the popular fiction magazines of the day, and encouraged Hodgson to further develop his peculiar cosmic vision.

  The opening novel in this book, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” was Hodgson’s first published book, and is the cornerstone of his “Sargasso Sea” cycle of stories. This novel was first published in England by Chapman & Hall in 1907. A year earlier, Hodgson’s first Sargasso Sea story “From the Tideless Sea” was published in the April 1906 issue of America’s The Monthly Story. On Hodgson’s side of the Atlantic, the editors of The London Magazine made “From the Tideless Sea” their lead story in the May, 1907 issue. July of 1907 saw the publication of “The Mystery of the Derelict,” which was his second Sargasso Sea story. “More News From the Homebird,” (a sequel to

  “From the Tideless Sea) was published in August of 1907. This initial flurry of Sargasso Sea stories almost certainly helped stir interest in The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”, which was released to unanimous praise in October of 1907.

  Immediately following these publications, Hodgson would write some of his most well-known weird sea fiction, but he would not return to the Sargasso Sea until 1912, when “The Thing in the Weeds” was published. Just over a year later, “The Finding of the Graiken” was printed, and would be the last Sargasso Sea story published during Hodgson’s lifetime.

  During the year’s following his death, Hodgson’s wife worked tirelessly to keep her husband’s work in print, and to find homes for his unpublished stories. In November of 1920, The Premier published “The Voice in the Dawn”, which was William Hope Hodgson’s final Sargasso Sea story. Arkham House reprinted this story in Deep Waters in 1947, under the title “The Call In the Dawn.”

  One of William Hope Hodgson’s most commercially successful creations was the series of stories featuring the British smuggler, Captain Gault. These stories were written during 1914 and 1915, prior to his commission in England’s Royal Field Artillery. All but one were published between 1914 and 1917, in The London Magazine. In September of 1917, Eveleigh Nash published ten of these stories in the collection Captain Gault. “The Painted Lady” was probably omitted from this collection because it had been published in his earlier Eveleigh Nash collection The Luck of the Strong, (in a slightly different form) as “Captain Gumbolt Charity and the Painted Lady.” “Trading With the Enemy” appeared in the October 1917 issue of The London Magazine, which was too late to allow its inclusion in the Eveliegh Nash collection. “The Plans of the Reefing Bi-Plane” was a rejected Captain Gault story that was not published until 1996, in Terrors From the Sea. This volume brings together for the first time all thirteen Captain Gault stories.

  Hodgson’s earlier commercial successes with his supernatural detective Carnaki may have encouraged him to create a serial adventure character: Captain Jat was the first such creation. Though not as commercially successful as Captain Gault, the two Captain Jat stories that were written are excellent combinations of humor and horror, and feature a classic Hodgson-stand-in character, Pibby Tawles… A cabin boy who always manages to end up better off than his Captain. This image of an apprentice getting his revenge upon, or tricking his abusive superiors is a re-occurring theme in his fiction that reflected Hodgson’s own love/hate relationship with life at sea. Both

  Captain Jat stories were published in The Red Magazine in 1912, and reprinted in his collection, The Luck of the Strong.

  The DCO Cargunka stories are another example of Hodgson’s search for a commercially viable series character. The Cargunka stories were published in The Red Magazine, in 1914 and 1915 – the same venue that had earlier published his Captain Jat stories. “The Bells of Laughing Sally,” and an abridgment of “The Adventures with the Claim Jumpers” were printed in Cargunka and Poems and Anecdotes (Harold and Paget, New York, 1914). This extremely odd publication contained abridgments of several Captain Gault stories and abridged versions of his well known sea fiction, as well as summaries of several of his stories that were not published until after his death(“The Sharks of the St. Elmo,” and “Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani”, among others.). This odd collection of summaries and abridgments is mixed together with Hodgson’s verse in an almost stream consciousness style. Complete versions of both Cargunka stories were reprinted in The Luck of the Strong.

  The stories in this first volume of Collected Fiction are the kinds of stories that helped Hodgson achieve commercial success. These stories were often published in the highest paying fiction markets of his day, and demonstrate his wide-ranging narrative talents: from the weird and fantastic, to the humorous, to straight adventure stories. Today’s readers of Hodgson may be more familiar with his stunningly original novels of cosmic vision, like The House on the Borderlands, or The Night Land, but it is the narratives of the sea that first captured the attention of the reading public. Most importantly, however, it was in
that weed chocked Sargasso Sea where he first began to explore unreality, and the borderlands of human existence.

  Jeremy Lassen

  San Francisco,

  Februrary, 2003

  The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”

  Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange Places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript.

  Madre Mia

  People may say thou art no longer young

  And yet, to me, thy youth was yesterday,

  A yesterday that seems

  Still mingled with my dreams.

  Ah! how the years have o’er thee flung

  Their soft mantilla, grey.

  And e’en to them thou art not over old;

  How could’st thou be! Thy hair

  Hast scarcely lost its deep old glorious dark

  Thy face is scarcely lined. No mark

  Destroys its calm serenity. Like gold

  Of evening light, when winds scarce stir,

  The soul-light of thy face is pure as prayer.

  I

  The Land of Lonesomeness

  NOW WE had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry from the bo’sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope within our hearts, we pulled wearily towards it, and thus, in about an hour, discovered it to be indeed the coast of some flat country.

  Then, it might be a little after the hour of midday, we had come so close to it that we could distinguish with ease what manner of land lay beyond the shore, and thus we found it to be of an abominable flatness, desolate beyond all that I could have imagined. Here and there it appeared to be covered with clumps of queer vegetation; though whether they were small trees or great bushes, I had no means of telling; but this I know, that they were like unto nothing which ever I had set eyes upon before.

  So much as this I gathered as we pulled slowly along the coast, seeking an opening whereby we could pass inward to the land; but a weary time passed ere we came upon that which we sought. Yet, in the end, we found it—a slimy-banked creek, which proved to be the estuary of a great river, though we spoke of it always as a creek. Into this we entered, and proceeded at no great pace upwards along its winding course; and as we made forward, we scanned the low banks upon each side, perchance there might be some spot where we could make to land; but we found none—the banks being composed of a vile mud which gave us no encouragement to venture rashly upon them.

  Now, having taken the boat something over a mile up the great creek, we came upon the first of that vegetation which I had chanced to notice from the sea, and here, being within some score yards of it, we were the better able to study it. Thus I found that it was indeed composed largely of a sort of tree, very low and stunted, and having what might be described as an unwholesome look about it. The branches of this tree, I perceived to be the cause of my inability to recognise it from a bush, until I had come close upon it; for they grew thin and smooth through all their length, and hung towards the earth; being weighted thereto by a single, large cabbage-like plant which seemed to sprout from the extreme tip of each.

  Presently, having passed beyond this this clump of the vegetation, and the banks of the river remaining very low, I stood me upon a thwart, by which means I was enabled to scan the surrounding country. This I discovered, so far as my sight could penetrate, to be pierced in all directions with innumerable creeks and pools, some of these latter being very great of extent; and, as I have before made mention, everywhere the country was low set—as it might be a great plain of mud; so that it gave me a sense of dreariness to look out upon it. It may be, all unconsciously, that my spirit was put in awe by the extreme silence of all the country around; for in all that waste I could see no living thing, neither bird nor vegetable, save it be the stunted trees, which, indeed, grew in clumps here and there over all the land, so much as I could see.

  This silence, when I grew fully aware of it, was the more uncanny; for my memory told me that never before had I come upon a country which contained so much quietness. Nothing moved across my vision—not even a lone bird soared up against the dull sky; and, for my hearing, not so much as the cry of a sea-bird came to me—no! nor the croak of a frog, nor the plash of a fish. It was as though we had come upon the Country of Silence, which some have called the Land of Lonesomeness.

  Now three hours had passed whilst we ceased not to labour at the oars, and we could no more see the sea; yet no place fit for our feet had come to view, for everywhere the mud, grey and black, surrounded us—encompassing us veritably by a slimy wilderness. And so we were fain to pull on, in the hope that we might come ultimately to firm ground.

  Then, a little before sundown, we halted upon our oars, and made a scant meal from a portion of our remaining provisions; and as we ate, I could see the sun sinking away over the wastes, and I had some slight diversion in watching the grotesque shadows which it cast from the trees into the water upon our larboard side; for we had come to a pause opposite a clump of the vegetation. It was at this time, as I remember, that it was borne in upon me afresh how very silent was the land; and that this was not due to my imagination, I remarked that the men both in our own and in the bo’sun’s boat, seemed uneasy because of it; for none spoke save in undertones, as though they had fear of breaking it.

  And it was at this time, when I was awed by so much solitude, that there came the first telling of life in all that wilderness. I heard it first in the far distance, away inland—a curious, low, sobbing note it was, and the rise and the fall of it was like to the sobbing of a lonesome wind through a great forest. Yet was there no wind. Then, in a moment, it had died, and the silence of the land was awesome by reason of the contrast. And I looked about me at the men, both in the boat in which I was and that which the bo’sun commanded; and not one was there but held himself in a posture of listening. In this wise a minute of quietness passed, and then one of the men gave out a laugh, born of the nervousness which had taken him.

  The bo’sun muttered to him to hush, and, in the same moment, there came again the plaint of that wild sobbing. And abruptly it sounded away on our right, and immediately was caught up, as it were, and echoed back from some place beyond us afar up the creek. At that, I got me upon a thwart, intending to take another look over the country about us; but the banks of the creek had become higher; moreover the vegetation acted as a screen, even had my stature and elevation enabled me to overlook the banks.

  And so, after a little while, the crying died away, and there was another silence. Then, as we sat each one harking for what might next befall, George, the youngest ’prentice boy, who had his seat beside me, plucked me by the sleeve, inquiring in a troubled voice whether I had any knowledge of that which the crying might portend; but I shook my head, telling him that I had no knowing beyond his own; though, for his comfort, I said that it might be the wind. Yet, at that, he shook his head; for indeed, it was plain that it could not be by such agency, for there was a stark calm.

  Now, I had scarce made an end of my remark, when again the sad crying was upon us. It appeared to come from far up the creek, and from far down the creek, and from inland and the land between us and the sea. It filled the evening air with its doleful wailing, and I remarked that there was in it a curious sobbing, most human in its despairful crying. And so awesome was the thing that no man of us spoke; for it seemed that we harked to the weeping of lost souls. And then, as we waited fearfully, the sun sank below the edge of the world, and the dusk was upon us.

  And now a more extraordinary thing happened; for
, as the night fell with swift gloom, the strange wailing and crying was hushed, and another sound stole out upon the land—a far, sullen growling. At the first, like the crying, it came from far inland; but was caught up speedily on all sides of us, and presently the dark was full of it. And it increased in volume, and strange trumpetings fled across it. Then, though with slowness, it fell away to a low, continuous growling, and in it there was that which I can only describe as an insistent, hungry snarl. Aye! no other word of which I have knowledge so well describes it as that—a note of hunger, most awesome to the ear. And this, more than all the rest of those incredible voicings, brought terror into my heart.

  Now as I sat listening, George gripped me suddenly by the arm, declaring in a shrill whisper that something had come among the clump of trees upon the left-hand bank. Of the truth of this, I had immediately a proof; for I caught the sound of a continuous rustling among them, and then a nearer note of growling, as though a wild beast purred at my elbow. Immediately upon this, I caught the bo’sun’s voice, calling in a low tone to Josh, the eldest ’prentice, who had the charge of our boat, to come alongside of him; for he would have the boats together. Then got we out the oars and laid the boats together in the midst of the creek; and so we watched through the night, being full of fear, so that we kept our speech low; that is, so low as would carry our thoughts one to the other through the noise of the growling.

 

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