1 - The revenge of matter

Summary

In William Hope Hodgson's “The Crew of the Lancing,” an unnamed ship, sailing somewhere in the tropics, is becalmed after a submarine earthquake. Entrapped within the “wreathing mists” that arise from the boiling sea, and oppressed by a “general feeling of something impending” (p. 259), the men hear strange noises “far out in the night, a muffled screaming, and then a clamour of hoarse braying like an ass's, only deeper, and with a horribly suggestive human note ringing through it” (p. 260). The source of this braying is a hitherto unknown species of deep-water monstrosities, dislodged from their usual habitat by the earthquake, that have boarded another becalmed ship, the Lancing, and eaten its crew.

Crawling about the decks [of the Lancing] now visible in the thinning mist, were the most horrible creatures I had ever seen. In spite of their unearthly strangeness I had a feeling that there was something familiar about them. They were like nothing so much as men. They had bodies the shape of seals, but of a dead unhealthy white colour. The lower part ended in a sort of double curved tail on which they had two long, snaky feelers, and at the ends a very human-like hand with talons instead of nails – fearsome parodies of humans.