The Stone Ship

By William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. He began a four-year apprenticeship as a cabin boy in 1891. In 1899, he opened W. H. Hodgson s School of Physical Culture offering tailored exercise regimes for personal training. He wrote articles such as Physical Culture versus Recreative Exercises (1903). Hodgson turned his attention to fiction, publishing his first short story, The Goddess of Death (1904). In 1906 the American magazine The Monthly Story Magazine published From the Tideless Sea, the first of Hodgson s Sargasso Sea stories. His first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig , appeared in 1907. Amongst his other works are The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909), Carnacki: The Ghost Finder (1910) and The Night Land (1912).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609771294

William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was a British author and poet best known for his works of macabre fiction. Early experience as a sailor gave resonance to his novels of the supernatural at sea, The Ghost Pirates and The Boats of the Glen-Carrig, but The House on the Borderland and The Night Land are often singled out for their powerful depiction of eerie, otherworldly horror. The author was a man of many parts, a public speaker, photographer and early advocate of bodybuilding. He was killed in action during the Battle of the Lys in the First World War.

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The Stone Ship

By William Hope Hodgson

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2013 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2013

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-60977-129-4

Rum things!--Of course there are rum things happen at sea--As rum as ever there were. I remember when I was in the Alfred Jessop, a small barque, whose owner was her skipper, we came across a most extraordinary thing.

We were twenty days out from London, and well down into the tropics. It was before I took my ticket, and I was in the fo'cas'le. The day had passed without a breath of wind, and the night found us with all the lower sails up in the buntlines.

Now, I want you to take good note of what I am going to say:--

When it was dark in the second dog watch, there was not a sail in sight; not even the far off smoke of a steamer, and no land nearer than Africa, about a thousand miles to the eastward of us.

It was our watch on deck from eight to twelve, midnight, and my look-out from eight to ten. For the first hour, I walked to and fro across the break of the fo'cas'le head, smoking my pipe and just listening to the quiet.... Ever hear the kind of silence you can get away out at sea? You need to be in one of the old-time windjammers, with all the lights dowsed, and the sea as calm and quiet as some queer plain of death. And then you want a pipe and the lonesomeness of the fo'cas'le head, with the caps'n to lean against while you listen and think. And all about you, stretching out into the miles, only and always the enormous silence of the sea, spreading out a thousand miles every way into the everlasting, brooding night. And not a light anywhere, out on all the waste of waters; nor ever a sound, as I have told, except the faint moaning of the masts and gear, as they chafe and whine a little to the occasional invisible roll of the ship.

And suddenly, across all this silence, I heard Jensen's voice from the head of the starboard steps, say:--

"Did you hear that, Duprey?"

What? I asked, cocking my head up. But as I questioned, I heard what he heard--the constant sound of running water, for all the world like the noise of a brook running down a hill-side. And the queer sound was surely not a hundred fathoms off our port bow!

By gum! said Jensen's voice, out of the darkness. That's damned sort of funny!

Shut up! I whispered, and went across, in my bare feet, to the port rail, where I leaned out into the darkness, and stared towards the curious sound.

The noise of a brook running down a hill-side continued, where there was no brook for a thousand sea-miles in any direction.

What is it? said Jensen's voice again, scarcely above a whisper now. From below him on the main-deck, there came several voices questioning:--Hark! Stow the talk! ".