William Hope Hodgson - The Boats of the Glen Carrig

The Boats of the Glen Carrig
First published in 1907.

ISBN 978-1-775415-41-1

2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.

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

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.

Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made nodiscovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there acry from the bo'sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there wassomething which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was verylow lying, and none could tell whether it was land or but a morningcloud. Yet, because there was the beginning of hope within our hearts, wepulled wearily towards it, and thus, in about an hour, discovered it tobe indeed the coast of some flat country.

Then, it might be a little after the hour of midday, we had come so closeto it that we could distinguish with ease what manner of land lay beyondthe shore, and thus we found it to be of an abominable flatness, desolatebeyond all that I could have imagined. Here and there it appeared to becovered with clumps of queer vegetation; though whether they were smalltrees or great bushes, I had no means of telling; but this I know, thatthey 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, seekingan opening whereby we could pass inward to the land; but a weary timepassed or ere we came upon that which we sought. Yet, in the end, wefound ita slimy-banked creek, which proved to be the estuary of a greatriver, though we spoke of it always as a creek. Into this we entered, andproceeded at no great pace upwards along its winding course; and as wemade forward, we scanned the low banks upon each side, perchance theremight be some spot where we could make to land; but we found nonethebanks being composed of a vile mud which gave us no encouragement toventure rashly upon them.

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

Presently, having passed beyond this clump of the vegetation, and thebanks of the river remaining very low, I stood me upon a thwart, by whichmeans I was enabled to scan the surrounding country. This I discovered,so far as my sight could penetrate, to be pierced in all directions withinnumerable creeks and pools, some of these latter being very great ofextent; and, as I have before made mention, everywhere the country waslow setas it might be a great plain of mud; so that it gave me a senseof dreariness to look out upon it. It may be, all unconsciously, that myspirit 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 norvegetable, save it be the stunted trees, which, indeed, grew in clumpshere 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 mymemory told me that never before had I come upon a country whichcontained so much quietness. Nothing moved across my visionnot even alone bird soared up against the dull sky; and, for my hearing, not somuch as the cry of a sea-bird came to meno! nor the croak of a frog,nor the plash of a fish. It was as though we had come upon the Country ofSilence, which some have called the Land of Lonesomeness.

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

Then, a little before sundown, we halted upon our oars, and made a scantmeal from a portion of our remaining provisions; and as we ate, I couldsee the sun sinking away over the wastes, and I had some slight diversionin watching the grotesque shadows which it cast from the trees into thewater upon our larboard side; for we had come to a pause opposite a clumpof the vegetation. It was at this time, as I remember, that it was bornein upon me afresh how very silent was the land; and that this was not dueto my imagination, I remarked that the men both in our own and in thebo'sun's boat, seemed uneasy because of it; for none spoke save inundertones, as though they had fear of breaking it.

And it was at this time, when I was awed by so much solitude, that therecame the first telling of life in all that wilderness. I heard it firstin the far distance, away inlanda curious, low, sobbing note it was,and the rise and the fall of it was like to the sobbing of a lonesomewind through a great forest. Yet was there no wind. Then, in a moment, ithad died, and the silence of the land was awesome by reason of thecontrast. And I looked about me at the men, both in the boat in which Iwas and that which the bo'sun commanded; and not one was there but heldhimself in a posture of listening. In this wise a minute of quietnesspassed, and then one of the men gave out a laugh, born of the nervousnesswhich had taken him.

The bo'sun muttered to him to hush, and, in the same moment, there cameagain the plaint of that wild sobbing. And abruptly it sounded away onour right, and immediately was caught up, as it were, and echoed backfrom some place beyond us afar up the creek. At that, I got me upon athwart, intending to take another look over the country about us; butthe banks of the creek had become higher; moreover the vegetation actedas a screen, even had my stature and elevation enabled me to overlookthe banks.